An Investigation into the effect of the deployment of ICT resources on English at KS3
Simon Elliott
An Investigation into the effect of the deployment of ICT resources on English at KS3
Simon Elliott
An Investigation into the effect of the deployment of ICT resources on English at KS3
Simon Elliott
30th October 2003
Introduction
The effect of the deployment of ICT resources on the English curriculum at Key Stage 3 is most dramatically observed when change occurs, in this case moving from desktop computers sited in suites to laptops located in convenient geographical locations.
In this brief study I will look at the role of ICT on changing literacy and how these issues can have an effect on the use of ICT in creating successful strategies for the integration of ICT into the English curriculum rather than the usual “bolt-on” approach.
Originally the intention was to investigate the effects on both Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. However, as is explained later, there was no use made of the facilities by Key Stage 4 English during this half term, largely because of the arrangement of the English Scheme of Work. The focus was therefore moved to Key Stage 3 for the observation. Background issues and opinions were gathered from both Key Stages.
In looking at the distribution of resources, I will look at the previous academic year and how the facilities were used then and move on to the current academic year and look at the opinions of staff and students as to the effect of the changes implemented over the Summer vacation.
Finally I will address the technical and organisational issues that have arisen and how this school intends to resolve them to further the progress made.
Investigation Environment
The study was carried out in a non-selective, coeducational independent day and boarding school in the South West of England. The groups looked at were from years 6 to 9, covering KS3 at the school as well as the traditional end of the Key Stage, Year 9. (The school operates an accelerated curriculum for Key Stage 2 to give the advantage of an extra year for GCSE).
The school has a large number of overseas boarders, including around 10% of the school’s population coming from Hong Kong and mainland China, and therefore many of the students have English as an addition language.
The investigation and collation of material was carried out over in the first half of the Autumn Term and written up over the half-term vacation. Some of the material on the role of ICT in English before the school gained mobile ICT resources was collected over the past year as part of another research project but reanalysed in the context of this study.
I was a science teacher in an all-girls’ maintained comprehensive in a large city in the South of England before moving into ICT, initially through an LEA support team and latterly as Head of ICT in the school where the research was carried out.
Interviews included the Head of English at Key Stage 3 and evidence gathered from teachers of English at Key Stage 3 and 4 over the past year.
The school has made great advances in the use of ICT. However, as was noted in an Ofsted inspection, cross-curricular ICT was not fully embedded in the curriculum. Over the past two years, I have sought to find ways of facilitating the process of the integration of ICT tools across the range of subjects.
ICT Resources
2002 - 2003
In the academic year 2002-2003, the school had two ICT suites, one with 15 Apple iMac and eMac desktop computers (running MacOS X 10.2) and one with 20 desktop PC’s (running Microsoft Windows 98SE). Information Technology, Music Technology and Mathematics all had timetabled lessons in the suites leaving 10 half-hour spaces in the KS4/5 suite and 18 in the KS2/3 suite. Children were limited to 50Mb of server storage each on a Microsoft Windows NT4 server.
There was access to two digital video cameras, a number of digital still cameras as well as scanners and the usual range of other peripherals.
It was also in 2002-2003 that the main phase of the whole-school wireless network (based upon the 802.11b standard) was completed.
2003 - 2004
In the summer of 2003, the school purchased three trolleys of fifteen Apple iBook laptop computers per trolley. Each trolley had a scanner and networked laser printer. One was placed on the top floor of the school, one on the middle floor and one on the ground floor in the KS4/5 ICT room.
At the same time as the laptops were introduced, a new server system was introduced, based on MacOS Server X, increasing the storage capacity from 18Gb to 818Gb and giving students and staff 1Gb of storage each. This left around 300Gb of space for digital media files and other eLearning resources. The wireless network was upgraded to 802.11g in the main teaching areas.
