The impact of computers on teaching and learning is such a new area that it’s difficult to know what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’.

Even long established ideas in teaching can be seriously challenged in the face of new evidence- take the assumption that teaching assistants are good for the pupils that they assist on a one- to- one basis. Apparently not:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8236705.stm

Similarly, I would have assumed that keeping up to date with friends on Facebook have no appreciable effect on academic performance. It seems that I’m wrong- such activities and the playing of certain games is actually good for academic attainment:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8241348.stm

I think the moral of the stories is that one shouldn’t trust gut feelings in education, but should test any assumptions in a rigorous and objective way. My gut feeling is that IT can have both good and bad effects on the learning situations into which it is introduced.

Of course I could be wrong…

Image from Wikipedia Commons

Ten pin bowling has always been an activity that encourages people to pay for the privilege of performing a repetitive task capable of being serviced by mechanical automation and no input of raw material. It has a similar business model to one armed bandits in casinos, but without the need to pay jackpots.

Traditionally, bowling has also been seen by bowlers as a skilled sport with some social benefits. Just for fun, I’d like to treat ten pin bowling in this post as if it were an academic subject, like a GCSE.

Let’s say that the skills and knowledge acquired by the bowlers is valued by society. Let’s assume that attainment in these skills are seen by society as being measured by the point scores achieved by bowlers.

Bowling has been through cycles of boom and bust. The scoring system has always been a little complex, with points being given for each pin knocked over, but bonus points being awarded if you are able to knock over all ten pins with either one or two balls. The arithmetic required the ability to add integers of 10 or less to a number less than 300. One of the boom cycles of the game came with the advent of computer scoring, where the machine took over the job of recording the number of pins knocked over by each player and adding all the bonuses.

The ball is bowled down a lane, which is between two gutters. The gutters serve the purpose of stopping balls going from one lane into another, and reduce the width of the lane to only that strictly necessary for the reasonable targetting of the pins. Beginners would find that most balls would end up in the gutters and not hit the pins, and therefore the first problem to be solved in bowling is how to direct the ball with suffiicent accuracy to avoid the gutters. This meant that children would quite naturally be frustrated in their early experiences because most of their efforts would be unrewarded by the sight and sound of pins being bowled over.

A recent innovation in bowling has been the provision of bumpers- retractable rails which can be raised to prevent balls from falling into the gutters, ensuring that each ball bowled resulted in a score. This innovation has also been responsible for a sharp rise in bowling activity.

In my analogy, computerised scoring and bumpers are examples of ‘technology’ that have been introduced to the ’subject’ of bowling. In terms of attainment, automatic scoring has done little to change the attainment by students, but has made the subject much more popular. Bumpers have also increased the popularity of the subject, but has raised attainment considerably.

From the point of view of bowling establishments (is the analogy for bowling establishments politicians?) the technology is all good. It has transformed the teaching of the subject and raised attainment. From the point of view of the students, it’s probably all bad. The automated scoring has removed the cross curricular arithmetic element from the subject altogether. The bumpers have removed all the skill-score-attainment-skill feedback loops in the activity. Because children with no skill at all- subjectively, bowlers from the early days would rank them as total beginners- can attain higher scores than children with considerable skill because of the bumpers redirecting all poorly bowled balls to the pins, there is no natural urge to improve. The subject no longer encourages independent learning as it once did. As a result, bowling establishments are now home to children who make no progress at all in the activity. Instead of making a contribution to hand-eye coordination, patience, acquisition of skill etc, bowling has been reduced to a subject where parents hand over their childcare responsibility to pin placing, ball returning, automatic scoring machines.

Of course all this is tongue in cheek. But I find it unnerving to note that in society, ‘going bowling’ is treated as a mildly amusing, harmless pastime now just as it ever was, and nobody seems to have noticed that something apparently so simple has so completely lost its once probably genuinely educational value.

'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.

I’ve written before on viewing history as experiment, with the present as the result, and noted how that way of thinking can help us understand where we are now. I’ve just come across a wonderful article by John Clare of the Daily Telegraph 28/11/01. I haven’t been able to find it from the Telegraph website, so I can’t be sure this attribution is correct. Nevertheless, the article describes how Mr Clare, a writer well known for his scepticism of the benefits of ICT in education, comes across a piece of technology he really believes will help teaching and learning:

After years of writing with scepticism and even hostility about the millions being spent on equipping schools with computers and connecting them to the internet, I have at last seen an electronic system that really does have the potential to improve teaching and enhance children’s learning.

