Here's somehting I wrote for Scott's web thingy - and he suggested i forward
it to you too!
Best,
Martin
_________________________________________________________ IT Manifesto?
Clear blue water appears to have re-emerged, at last, between the Tories
and
Labour on at least one aspect of education policy. With the publication of
its own
specially commissioned Stevenson report on the state of the nation s
school
computer resources, the "pioneers of new thinking" and heirs of the White
Heat
revolution of the Wilson years have committed themselves to ambitious plans
to
realise the potential of new technology whilst the Conservatives have
re-dedicated themselves to a return to distinctly old-fashioned educational
values.
For the latter-day Gradgrinds, it s a dry prescription of tests, more
tests, exams,
and a few teacher appraisals too. Not a word appears in their election
manifesto on
the educational benefits of new technology. It s as though they think
there aren t
any.
Labour, meanwhile, is steaming on, promising an Email account for
every
child , free access to the Internet for every school, (small print, rescued
charges for
making use of the free access), and various initiatives to make teachers
more
computer literate and techno friendly . The Stevenson report identified two
main
areas of concern: teachers and software - although the hardware isn t much
good
either, and as for the pupils... Labour now says it plans to set up a
teacher-net
allowing quality checked programs to be made available for downloading -
cheap.
Actually, everything New Labour offers has to be cheap, and what isn t will
be made
so by using national lottery money. That idea, we may recall, had been
mooted by
Gillian Shepherd in the party conference season, as a way of financing
tomorrow's
technology with funds from the day after. However, talk of stolen clothes
should be
tempered, for she seemed to have in mind a ?300 million a year orgy of
CD-ROMS
and lap-tops for children, whereas it looks like Labour is simply trying to
plug some
sort of DfE spending black spot, lest it turn into the dreaded spending
black hole.
Funds supposedly only for additional projects, Labour would use for training
teachers, one of the few things that might be expected to be paid for out of
normal
government expenditures.
In any case, the stampede for what is now being called CT ,
( Communications technology, all important for the chattering classes?) not
IT, is
really rather old hat. There is something rather sad about the old new
technology,
as any teacher with a stock cupboard of BBC micros, or a drawer full of
electronics
kits can vouch.
Mrs Shepherd is right to wonder what happened to the ?1 billion the
supposedly frugal Tory administration has spent on it over the last eighteen
years.
Did it really help to connect all the children to Teletext? Or to train
primary school
children to manoeuvre all strange sorts of souped-down vehicles using LOGO
and
control technology ? The government seems to think not, as it has
conspicuously
given up recommending that as a prescription for either the classroom or
society at
large. In fact, the only new technology left being pushed by the Tories is
the mobile
phone and information points, and de-regulated commercial broadcasting.
Dennis Stevenson calls the state of "ICT" ( thereby having the best of
both
worlds) "primitive and not improving", noting that nearly half the computers
in
primary schools are over five years old, and that there is still only one
per thrifty
children. Despite their protestations, Labour, Liberals and Tories alike
still seem to
be measuring educational innovation by numbers of machines purchased, either
covertly using the millennium honey pot, or as with the Liberals, explicitly
promising
a computer for every ten year old out of their famous penny for the school
system
tax collection. The politicians efforts with new technology, as the
philosopher
Santazana might have said, increasingly resemble the behaviour of the
fanatic -
redoubling of efforts having long ago forgotten the purpose. Just maybe
there never
was one.
650 words
Martin Cohen is researching into the use of information technology in
schools in West
Yorkshire and Devon at the University College of St Mark & St John.
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Posted to uk-policy, a service of Nexus. http://www.netnexus.org/
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Posted to ict, a service of Nexus. http://www.netnexus.org/