Press Release

8th November 2011

Teddington School hosts TEDxTeddington

On Friday 4th November, Teddington School hosted the inaugural TEDxTeddington conference, an independently organized event, licensed by TED.

TEDxTeddington was a celebration of science, art, music and humanity. The twelve speakers included scientists from the National Physical Laboratory; an Emmy Award winning film maker; Teddington staff; and exceptional students past and present. The event was sold out, and the attendees were simply astonished by what was presented on the night. The event was professionally filmed and talks will be available online.

The past student speakers included Hannah Simpson, Charlotte Stevens and Suzie Wright. Current students included Hester Folley, Arthur Vie, and Talor Hanson. Talks ranged from personal stories with musical performances; to the visualization of time through photography; to live drawing of anime characters. The conference was honoured to have talks by world experts from the National Physical Laboratory Andrew Hanson (on the science of colour), and Michael De Podesta (on making the world’s most accurate thermometer) as well as breathtakingly beautiful videos from film maker David Baillie’s work in Antarctica for the series Frozen Planet currently airing on the BBC

Months in the planning, the event was organized by Teddington School not only as a hugely entertaining and educational event, but as an opportunity to coach and mentor students so that they could speak and perform on equal footing with world class speakers on an adult stage. TEDxTeddington represents the original educational thinking and high ambition of the school that has accompanied its move into its spectacular new building in September 2010.

TEDxTeddington received lead sponsorship from local business Baseone; corporate sponsorship from RM and Toshiba; and information sharing sponsorship from UK Parliament, which is organizing their own TEDxHousesofparliament in June 2012.

TEDxTeddington organizer Dr Edmond Hui said:

“Speakers, organizers, sponsors and audience alike were astonished at the quality of the presentations. Feedback from attendees was universally complimentary- ‘extraordinary… inspirational… brilliant!’.”

Videos can be seen at the TED site.

1. The medium of information transfer and storage shapes society powerfully and without society’s consent or knowledge. The introduction and evolution of written language profoundly affected the oral traditions of society; the introduction of books revolutionized the storage of information and the way learning occurred; printing completely changed the demographic of the knowledgeable elite. We now are in the middle of the fastest change in information technology in history.
2. Carr makes claims about neuroplasticity. There is research that shows that the human brain rewires itself throughout life, changing the way it thinks to optimize itself for the way it repeatedly thinks. Repetition literally shapes the mind. I am not qualified to judge whether he can justify the generalizations he makes from the research he cites, but I’m certainly convinced that the possibility exists that the way information is acquired changes the way the brain works.
3. The use of hyperlinking in electronic documents, and the delivery of information in small chunks by internet search engines is a radically different form of information transfer to that of a book which is typically read in a long, immersive manner; in the same way that pop music contrasts with classical music. Carr believes that concentrated, immersive learning is key to ‘higher’ functions of the mind- creativity, emotions, inventiveness; and that the evolution of the internet and the worldwide web in particular acts precisely against this form of learning. He believes the widespread use of dynamically linked documents, short chunks of information, and multiple simultaneous points of attention are changing the way society thinks, and that this change is for the worse.

I have been thinking along a parallel track. I have been told independently by a few teachers in both primary and secondary schools that there is an increasing requirement for the learning they deliver to be in ‘chunks’ so that learning objectives can be told explicitly to the class and assessed during and after the lesson. Indeed only yesterday I was told by a teacher how successful a lesson he’d witnessed was- a language lesson in which all the students were plugged into laptops, headphones on, answering multiple choice questions into a website which would then mark the work automatically and  present the results to the teacher in real time. I have no objection to the idea that this lesson was an excellent one of its kind. I can’t comment on the whole mix that was being taught to those students over the course of a year. Carr’s point is that information nowadays is increasingly being presented and taught in that way. If so, I suppose the question is whether a child fed on a diet of mince will miss never having had a steak.

Let’s leave aside whether society is being changed wholesale and look at a couple of examples.