I now also understand why, despite all the expenditure and hype, computers have made little impact so far on what happens in the classroom: their promoters have been trying to force teachers to change what they do instead of to help them to do it better.

What could this device be? The interactive whiteboard, of course. (Remember this article was written in 2001.)

And that is what sets my new discovery apart: it is designed to help teachers teach as they want to. It is called an electronic whiteboard and consists of a screen measuring about 5ft by 4ft, fixed to the wall at the front of the class and a projector that hangs from the ceiling. It is a computer and a blackboard rolled into one; “chalk and talk” made electronic, and it can transform whole-class teaching.

Above all, it enables teachers to illustrate their lessons to make them clearer and more interesting. They can use the whiteboard to display film clips (for example, in English, history and foreign languages), animations (science, geography, PE, design and technology), graphs and charts (science and maths), and maps, documents and photographs (history, geography, art, religious education) taken from educational CD-Roms, videos and the internet, or scanned in from their own resources.

Assuming the roles of researcher, director and presenter, teachers can assemble their lessons like a television documentary, selecting the material that best illuminates what they want to say, confident that the whole class can see the screen, and confident of the whole class’s attention.

But that is not all. The whiteboard also functions as a blackboard, with an electronic pen doubling up as computer mouse and chalk. Everything the teacher writes on the board can be saved on the computer [my emphasis] (in its original form or converted to computer text), building up a bank of material that can be used again and that pupils can access at will.

This is a truly remarkable record of an early example of the misunderstanding of interactive whiteboards (see earlier post) Mr Clare describes admirably the advantages of having a computer in the classroom, and being able to show a class full of students the output from the computer- this is the computer-digital projector apparatus. The remarkable thing about Mr Clare’s article is that only the italicised part refers to a unique capability of the interactive whiteboard itself. Like so many others after him, Mr Clare has witnessed the initial introduction of a computer, teaching software, projection system, and IWB into a classroom and attributed all the educational advantages to the whiteboard itself. He even defines an ‘electronic whiteboard’ as ‘a screen …fixed to the wall…  and a projector that hangs from the ceiling’ which is plain wrong. The electronic whiteboard is the thing fixed to the wall. The projector is the thing fixed to the ceiling. If that system were always bought as a sealed unit, there would be no damage done by the misunderstanding. But the whiteboard, the input device that is plugged as a peripheral into the wonderful computer, software, and projector, is the most expensive part of the system. It was probably twice the cost of the other components put together, and it contributed a tiny part of the teaching and learning benefit.

This would be trivial if it were not for Mr Clare’s final point:

They cost pounds 4,300 each, which, in the context of spending on ICT, is not very much.

I would suggest that even at the time, it was very much, and even though they cost less now, they are still the most expensive single piece of equipment in the classroom, and I would argue they still contribute the least educational value for money.

The assumption that 100% of the A/V presentation at the front of the classroom is attributable to the provision of an interactive whiteboard seems to have become pervasive in the corridors of power since that time, to the extent that huge investments have been made in this technology in all schools in the country; yet I’m not at all sure that decision makers fully grasped the genuine division of costs and benefits in those pieces of equipment at the front of the class. There are many wonderful teachers who make the most of IWBs and I daresay many of them wring good value for money out of their IWBs. But many boards hang limply on their walls all over the land, the limits of their interactivity being to show a green light when the computer is properly connected, or telling a computer they’ve been touched which then causes a line to be projected onto them- an effect more quckly, accurately and cheaply produced by a pen on a dry-wipe board.

Technology solutions need to solve problems in order to be successful. So many gadgets and gizmos are solutions looking for problems. It’s quite rare for me to come across a solution that shows me I had a problem I didn’t even know I had. I’m happy to admit that this has happened in the last couple of days.

I downloaded the Brushes app onto my iPod Touch on a whim. I’m always interested in seeing what this beautiful piece of equipment can do- currently all it does is play music and show Ted Talks, and it has a slide rule app on it as well, so I can ask students whether they know what that is (the answer is usually ‘no’).

To my surprise, the Brushes app actually allows me to finger paint better than in real life, without the mess. And it does it anywhere, without wires or noise or any other fuss. As the screen is backlit, I can also paint in bed, before I fall asleep. Well, I didn’t know I needed to finger paint in bed, and truth be told, I don’t. But it’s been a lot of fun.

Finger painted lobster

I know I’m no artist, but I have to admit I’m surprised what’s possible on the ipod’s little screen, thanks to the two-finger ‘pinch’ zoom feature that allows you to work on the details.