This allowed the KS2/3 ICT suite to be split into two offices and generate another classroom to cope with an increase in pupil numbers and support staff. It also had the benefit of placing ICT resources closer to the KS2 and KS3 classrooms.
This academic year, Music Technology was taught in the Music department on half of the computers that had been removed from the KS2/3 suite. Mathematics and PE took regular slots on the laptop trolley timetables. At the time of writing, more departments were booking up “slots” for regular use.
The role of ICT as a learning resource
ICT is changing the way that one of the fundamental parts of the English curriculum, Literacy, is percieved.
Richardson (2002:15) says that:
“To a much greater deal than before, tools not only help learners engage with the subject but also develop their ICT capability which includes the underlying concepts of how to identify, retrieve, assimilate, interpret and communicate relevant information”
Within the English curriculum, the ability to communicate information in different forms has always been important. ICT tools offer new and rich ways to manipulate information that has been retrieved from information sources as well as designing ways of communicating information through different contexts.
The conclusions of Findlay’s study included a statement reinforcing the need for new pedagogues to support the use of ICT rather than merely tacking it on to existing strategies. Thus is therefore a new revolution in teaching and learning waiting to be initiated by educators yet happening in the everyday lives of our new-media children.
In a survey carried out by Findlay (2001) in 1998 of 230 schools, none connected the use of ICT with Literacy. Two years later, only 17% described their use of ICT in developing reading and writing skills as “consistent”. This shows an area of weakness that I feel might appear somewhat strange to someone from the world of literature or publishing.
When Findlay (2001) looked at Literacy teaching in 24 contexts, it was found that teachers resorted to very traditional teaching methods.
The work of Findlay is further backed up by Harrison (2002) in the ImpaCT2 report where the researchers report that:
“ICT is little used in English at KS4. The majority of pupils surveyed reported never or hardly ever using ICT to support their learning of English, either within the their English lessons (71%) or within their wider school experiences (72%). This contrasts with the finding that approximately half the sample used ICT at home to support their English studies, with one third reporting use some weeks and 20% most weeks or every week.”
We therefore see that, even in one of the most recent and wide-ranging pieces of research into the use of ICT in schools that took place after several years of high national investment in ICT equipment, children’s home use of ICT was far more embedded than their use in school and this use was not guided by teachers – the children were teaching themselves.
Not only are children learning how to use the technology themselves, their understanding of the artefacts that are produced by new media devices are being developed outside of their experiences in school.
Television, video and multimedia adventures found on home computers and video game consoles are helping children develop a strong visual literacy at an ever earlier age. Collins et al. (1997) found that, even if children had a poor understanding of the way that textual narratives were constructed – works of fiction with evolving storylines – they are intuitively developing a visual literacy of semiotics, reading films and understanding the meanings therein. Collins et al. then said that these interpretational skills directly inform their written literacy as they analyse the camera viewpoints, dialogues and the contexts that the actors find themselves in.
Kress (2002:71) states that:
“Language in its written form is becoming specialised…. Getting closer to speech-like forms than to what are still considered formal writing-like forms.”
The concept of Visual Literacy is gaining interest from researchers who understand the need to address this area of children’s’ learning. Callow and Zammit (2002:189) discuss the development of “Visual Systemics” where children “read” visual media, whether traditional multimedia texts or the, by now, familiar hypermedia resources, just as they would textual sources such as books.
Robinson (1997:180) clarifies this with relation to narratives and storytelling by asserting that:
“They (children) are learning about narrative from their encounters with narrative in whichever medium, rather than being taught by video how to read print or visa-versa.”
Beavis (1998:234) contrasts the high culture position of traditional attitudes to non-textual literature with the attitude of young people who “read” the world around themselves. This high-culture position is in conflict with the reality of young peoples’ lives. The curriculum must seek to “mediate” (1998:240) between the past and present worlds.