1. I teach traditional karate. By this I mean that in our style of karate, we try, within the bounds of modern health and safety standards, to teach it as our teachers taught us. The teaching and learning transaction, as well as the teaching to teach, is designed to continue a way of training, rather than to achieve a simple learning objective in the person who has completed the training. If one considers a black belt as the goal (it isn’t, but for now it’ll do) then the goal is not to get the belt, but to understand the journey, to have lived through the training, to have picked up the culture of Japan in general and karate in particular. This knowledge is transferred by practice and repetition. At no point will an instructor say, ‘at the end of this lesson, you will be able to…’ because progress always occurs at an individual level, in stops and starts. Seldom will an instructor reveal his lesson plan at the beginning of the lesson, although he always will have one. A karate lesson is an immersive experience, involving trust that what is being asked is actually valuable. It’s only with hindsight, like looking down from a mountain just climbed, that the student realizes what a long way they’ve come. I can’t say this way is better. I can say that I’m glad I do this, because it gives me a different pedagogy which I can use to test conventional assumptions.
2. Polynesian culture (with the possible exception of the outpost at Easter Island) never developed a written language. Their most important knowledge was passed on by rote learning as oral tradition. It was an important rite of passage to be able to recite the family history word for word. Even today, Polynesians have a cultural epectation that children can stand up in public and speak clearly to an audience. I imagine that there must be less incentive to continue the oral tradition nowadays as family trees can so easily be stored on computers.

I feel that if karate was taught in modern chunks, ie ‘today you will learn the cat stance’ or ‘by the end of the lesson you will be able to deliver an opposite punch to the chin’, then modern ICT can be brought to bear- video analysis to show the performance of a technique, or multiple choice questions on vocabulary and the points of etiquette. However, were karate to be taught this way, I can’t believe the resulting karateka will feel that they have lived through a genuine karate experience, where the techniques are learnt by repetition and observation, vocabulary is learnt in the context of performance and etiquette is learnt through respect.

Similarly the passing down of ancestral knowledge by oral tradition involves family meetings, testing of knowledge by relatives with different viewpoints, and social interactions not recordable in a computerised genealogical database. The point of learning the story of the family is that it is a bonding cultural exercise steeped in tradition, that is not equivalent to looking up great uncle Fred in a database.

As I’ve written before, the danger is that wholesale changes in education occur in our society without the benefit of accrued evidence. The introduction of ICT as a pervasive element in education has occurred very quickly- much faster than any resulting large scale change in society that it might cause can be observed and reported. By the time we’re sure it’s happened, billions of people will have been affected, for better or worse.

This bubble machine is sold as an educational toy, because you can see how it works through the transparent side panels. The gears drive a fan, and the handle is attached to a wand which dips into the reservoir and brings holes over the fan vent.

Blowing bubbles is one of the first signs of a child achieving skilled hand-eye coordination and tool use. You have to unscrew a bottle, dip the wand into the bottle, bring the bottle to your lips, blow at just the right rate, learn about surface tension, and if you do everything right you’re rewarded with a stream of bubbles. You learn that the liquid in the wand runs out, and you have to repeat the process- so you’d better have held the bottle upright while doing all this!

The bubble machine removes all of those skills in one stroke- or to be accurate in a series of mindless repeated strokes, that teach a child nothing more than the skills needed to lose all their money in Las Vegas or Atlantic City.

We see new technology being introduced at the expense of old skills all the time; I’ve mentioned here the loss of arithmetic skills with the advent of calculators, or the loss of book research skills with the advent of google. When I observe those, I often wonder whether I’ve been rigorous in my conclusions; is it really that simple? Is it a cause and effect? Are babies really thrown out with bathwater?

I see the bubble machine as a useful example because you can see the features, benefits, outputs. It is literally transparent. Its educational function is clearly the display of a bubble making mechanism- of some value to a tiny number of future engineers, and admittedly of general interest for a few seconds to everyone who uses it. On the other hand, for its target audience it completely displaces an iconic childhood activity that beautifully rewards training in coordination and dexterity. From my point of view, the educational impact of this machine is deeply negative, although I have no way of quantifying this.