But the real surprise was the ability to use the Brushes Viewer to create a movie of the painting process:

Now you can see how I created the painting, and if you were so inclined, you could work out all the artistic(!) decisions I had to make in order to arrive at the final result. (In case you wonder, Brushes allows you to use a dropper tool to pick up any colour on the canvas. I figured out what colour I wanted for the antennae, but realised that I needed to do them last. So I put a red squiggle down, finished the painting, picked up the red again, and painted the antennae.)

Now I’m imagining I’m an art teacher. Wouldn’t it be nice to have students paint without mess, use technology that has near instant startup (no log in or application startup waiting times), automatic saving, easy publishing, and keep a record of every brush stroke they made so that I know how they created a painting? Something that allows them to explore colour and transparency and sequence and form with no ongoing costs? I think those are interesting problems, and I think they’re problems that iPods with Brushes are a solution to.

The only thing I would worry about is whether it’s truly an artistic medium. Is it a genuine means of expression? Is it Art?

Have a look at these, and tell me what you think.

PS: 

I e-mailed Steve Sprang, the author of Brushes, to let him know about this post. Here’s his reply:

“Hi Ed,

Thanks for the nice blog post. I appreciate it!

I think it’s safe to say that it’s art. At least, I think the many artists using Brushes would say that!

Take care,
Steve”

To which I would reply that I’m not sitting on the fence either. Of course it’s art. It was a rhetorical question really, because if it’s art then it’s a tremendous opportunity for schools to introduce a new medium with built in advantages for teaching and assessment. Watching a brushes video tells you far more about a student’s technique far more easily than trying to figure it out from finished work.

Thanks, Steve, for your comments and for a stunningly good app.

I was thinking about what I’ve been writing here, and wondered why I’ve been posting negatively. After all, I’m a computer enthusiast. I think I understand now- I’m a bit like those guys at CAMRA . They don’t have anything against beer, just bad beer.

Maybe I should start a campaign for real IT. It’d be for enthusiasts- people who use IT properly: to solve problems; to make things better; to help people learn more in less time; to express themselves exactly as they want to.

When I worked in the private sector, we used to introduce IT initiatives only when we could see what that initiative was supposed to do. So, usually, there’d be a 3 letter acronym or a jaunty title for the type of thing we were doing- business intelligence; OLAP; CRM; Data Warehousing; Customer Database; Content Management System; Booking System.

In commerce, you can’t get money to do stuff unless you could identify the problem you were solving. Not once did the owners of any business say to me, ‘Put IT at the core of our business.’ IT was already at the core of our business, like English as a common language and the ability to multiply the number of delegates by the conference fee. At no point did anyone feel the business needed to ‘use more IT’ in a general sense.

This is in stark contrast to the prevailing attitudes in Education, or at least as it is reported by the press: this article is on the BBC website, a response to the latest review on primary curriculum.

Computers enter learning ‘core’

Computer technology is to move centre stage alongside English, maths and personal skills in an overhaul of England’s primary school curriculum.

All the report recommends is this:

ICT capability

Focus: Children use and apply their ICT knowledge, skills and understanding confidently and competently in their learning and in everyday contexts. They become independent and discerning users of technology, recognising opportunities and risks and using strategies to stay safe.

Children learn how to:

1. find and select information from digital and online sources, making judgements about accuracy and reliability

2. create, manipulate and process information using technology to capture and organise data, in order to investigate patterns and trends; explore options using models and simulations; and combine still and moving images, sounds and text to create multimedia products

3. collaborate, communicate and share information using connectivity to work with, and present to, people and audiences within and beyond the school

4. refine and improve their work, making full use of the nature and pliability of digital information to explore options and improve outcomes.

And that’s really it- a little aspirational prose buried in a long review. How on earth did it come to be headline news? I would suggest that it’s because journalists know what a computer is, and nobody ever got fired for saying that more computers are a good thing for kids.

All I’m asking for is a little more critical analysis- an understanding that there is good technology and bad technology. Just like there is good beer and bad beer.

Here’s an example of good technology. The folks at Ted.com get clever people to talk about the things they’re clever at. Then video them and make the videos available on the internet. Then our hosts at wordpress make it easy for me to point you at them and show you. For someone who is interested in origami (as I am), this talk was revolutionary. And thanks to Ted and WordPress, I can now do the IT equivalent of buying you a drink- I’m offering you a bit of knowledge. Cheers.