Beavis raises the stakes of this new literacy by saying (1998:243) that:
“The image of literacy that most of us have now will be obsolete before today’s new readers and writers have finished primary school”
and then goes on to link this to the future world of work with the statement that (1998:244):
“There is an increasing importance of being able to read and work with images in the future world that is a “media-text” and “symbol-saturated” environment”
In the absence of an educational process, children are evolving methodologies of dealing with the new opportunities themselves. Sefton-Green and Reiss (1999:2) state that:
“There is the increasing recognition that culture is not the sole presence of formal education… Young people are using both their consumption of the mass-media and the production techniques now widely available in the leisure environment marketplace to make, share and enjoy electronically mediated cultural experiences”
and go on to define Multimedia Literacies as:
“The ability to work across text, image, sound and moving image with equal fluency, exploring each dimension separately and making connections between these historically discrete domains”
Livingstone (2002:222) comments on the new visual literacy of today’s children and points out that their writing style is becoming increasingly stylised by the new media that saturates their lives – text messages (SMS) and e-mail, with their staccato briefness, and the video style of television and film. The relationship that this has with teaching and learning becomes clear with the assertion that:
“They (children) have learned to use both text and images to convey messages and when restricted to one form or other for communication, become stifled. To express their ideas, they must use both.”
Collins et al. (1997) highlight many important concepts in the field of multimodal learning and suggest that learning involves the use of tools to assist in the discovery of information. Language is vital in this, especially between learners. ICT allows the learner to control the process – to become the producer as well as the consumer, with the teacher as a guide.
Dubois and Vial (2000) explain that multimodal learning is where the learner is forced to engage in additional processing of information because of the integration of textual, visual and auditory cues in material being viewed. Integration is key here as many simple multimedia resources allow the user to view the text, then bring up a picture and, finally, add auditory resources. This approach is, at best, bimodal but more often than not, sequential monomodal learning – focussing on one learning approach at a time.
In the research by Collins et al, multimedia (talking books) allowed children to tell stories rather than flatly recount text. Collins et al. (1997:66) introduce the term “Visual Literacy” to account for this and argue that competence in visual literacy is more or less ignored and therefore children are left to develop their own.
Galda (1993:506) defines visual literacy through the statement that:
“Children today are immersed in a visual culture of television, videos and computers. While they constantly use and interpret visual images, they often are unable to analyse and think critically about these images. Children need the ability to see in the fullest sense and to recognise the significance of what they are seeing. As children become visually literate, they will be able to communicate effectively through both comprehending and creating images in a variety of visual media”
Burmark (2002:5) insists that:
“It is no longer enough to read and write text, and that children must learn to process both text and pictures. An image-rich curriculum can reach more children and teach them more quickly that traditional written child reports and text-based, verbal instruction ever could. The age of images brought with it more than just still and moving photographs and was fostered largely by television.”
Whether we are content with it or not, society is moving toward multimodal learning where the words are just as important as the pictures and visa versa. Children are therefore more confident in their use of visual conversations and have difficulties when asked to perform in a purely textual mode.
Abbott (2001) concludes that Literacy is changing and becoming more complex. Abbott goes on to state (2001:122) that:
“Young learners are already beginning to cope with an increasingly complex and multimedia-enriched world”
Abbott comments that at the start of the 1980’s, the use of video in the classroom involved moving the class to a viewing room with a technician to operate it. By the end of the twentieth century, it was no longer possible to view literacy as based on the word or even on the word-based text. In Abbot’s words (2001:9):
“Literacy today is essentially multimedia, composed of an amalgam of words, pictures, sounds and the moving image.”
Davis and Sullivan (2002:123) state that:
“Communicating with ICT requires some conception of visual literacy of spatial awareness, of sound and of performance.”
They go on to assert that:
“ICT… is not just a useful aid for the teaching and learning of literacy but as something absolutely central to any definition of a confidently literate future citizen. It inspires their creative use of language into a form that they understand – a new-media centric model of communication.”
This statement, if taken seriously, must have a profound effect on teaching strategies, away from the current focus on textual literacy and on to a more rounded view of literacy as information gathering from many forms.
