Something For Nothing – From Microsoft?

Microsoft have a history of working very hard to get themselves firmly embedded in schools and the day to day lives of children. I have often wondered why educators didn’t raise a hue and cry about the only company on earth capable of making their products (microsoft office etc.) made part of the school syllabus and the wider curriculum for millions of children all over the world.

Their latest Trojan horse appears to be the Minecraft Education Edition. When i first saw that Microsoft had purchased Mojang (the company that owned Minecraft) for $2.5bn I suspected exactly this. And, now here they are enticing in teachers and students with lesson plans (teacher’s job done for them if they’re inclined to be lazy?) collaboration features and all the addictive qualities of computer games, with no proof that it contributes to learning that i can see.

EdTech Magazine – Microsoft Releases Free, Early-Access Version of Minecraft: Education Edition

In the wider sense, it’s been disappointing over the last few years that we’ve not seen a more concerted effort to make open source operating systems and programmes like Open Office made more accessible and easier to install and use in the education domain. Because, the fact is, they’re completely free. And maybe that’s the key as to why any potential support for them got stifled?

Schools spend a lot of money on licences for Microsoft products (even at the reduced rates for education) and these recurring licence fees are passed on directly to parents in the private sector (taxpayers in the public sector). However, one of the biggest hurdles was that use of the Microsoft pay model software even got built in to government policy, national syllabus and curricula in country after country. Really, when you think about it, a quite amazing and monopolistic state of affairs that ties in children’s learning to the products of this single company.

This then can make you wonder just how philanthropic really are the efforts and contributions of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (I guess they won’t be offering me a job any time soon!) when they choose to direct the lion’s share of their dollars at education. Will a government reliant upon their spending in education say no to inclusion of their software in the computing syllabus of the schools?

Really? Is this healthy? Has anyone noticed?

Real World Problems as Classroom Projects

Right now, UAE is hosting the World Government Summit, with a formidable group of speakers and presenters.

I was interested to see this summary of a presentation by Paul Anderson, a teacher of Advanced Placement courses in a Montana, USA school:

World Government Summit 2016 – Paul Anderson

He talks of the ways in which reflecting on his own teaching and the experiences of students in his classroom lead him to change his views on what was needed, now and in the future.

Technology in the Classroom

The proportion of people who see mobile devices as ‘the way forward’ in education is growing all the time. However, there is less consistency when it comes to shared understanding about how to effectively deploy mobile devices in the school environment.

The education media over the last two months has been full of stories about the monumental mismanagement of the Los Angeles iPad implementation programme. Whilst lots of educators have looked down their noses at the mess that was created there, some are ready to acknowledge that they might have fared no better;

Mindshift Article – Why LA iPad Rollout Went Wrong

I know of tablet implementation programmes in India that have involved little or no training or time spent addressing the key impacts on school culture. Sadly, in some cases, the emphasis was more on the marketing appeal of such a ‘modern’ approach, rather than the academic and educational aspects.

What then results is classrooms where teachers continue to ‘lecture’ pretty muc as they always did whilst at least half the class are exploring completely irrelevant things on the tablets, ignoring the far less appetizing fare offered by the teacher. This, in one case, then lead to scenarios where children would be told to put the tablets away for most of the time, with messages such as, “If you work hard and are good, I’ll let you get the tablets out for 10 minutes before break.” Should we be surprised in such situations that the children fail to realise the learning power of the tool, but instead see it as a toy for idle leisure pursuits.

Incidentally, on the basis of the article earlier probably the most valid point is that there is little to justify iPads rather than any one of a variety of generic tablets that can be had for 30-40% of the cost, yet give almost as much of the learning benefits. Whilst I respect apple greatly, their machines are not the best for the education domain (even the drop test data suggests that they’re not suitable). When a low cost tablet can be had for a cost equivalent to about 2 years of textbooks (loaded up with equivalent curriculum material), then there’s less fear associated with the hardware, especially the risks that worry parents of being held to account for loss or damage.

Here is an in-depth article from New York Times that explores many of the pros and cons of one-to-one tablet programmes. It addresses many of the fears and concerns that i’ve heard raised by parents and teachers;

New York Times – No Child Left Untableted

On the point about ‘screen time’ my own suspicion is that as the amount of time children spend using tablets in the school/ education environment increase, so there will be some reduction in the currently increasing amount of ‘idle leisure’ time children are spending with screens. I believe, there’s as much chance that we’ll see an increase as a decrease in physically active pursuits. Somewhere, i think instinct within children will make them want to have active time. I would be delighted to see some of their screen time contributing to something productive.