I’ve got a shoulder injury, so I watched a karate class today instead of training in it as I usually do. One child, who had quite a short attention span when he started a few months ago, concentrated and worked continuously for at least 45 minutes. His mother was watching with me and was amazed at his progress after such a short time.

I work in a school and also teach some karate classes of my own, and I’m continually struck by how well a typical karate class fits the accepted criteria of excellent teaching practice.

The public perception of karate extends little further than people dressed in white suits and coloured belts, looking and sounding aggressive, striking peculiar poses and making odd noises. The truth, I think, is much more interesting than that.

Apart from karate competitions, and individual practice, the vast majority of karate takes place in organized classes. In other words, karate is primarily an educational activity, with the most of the time spent actually learning and training in formal classes. While it is certainly fun to do, there doesn’t seem to be such a thing as social karate as there is in tennis, nor do you usually learn to do karate as an activity in itself. For most people, ‘doing karate’, is actually attending a class and ‘learning karate’.

Karate has a fairly standard teaching structure. It takes place in a dojo, typically a school hall or gym. Students arrive before the start of the lesson, bowing as they enter. If available, the students lay mats on the floor. The instructor may be present from a previous class, or may arrive just before the class begins, and bows on entering the dojo.

The instructor calls the students to line up, and they do so facing the instructor in order of seniority. The instructor invites the class to kneel, and together they may observe a short period of silence or mokuso. They then exchange bows from the kneeling position, and all stand.

The class perform warmup exercises, unless the students have arrived early and done their own warmups.

The lesson then typically consists of three parts: kihon (basics), kumite (sparring or other paired activity), and kata (individual choreographed sequences of moves).

Kihon is the foundation of karate- the study and practice of stances, strikes and blocks either individually, or in sequences called by the instructor.

In Kumite, students working in pairs learn the range and timing needed to strike an opponent, and to defend against attacks. Beginners are taught strictly choreographed sequences, where both partners know each move that is to be made by the other. As they progress, more freedom is allowed, until free sparring is practiced, with appropriate safety equipment and rules of engagement.

Kata are traditional, named sequences of kihon. The performer visualises encounters with a number of opponents, and uses techniques to deal with a variety of attacks. Kata functions as an archive of coded information about the use of combinations of techniques, which is retrieved by students during practice.

These three main topics can take up a third of the lesson each, or the instructor can choose to vary the emphasis on any one part.

The lesson ends with another line up, at which point the instructor may talk to the students about particular points covered, or give advice to students as to what to practice for the next lesson.

The class then kneels, perform mokuso again, exchange bows. If the mats are not needed for the next lesson, they are put away, and students leave the dojo, turning and bowing as they reach the door.

Karate is a mix of many things: art, performance, culture, self defence. So, while kata is officially and explicitly not a dance, it is certainly aesthetically impressive, and it is practiced as a performance. Karate is a martial art. The students learn (albeit a westernized subset) something of Japanese culture, and especially the oriental tradition and rituals of mutual respect between teacher and student. And underpinning it all, is the physical development of fitness and fighting skills.

Parents watching their children in a karate lesson will often remark on the good behaviour, the depth of knowledge being taught, the ease with which students of different skills and ages work together, and the length of time the students will stay focused.

The curious thing is- all of these observations are well founded, karate lessons do feel different to ordinary school lessons- and yet as a teacher, karate feels both deeper and easier to teach than an ordinary school lesson.

When teachers in conventional subjects plan lessons, they have checklists (such as the following) of things to consider.

WALT: We are learning to… In karate, there is both the statement of the obvious: ‘We are learning to do karate’ and the functional ‘we are learning a martial art for self defence and for other things’. Within each lesson, any aspect of kihon, kumite, or kata is similarly easy to explain- the objective is always to do some technique better so that one can respond to an opponent’s physical attack.

WILF: What I’m Looking For… In karate, the instructor acts as an exemplar. The techniques are demonstrated, and the students are asked to copy. They are always working towards some way of moving, or some sequence of techniques, or to win in a competitive sparring situation.

TIB: This is because… Put your weight behind the kick /punch etc. This is because… you want to hurt someone who wants to hurt you, and you want to do it better. Or, keep your posture upright, because if you don’t, you’ll fall over when you turn. There is, or should be, an explicit reason for anything that a karate instructor asks for.

Assessment: Teachers have to be able to assess the learning of students. In karate, this is done by formal grading tests, when students demonstrate their knowledge and skill in front of their instructors and or external examiners. Success in these gradings result in the award of coloured belts, which are worn during subsequent lessons.

