Volume 8 Issue 1  April 2004

Volume 8 Issue 1  April 2004

Future Shock!

In order to usher in the second education paradigm within the borders of any given country 14 essential elements need to be put in place, and in the appropriate order. 

These 14 elements can be broken down into three key areas:

·         End user issues

·         Ministry/Department of Education policy issues

·         Internet infrastructure issues

The 14 cornerstone issues are as follows:

End User Issues

1. An Information & Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure within every school that incorporates an effective and reliable network in association with a secure file and web server. The network needs to meet standards as deemed appropriate by Ministry/Department of Education.
2. Accessibility
   (i) Reliable and portable technology that can access and produce, as well as manipulate the rich information resources presently created and available, along with those being produced by all learners and teachers within the teaching and learning environment.  This technology will need to be predominantly portable, intuitive, and cost less than $NZ/AUD1000 ($US750).  It will include digital image cameras, PDA’s, notebooks (in preference to large footprint desktop equipment), tablets, scanners, sound equipment, and digital video cameras.
   (ii) Display Technology that ensures viewability and accessibility of information in the classroom setting.  This will include data projectors, LCD screens and interactive (SMART) whiteboards. Display technologies will consume an increasing percentage (an anticipated30-40%) of the ICT budget over the next few years.
   (iii) Videoconferencing Technology that enables schools to interact in a full-screen formation environment using Web enabled formats (MPG4). Current technology with it’s high cost and bandwidth intensive infrastructure requirements make this a very limited option when measured against achieved teaching and learning gains.
   (iv) Cabling/wireless technology:  It is anticipated that wireless technology both in the transmission of data throughout a school and via broadband will increasingly become more commonplace. Schools that are presently cabled will increasingly add in wireless opportunities to suit student and teacher practices, eliminating the requirement that all computer access equipment face a wall. 
3. High-speed Broadband Internet access must be both available and affordable for learning institutions, homes and mobile environments.  Broadband/ High-speed access is defined as being greater than 0.5Mb/sec (guaranteed).  To meet these requirements high-speed coverage will be achieved via a combination of satellite, DSL, cable and wireless.  Where necessary this will require the unbundling of monopolistic telecommunication providers via government intervention. 

The Ministry/Department of Education Policy & Initiatives

4. A sustainable professional development programme which underpins the implementation of the second education paradigm, delivering a rich teaching and learning culture within schools, ensuring that the program is manageable and well thought out. The scaffolding will be in line with our knowledge of cognitive development and in synch with students’ developmental capabilities in regard to context and content. 
   Initiatives that seem to be signalling success are based on “cluster” models where each cluster of schools (4-12 schools), has a degree of autonomy for its own professional development, and a funding allocation to cover this. To make this work, effective communication channels to the clusters will be essential so that the vision can be communicated effectively, ensuring that the schools have an understanding of the deep seated pedagogical, epistemological and community desired rationales on which the vision is based. 
   This vision is about changing teacher/learner culture, a process that we see as evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Time frames for complete migration of teacher culture into the second paradigm is measured in the 10-20 year range, given effective communication, good systems, appropriate funding and school/teacher/community inducements.  However, changes to infrastructure allowing for the transition could be in place within the next 12-18 months if Ministry/Department of Education sees this as a priority. 
5. The capacity to effectively communicate the vision initially to teaching and learning leaders, subsequently to all teaching and learning staff and then into the entire community.  It is anticipated that this process would require a time frame of 3-5 years.  Unfortunately leaving it for a few years until other things have settled down is not an option,  (they never will settle down). The fact that the community will inevitably be alerted to the vision before the teacher/learning culture is completely in place will cause some angst, but hopefully it will also provide some impetus for the change. It is imperative however that the teaching fraternity are given some lead time on this.

The ultimate aim is to engender in the community the ability to cope with the changes and to provide students with the necessary skills to empower them to be both productive and worthwhile citizens, along with the tenacity to struggle for the realisation of the vision to which they are committed, while maintaining healthy and balanced lifestyles.

