Final analysis of the impact of ICT on education

Final analysis of the impact of ICT on education

ICT stands for information communication software. In education this means technologies such as email, search engines, smart boards, kindles and laptops. (Rasmussen, I., & Ludvigsen, S. 2009)The introduction of such technologies has opened up a range of educational opportunities. However technology has also introduced a new set of problems in our classrooms. Problems such as inequity of the technologies available at home and in the classroom can put some students at a disadvantage, as well as the obvious problem of the technical fluency (or lack of) of both the teachers and students. (Rasmussen, I., & Ludvigsen, S. 2009)

Although it appears that teachers are making an attempt to keep up with modern ICT, (Project Tomorrow, 2008; van Braak, Tondeur, & Valcke, 2004) they are still lagging behind in their technical skills. Teachers tend to favour low skilled forms of ICT such as word processor and PowerPoint’s, and do not access the higher skilled, and often better quality forms of technology. (Maddux & Johnson, 2006; Russell, Bebell, O’Dwyer, & O’Connor, 2003)

Despite teachers’ lacking in ICT skills, it appears the inability to integrate ICT effectively into their classrooms is the major problem teachers’ face with ICT. (Beauchamp, 2004).Teachers are given professional development in the area of technical skills, yet their pedagogy is left unattended to, so teachers with good technical skills are still unable to effectively integrate ICT into their classrooms to enhance student learning.

On the whole teachers are not using the technology available effectively to enhance student learning in their classrooms. It appears that teaching pedagogy has failed to evolve as technology has evolved. Technology is based around students centred and group participation styles of learning, whilst many teachers still remain teaching in a teacher centred style of learning. This means that the technology being used in classrooms (if any) is ineffective. (Cuban, Kirkpatrick, & Peck; 2001; International Society for Technology in Education [ISTE], 2008; Partnership for 21^st Century Learning, 2007) Teaching pedagogy will need to change to accommodate the new forms of technology available in classrooms and will need to take on a student centred approach.

  

Although there is a large amount of technology available for our classrooms, and even in our classrooms, it appears that teachers are failing to include these technologies into their lessons. Teachers are remaining to teach in ‘traditional’ methods, with limited use of technology. The technology being used in classrooms is ineffective as teachers are remaining to teach in the ‘traditional’ teacher centred style learning, whilst technologies available are best used in student centred and group style learning. Schools and teachers will need to accept technology more widely into the classrooms, but for this to happen teachers must be willing to change the manner of which they teach. Unfortunately it does not appear as if this is the case across most classrooms. (Ertmer, P., & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. 2010).

ICT will change our classrooms in two main ways; technology will make information and educational experiences available that were previously unreachable and ICT will change the way future teachers teach and operate within their classrooms. (Bhattacharya, B., 2003).

Technologies such as search engines and online books and articles will mean that future students will be able to access information faster and easier than past generations.

Smart boards married with other technologies such as virtual gaming and internet can mean that students will be able to take virtual excursions to places that previously were impossible. This means that students are able to grapple with new topics and subjects as students are able to visualise and experience the topic on a much more concrete model then ever before.

It is important that teachers are able to continue to learn and change with technology as the digital age advances. This will leave teachers at the advantage as they are able to present lessons and ideas in ways that they did not have the opportunity to do in the past.

As future students will be “digital natives” it is important that teachers are able to use technology so as to meet the students on their level and present information that is interesting and engaging. Digital technology will be part of future students nature so therefore to get through to our students we must “speak in their mother tongue” (digital technology) to fully engage and interest our students.