Differentiation: The students are always dressed in karate uniforms, or gis, which are held together by the belt achieved at the student’s last grading. Classes line up in belt order, and the instructor teaches the lesson either as mixed ability or differentiated according to the requirements at any time. For example, Kihon can be practiced as a whole class activity. Techniques are performed simultaneously by all students as they are called out by the instructor. Classes can easily be divided into groups of students according to belt level and taught different kata appropriate to their level. At any time, the instructor knows what to expect from each belt level and can vary the instructions accordingly. Because all techniques or kata require practice, all groups can be instructed to practice what they have just been taught while the instructor moves on to teach something to another group. The impossibility of perfection means that students never actually ‘finish’ a task, even if they achieve obvious and measurable improvement.

Group work: As techniques are always in some way related to self defence, there are many choreographed or free exercises that require partner work. There is also a form of competition called team kata, where three competitors perform synchronized kata in a team.

Behaviour management: Behaviour management in a karate class is taken for granted, because of the nature of the subject. The message is that because students are being taught to do nasty things to other people, it necessary for them to work cooperatively with each other and to follow instructions exactly in order to prevent injury. Further, the formal oriental atmosphere in the dojo provides an ‘other worldly’ environment that encourages students to leave any behavioural issues outside. Bowing in the dojo is the approximate equivalent of a handshake, and is performed before and after any interaction. Something is being taught at all times, and the students are always under instruction to do something. Apart from water breaks, there is always something that they are supposed to be doing, so there is no downtime for mischief to fill.

Motivation: A black belt in a traditional Japanese / Okinawan martial art is one of the most respected and well known educational qualifications in the world. I have achieved top grades in GCE O level and A level examinations, graduated from a respected university as a BSc with honours, and been awarded a PhD. As I have progressed through the academic system, and then through various steps in my career, I have found the earlier academic achievements fade in significance. I consider the work and perseverance required, and the knowledge and skills gained in achieving a black belt in karate to be greater than in any of my other qualifications. The belt system supported by regular formal testing acts as excellent motivation for all students, and the eventual achievement of a black belt is an unforgettable life event.

Curriculum and Syllabus: Karate styles have defined knowledge and performance levels for each belt, which may or may not be published. In any case, students always know, or should know, what they have to achieve in order to pass their next belt. The answers are known in advance- the challenge is to perform them at the grading. Many schools also require written essays or dissertations at advanced levels in order to show that the student has gained the desired background knowledge of the art.

Lesson Planning: Conventional teaching demands a plan for every lesson. Karate instructors never need written lesson plans, because the categories of teaching are fractal in nature. The concept is quite peculiar. Karate works at different levels- from the strategy of self defence, through the decoding of passages of kata to extract encoded meanings, to the precise ways of moving that serve to execute techniques while retaining balance and proper posture. The instructor can take any subject and expand on it at any level that suits the class or suits his preference on the day. No resource preparation is needed because all teaching can be done by exemplification and role play. Inexperienced instructors can simply teach a third each of kihon, kumite and kata, while experienced instructors can vary the mix in order to suit the class, or simply to break up routine.

Cross Curricular benefits: Karate offers many cross curricular benefits. The good behaviour in karate classes can be leveraged in other lessons. Increased fitness and performance psychology has clear benefits for PE. The performance of ritual feeds into religious studies, because it demonstrates the use of ritual and formal behaviour in atmospheres of respect in a non-religious setting. This helps the student to understand the belief component of religions separate from the contribution of ritual. Kata performance trains stage skills and has benefits for public speaking and other performance subjects. Perhaps most subtly of all, the long term nature of the endeavour, with the emphasis on hard work and excellence, builds an understanding of things that can only be achieved by perseverance. There are no shortcuts to fitness, nor to the understanding of physical and violent interactions between people, nor to the ability to perform kata to competition standards. Such achievements cannot be plagiarized from the internet.

