Activity 8: Teaching and learning at the school

Learning Area Vision

To promote context in which learning accepts 21st Century change, which includes integrating ICT in Education.

ICT integration will make teaching and learning a true authentic-contextual student-centred learning experience.

With this new way, teaching and learning can take place both within and outside of the classroom, through the use of ICT tools. 

Therefore, what I would like to see is that ICT is implemented in the Teacher Education Department to empower teachers and students to move from basic ICT skills to the successful integration of ICT tools and resources in lessons.

Activity 7: The importance of vision and the clarifying role of a leader

Role of the leader

The following ideas extracted from the articles are what my school's leadership will need for the process of ICT integration.

Why Vision Matters by Robert Knowling

·        Merging Vision and Values is an essential strategic action for leadership in any organization. However, defining your vision (the expression of what your company wants to be) and articulating your values (the principles governing how you operate) are not easy or painless.

·        The first step in visioning is to assess your organization, your industry, and your sector of the economy.

·        Vision and values helps employees understand what's important in the business. It tells us not just what, but also how and why we are expected to deliver.

·        Whereas it is important for the leader to have commitment of the organization's time, money, people, or training, where the leader’s job is to allocate resources, and to do that effectively the leader has to listen, recognize, and celebrate success.

·        In addition, the leader must know that Human Resource is to be optimized as a result there is a humane way to deal with people even when you have to deliver tough news or deal with people who don’t share the same views.

·        Also, the leader must understand that the culture determines how people work together and how they respond to change. No leader can succeed without understanding and shaping the norms at work.

·        Finally, in all the principles the leader has to first know the change process starts with you -- how you run your meetings, manage your calendar, share information.

The Art of Chaordic Leadership by Dee Hock

·        The chaord: any self-organizing, self-governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex organism, organization, community or system, whether physical, biological or social, the behavior of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both chaos and order. It can be thought of as an organization that harmoniously blends characteristics of competition and cooperation; or from the perspective of education, an organization that seamlessly blends theoretical and experiential learning. 

·        In this way the Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice.

·        Therefore, a clear, constructive purpose and compelling ethical principles evoked from and shared by all participants should be the essence of every relationship in every institution.

·        A vital question is how to insure that those who lead are constructive, ethical, open, and honest. The answer is to follow those who behave in that manner.

·        True leaders are those who epitomize the general sense of the community -- who symbolize, legitimize and strengthen behavior in accordance with the sense of the community -- who enable its shared purpose, values and beliefs to emerge and be transmitted. A true leader's behavior is induced by the behavior of every individual choosing where to be led.

·        Therefore a true leader must first manage self: one's own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It is a complex, unending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task. It is the management of self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of management are inescapable.

·        Leaders can only recognize and modify conditions which prevent it; perceive and articulate a sense of community, a vision of the future, a body of principle to which people can become passionately committed, then encourage and enable them to discover and bring forth the extraordinary capabilities that lie trapped in everyone struggling to get out.

Activity 6: Models and stages of technology change

It was interesting to see that most persons school were inbetween the adoption and adaptation Professional Development ICT stage.

In addition the main challenges of each school were based on inadequate: resources, connectivity, support and professional development.

In conclusion, most staff members had basic ICT skills, however they need to develop pedagogical ICT skills in order to successfully integrate ICT within their curriculum.

Activity 5: Learning communities: Exploring ICT integration lessons from other schools

Each school purpose for integrating ICT depends on their vision. In addition, the actual process of integration may vary based on their availability to resources, and opportunities for Professional Development.

However, if there is a leader, for example the one staff member with the enthusiasm or drive to support other collegues in acquiring basic ICT skills and knowledge of pedacogical ways of integrating ICT in their classrooms there will be much development throughout the school in sudents performance.

This though is not a situation to pressure teachers to use ICT, but that of providing opportunities for them to use it.

Everyone can learn by anothers experience once it is shared.

Activity 4: Whole school conditions for ICT integration

Vision

The vision is to explore, use, integrate, implement and manage ICT as an agent of change in the 21^st Century, by empowering teachers and learners with current education through all the ICT opportunities available to use the knowledge, skills and attitudes gained to support, enhance and extend teaching and learning beyond the classroom walls.

Leadership

The leadership that is needed for this should include strategic planning, leading and managing staff with clear and honest communication and dedicated or committed collaboration, providing proper and adequate teaching and learning infrastructure, resources and tools, creating and implementing sufficient personal and professional development opportunities for staff, administration and management, and being flexible in incorporating and adopting curriculum and assessment guidelines and monitoring instruments in regards with the relationship fostered among all through the unified philosophy or beliefs formed in using ICT in education.

Teacher's Role

Teachers need to incorporate ICT in their curricula. Instead of making it seem like extra work, they can start to include ICT as part of the normal daily lessons, where combinations are made with the normal pedagogical practices. As a result, a teacher can start using computers for simple tasks that he/she knows how to use and work with, then gradually move on to more complex tasks as he/she increases his/her knowledge and capabilities of basic, intermediate up to advance computer skills. In addition, because the teacher should focus more on the didactical aspects of using the computer and not only the technical aspects there is the bonus of developing other skills as well.

The teacher’s main role in the classroom should be that of a mentor, coach, guide, facilitator, and motivator. However, the bottom line is that as a learner the teacher will need not only to know about ICT, but to also know how to use it in their teaching.