Carvin introduces us to “Adaptive Literacy” (2002:41) and tells us that literacy is a skill learned as a series of sub-skills and therefore children must be exposed to all of the subsets – visual, textual, technological – as taught skills rather than independently acquired. Again, as with other quotes in this essay, we are pointed to a new way of teaching and learning. Carvin defines (2000:42) “Adaptive Literacy” as:
“The willingness to learn new tools and apply previous learning to new situations”
Kress and Van Leewen (1996) outline how we can discuss images in terms of a grammar that must be read, just as a story of words is read. They go on to state that (1996:15):
“The skill of producing visual texts, however important their role in contemporary society, is not taught in schools. In terms of visual literacy, education produces illiterates.”
Ohler (2000:1) contends that:
“In an era when children design web sites for projects and integrate video, graphics and animation into their presentations, Art is fast becoming the new literacy for our times.”
With even more certainty, Ohler discusses the leaving behind of a text-centric world and the need as a result to teach visual literacy, rather than let children discover it through the muddled world of television, video games and the Internet. Multimedia has become the new global language.
On their website, the American Media Literacy Association (AMLA) (2002) state that:
“Today’s information and entertainment technologies communicate to us though a powerful combination of words, images and sounds. As such we need to develop a wider set of literacy skills, helping us to both comprehend the messages we receive and to effectively utilise these tools to design and distribute our own messages”
The challenge is to translate these new literacy skills into the English curriculum and embed them effectively as well as helping students to develop them in a more supported way through modifying existing schemes of work to cover them, just as we do with textual literacy.
Successful Strategies for the use of ICT in English
Changing Opportunities
Goodwyn (2000:1) reports that some have the view that the new “eCulture” is an easy option that children take, implying that this culture will damage the knowledge built up in the mass of written works. As stated in an earlier section, our view of literacy is changing from just associating the term with text to a spectrum of understandings from textual literacy to computer literacy to visual literacy.
We must therefore look at the use of ICT in English and decide whether the activities are offering something new or whether they are just copying a traditional approach with one involving ICT for the sake of it. One must look at the reading of Hamlet from a paper book against the use if an eText from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg,net) and see what is being done that is special, that could not be done were it not for ICT.
What ICT does change is access to resources. Whole libraries are online, take the recent move by the British Library to place the original “Canterbury Tales” online as a prime example, and the range is growing daily.
The Internet also opens up collaborative techniques such as WikiWebs and Wikipedia, an online community-controlled encyclopaedia, as well as network software such as SubEthaEdit that allows many individuals to contribute to a piece of text. Complications do arise from the textual fluidity of the Internet and the use of varieties of English that may not obey the “rules” being taught in class.
When it comes to using ICT to enhance the teaching of English, there are several methodologies that have worked for integrating ICT into the English curriculum. These are affected by the deployment of the technologies in the school and the impact of how access is organised. It is also important that the curriculum is designed to maximise their potential and that staff have the confidence to use the resources efficiently and effectively.
The main benefit of the use of ICT seen by teachers of English is that the presentation of the work is less dependent on the student and so even the most untidy student can create a piece of work that they are proud in. This can have a motivational effect on students, especially boys.
In order to be able to present work effectively, students need to be taught how to present text on the screen and page. Typography, and textual design in general, are not naturally learnt skills and must be taught in class just as we would teach spelling and grammar. How to emphasise text appropriately is an important skills, whether changing text style, font or tabulation.
Moore (1986) makes some suggestions for effective activities within English and these were used as starting points in the interviews with the teachers and students. Moore does emphasise that the motivational effect of using ICT will be short lived and therefore the activities themselves must have intrinsic benefit rather that just being “fun” alternatives.
Effective Activities in English
An alternative to standard encyclopaedia work is to get the students to select a passage on a subject that interests them and have them rewrite it in a different linguistic style.