Which brings me to the point of this post. When I started karate, I asked my instructor whether he would like me to help with the club website, and to post videos and other enhancements. I was quite surprised by his negative reply. His opinion was that karate is at least in part an activity in which we learn to learn directly from another human being. The tradition and practice of the art is that the interaction is face to face, limb to limb. I believe he is right, and that karate is probably best taught as I have described here. I can’t think of a way of automating it, creating web resources for it, or using computers to substantially improve its teaching and learning other than a simple web presence that tells students dates and times, competition results, perhaps glossaries of Japanese terms. The vast bulk of the teaching and learning, I believe, is best done in the traditional manner because the instructor is conveying an entire art with depth and meaning in each topic. In all of this I realize that I may be completely wrong. But that’s the problem. A teacher who teaches any subject in a school, when faced with an expectation from their school to introduce significant IT into their lessons, could quite reasonably think that IT won’t help in their subject in the same way that I feel about karate. With my karate experience I cannot say with any conviction that all subjects benefit from ‘modernisation’ using IT. I see IT making huge contributions in music, visual arts, languages, etc, but not necessarily so much in other subjects.

I genuinely wonder whether, in twenty years, when teachers will all have had exposure to IT in their own school years, whether IT will genuinely be completely pervasive in all subjects, and if so whether the teachers of the day will wonder about why it should be so. I wonder whether the education of the students of that time will have improved, and if so if it will have improved by an amount proportional to the money spent on the IT used to teach them. I know that if I’m still alive and mobile, I’ll still be able to teach karate to twenty or so people, in a simple room with no furniture and no IT at all, and keep them completely focused for an hour and a half. I hope the teachers of the day will be OK in a power cut.

I’ve been watching a fishing program on TV. When I used to fish, as a small boy in Hong Kong, I used the local idea of fishing tackle- monofilament line, sinker and hook. That was it. We used to see people using fishing rods and wonder what that was about. I think I’ve figured it out now. Here’s what I believe are the most commonly believed functions of a rod.

1. Distance. If you’re fishing from the shore, or for that matter a boat, a rod allows you to dangle a line further away from you than your arm’s length. Since this takes the line away from tangles and gives you a greater area of water to explore, it’s an undeniable advantage of a rod.

2. Casting. It’s true that with a rod, you can cast the bait or lure further than by throwing; although not by much- air resistance is important, and a skilled hand liner can throw a baited line quite far enough for most conditions.

3. Speed. Some freshwater fishermen, and some tuna fishermen, use rods with fixed lines (no reels). The freshwater fishermen use lines approximately the same length as the rod. By simply lifting the rod, the fish is brought inevitably to the hand, making the process of bringing the fish as simple as a flick of a wrist. Tuna fishermen have lines the appropriate length to allow them to haul the tuna up out of the water, overhead and into the hold, where the barbless hook releases itself and the fisherman flicks the lure back into the water behind the boat to immediately catch the next fish in the school. No hand or reel technique can rival the speed of these fixed line rods.

4. Some vaguely held belief about preventing line breakage, ‘playing the fish’, helping with reeling a fish in. This is almost entirely unfounded. If you genuinely want to catch a fish, use a line that won’t break for the biggest fish you’re likely to catch. One of the most prized sport fish in the world, the bluefin tuna, is commercially caught on longlines that are stronger than the fish is able to pull. There is perhaps an argument that some fish have fragile mouths, and the rod softens the stresses of a struggling fish, making the hook less likely to pull out. But that’s about it. Modern sport fishing reels, with their drag settings, can be adjusted to release line well before the the breaking strain is reached, so the prime reason is certainly not the prevention of line breakage. Mountain climbers want to prevent line breakage. They don’t rope together via rods! I do accept that for the largest fish, there is an issue of fatigue, and it would be folly even with really good gloves to pull in a struggling tuna by hand, but the rod fishermen use reels that are essentially winches. There’s no reason not to use winches with appropriate drag settings.

These reasons, I believe are trivial compared with the main reason ordinary ’sport’ fishermen use rods. The biggest reason is that of self delusion. A rod makes a struggling fish appear to be much bigger than it really is.

Consider, for the sake of argument, a rod which is held by both hands, 30cm apart. Imagine that the rod extends 3m beyond the further hand. This is essentially a lever– a very long crowbar. If the fisherman is on a boat, and holds the rod horizontally, and a fish pulls vertically downwards with a force of 10N, he would have to balance this with a force downwards of 100N from the hand on the butt end of the rod, and upwards with a force of 110N with the other hand. As he is pulling a fish up from the depths, his attention will be on the hand pulling up- he will be pulling upwards with over 10x the force that the fish is pulling down. By contrast, the handliner catching the same fish will feel the real pull from the fish- a mere 10N!

I would suggest that the millions of sport fishermen all over the world, and especially those who use rods fishing from boats for dinner sized fish, are using extremely expensive gear, primarily to make fish appear larger than they really are. Am I being unfair?