The worrying thing is that I see many technological innovations having a similar effect on development and education. More on this in future posts.

There was a moment’s silence. I could imagine Bill’s incomprehension at the question. He answered that if you were under five years old, and were sick or hungry, a phone wasn’t going to do you much good. I was struck both by the insanity of the question, and the simple rationality of the reply. Bill understands the boundaries between technology and humanity. The reporter was unaware of the disconnect between technological ‘progress’ and the human condition.

At school I was told, admittedly second hand and so I am recounting this as more as an interesting story than as evidence, that a student had done some research on the computer in the library, and having been asked to write what he’d learnt in his own words, had simply copied and pasted from Wikipedia. This copy and paste culture is a common complaint of teachers everywhere, but I was then told that the teacher took the work, found the source of the text and showed the student how it was blatant plagiarism. The surprise was that the student was apparently completely unable to comprehend the teacher’s complaint, and despite patient explanation seemed to think that there was no difference between writing and copying as a means of producing work.

I’m convinced that such failures to understand are quite common in the face of new technology. Although I’m fascinated by this, I can’t think of anything else to say.

We are taught that if at first we don’t succeed, we should try, try again. This proverb embraces the power of iteration, the act of repeating a process. A repeated process can accumulate change over time- either progress towards solving a problem, or physical progress as in climbing a mountain one step at a time.

Lao Tzu said, ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. He meant that iteration of single steps can take you a thousand miles.

Darwin introduced his ideas on the origin of species in this way:

‘As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.’ [My emphasis]

The complexity of the natural world with its bewildering variety of species defied explanation, because while it’s clear how these things are maintained by reproduction, it’s not clear how each different type first appeared.

Darwin knew that the origin of complexity lay in reproduction as an iterative process– as long as there is variation, mortality, inheritance and lots of time. By understanding the effects of iteration over millions of years, Darwin realized that the first simple living things, as long as they didn’t die out, had no choice but to diversify and evolve into many and diverse types.

The really interesting thing about the controversy stirred up by Darwin is why something that was so obvious to him (and his supporters) was not at all obvious to everyone else. I don’t mean the controversy in the sense of evolution being contrary to religious beliefs– that was inevitable. I mean that the argument against evolution often involved a counter argument that so much complexity could not arise from simple living things by chance alone. Regardless of what actually occurred, the capability of the process of natural selection to generate complexity over time is both undeniable (and can easily be modeled by simple example or realistic computer models) and obvious to anyone who takes the time to read and understand Darwin’s simple explanation of the power of iteration.

The effects of iteration are everywhere, as if hiding in plain sight. Car engines repeatedly turn car wheels. Lifetimes of heartbeats and breaths. Computer central processing units performing billions of calculation cycles a second. The polishing of pebbles being rolled up and down a beach by the action of waves.

Iteration is also the foundation of human learning. The characteristic skills of childhood, walking and talking, are acquired by repeated attempts, honed by parental correction and encouragement. The English language has several words for iterative learning: drill; experience; nag; practice; rote; rehearse; repetition; train. Iteration is vital because so many apparently ‘basic’ units of human learning are actually highly complex processes- making a step or saying a word are both extremely delicate dances by many muscles acting in precise choreography. No matter how efficient the brain is at observing and processing the incoming information, it’s impossible for it to coordinate the necessary commands to do all these things in one go, the first time. It has to observe, attempt an approximation, modify the first attempt, repeat, modify, repeat until the skill or knowledge is learnt.