Use an older child to assist a younger one in the creation of a fairy tale with the older one advising on how the story can develop. In this way, the tale becomes collaborative and the older child learns mentoring skills.
Website creation and email offer direct editing skills as well as communication and collaboration. The audience must be front most in the authors mind and quality of textual content must be combined with presentation.
A way of enlivening a scene from a play is to turn it into a newspaper article or news-desk style video recording. The students have to place themselves inside the text in order to transfer the focus into a reported style.
To engage students in the dynamic that is the English language, students can compare the English (spelling and grammar) on web sites from the different countries for whom English is the first language.
Creating a story by composing and recomposing text from the first draft version to the final version on screen.
Engaging in collaborative writing, as discussed earlier, using WikiWebs, Blogs and tools such as SubEthaEdit (formerly Hydra).
Composing short stories and poems by emailing a seed idea to a student and getting them to email that, plus their contribution, to a second student as so on.
Cloze activities using drag and drop from a list of words.
Composition of greeting cards based upon photos or pictures selected by the teacher.
Taking a poet’s draft work and creating an alternative final version, comparing it with the original, remembering to keep versions saved as different files along the way to show progression.
Sequencing audio files (story segments saved as MP3’s in Apple iTunes), Picture files (photo-story style pictures placed out of order in Apple iPhoto) and video files (video clips in Apple iMovie) and then presenting the result in the correct order.
Speech writing on a theme (for example - “I have a dream”) using PowerPoint for an autocue. This can be extended by preparing key sentences in PowerPoint and getting the speaker to create a speech “on-the-fly”.
Taking a piece of text and using the text formatting abilities of the word processor to colour nouns one colour, verbs another and so on. If colour printing is not available, the student can email the result to the teacher as an attachment.
The role of ICT resources in English in the school under study.
ICT Usage in English at Key Stage 3 and 4 (2002 - 2003)
One English teacher would take a year 9 pre-GCSE group into the ICT suite to work on story texts in a traditional setting (reworking text first written by hand in an earlier class). The ICT teacher also used digital video to assist another group in the development of narratives for 2 hours per week for one term.
Other than the above, there was no formal use of the ICT resources in English due to the lack of free lessons available on the room timetable at the time when the classes were being taught English.
Observations of lessons during this time showed that the approach was mainly to use the facilities for presentational purposes. Only the digital video work had the students using the ICT resources to do anything different.
Views of staff and students 2002 - 2003 (When ICT provision was suite-based)
Speaking to the teacher who used the ICT facilities the most in this academic year, it was clear that a major obstacle was the ability to use the room at the times when they had groups that would most benefit. A heavy timetabled load of the rooms meant that there were only certain “slots” free and these did not match up well with the Key Stage 4 English classes. In the end, the only group that could benefit was one half of Year 9.
The teacher’s approach was to use ICT as a presentational tool, typing up a hand-written story, as well as a text-reworking tool, editing and refining the story. When asked about other uses of ICT in English they expressed the opinion that there was already too much to cover in the time without adding ICT as well. They saw it as an additional skill and not one that could replace approaches.
The teacher of Key Stage 3, at this time, was not confident in the use of ICT themselves, outside administrative tasks such as email and report-writing, and therefore made little use of the ICT suite. They also said that, because it was down the other end of the school (near the front entrance), it was a case of “out of sight, out of mind”.
The students saw that ICT was important for English teaching as the results of a survey showed with English Language being 5th and English 7th in a ranking of the importance of ICT to all subjects taught in the school. Interviews carried out subsequently showed that the students understood the opportunities that ICT offered English but that they rarely had the chance to put them into practice.
