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eLearning
European Education Partnership

Roger Broadie roger@broadie.demon.co.uk

Categorisation of Educators' ICT-for-Learning Skills &&&

All Innovation Reports are the start of brief Innovation Profiles. Go to
http://www.eep-edu.org and click the Innovations Service button for more on
this and other innovations.

There are three main stages in enabling teachers and students to use ICT for
learning,
enabling only a few of the people in the school/college,
enabling all teachers and students in every classroom,
and enabling use of the device or service outside the school.

Some investments are more effective in getting the school/college to the
next stage. Some also enable more effective use of previous investments. As
an example consider the impact of interactive whiteboards in all classrooms.

Go to http://www.eep-edu.org and click the Innovations Service button for more on this and other innovations.

We all learn by linking new information into our current mental map of a subject. Each person has their own conceptual structure and points of
interest that motivate them to learn more.
Though teachers can present structured approaches, individual exploration is vitally important, provided it is satisfying and productive. Online hyper-linked learning content can give learners a wide and stimulating area
to explore - but how should this individual exploration be balanced with class teaching?

Having pencil and paper can help you hold and structure thoughts. With a laptop you gain tools to aid thinking. Add wireless connection and you get the constant capacity to access information you need and to communicate. Something strange and powerful happens to your capability when you can reliably integrate new capacities into your personal mental environment. It must surely be part of an educator's role to help students to integrate
external capacities into their lives, as well as to extend internal capacities.

Some of the deepest impacts of computers on learning are the most difficult to see - because they are impacts on the mind. Visual representations that are organised through software, can be edited while being discussed and can
help 'make thinking visible'. Discussion stimulated by developing visual representations can 'make thinking audible'. This inter-play of questioning, debate and visualisation operates through several channels into the brain and improves cognitive mapping and thinking
skills. What is the importance of this relative to traditional
school/college learning and how do we assess it?

The stage of enabling students to use ICT outside the school/college can be an early part of the school's ICT development plan. Creating a school website is not difficult or expensive and an increasing number of students
and their families can now access the Internet from home.A very powerful message is carried to students when their own school/college starts to actively communicate via the Internet. This message is even more powerful if students contribute to the web site.

European Education Partnership - Innovation Report No. 041
- What ICT infrastructure is desirable?
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Change is so fast with ICT that it is hard to remember your feelings about
ICT-for-learning only a year ago. Looking forward, it can be hard for
teachers to imagine their school/college having significantly more advanced
ICT. It is then hard to decide what steps to take today.

A useful strategy for looking forward is to consider the distant future, in
say 10 years time - or 20 years if you cannot imagine sufficient development
in 10 years. Choose a time-scale which allows you to ignore current
restraints and ask what ICT-for-learning is most desirable. For example,
imagine that all the classrooms in the school/college will be equipped with
interactive whiteboards, connected to the school/college network and the
Internet, with useful digital content available.

ICT dramatically changes learning opportunities at the level of the
individual, as well as for the classroom and the school. We all have special
learning needs, some people of course much more than others.

ICT helps individual problems to be overcome. It can enable specific skills
and elements of learning to be tackled individually. Do not ignore the
ICT-for-learning developments emerging from the 'special needs' community.
They may have much relevance for us all.

"After seeing the quality of team-working I am convinced we need to embed
digital video work into the curriculum," said one teacher.

Statements such as this lead quickly to considering what new skills teachers
will need to make this a reality. How many teachers do you know who
understand the grammar of film as well as they understand the grammar of
written text?

Many teachers produce considerable amounts of content for learning;
worksheets, notes and diagrams. All teachers produce ephemeral content in
class; questions, explanations and suggestions on how to do work.

This ephemeral content is important in stimulating and guiding students'
work. It is quite easy to imagine the worksheets, notes and diagrams being
put into online learning environments by teachers, but how many teachers
have the skills to also incorporate the important guidance content?

All schools/colleges in Europe will become properly equipped with ICT and
networked, in time. All students will use ICT for learning. Therefore all
teachers wishing to develop their career as a professional educator will
need to gain a range of new knowledge and skills.

The skills required are not just ICT skills. ICT changes how many of the
human interactions in learning happen. It also changes how education is
organised and managed. The first step must be for every teacher to develop a
vision of the kinds of new skills they personally wish to gain.

A learner who strongly desires to study a particular subject will use any available learning resources that address their interest, no matter how poor these resources are. Having to study a 2nd or 3rd choice subject, because that is all that is on offer, will not enable students to achieve the best
they can.
For teachers this poses a problem. Should the teacher help the student to find and use learning resources in a subject they do not teach, or should they only aid learning in the subjects they know they can teach well? Now that increasingly good learning resources are online this problem must be addressed and teachers will need new skills to do so.