Innovation Profile 037

ICT is implemented in stages

There are three main stages in enabling teachers and students to use ICT for learning, enabling only a few of the people in the school/college, enabling all teachers and students in every classroom, and enabling use of the device or service outside the school.

Some investments are more effective in getting the school/college to the next stage. Some also enable more effective use of previous investments. As an example consider the impact of interactive whiteboards in all classrooms.

Because whiteboards become the focal point for lessons and are used by both teachers and students they have a huge impact. They can considerably increase the use of the other investments in ICT; for example the investment in learning content and software, the school/college network, computers owned by teachers, students' computers, and video conferencing tools and services.

Of course investment in ICT must always be done for good educational reasons. Here again the interactive whiteboard scores highly. Two major trends that are changing education are increased use of visual learning materials and more communication between learners and others who can help their learning. The whiteboard of course enables much more effective use of images, visualisations and video. A whiteboard can also be the node for communication, within the class and widely, through video-conferencing or on the web.

If you have not yet looked at all the positive impacts on learning that interactive whiteboards can produce, a good place to look is the Promethean web site, www.promethean.co.uk (or www.promethean.fr). There are a number of case studies available in this site that illustrate the benefits being experienced in a wide range of schools/colleges. Comments from the teachers involved illustrate how important they feel these benefits are.

But the technology is only half the story; people are the other half. On the Promethean site you will also find links to Centres of Excellence and User Groups to help teachers appreciate why they should change how they teach and what best practices they should adopt. This is important - those leading the introduction of technologies which have a radical impact in improving learning, must consider the impact of this change on teachers and must manage and support the change processes.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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