The students and staff felt that the lack of free timetable slots for either ICT room meant that it was difficult for the use of ICT to be anything other than an occasional “treat” The location of the facilities, in the front of the school, was seen as more presentational rather than practical - it was the first thing seen by prospective parents as they entered the school. There was also the feeling that the suites were the ICT department’s resources that they were allowed to use, rather than a whole-school resource. (The unreliability of the PC’s was also a “turn-off” factor)
Staff were often unwilling to move classes down to the ICT suite as it also entailed moving all of their additional materials required for the lesson. When that involved several flights of stairs, the extra obstacle was enough to put them off. Other staff expressed the best way to use ICT was spontaneously, within a normal lesson context, and that the combination of lack of availability and remoteness of location was not helpful to integration of ICT within their subject area.
These findings were consistent with the conclusions of Findlay (2001:7) who noted that the availability and accessibility of ICT resources in a school had a direct effect on the use of ICT within the curriculum in general and English in particular. Indeed, Findlay says that only 32% of teachers felt that ICT had had any significant effect on literacy and Cuban (2001:104) concludes that there has been little improvement in the use of ICT in American schools, mainly due to problems in the way that students access the resources.
The role of ICT resources in English in the school under study.
ICT Usage in English at Key Stage 3 and 4 (2003 - 2004)
The KS3 English teacher has been able to make extensive use of the laptop trolley on the same corridor as their classroom and has changed some aspects of their curriculum in order to integrate the equipment into lessons.
All year groups at Key Stage 3 had experienced the laptops in their English lessons and were getting used to the system.
Students at Key Stage 4 had not used the computers within English in the first half term as the year 9 group had not got onto the story writing topic. The teacher of the other groups expressed the desire to use the computers with the students but had concerns about fitting it into the demands of the GCSE curriculum and so had not used the computers with the groups in lessons although the students had used computers at home and in break-time to improve the presentation of their coursework.
Whilst the lessons that were conducted with the laptops were different than had been seen in previous years, when desktops were the main computer resource, it was often of a research form rather than a deeper integration into the curriculum.
Views of staff and students 2003 - 2004 (When ICT provision was laptop based)
Interviewing teachers and students one month into the first term of laptop-based ICT provision in the school, it was clear that many changes were taking place.
The new Key Stage 3 English teacher was very confident in their use of ICT and so was far more receptive to the integration of ICT into the English curriculum.
Students took little time in making the transition from Microsoft Windows-based desktops to Apple laptops, largely because the IT department placed the Key Stage 3 curriculum on hold to enable all students to understand the small but significant differences in the interfaces as well as navigate a whole new network structure that allowed students to place files in teachers’ “drop boxes” for paperless submission of work.
There had been no other changes in staffing within the English department and so attitudes to the use of ICT, other than the greater degree of access in the timetable, had not changed in Key Stage 4. Staff at this Key Stage still saw ICT as a tool added onto the curriculum and less important than the other parts of the curriculum that they had to deliver. The laptops for the ground floor were situated in the remaining ICT suite and therefore were still seen as part of the IT department and not a whole-school resource.
When the Key Stage 3 teacher was interviewed, they said that the fact that there was a trolley of laptops on their floor made them much more accessible and they were able to introduce the laptops into the lessons with a mixture of planning and spontaneity to enhance lessons and saw how work done so far in the half term could be adapted for future years.
They commented that the biggest advantage of the laptops over the desktops that they had used in previous schools was that they could enter the English classroom itself as just another resource along with books, audio and video. This took away from the idea that all lessons that involved ICT were IT lessons at heart as the teacher was on their own ground rather than take the students to the “home” of another subject.
These comments seemed to match up with findings in the ImpaCT2 study where activities in English seemed to reinforce skills at using ICT tools rather than ICT helping to reinforce concepts in English.
The teacher identified shortcomings in the design and management of the ICT systems in the school (discussed in the next section) and explained how, with those resolved, the laptops would be used more within the Key Stage 3 English curriculum.
The activities that had benefited from the laptops were predominately research-based - the World Book encyclopaedia that came with the laptops as well as the Internet -although there was some use made of leaflet design and other forms of word processing.