What’s this got to do with computers and teaching? Well, I believe that in our complex modern lives there are many things that we use all the time, but we don’t know why we use them and what good they do us. 

My family car has an automatic gearbox with P R N D 3 2 1 ice and sport settings. Because I’m that sort of guy, I know what each setting means and when to use it. One of my cars has ABS and the other does not, and I know how to brake with either. It’s perfectly possible to drive the car with only the knowledge that R is reverse, D is forward, and the big pedal slows it down.

It is also possible to think that IT is unequivocally good for education- that investments in IT in schools will lead automatically to educational transformation, and in a good way. And to think that if results aren’t immediately apparent, the reason is that the school didn’t invest in enough training. All I’m trying to say is that if fishermen might not know what a rod does, or if drivers might not understand 7 out of 9 settings of their gearbox, or how to make their car stop as quickly as possible, how can we allow obvious complacency in educational IT to go unchallenged? Can we be sure that IT in schools is for teaching and learning, or should we assume that the only certainty is that it is for the profit of vendors? Can we be sure that investment in interactive whiteboards is more cost effective than investment in teaching manpower?

I was struck by this description of Interactive Whiteboards on the government and BECTA funded website nextgenerationlearning.org.uk:

For many schools interactive whiteboards have revolutionised lessons. For example, the combination of a teacher explaining something that might be complicated, such as angles in maths, and seeing it come to life on the screen means it takes a lot less time to understand.

• Teachers can record, save, and reuse information, and present content in different styles. This saves time, improves the pace of lessons and leads to greater pupil understanding of what is being taught.
• Applications include interactive features which allow children to move and change images, text and objects on the board in front of the class.
• Video, sound and animation can all be included in the lessons, deepening engagement – especially with early learners.
• Lessons can be edited, expanded or changed as teachers and learners work. This flexibility means the teacher can focus on groups or individuals who are having difficulties. The material can be recalled and reused instantly to help understanding. 

Each sentence in this description is either incorrect or flawed. Taking each in turn:

1. For many schools interactive whiteboards have revolutionised lessons. For example, the combination of a teacher explaining something that might be complicated, such as angles in maths, and seeing it come to life on the screen means it takes a lot less time to understand.
   For many schools, interactive whiteboards were installed at the same time as projectors and computers. The combination of this hardware and the teaching and lesson management software included with many interactive whiteboards has indeed revolutionised lessons. The whiteboard itself is an input device and has not revolutionised lessons. Seeing a complicated thing come to life on screen requires a computer, projector and screen, not an interactive whiteboard.
2. Teachers can record, save, and reuse information, and present content in different styles. This saves time, improves the pace of lessons and leads to greater pupil understanding of what is being taught.
   Teachers can record, save and reuse information, and present in different styles, because they have computers, software and projectors. The whiteboard does not do any of this.
3. Applications include interactive features which allow children to move and change images, text and objects on the board in front of the class.
   This is true, although blackboards, whiteboards, magnetic boards, and pegboards have allowed this for many years.
4. Video, sound and animation can all be included in the lessons, deepening engagement – especially with early learners.
   Video, sound and animation can all be included in the lessons without any input from an interactive whiteboard.
5. Lessons can be edited, expanded or changed as teachers and learners work. This flexibility means the teacher can focus on groups or individuals who are having difficulties. The material can be recalled and reused instantly to help understanding. 
   This is a confused point. Lessons can always be edited, expanded or changed as teachers and learners work. The teacher can always focus on groups or individuals who are having difficulties. Material can always be recalled and reused instantly. The point is essentially extolling the benefits of teaching software such as Smart Notebook, which is undeniably useful for teachers. There is no mention of the contribution of the interactive whiteboard in these benefits.

Taken at face value, it would appear that BECTA are unable to point out a single benefit of interactive whiteboards themselves, as opposed to the uncontroversial benefits of the computer, software, and projector that is required to make the whiteboard work.

I believe it is important to understand what the interactive whiteboard really is- a large input graphics tablet mounted on the wall, onto which is projected a calibrated computer screen. It is an input device. As such, its unique benefit is simply to be able to bring students to the front of the class and allow them to interact with the projected image by direct input to the computer. It is trivial to allow students to interact with a projected image- one can simply project onto a dry-wipe whiteboard, and they can use pens. The uniqueness of the interactive whiteboard is that the computer is aware of the interaction, and can therefore react (by scoring the interaction, changing the projected image, etc) and save the results.