Curiously, the nature of learning by iteration necessarily plays down its own importance. Personally, I can’t remember being able to walk badly; I can’t remember struggling to speak; and the best way I can appreciate what it’s like to not be able to play tennis is to try to play with my left hand. In order to improve by iteration, you need to emphasize in your memory the latest or most successful attempt and discard previous attempts. I don’t know whether this is reflected in the reality of how the brain works, but it certainly feels like I naturally forget the bulk of learning iterations and remember only the most recent- as if there is only one pigeonhole for that learning and the latest attempt fills the pigeonhole at the expense of the last. It feels like any skill or kowledge, be it walking or talking or solving quadratic equations, is something I’ve learnt in one go even though I know that I have actually done those things many times. Learning seems to leave no fossil record of previous understandings in our brain.

It is of course entirely possible to learn things in one go. Our responses to near death situations were honed from brushes with predators in our deep prehistory. Nowadays if we cross the road without looking and narrowly avoid being hit by a car, we experience such a moment of fear that we never forget the incident and are much more likely to take care in the future.

In normal, non-emergency situations, learning is less simple. I think it’s fair to say that repetition gives an opportunity to reinforce learning in most situations, and that the lack of repetition makes it more difficult to learn well.

I believe many modern educational regimes, especially those emphasizing personalized learning, heavy use of ICT, and directed learning paths reduce the opportunity for students to receive iterative learning. One GCSE ICT course, for example, is assessed by means of coursework undertaken in ICT suites, where the assessment is of printed screenshots prepared by students while carrying out tasks demonstrated by the teacher. So, the ability to send an email to someone, to use cc, attach documents to the email, reply and forward are proven to the examination board by means of screenshots of single instances of these activities. Since there is no testing of the context in which any of these uses of an email is required, nor any need for the student to choose and use these features in a real world example, nor any requirement for the student to perform these tasks more than once, the qualification is really only proof that the student was able to carry out single tasks under the supervision of a teacher. In contrast, the traditional teaching of arithmetic requires students to perform calculations of each required type many times, using different numbers, and in different contexts; and the students are tested in entirely novel situations in which they have to choose the types of calculation they use and apply them correctly.

Automation and simplification of student syllabuses and assessments have many subtle effects on end results. The showing of a video may well be able to explain a topic clearly and simply, yet the one-way, one-time flow of information may well teach differently to a teacher explaining the same topic directly to the class with more class involvement and practice.

I believe that as education is radically transformed in the 21^st century, care must be taken to examine the loss of iterative learning– often dismissed as ‘rote’ and ‘old fashioned’– from the syllabus.

Information can certainly be found quickly on the internet for copying and pasting into a document. On the other hand, traditional repeated interactions with books, finding and sifting related information, précising and writing by hand may have encouraged different types of learning that occurred invisibly alongside the direct acquisition of a particular piece of information. While a sum can easily be done on a calculator, mental agility and internal understanding of number systems may be better improved by the need to memorize times tables and estimate results on the way to calculating sums by traditional methods.

It’s difficult to create shortcuts to learning physical skills. That’s why drills and practice are still commonplace in music, drama and PE. It’s commonplace to hear teachers of these subjects tell their students that there is no substitute for hard work and practice. Art courses still not only use iteration, but are judged by students showing evidence of iterative progression in coursework. It’s therefore a little surprising to find educators in other subjects more willing to discard iterative practices, as if there actually are substitutes for hard work and practice.

Children are instinctively aware of the power of iteration, and use it almost as a default technique to achieve their objectives. In an episode of the TV animated series The Simpsons, Bart orders a toy spy camera, which takes a long time to arrive in the post. Every day he waits at the door for the postwoman and pesters her: ‘Where’s my spy camera?’ After many repetitions, the box finally arrives and the frustrated postwoman throws the package at Bart, shouting with relief, ‘Here’s your stupid spy camera!’ The interaction is funny because watching adults immediately recognize the futile but automatic use of the pestering tactic (= iterated request) by Bart, on a completely intractable and un-modifiable process. They also recognize with possibly subconscious discomfort that the arrival of the camera inevitably rewards and reinforces Bart’s pestering behaviour.

Children effortlessly use iteration to learn and perfect their skills at computer games and mobile phone texting. Marketing campaigns routinely target child audiences in order to increase sales of products to adults, because ‘pester power’ is such an effective motivation for parents.