The teacher explained that they were reworking the Key Stage 3 scheme of work and, as they had only been in post since the start of term, they were looking at the possibilities of integrating ICT into English as they designed the scheme. Again they went through what the IT department would need to do to make it possible for English, as well as other subjects, to use the resources more effectively and this will be discussed in the next section.
Talking to the students, they were very enthusiastic about the introduction of the laptops into the school. They commented that it enabled them to work at their own desk, rather than having to move to the ICT suite. Another benefit was that they had more room to work when using the laptops than the desktops and so it was easier to create work. The computer became a part of their range of desktop resources rather than having to fit around the computer.
Although the screens were smaller (12.1” for the laptops and around 14” visible for the desktops) they found the displays easier to work with (flat panel as opposed to traditional CRT monitors on the desktops) and less tiring on the eyes. They said that they found the keyboards and trackpads harder to use at first but soon got used to them.
When it came to software, they had been taught aspects of Microsoft Word in previous academic years but still found the interface confusing. Some students found AppleWorks easier to use, especially when it came to leaflet creation, as the interface was simpler but still provided them with the tools that they required.
They found the ability to use the Internet anywhere the most useful feature as it gave them a “library in every classroom”. Effective searching was a skill that they identified as one that they still needed help with.
They felt that teachers in general were making more use of the laptops in their lessons than had been the experience in previous academic years with the ICT suites and they felt that computers were less of a special treat and more of an everyday tool (although one or two said that their feeling about lessons with laptops were still “Ooh, a fun lesson” but this was not a majority opinion.
Overall, the use of ICT in a cross curricular sense had definitely increased dramatically from previous years but all users, staff and students alike, identified technical and organisational weaknesses that needed addressing before the laptops could be used to their full effectiveness.
Technical Issues
Although the school had had a wireless network for some eighteen months before the introduction of the laptops, it soon became clear that there were significant “holes” in the coverage that had not been discovered before due to the lack of some staff using their laptops in their classrooms or some year groups that had not had students with their own laptops using them in class and so finding out where the signal was poor. One of the rooms with gaps in coverage was the Key Stage 3 English room and so, beginning with the half term holiday, a survey was made of the school and the location and configuration of the Apple Airport wireless base stations were adjusted to improve the coverage. Three extra base stations, that had come free with the trolleys, were deployed to improve the signal in some areas.
Another problem was that of laptop battery charging. Although the iBooks had a battery life of around 3 to 3.5 hours under normal use, it was vital that staff returned the laptops to the trolleys for charging over the morning break (10:20am until 10:45am) if they were to be useable up until the Key Stage 3 lunch break (13:05pm to 14:10pm) where they again needed to be charged, ready for the afternoon. A timetable was therefore drawn up showing times when the laptops needed to be “returned to base” and all staff informed.
There were some issues at the start of term that had damaged staff confidence in the reliability of the laptops but these had been isolated to students, particularly sixth-formers, with their own laptops who had configured network settings that directly conflicted with the school system. A review of procedures identified the need to audit all student and staff laptops that were not school property to check that their settings were compatible. This was made more complex by some of the laptops of the overseas boarders being installed in other languages (German, Cantonese and Mandarin) and a variety of versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Apple MacOS system.
With 45 student laptops available, whole school software licences were purchased for all but two packages - Adobe Photoshop and Filemaker Pro. However, because the implementation schedule had precluded identity stickers being applied to the laptops, it became difficult to keep all of the laptops in the trolleys that they had started in. The result was that some of the ground floor laptops ended up in the middle floor trolley and so on. It was determined that a priority was colour coding the laptops to assist in their organisation.
Finally, students shutting the lid on the laptops before the logging off procedure had completed resulted in a “frozen” laptop (the so called “spinning beach ball of death” known to Apple Mac users). Educating the students into waiting for the log-on screen to appear and staff into giving students adequate time at the end of lessons to log off before having to return the laptops. It was also necessary to teach all users how to reset the laptops should they find one frozen.