It is important when judging the importance of the interactive whiteboard in education to assess how much educational benefit is in fact derived by bringing children to the front AND having them interact with a projected image AND saving the results of the interaction. If any of these conditions are not met, then the interactive whiteboard (with its accompanying expense) cannot be justified. If you don’t want to bring students to the front, you’d be better off with a slate or tablet PC. If you don’t need them to interact with a projected image, you don’t need the whiteboard as an input device. If you don’t want to save the interaction, then you could probably achieve the same results by allowing students to write on a dry wipe whiteboard onto which an image is projected.

In my opinion, the importance of the interactive whiteboard is significantly overestimated. My school was recently inspected by OFSTED, and the inspectors were moved to comment:

‘In most lessons, teachers make good use of interactive whiteboards, with stimulating demonstration and exemplification.’

It was nice of them to see, but in a school where we make significant use of an enormous range of new technology, with some innovations attracting national attention, it was odd to see them making their only specific comment on the school’s IT systems on what is, after all, an input device- and one that doesn’t demonstrate or exemplify at that.

The downside to all this is that attention is diverted away from the real star of the show- the teaching software. The real revolution has been in the development of software that is designed to do all of the things BECTA assigns to the interactive whiteboard. The interactive whiteboard manufacturers know this- the board is just  a simple object mounted on the wall. The software is the part of their product that they are constantly enhancing and developing, because that’s what actually makes a difference to teaching and learning. Without this, teaching software would essentially be Powerpoint and other presentation software. Teaching software allows teachers to plan and manage lessons, create and aggregate resources, build interactivity and collaboration.

Understanding the actual contributions of the parts of the computer- software- projector- interactive whiteboard system is the first step to appropriate allocations of resource. Knowing that the software can be used without the whiteboards can theoretically lead to savings. Knowing that teachers need training not on the use of whiteboards (duh! make contact with the board and move your finger / pen…) but on the use of teaching software places the training need within the realms of the other software training that teachers require- in MIS systems, productivity software, web 2.0 applications, etc.

It’s 200 years since Darwin was born, 150 years since the publication of the Origin, and 30 years since I started out on a PhD course studying barnacles. I’ve never directly used my barnacle research in my later career(s), but I often feel that those four years studying sex and violence in barnacles formed the foundation of my way of thinking and writing. I have used the barnacle knowledge very little, but I have used my training as a scientist a lot. Darwin spent twice as long studying barnacles, and said that was too long; but I don’t think he meant it. He embarked on his study in order to become an expert in a group of species, so he could get a real feel for how living things are similar to each other- a real foundation for his main work on evolution. I suppose he also needed to be seen as an expert on something before he’d be taken seriously when he published his Origin of Species bombshell.

Anyway, in that happy hour of lucid half sleep I often spend before the alarm goes off, mindful of all these anniversaries this year, I thought about Darwin’s wedges:

The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.

Darwin uses this metaphor to illustrate the struggle for existence- an excess of possible inhabitants of any space competing with each other for existance. It’s a setup for the central observation that the fittest survive, the weaker die: the best wedge or the one driven in most powerfully stays there; the weaker wedge drops out. The metaphor was humorously invoked in the animated film Ice Age (which abounded in evolution in-jokes) in which the character Scrat, a squirrel -like creature, attempted to jam as many acorns as possible into a hollow tree trunk.

Anyway, much of my research was in how barnacles live- something Darwin didn’t pay too much attention to- he was mainly into taxonomy, describing species and looking at how they were related.  When barnacle larvae settle on rock , there are far too many for the available space. You can see from this photo that this year’s larval settlement on the bare rock number far more than the adults in an equivalent area. It turns out that competition for space is done in an actual physical way. The larvae grow until they cover all the available space, after which they jostle and squash each other. Any barnacle which distorts so much that it can’t extend its legs out of the hole at the top of its shell properly to feed dies either because it’s physically squashed or starves to death.

In thirty years, I’d treated Darwin my predecessor in barnacle research almost as a different person to Darwin the discoverer of natural selection. Only today did I realise that I had spent 4 years studying probably one of the few actual, living examples of animals acting out Darwin’s inanimate metaphor. As far as I can tell from a quick Google, nobody else seems to have noted this remarkable link between the two great areas of Darwin’s research- the crowding and physical competition for living space acted out by the billions of natural wedges that are the barnacles of his 8 year study, illustrating in real time every day one of the most memorable metaphors in his ‘most beautiful and most wonderful’ book.

Adult barnacles with larval settlement