Innovation Profile 124

Home versus School

In the 19th and early 20th century, children went to school to learn skills and knowledge and did their social learning playing in the street. Many children do not now meet and interact with their peers and wider family after school every day.

Perhaps now schools should organise time and curriculum to promote social interaction and learning in school, and enable much more of the learning of skills and knowledge to happen at home.

Community licences for digital learning resources combined with sufficient computers and network access at home can enable this to happen. Sherston now offer community licences which enable CD ROMs to be loaned or sold to pupils for use at home. Details can be found at http://www2.sherston.com/circle/community.htm.

It can be hard for students to concentrate on developing skills or engaging with knowledge in school. A classroom is a social place with many social distractions. The need for the class to follow the syllabus creates time pressures which inhibit deep engagement. At home a child can become absorbed in an activity, for as long as they wish.

Digital learning resources are adopting more of the techniques that stimulate engagement and interaction and which scaffold learning and progression, to maintain challenge. This enables pupils of an ever-wider range of abilities and learning styles to become willing to use time at home for learning.

In the past schools have used the argument that not all their pupils have access to computers at home, to resist the kinds of organisational and pedagogic changes which could promote more learning at home. In many areas the large majority of pupils do now have access to computers at home and this argument is no longer valid.

It is not a question of whether this kind of learning of skills and knowledge should happen at home. It is now a question of when a school's pupils will have ICT access and will do this, to gain the lifelong learning capabilities they need.

And this will seriously challenge schools as to how in-school time is best spent.

The Sherston Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company and a list of other Innovation Profiles connected with it.

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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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