Organisational Issues
Students and staff were unsure of what software to use with the new equipment and so a help sheet was created to explain what applications should be chosen for what tasks. A thorough training programme was also created to complement the work already done over the previous three years.
The English teacher at Key Stage 3 was unsure of what skills were taught in the IT curriculum and at what key stages. This prevented them having the confidence to use the laptops without the fear of the students not knowing what to do. It was therefore recommended by the the English teacher that the IT department publish a skills scheme of work so that all staff be aware of how the students were progressing each year. This was put into practice and, at the time of writing this report, the IT department were creating such a scheme document.
It was also established that the IT department need to be aware or broad topic descriptors for subject areas to ensure that the skills being taught would support learning in those areas.
Timetabling was still a problem with the design of the whole school timetable having knock-on effects on the use of ICT resources in lessons. The school day was split into eleven thirty-five minute periods with two being used for lunch and after-lunch break. This meant that some lessons, including those of the English teacher being interviewed for this report, were single periods of only thirty-five minutes. it was established that this was not long enough to effectively use the trolley as the log-on, load, save and log-off procedure took up to ten minutes depending of the year group and the speed of the network. A recommendation was passed on to the Senior Management Team for review when future planning was raised in a meeting.
The training of staff had been going on for three years but was on a voluntary basis. It became clear when talking to staff that some were still lacking in confidence in their own skills but were not able to come to the after school session. A lunchtime “drop-in clinic” was established to make it easier for those staff to come to training, should they wish to. An IT department rota was also created so that there was always a member of staff that could be called upon, should things go awry.
Much of the above was to create higher confidence amongst staff who, whilst recognising the need to use ICT tools, were unwilling to “have-a-go” in case they were seen to fail in front of the students. This was especially felt by the more experienced staff (not necessarily the oldest) who were uncomfortable in losing their “expert” status in the eyes of the children.
The gathering of eLearning resources was also seen as essential in increasing the usefulness of the laptops in English lessons. It was agreed that the English department would create a reading list and the IT department would endeavour to source ebook versions from organisations such as Project Gutenberg and place them on the school network for the children to access. This would solve the time wasted in finding resources in lessons and help in creating the image of the laptop as another tool for learning English.
Finally, it was identified that cross-phase subject meetings as well as an IT users group would help share good practice amongst colleagues and support those teachers who still saw ICT as an add-on.
Conclusions
Although there was little change at Key Stage 4, compared to previous years, this was largely due to the siting of the ground-floor laptops in the ICT suite. The study did find that the resources need to be strategically placed away from the normal ICT facilities to emphasise that they are a whole school resource. The ground-floor trolley will be moved into the next door library to see if that changes the feelings of staff that it is an IT departmental resource rather than for the whole school.
The changes at Key Stage 3 could be put down to a change of staff however, on talking to the teacher extensively, it became clear that they used ICT within their lessons because it was a mobile resource rather than they were simply more receptive towards ICT in general. This was reflected through an increase in cross-curricular use across the school at Key Stage 3 and, to a lesser extent, Key Stage 4.
Part of the increase in usage was that, particularly when small Key Stage 5 classes were in progress, in previous years it was common to see half of the computers. The reduction of desktop computers in the Senior School suite (Key Stage 4 and 5) and the purchasing of laptops in their place meant that the suite became variable in size. This meant that there were groups that could take half a suite away to another room.
Given the experiences in the first half term of laptops, the remaining desktop computers in the school will be replaced with laptops when they become obsolete.
The effect on the English curriculum at Key Stage 3 is already noticeable and, with the technical and organisational issues highlighted above resolved, I am confident that the change will become dramatic.
Finally, the importance of effective staff training cannot be understated. Those staff who were either already confident or attended the regular staff training are the ones who make the most use of the equipment. It did also become clear that a school needs to make time for staff to meet and share good practice to create informed curriculum change.
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