References

Baum, J. (2006). Cyberethics: The new frontier, redOrbit. Retrieved October 7, 2009 from http://www.redorbit.com/news/education/345993/cyberethics%5fthe%5fnew%5ffrontier/index.html  Cited in Endicott-Popovsky , B,. (2009) Seeking a Balance: Online Safety for Our Children, Teacher Librarian, 14811782, Vol. 37, Issue 2

Cassidy, W., Jackson, M., & Brown, K. (2009). Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones, But How Can Pixels Hurt Me?: Students' Experiences with Cyber-Bullying. School Psychology International, 30(4), 383-402. doi:10.1177/0143034309106948

Ford, A. (2009). School Liability: Holding Middle Schools Liable for Cyber-Bullying Despite Their Implementation of Internet Usage Contracts. Journal of Law & Education, 38(3), 535-543. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

Franek, M. 2005/2006. Foiling cyberbullies in the new wild west.

Educational Leadership 63 (4): 39–43. Cited in Kite, S., Gable, R., & Filippelli, L. (2010). Assessing Middle School Students’ Knowledge of Conduct and Consequences and Their Behaviours Regarding the Use of Social Networking Sites. Clearing House, 83(5), 158-163.  Accessed on the 1^st of September

Juvonen, J. & Gross, E. 2008, ‘Extending the school grounds? Bullying experiences in cyberspace’, The Journal of School Health, v.78, n.9, p.496. Cited in Price, M., & Dalgleish, J. (2010). Cyberbullying Experiences, impacts and coping strategies as described by Australian young people. Youth Studies Australia. Vol. 29 Issue 2, p51-59, 9p, 3 Charts, 1 Graph http://www.mceetya.edu.au/verve/_resources/natsafeschools_file.pdf accessed 15/09/10

Final Cyber bullying Analysis

Final Cyber bullying Analysis

I investigated cyber bullying, which has become a massive problem faced by schools since the widespread introduction of technology into our classrooms and homes.

“Cyber bullying is bullying that is carried out with the aid of recent technologies like email, chat rooms, discussion groups, instant messaging and mobile phone texting.”(Ford, 2008)

Franek defines a cyber bully as “anyone who repeatedly misuses technology to harass, intimidate, bully, or terrorize another person” (2005/2006).

It is still unclear how prevalent cyber bullying is in our schools with statistics ranging from 9%- 49% of students experiencing some form of cyber bullying. (Juvonen & Gross 2008) Clearly this is an area that requires further investigation. However, a lower number of 9% of students experiencing/d cyber bullying still results in a significant number. E.g. For a school of 1000 students 90 of those will have been cyber bullied at some point. Once we clearly define how prevalent cyber bullying is it may become easier to address the issue at hand and implement anti-cyber bullying programs.

The department of education has played a large role in what schools are currently doing to deal with cyber bullying issues. The Department of education has deployed a “National Safe schools framework”. The aim of this framework is to “ensure the wellbeing of all Australian students” (Student learning and support services taskforce, 2003).  Whilst there are good suggestions, and a good start to begin to stop cyber bullying in our schools there is no suggestion in the framework to ensure that all schools carry out these policies. I believe that until the department of education is able to ensure, and check that these policies are implemented in schools cyber bullying will continue to plague our schools, as many schools may fail to implement the framework properly, if at all.

Ford (2009) recommends using “traditional anti- bullying strategies” to combat cyber bullying. This is because “Cyber-bullying is not so different than regular old school-yard bullying as the tactics employed by the offenders, the people affected, the resulting consequences, and the reasons for the bullying are all basically the same.” (Ford, 2009) Some of his strategies suggested include:

      “Intervention”- that is talk to the bully about their behaviour

      “Counselling”- for the bully to deal with the root cause of the bullying, and to teach the victims coping strategies.

       “School assemblies”- addressing the behaviour and highlighting the school policies against bullying (in any form) and the consequences that can occur for the bully.

      “Students parents can be bought in”

      “Educating teachers about cyber bullying and how to safeguard their students”. (Ford, 2009)

Although these are great suggestions, they can only be put into action, once the victim reports the bullying. Unfortunately up to 90% of victims don’t inform an adult. ((Juvonen & Gross 2008) Unlike traditional bullying where the bullying becomes obvious, cyber bullying can be easily hidden and often anonymous.

