'60s Underwood Typewriter, from Wikipedia Commons.
Older readers will remember the enormous newspaper campaigns in the early part of the twentieth century extolling the wonders of the typewriter, and how it was going to transform both the workplace and education.
Only joking. The typewriter became ubiquitous because it was useful, it was obvious what it did, and you could learn to use it all by itself or with some training. It was highly reliable and required no electricity. Manufacturers and governments didn’t have to convince the world that it was a good thing.
Why does the government have to promote the use of ICT in schools, and why is ICT presumed to be good? BECTA’s website doesn’t come right out and say that ICT is a good thing, instead couching its strategy with terms like ‘appropriate use’ of technology. But there is no doubt when you read through what that organisation does in support of the government’s ‘e-strategy’ that it is there to encourage the increasing use of ICT.
I was talking to a visitor yesterday, and introducing her to the various systems in the school, when I asked a question without thinking, a question that had probably bubbled under in my subconscious for some time, and I supposed underpins much of what I write here. I asked,
‘What do you think- is ICT a good thing?’
To which my visitor replied in the affirmative. I had in fact asked the question without even thinking about what my own answer was. Now that the question was out in the open, the answer became obvious- ICT is a bad thing, unless its use solves a problem or makes something possible that wasn’t previously so. Not only that, it remains a bad thing until it has successfully provided benefits that outweigh its total cost of ownership.
I don’t think that’s a controversial statement. I don’t mean it to be controversial. I just think it needs airing. Any controversy comes from different analyses of the value of observable or measurable benefits. But it does, I think bring clarity to simple assessments of quite ordinary situations. A primary school finds the budget to buy a roomful of laptops, software and charging trolleys with the installation and training costs; and it takes on the cost of maintaining and supporting those computers. The timing of the purchase is at the end of a financial year, when the budget has to be spent. The school isn’t ready for it, because the teachers are really busy, and the computers aren’t really used until the beginning of the autumn term. Then the ICT coordinator leaves and as a result the whole project gathers dust for a while until next April. Before you know it, enough money to buy a teacher for a year has been spent on a few whole class ICT lessons where students are taught to log in, access the internet, and find some pictures- something that has clear educational value, but would with total certainty be either learnt at home anyway or be taught with greater ease later when the pupils actually need to use the computers to do the work.
And don’t get me started on interactive whiteboards that are only used as projection screens.
ICT is not neutral- it cannot be neutral. If you’ve got it, you’ve spent money on it that could have been spent on other things. Only if you can deliver educational benefit that not only balances the total cost of ownership, but exceeds it, does your ICT become a good thing.
