Efficient technology usage in classrooms
A beneficial fallout of the ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) boom which is sweeping Indian industry is that new technologies are increasingly being used in the nation’s classrooms. But despite considerable expense on building technology infrastructure over the past decade in particular, schools in India (private and government) have made woefully slow progress in leveraging IT assets for better teaching and learning outcomes. If current practices continue, within the next decade there will be widespread disillusionment within school managements unable to justify the enormous price-tag that accompanies unproductive technology solutions. Alternatively a large number of schools will continue to muddle through, quite unaware of the extent of under-utilisation of their investments.
With corporates such as Intel, HP and Microsoft (whose long-term fortune directly correlates to computer penetration in schools) making large commitments to the education sector, technology largesse and spending are poised to grow. But unless stakeholders in schools become aware of the conditions precedent for sustainable and effective technology integration in classrooms, the effort and expense will not be commensurate with the quality of learning outcomes.
In the late 1990s author-educationist Larry Cuban provided a reality-check of the state of information technology usage in American schools (Computers in the Classroom: Oversold and Underused). Likewise in this column an assessment of technology usage in K-XII education in India is essayed with the objective of suggesting options for getting more bang out of investment in technology enabled learning.
The conditions precedent or enabling conditions for effective integration of new information technologies in school education are:
Digital fluency of teachers. That is their comfort level with technology. It is commonplace for teachers to throw up their hands at a paper jam in a printer, and/or despair about a ‘hung’ system, or await help to connect a data projector to a computer.
Such defeatist behaviour is evidence of lack of comfort with computer technologies. Teachers need digital fluency, which is distinct from simple digital literacy. This doesn’t mean that they need to be trained computer professionals. It means they should be trained sufficiently to stop regarding the computer or related hardware as mysterious objects that only experts can handle.
Installing adequate educational technology infrastructure. The most common mistake school managements make is to equate technology with computers. The term ‘educational technology’ covers a gamut of hardware such as digital cameras, audio and video recorders, scanners, printers, the internet, TV, radio, graphing calculators, GPS (GIS), handheld probes and sensors, robotics and other science kits.
Teacher-training. All contemporary teachers need to know how to leverage technology for better learning outcomes. Teachers need to be able to differentiate between ‘teaching about technology’ and ‘teaching with technology’ and to design curriculums that use technology meaningfully. Since such training is foreign to current pre-service teacher education programmes, this need must be met through in-service training.
Engagement with technology integration specialists. These are trained professionals who can help teachers with the tasks of meaningful integration of technology into the curriculum. They must be hired, even if briefly.
Qualified systems administrators & technical support staff. Investment must also be made in such personnel to provide crucial help-desk services to teachers. They are also required to routinely maintain and upgrade systems and school networks, troubleshoot problems, and set up the necessary security infrastructure for networked computers.
Time table scheduling for conducive use of technology. Unless teachers are able to use blocks of two periods, the usual 40 minutes per period is grossly insufficient for technology-based lessons.
Students’ access. Computers locked away in sanitised ‘computer labs’ and accessible only for brief periods discourage exploratory learning environments, which computers are designed to create.
Teacher access to technology resources. In addition to students, teachers must also have space and equipment for lesson planning, administrative tasks, internet research, printing, scanning, etc. They should be able to conveniently download, print and scan, and use the wealth of materials already available in the print and electronic media, or create their own.
Visionary school managements. Institutional managements which strive to improve teaching-learning through technology usage and are empathetic towards the technology needs of their institutions, are a vital condition precedent of good contemporary classroom practices.
(A alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Educa-tion with a specialisation in technology in education, Shuchi Grover is a Bangalore-based education consultant)