The article quite rightly highlights that the biggest potential benefit to flow out of the use of ICT is personalization of the learning experience in a way that conventional schooling, even with the best teachers hasn’t been able to achieve.

One example I often give is when a child gets an illness or an injury that causes them to miss 3-4 weeks of school time. In India and many other countries, regrettably, this happens to many children at some point during their schooling. In a traditional scenario, the child stops all learning from the moment they step out of school until the day they step back in. When they go back, they are expected to go along with their peer classmates, as if they missed no time at all. To ‘close the gap’ teachers leave the onus on the child and parents. The assumption is that ‘copying the notes’ from a friend is an adequate substitute for the learning missed. Of course, if that was true, we could just copy the notes in a few weeks and give the children the rest of the year off!! (heretical thoughts, I know)

In the ICT enabled, personalised learning environment, firstly as the child starts to recover at home they can start to re-engage with their learning, even engaging in online discussions with classmates from home. The amount of work they do each day can be calibrated to their recovery until they are fit to return to school. Then, they pick up from where they left off – not where the class has reached.

The final document I share here is a white paper produced by a firm of consultants, Heff Jones Nystrom. It provides some sound advice about implementation, what matters and the working practices to make one-to-one programmes succesful as well as some of the evidence that’s beginning to accumulate on the learning and educational benefits that can be achieved from an effective programme.

Herf Jones Nystrom – White Paper

The $35 Computer

There was much excitement and conjecture this week and no shortage of hyperbole as Kapil Sibal unveiled the new device jointly designed by students of various top engineering institutes of the country. There was even talk of pushing on further to a $10 device that would revolutionise education.

BBC News Story on Launch
The Hindu – Article

There are many schools in the country that already take advantage of the use of IT, who will be only too glad to see hardware costs coming down. However, these still represent a tiny minority and there are many reasons for caution,

The BBC article above mentions the MIT, Nicholas Negreponte ‘One Laptop per Child’ Scheme. When first launched that scheme was met with massive excitement, but it really not lived up to the expectations.

The following article from Live Mint highlights some of the very legitimate reasons why caution is needed and some of the lessons that will have to be learned from the MIT project.

Live Mint Article

A few of my own observations;

a) Are all the people who work in Om Books, Landmark or Crosswords walking geniuses? They spend their every working hour surrounded by the collective knowledge and wisdom of many of the greatest minds that have ever lived (plus, of course some Mills & Boon, Chetan Bhagat etc.!) – it’s all there and they can just help themselves. Of course, that’s not how it is – and letting children loose on the vast sea of knowledge on the internet (where the volume of dross far exceeds the worthwhile material) is even less likely to have positive effects on learning without very well designed strategies and a great deal of teacher training. In the worst case scenario, learning could actually be negatively impacted.
b) Bringing ICT in to the learning domain is not inherently about hardware or software. It’s actually about hearts and minds and fundamental aspects like the belief of teachers about ‘What is teaching?’ A paradigm of teacher as deliverer of knowledge, to then be drilled repetitively until it sticks long enough to pass an exam does not need or require any computer hardware or software – the teacher is already the hardware and her voice and lecturing is the software.
ICT only really becomes useful where a teacher wants to adopt the role of facilitator and guide to the curious to ‘discover’ knowledge. Worse, the technology can become an excuse for traditional teachers not to change.
c) The Live Mint article raises the issue of how many schools currently have internet connectivity/ wireless facility. However, even where schools get equipped with wireless hubs etc., how much bandwidth would be required for a school with 1-2,000 such devices in use, and what would be the ongoing costs for that bandwidth? I fear that these costs would render the basic hardware cost almost meaningless.

Ultimately, the biggest issue will come down to teachers. I fear a scenario where, in hundreds of thousands of classrooms in the country classes would continue to be rote based and indistinguishable from what went on 100 years ago, except, 2-3 times a day, the children will be allowed some time to ‘play’ with their computing devices. The teachers could then argue that the children have no reason to ‘ get bored’, to lose their concentration or willingness to be drilled under the old teaching methodologies. Inadvertently and ironically, the modern technology could become a significant blockage to progress.

Used well, ICT can fundamentally change our classrooms and has an enormous array of uses and benefits. Just by way of a single example, ability of children with special needs to record (video or audio) lessons and watch/ listen again later can be very powerful.

I would love to be proved wrong in my caution and will follow developments with interest. However, for now I’m on the side of the skeptics.