Inside View from Ireland: Start with Teachers Collaborating

IRELAND LOOKS SET TO abandon the most most critical paradigm to Irish economic success as a December 2009 budget imposes several constraints on teacher training and schools' IT infrastructure. It's as though the Department of Education does not believe world-class ICT provides an essential building block for the delivery of education services. A quality system of education believes that teachers need to be educated on the clever use of technology that students now carry in their backpacks. Some teachers have never stepped up from a clamshell phone, never seeing the need to use a phone for more than talking or texting. To keep phones at bay, some schools force them to hibernate in power-off modes when they could be used as low-cost access points to e-learning materials. When I suggest phones or personal netbooks deserve to be incorporated into a primary schools's ICT strategy I often get confined to the corner of discussions by principals who believe computers belong locked in separate rooms, scheduled when they're updated with the latest anti-virus software. That's so wrong--just as it's wrong to assume that the best way to use State-funded computer assets is to lock them down for most of the year in separate rooms. The world has changed--the canteen is the computer lab now (see above).

Over the next three months, I'm making samples of convergent multimedia technology. It's an initiative related to new course development in Tipperary Institute. At the same time, it's part of a strategy document that could be used in Irish primay schools with pocket media devices, netbooks, and social learning networks. I don't believe I'm talking about radical things here. In the 15 years I've lived in Ireland, some Irish classrooms have not changed as dramatically as the connected world right outside their doors. Some are fiscally restrained. Others are dogmatically constrained. With the absence of innovation in education comes the death of the innovation culture.

Some notes from Moleskine about today's meeting:

Most of our youngest third level students interact more from social networks connected to education material than they glean from standard lecture sessions.
The Minister for Education will get a greater return for investment by putting netbooks into hands of students than by equipping bog-standard computer workstations in dedicated classroom facilities.
Creative multimedia students can often answer very techical questions that lie outside the range of expertise of well-regarded technical support personnel.
Interactive whiteboards need to be in common use areas.
Open wifi should be as commonplace in hallways as overhead lights. If needed, it can be switched off just like the lights.

Simon M. Lewis -- "A committee to save ICT in schools" on Anseo's blog, 12 Aug 09.