For those victims of cyberbullying who feel that they cannot inform an adult identified six key reasons for doing so:

• fear of retribution from the cyber-bully (30 percent);

• it is the student’s problem and not the school’s mandate (29 percent);

• the school staff could not stop the bullying anyway (27 percent);

• they could get their friends in trouble (26 percent);

• their parents would restrict their access to the Internet (24 percent),

and

• other students would label them as ‘informers’ or ‘rats’ (20 percent). (Cassidy, W., Jackson, M., & Brown, K., 2009).

All of these reasons have a core belief of feeling unsafe within the school environment if they were to ‘dob’. For this reason it is important that schools are able to create an environment where students feel safe and comfortable with informing adults of bullying incidents.

Through my research, it appears that the best way to stop cyber bullying would be to effectively teach our children to be cyber safe. According to Baum (2006), there are five things that we can do as educators to ensure the online safety of students:

      Initiate a cyber ethics/safety curriculum

      Teach cyber ethics/safety in the classroom

      Use the Internet for curriculum delivery

      Have students make a pledge

      Create an Internet Use Policy

In saying this, these steps cannot completely stop cyber bullying from occurring. For those students that are being cyber bullied it is important that we encourage our students to attempt to “avoid receiving messages from suspected bullies by blocking their screen names from their computer, restricting buddy lists or changing their own avatar” (Juvonen & Gross 2008).

References

Baum, J. (2006). Cyberethics: The new frontier, redOrbit. Retrieved October 7, 2009 from http://www.redorbit.com/news/education/345993/cyberethics%5fthe%5fnew%5ffrontier/index.html  Cited in Endicott-Popovsky , B,. (2009) Seeking a Balance: Online Safety for Our Children, Teacher Librarian, 14811782, Vol. 37, Issue 2

Cassidy, W., Jackson, M., & Brown, K. (2009). Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones, But How Can Pixels Hurt Me?: Students' Experiences with Cyber-Bullying. School Psychology International, 30(4), 383-402. doi:10.1177/0143034309106948

Ford, A. (2009). School Liability: Holding Middle Schools Liable for Cyber-Bullying Despite Their Implementation of Internet Usage Contracts. Journal of Law & Education, 38(3), 535-543. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.

Franek, M. 2005/2006. Foiling cyberbullies in the new wild west.

Educational Leadership 63 (4): 39–43. Cited in Kite, S., Gable, R., & Filippelli, L. (2010). Assessing Middle School Students’ Knowledge of Conduct and Consequences and Their Behaviours Regarding the Use of Social Networking Sites. Clearing House, 83(5), 158-163.  Accessed on the 1^st of September

Juvonen, J. & Gross, E. 2008, ‘Extending the school grounds? Bullying experiences in cyberspace’, The Journal of School Health, v.78, n.9, p.496. Cited in Price, M., & Dalgleish, J. (2010). Cyberbullying Experiences, impacts and coping strategies as described by Australian young people. Youth Studies Australia. Vol. 29 Issue 2, p51-59, 9p, 3 Charts, 1 Graph http://www.mceetya.edu.au/verve/_resources/natsafeschools_file.pdf accessed 15/09/10

Bullied to death: They committed suicide because of bullying

Childnet International - Cyber Bullying

Why don’t victims report Cyber bullying?

Why don’t victims report Cyber bullying?

For those participants who state they would not confide cyberbullying

problems to school personnel, the most prevalent reasons for

not doing so are as follows:

• fear of retribution from the cyber-bully (30 percent);

• it is the student’s problem and not the school’s mandate (29 percent);

• the school staff could not stop the bullying anyway (27 percent);

• they could get their friends in trouble (26 percent);

• their parents would restrict their access to the Internet (24 percent),

and

• other students would label them as ‘informers’ or ‘rats’ (20 percent). (Cassidy, W., Jackson, M., & Brown, K., 2009).

references

CASSIDY, W., JACKSON, M., & BROWN, K. (2009). Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones, But How Can Pixels Hurt Me?: Students' Experiences with Cyber-Bullying. School Psychology International, 30(4), 383-402. doi:10.1177/0143034309106948.