Educators are often confronted with children who are unwilling to perform repetitive tasks. The complaint is that it is ‘boring’. I think that is a very interesting area for research, since children are clearly happy to perform many iterative and apparently boring tasks. It may be because the iteration, the hard work and practice, is only willingly undertaken when the target of the work is sufficiently attractive.

In life, at first you usually don’t succeed. We know the life skill that solves this problem. We’ve known it since we were children and our children know it now. Our education system should be structured to reinforce, not bypass, the willingness and ability of students to iterate when appropriate.

Darwin ends his ‘On the Origin of Species’ by describing again the various observations that make evolution inevitable, and then finishes with this wonderful evocation of deep time– the reference to the apparently endlessly repeating days and years that give evolution the time to do its work:

‘There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.’

It’s a story about the ‘Tragedy of Dying Languages’. My first language is Cantonese, but my most fluent language is English. I usually think and dream in English although I can do those things in Cantonese. Problem is, my education has been in English, so I am illiterate in Chinese (ie I can’t read nor write). Worse, I have lived in the UK all my adult life and have little opportunity to converse in Cantonese. The Cantonese translations of all modern English words such as email, website, spreadsheet, word processor are entirely unknown to me. My Cantonese self is an adult with a child’s grasp of language, frozen in aspic from 1976.

The BBC article caused me to reflect on what I would lose if I lost my Cantonese language altogether. I can point immediately to two categories of conversation- food, the importance of rice, the need to ensure that your friends and relatives have actually eaten and are not hungry before carrying on a conversation. And Tragedy. The Cantonese word for tragedy or calamity maps perfectly onto the English, but when you say it, or other phrases about tragedy in Cantonese, you feel the meaning deep in your soul. These are words and phrases that carry with them the tragedies of generations, and together with the interest in food, are the result of a history of flood and famine and war. When the Cantonese speak of ‘wun fan sik’ (to look for rice to eat [meaning employment]) or ‘chaam’ (sad, tragic) or ‘jow naan’ (running from calamity- to be a refugee), the words have the meaning of personal experience (even if the speaker has not experienced it). I cannot express myself in English on these matters as powerfully as I can in Cantonese.

The article tells of Johnny Hill, the last speaker of one of the native American languages in Arizona.

Johnny has tried to teach his children and others in the tribe. “Trouble is,” he sighs, “they say they want to learn it, but when it comes time to do the work, nobody comes around.”

Although I struggle to find the right language for it, I am forming an increasing belief that in education, some things can only be learnt if one actually expends effort in learning it. Playing musical instruments come to mind- one seldom achieves excellence in music without hour upon hour of practice. I worry about the introduction of computer facilities into educational systems which make it ‘easier’ for students to learn. The fact that students take naturally to computers, play games and visit social networking sites at home, does not in itself mean that the curriculum should be increasingly delivered by a computer medium. If I play a Mozart sonata on the piano, I immerse myself in the music and have a physical connection to the composer because I have to move my fingers in exactly the same positions and order that the great man did when he played it. If I was assessed purely by the noise I was able to make, I could obviously make a better noise by pressing a button and getting a computer to play the same sonata as an MP3 recorded by some wonderful pianist. This example is clearly ludicrous; I am not suggesting that any exam board would ever assess in such a way. But how different is that to a student conducting research for coursework at home, selecting and clicking in order to paste paragraphs from the web into a word document, instead of writing it themselves in their own words?

There is seldom anything to be lost by using technology to make a teacher’s life easier. But whenever a learner’s work is made easier by technology, there is a danger that the richness of the intended learning actually depended on the difficulty of the work itself. One could argue, for example, that the introduction of the calculator reduced the understanding of arithmetic because it reduced the actual calculation load for the students, or that predicitve text and text language on mobile phones have reduced the ability of students to analyze and construct language that has deep meaning.