6. The curriculum must be couched in a framework based on the delivery of essential skills while maintaining a balance between Just In Time (JIT) and Just In Case (JIC) learning, which two elements allow for learners to become "lifelong learners".  This framework therefore must be directed towards establishing foundational academic requirements that are consistent with the overarching view that each learner will have the capability to be an independent and intra-dependent (working as a team) learner. Content, (whether implicit or explicit) must be reduced to allow for the increased level and variety of skills and processes that are now required to be taught. Curriculum documents need to be “slimmed down and essential skills and processes stated more explicitly.
7. Assessment needs to be authentic and implemented in line with the new paradigm, with its fundamental focus firmly fixed on providing appropriate feedback to the learner rather than being wholly directed towards benchmarking/testing.  In the main, assessment should be an individualised process with quantitative/qualitative assessment provided by learning managers (teachers/tutors). Outputs should be based on the development of conceptual understanding and the acquisition of essential skills as opposed to the current emphasis on remembering discrete and unconnected information.
   
   Senior school examination systems need to be in step with the transition implicit within the second paradigm. Some countries have autonomous or external examination systems that dictate curriculum far in excess of their intended role. This can be very unfortunate as no matter how the Ministry/Department of Education may intend teaching and learning to be delivered, these autonomous examination systems can over-ride these policy decisions by setting “testing” systems that imply content that may not even be prescribed in the curriculum documentation.  This is a serious issue and needs to be addressed urgently where it arises.
8. Authentication should be managed by the centralised Ministry/Department of Education via an LDAP authentication server which provides access to recognised services via a single password and username.  Services that could be supplied in this manner include access to a school’s Knowledge Net management and assessment software, ministry/department of education information, libraries of Digital Learning Objects bought under licence for teacher access . . . .
9. The Quality of Service (QoS) provided by all recognised suppliers must meet quality standards set by the ministry/department of education.  These "quality of service standards" should be published and made publicly available so that any software developed meets the required standards for interoperability. It may be that auditing of this will be necessary.

Internet Infrastructure Issues

10. A Content Management System which has A]. The ability to have content added to it by a simple WYSIWYG editor. B]. A library of Web resources for students to search.  C]. Intuitive and effective navigation. D]. The capability to index added meta-tagged objects. E]. Effective embedded permissions settings. F]. Calendaring/notices/school management/discussion groups. G] Web sites for each student/teacher/manager/class/subject/group. H]. The capacity to accommodate additional pagers and tools. I]. The capability for any user to customise the entire environment to suit personal needs and be provided with the most effective display of the required tools. J]. A way of recording and managing a record of learning or portfolio of student progress K]. The capability to create these environments for shared clusters of schools in order to eliminate reinvention of the wheel and to accelerate the interactions between groups of teachers, students, managers and the community  . . .. . . .
11. In order for education institutions to be able to create individualised learning programs it is necessary for Digital Learning Object databases to combine their resources and make them searchable via a single interface.  Digital Learning objects will require a common set of standards such as those developed by Dublin CORE/SCORM et all in order to be fully utilised.  It is crucial that managers/teachers are aware of the appropriate pedagogy and the underpinning epistemology in order to create learning environments that are suitable and appropriate for the intended learner.
12. Schools will all be part of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), allowing filtered and controlled Internet access and a safe, secure (firewalled) environment where every user can be tracked, if and when necessary.  The Virtual Private Network environment will allow for free exchange of information and material (including rich data transmission), from any point to any other point within that environment,.  The Virtual Private Network will be governed by standards set by the Ministry/Department of Education.
13. Currently used content management systems, assessment/management systems and reporting systems will all need to comply with a set of standards as set out in point 9, as will any additional systematic software that schools wish to use in their day-to-day management processes.
14. E-mail will be standardised (as per point 9) by providing web based access to whichever e-mail software package a school may choose to use.  E-mail packages without the capacity for e-mail accessibility will not be compliant with point 9.

Strategy; It’s all about being Strategic

Strategically it then becomes imperative that each of these elements has a team of people that will ensure that these objectives are being reached, and that team leaders of all sections meet regularly to ensure that each initiative conforms to interoperability and other standards that have been set by Ministry/Department of Education policy initiatives.

When two-tier government systems are in place it is imperative that the Federal government plays it’s part in ensuring that interoperability and standards across all member States/Territories are adhered to.  It would be all too easy to repeat interoperability disasters such as railways in the 19th century where different gauge tracks were laid in each State/Region thanks to parochial dominated political decision-making. Astute politics, had they been adhered to would have seen the bigger picture and ensured a single set of standards.  This can be translated now into a global situation where global standards allow for interoperability, facilitating communication from and to, anywhere, anytime, anyplace (A³).