Reflection

I have never been a technical person, which is perhaps why I never thought of technology as an important part of teaching. When I remember back to my Primary school days technology was really not part of my classroom, other than the weekly computer class which admittedly was spent playing games.
I have always imagined my own Primary class to be similar to my own memories with technology playing little to no part in my classroom.
It was not until I started my topic of the impact if ICT in education that I realised that technology has become a vital part of my future students lives and should be an important part in my own classroom. Perhaps there is a different and more creative way that I could teach the fundamentals of education then my predecessors.
It has only recently become a real possibility in my mind that classrooms will have laptops for every student rather than books and pens and maybe in 20 years time children will not be learning to read using paper books but rather from technologies similar to kindles and Ipads.
For this reason I feel that it is important that teachers are educated on how to use such technologies and how to integrate these into their classrooms so that their teaching practice can improve and become enhanced by digital technologies rather than be hindered by technologies emerging.
In saying this I do feel that some of the "traditional" technologies such as "the chalkboard", now known as the "whiteboard" will still remain in our classrooms, as smartboards are too difficult to write basic notes and diagrams on. For this reason I feel that some of these traditional technologies will still remain in classrooms.

Analysis

Analysis

ICT stands for information communication software. In education this means technologies such as email, search engines, smart boards, kindles and laptops. The introduction of such technologies has opened up a range of educational opportunities. However technology has also introduced a new set range of problems in our classrooms. Problems such as inequity of the technologies available at home and in the classroom can put some students at a disadvantage, as well as the obvious problem of the technical fluency (or lack of) of both the teachers and students.

Although it appears that teachers are making an attempt to keep up with modern ICT, they are still lagging behind in their technical skills. Teachers tend to favour low skilled forms of ICT such as word processor and PowerPoint’s, and do not access the higher skilled, and often better quality forms of technology.

Despite teachers’ lacking in ICT skills, it appears the inability to integrate ICT effectively into their classrooms that is the major problem teachers’ face in ICT. Teachers are given professional development in the area of technical skills, yet their pedagogy is left unattended to, so teachers with good technical skills are still unable to effectively integrate ICT into their classrooms to enhance student learning.

On the whole teachers are not using the technology available effectively to enhance student learning in their classrooms. It appears that teaching pedagogy has failed to evolve as technology has evolved. Technology is based around students centred and group participation styles of learning, whilst many teachers still remain teaching in a teacher centred style of learning. This means that the technology being used in classrooms (if any) is ineffective. Teaching pedagogy will need to change to accommodate the new forms of technology available in classrooms and will need to take on a student centred approach.

  

Although there is a large amount of technology available for our classrooms, and even in our classrooms, it appears that teachers are failing to include these technologies into their lessons. Teachers are remaining to teach in ‘traditional’ methods, with limited use of technology. The technology being used in classrooms is ineffective as teachers are remaining to teach in the ‘traditional’ teacher centred style learning, whilst technologies available are best used in student centred and group style learning. Schools and teachers will need to accept technology more widely into the classrooms, but for this to happen teachers must be willing to change the manner of which they teach. Unfortunately it does not appear as if this is the case across most classrooms.

ICT will change our classrooms in two main ways; technology will make information and educational experiences available that were previously unreachable and ICT will change the way future teachers teach and operate within their classrooms.

Technologies such as search engines and online books and articles will mean that future students will be able to access information faster and easier than past generations.

Smart boards married with other technologies such as virtual gaming and internet can mean that students will be able to take virtual excursions to places that previously were impossible.

New technologies work best in group and student centred learning styles. This means the role of the teacher as “the beacon of knowledge” as it has been in the past will have to change in order to accommodate student centred learning. Teachers will become more as mentors to the students, pointing students in the right direction and providing infrastructure for students to facilitate their own learning.