Learners Role

When given the opportunity to use ICT students will also learn about ICT. They will not only acquire ICT skills but a large set of other skills such as: reading, writing, communication skills, cooperation, teamwork, collaboration skills, critical thinking, problem solving, reflective thinking, research skills, media and literacy skills, organization and planning skills, etc. This is a clear example of adding value to learning using ICT.

Activity 3: Thinking about the whole school

The leadership at our school has been constantly working on integrating ICT in education.

The green and brown areas are in the process of change as there is a lot of critical reflection being done to improve those areas.

At our ABIIT location we are exposed to classrooms with 20 computers, a projector, one whiteboard, and one printer.

Although these ICT resources exist in the classrooms the lecturers are constantly faced with the challenge of being actually able to integrate ICT within their class due to poor inernet conectivity, outdated ICT hardware, lack of maintaince, etc.

However our leaders have been involved in Professional Development Training as they continue this CCTI course to learn the how, when and where to integrate ICT in education. As we explore, use and share ICT throughout our experience.

View an example of CCTI training reflection from other countries
click here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8h9QJfUqf8 

Activity 2: Schools scenarios

I believe that no matter what the challenges are that we are faced with today, due to our change in teaching from traditional to transformational, we need to deal with each problem in the most appropriate way always figuring out the why first, before we jump to any accusations.

In addition, it is not always easy for us to embrace change, but if we do not accept it, we may be left behind.
Please view ICT's in Schools video, click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3KExQfb1w

Scenario 1: Thuto Primary School

1. In any situation which involves a problem, the first thing that needs to be done is to fully identify the problem, e.g. 

• First of all, the staff computers were secured, however there is room open to if the learners computers were secured.
• Secondly, why did they wait for a whole month to pass without doing anything, knowing that the internet connectivity had change from reliable to unreliable?
• Thirdly, when they investigated the electricity bill and found out that community members were pilfering, the question that runs through ones mind is, don’t they have security for the school and even though they are using the electricity, it doesn’t account for the internet connectivity problem.

2. Then, once the problem is identified gather information on the problem, e.g.

Internet Connectivity Problem

How many computers where there in all?
How many for the teachers? 
How many for the students?

Did these computers have security access codes for users?

Did they use wireless internet access and up to what range?

Was the internet access high speed enough to carry the weight of the number of computers and total school grounds coverage?

Electricity Billing Problem

From investigation it was made known that community members use of the schools electricity is a cause of the high bill.

Community Members Pilfering Electricity

Why were they doing this?

Why all of a sudden over the last month up to date?

What where they using the electricity for?

Who exactly young, old, males, females?

What time of the day were they doing this?

What part of the school where they able to gain access to the electricity?

3. After all information has been gathered alternatives can be looked at to solve the problem, and prevent it from happening again e.g.

Internet Connectivity Problem

• Check to see that everything setup wise for the internet physically on the school plant is intact and nothing was disturbed.
• Ask the internet providers for the school, if they have been experiencing internet connection problems in your zone lately and if they have, what has been causing the interference?
• Ask the internet providers to provide the school with a school access code for the overall schools internet.
• The school sets up a programme that only persons with their School ID code and personal password can access internet anywhere on the schools’ compound.

Electricity Billing Problem

• Have all electricity outlets that are placed on the outside of the infrastructure of the school covered and locked with padlocks.
• Put all physical security measures in place.

Community Members Pilfering Electricity

• Have a meeting at the school inviting all community members and address the problems at hand and work with them to find solutions to the problems.
• Also, highlighting the importance of the school to the community, but especially to the students who attend.

Scenario 2: Monument High

Every institution carries its own culture and every individual his/her characteristics.

Therefore, what has been done to train or help educators learn ICT Skills at any institution needs to be looked at first. Why?  After all that has been done there, they are still educators who desire to acquire ICT Skills. As a result, I would ask them what ICT skills they want to possess and what they intend to do with their skills when they have them.

For example at my department educators have been exposed to varying opportunities of training in ICT skills, however I believe, that there are three small factors that normally come into play:

•        Time
•        Interest
•        Motivation

Most of the training my not be at an appropriate time for all individuals. Also they may just know about the training today for tomorrow, or today for today. This happens in most instances. In addition, in our department everyone works on a different schedule, it is not like an 8 to 4, or 9 to 3, time frame. It’s a two hour here, a two hour there today, or tomorrow a 4 hour here or 6 hour there spanding any time between morning and evening. As a result, it is very difficult to set a time that everyone can meet and even a day. As a result, it would mean suspension of some person’s classes to offer training at any given time.

Sometimes persons are interested to receive training; however their interest to what they want from the training and why they want the training may be different to others. In addition, there might be some interested but not if it is mandatory for them to do.

Motivating persons to want to improve or acquire ICT skills should be linked to their interests. As a result, yes we should make educators see that it is not as time consuming as they think it is once they get the hang of it. However, first encourage them to do what they want to try first, before sending them its easy message. Not everything one person sees is easy to do, is easy to another.

Persons, seem intimidated when they work in large groups, therefore smaller groups and more one and one, help some more than others. Where there are those who are willing to explore and learn on their own, there are however some, who want to know that at any given time they can get a quick support person to assist them.

Collaborative discussions and work groups should be set aside for all to participate in to see their progress of ICT skills. Since they would be able to share their successes and failures as they work with each other to apply and practice skills.

It’s meeting person’s needs, therefore any structured Professional Development in ICT should not be a one day or one week fix, which in most cases it is presented like that, but a slow over a period of 3 to 6 months the least to a max of 1 to 2 years to acquire, use and practice specific level skills.