There is also a strategic order to each of the elements outlined above.  Schools that have autonomy in their purchasing of equipment and services need to be provided with guidelines such that any purchases they make will comply with the standards set by the Ministry/Department of Education policy.  All too often standards set by officials are not clearly communicated or fully understood by school managers and those making the Information & Communication Technology purchasing decisions.  The above points are sequentially itemised in the following paragraph:

Firstly Information & Communication Technology is a vertical strand through any Ministry/Department of Education organisation, not a separate entity "doing its own thing".  This is a critical statement and it is imperative that it is adhered to for both political and purely practical reasons. 

Politically it is important that no interdepartmental/ministerial jealousies develop as other sectors watch the Information & Communication Technology section budget balloon while theirs may actually be decreasing.  The Information & Communication Technology section must work seamlessly with all other sections to ensure that all policies developed are consistent with the overall vision of the Ministry/Department of Education. The ICT sector within the Ministry/Department will need to facilitate the implementation of ICT’s across all sectors by putting infrastructure in place on behalf of other departments, and hence be seen as a service that empowers other sectors to increase effectiveness and efficiency rather than being presented as a threat to their authority.

Communicating the Vision

Herein lies the second crucial issue: Whilst most Ministry's/Departments of Education may actually have a vision, in general this is very poorly communicated outside of the Department/Ministry (or even the senior management of the Department/Ministry), often being documented in substantial booklets that remain unread on the shelves of school administrators even though they appeared to be well-publicised and widely distributed. 

In the era of the soundbite it is imperative that any vision be communicated effectively by a simple metaphor.  Unless the metaphor can be communicated visually/orally in a very short space of time then the vision will not permeate throughout the education community.  It is also important that the vision is communicated effectively to all levels within the Education community.  Too often assumptions are made that the vision will be outworked in schools because the senior administrator in a school has been given a 96 page document outlining it.  It is now apparent that a far more businesslike model needs to be adopted when attempting to communicate (market) visions such as this.

If a business is about to launch a new brand/line of goods/services the "vision" is first communicated to resellers and salespeople, empowering them with knowledge that makes them "information/knowledge rich".  Rather than expecting this strategy to be followed through in a 1 hour address at a busy conference, consider the impact if instead it is communicated by the most senior official within the Department/Ministry to each principal within principal associations, over a one to two month series of sessions.  In this way each of the individual principals is provided with a marketing program along with (hopefully) some incentives (financial or otherwise) to sell the vision.

On completing tasks that contribute to the overall "selling" of the vision, schools should be provided with some financial rewards/credits to assist in actually delivering the vision.  The adage "never giveaway anything for nothing" applies here as anywhere else.  The other initiative that needs to support this framework is the Ministry/Department’s co-operation in communicating this vision to the entire community via radio/television broadcast within a set time period.  This will put some pressure on schools to deliver the vision so that when the community expectations are set by the media the schools are in a position to deliver (at least in a superficial capacity)! 

The program outlined above needs to be confined to a manageable timeframe of approximately 12-18 months and bears no relationship to the time envisaged to achieve a substantial change in teacher culture which we have already identified as being a 10-20 year process. While a sense of urgency is required it is critical that the process is well planned and well resourced without incurring too much expense. Protracted delay will see the initiative placed in the "I will get onto this as soon as I finish everything else" basket.  Education per se has the undisputed capacity to transform communities when running in tandem with a clearly communicated and achievable vision.

In summing up it is clear that unless this vision is put in place we will spend the next 20 years talking about “red herrings” such as assessment schemes, team work, computers as tools, effective leadership models etc; which are all good and well but unless there is a vision for all this to sit within it amounts to nothing more than busy work with little or no real purpose.

There are other significant issues that need to be addressed such as the training and ongoing Professional Development of existing staff as well as community expectations of schools along with community expectations regarding parental responsibilities.

In recent OECD surveys Finland has been shown out as a country whose students achieve at a very high level and in next months newsletter we will investigate why this is so and what lessons may be learnt. Also next month we will look at the proposition “Who needs cables, wireless is the way to go! (hmmmm  . . . . . well maybe.)”

Comments and suggestions can be sent to

teachers@work.co.nz

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