Unless we ensure that technology is only deployed to make it easier for students to do more ambitious work, rather than to make existing work easier, we may be in danger of losing a lot of pedagogical babies in throwing out the bathwater of traditional teaching. The investment of millions could, in some cases, do more harm than good. It would be an understatement to describe that as a tragedy, but it’s the best I can do in this language.

It’s a story about poorer children being given laptops, which is of course a perfectly reasonable aspiration. However, the justification for this expensive program includes the quote,

A recent study from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggested having a laptop at home could lead to a two grade improvement in one subject at GCSE.

Fascinated by this idea that the mere provision of a laptop could lead to a measurable improvement, I followed the link to the DCSF (Department for Children, Schools and Families) website and found the press release from which the BBC report was written: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2010_0011

This press release includes the quote:

Research shows pupils could improve by two grades at GCSE with a computer at home

and refers to the Institute of Fiscal Studies report, which was commissioned by the DCSF themselves: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/RRP/u015337/index.shtml entitled ‘Drivers and Barriers to Educational Success – Evidence from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England’

The original document mentions the correlation between computer provision at home and improved educational outcome, but cautions in no uncertain terms that a correlation (which is what was discovered) should not be taken as a cause (which is something completely different). It is, for example, entirely possible that a family which is disposed to buy a computer for use at home creates an atmosphere conducive for young people to do better at school. Or, in what is known as ‘reverse causality’ that a student who for other reasons finds himself improving rapidly at school, is more likely to apply pressure on the family to purchase a computer. In any case the report specifically states that such correlations should not be used to drive policy, because it does not imply that the provision of a computer at home causes a student to achieve any improvement in GCSE grades.

It is therefore worrying to see the DCSF summarizing a tiny part of the report, placing it at the top of their press release, and implying that it is evidence that supports their provision of laptops to poorer children. They use the wording, ‘Research shows pupils could improve by two grades at GCSE with a computer at home’

I’ve emphasized the ‘with’ because this is essentially a weasel word that can mean either correlate or cause. They are also using this research to justify the provision of laptops, a specific type of computer, when the original research does not mention laptops at all.

The BBC has managed to fall into all of the traps set for it, because in their wording, ‘A recent study from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggested having a laptop at home could lead to a two grade improvement in one subject at GCSE.’ a generic computer has turned into a laptop (which happens to be what the DCSF are giving the young people) and the IfFS’s mathematical correlation, already simplified into ‘with’ by the DCSF, has finally and unequivocably changed into the misleading ‘could lead to’.

Personally, I like to think students get good grades because they receive good teaching, or because they work hard or work smart, or because their family supports their learning well, or because they’re just born talented. Doubtless the provision of computers at home has some effect, but that effect surely could be good or bad depending on how the computers are used. The one thing we know for sure, because that’s what the report’s authors assure us, is that they have discovered no evidence whatsoever that providing a computer (let alone a laptop) causes an improvement in GCSE grades. I hope the DCSF wasn’t relying on that report to support their expenditure on that project.

When I asked the IfFS about this, I was told by e-mail,

Yes, it often happens that wording (and therefore interpretation) varies when research is summarised. In this case the references to and perceived impact of computers only formed a small part of the very long report but this became a headline.

Semantics and statistics aside, it strikes me as profoundly odd that anyone would think that the provision of a machine, albeit an admirably complex and powerful one, could lead to an improvement in examination grades. I remember when a hitherto unimaginably magical machine, the electronic calculator, became available at affordable prices when I was in secondary school. We gathered round in groups in the playground challenging these machines to perform ever more complex calculations, taking the square roots of square roots, or multiplying numbers until the result maxed out the displays. No-one can be in any doubt that the pocket calculator revolutionized the arithmetic capability of mankind as a whole. In hindsight, do we believe that mathematical attainment at GCSE has improved as a result of this technological revolution? Do we truly expect the provision of computers, laptops or otherwise to do so? If so, rather than observe a mere correlation, let’s clarify the cause before spending millions of pounds of public money on hardware.

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.