Role of ICT

Main Page - Role of ICT

The question we are really interested in is what role should ICT play within schome.

The dICTatEd project has been exploring the question of what reasons should underpin the use of ICT in education for several years - check out the dICTatEd website (http://www.meD8.info/dictated/) and have a go at their questionnaire - it takes about nine minutes to do and is thought provoking (OK so I must at this point admit to being biased as I lead the dICTatEd project - but the feedback we have had clearly indicates that folk find the qeustionnaire does stimulate their thinking and can act as a great starting point for discussion of this important issue).

Add your thoughts on the role of ICT in education here:

• PeterT's view of the role of ICT in education
• School 2.0 is a wiki focussed on how education will be transformed by ICT

or join our discussion about ICT in education.

Other stuff to check out

The eStrategy Implementation Review (eSIR) - a Becta funded project that produced an eBook in 2006 which explores many of the issues surrounding the implemenation of ICT in education - key focus being on human factors not technology - see http://fm.schmoller.net/2006/12/educational_cha.html for a review of the eBook and http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_ap_03&rid=11410 to download the eBook itself.

'Harnessing Technology' - The DfES eStrategy (March 2005) gives a glimpse of the role that the (UK) government see's ICT as playing in education and care.

the elearningeuropa website has an interesting summary of its new report on 'The new learning paradigm in school education' (8Mb pdf), which identifies some potential roles for ICT in schools.

The Naace Future-Learning website provides tools to help schools to think about the best approaches to transforming education and hot to use ICT to support this process.

In 'the news'

6th Oct 06 - Is email only for 'old people'?

According to an article in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION (vol. 53, issue 7, p. A27, October 6, 2006), "College officials around the country find that a growing number of students are missing important messages about deadlines, class cancellations, and events sent to them by e-mail because, well, the messages are sent to them by e-mail." The article cites research reported in a 2005 Pew Internet & American Life Project called "Teens and Technology," which found that while college students still used email to communicate with their professors, they preferred to use instant messaging, text messaging, and services such as MySpace to interact with their peers.

The Chronicle article is available online at http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i07/07a02701.htm.

The complete Pew report is available at no cost online at http://www.pewinternet.org/report_display.asp?r=162.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project "produces reports that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life. The Project aims to be an authoritative source on the evolution of the Internet through collection of data and analysis of real-world developments as they affect the virtual world." For more information and other reports, see http://www.pewinternet.org/index.asp.

The Chronicle of Higher Education [ISSN 0009-5982] is published weekly by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 1255 Twenty-third Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 USA; tel: 202-466-1000; fax: 202-452-1033; Web: http://chronicle.com/.

From TL Infobits - September 06
INFOBITS is also available online on the World Wide Web at http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/ (HTML format) and at http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/text/index.html (plain text format).

Becta calls

On the 29th June 2007 Becta put out another batch of calls for expressions of interest. These should be listed on the Current activities page of the Becta website ...

They relate to:

• Research 1: Harnessing Technology Schools Survey
• Research 7: Measuring e-Maturity in Offender Learning and Skills Service
• Research 8: Assessing the potential of e-learning to support re-engagement amongst young people with NEET status
• Research 9: Impact 2008
• Research 10: Technology and School Improvement: reducing social inequity with technology
• Research 18: Personalising Learning
• Research 19: Benefits and Issues of Managed Services
• Research 21: Literature review of the health and safety issues associated with the use of ICT in education
• Research 25: Personalising learning - the learner perspective

On the 22nd June 2007 Becta put out several calls for expressions of interest for projects they are planning to fund. These included:

• Research 2: Harnessing Technology Local Authorities Survey
• Research 3: Learners and technology: 7-11
• Research 4: Measuring e-Maturity in Further Education (FE) colleges
• Research 5: Measuring e-Maturity among Work Based Learning (WBL) providers
• Research 6: Measuring e-Maturity in Personal and Community Development Learning (PCDL)
• Research 12: Web 2.0 technologies for learning at KS3 and KS4
• Research 13: New models of learning provision for KS3 and 14-19: potential of online learning

If you are interested in bidding for one of these then feel free to discuss it in the ICT in Education discussion board.

TLRP technology enhanced learning second call

The focus of this £6 million call http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk] - see current Funding Opportunities then TLRP - is on the creation, development and exploitation of digital technologies for learning through a better understanding of their capability to transform the quality of learning experiences and lead to enhancements in learning outcomes. Innovative interdisciplinary research proposals, integrating insights from across the research fields traditionally supported by ESRC and EPSRC, are sought to address 4 key research challenges - Productivity, Personalisation, Inclusion and Flexibility. However its closing date is 12 July.