Order of the Bath

The school English department has two roles. One is to teach the beauty of the language that we live with. To do this they will use the great writers of history and the present day; the poets, playwrights and novelists. They will teach metaphor, irony, meter and the structure of a novel and encourage the pupils to write in various styles both emulating the best and displaying originality of their own. The second role is to teach grammar and spelling, the use of a dictionary and thesaurus, how to construct a sentence and compose an essay. This is needed both to complement the first role and also because the kids will need it in their other studies. To understand text books and write their essays and course work for other subjects ranging from Religious Studies to Physics, including, occasionally, Maths. Both aspects are taught simultaneously and interwoven; I don’t think there is much separation of Language and Literature these days.

Similarly, there are these same two roles for the IT department. Computers are ubiquitous in society today and children need to know how they work, what they can do and how they do it. They need to understand how they are linked together in networks and their relationship with servers, the internet and business processes (I am guessing here, I hope that they are taught this). But, just like their English lessons, they also need to be taught the mechanics of “how to do things on the computer” for their other courses. They will need to discover how to create a document on a word processor, how to draw a graph using a spreadsheet. They pretty soon discover how to obtain information using the web browser! More advanced pupils may also need to study hardware design, operating systems, programming, human-computer interfaces and usability. It is a challenge for the IT department to integrate these aspects into a coherent curriculum.

A major different between the two subjects is the relative uniformity of the English language, and the wide variety of computer systems available. I am sure Microsoft would be very happy if IT meant Windows and word processing meant MS Office—they spend considerable effort in trying to convince Schools that this is the case—but that would be to give in to commerce. Are schools in the business of education for life or training for work?

The first aspect of IT teaching is hardware/software independent. There is little practical involvement except for demonstration purposes so the question doesn’t really arise. It is the second part, the practical application, that causes a problem. The kids not only need to be taught how to do these things on the equipment provided by the school, they also need to be able to replicate it on whatever systems they have access to at home. This constraint can place conflicting requirements onto what and how things are taught. Miss Posh Bentley may have been given a new Vista laptop for her birthday whilst Mstr. Rusty Ford may use the family machine cast out from a local shop, others may have none at all. This is the real digital divide. Where does the school place itself in this environment?

What are the options, taking into account their pupils needs and the limited budget? It is true that there are alternatives available, mostly at a much lower capital cost and, arguably, cheaper in the long run too. There are freely available operating systems, office packages, databases and most other applications needed.

BECTA have already said that they can see no benefit in schools installing MS Vista or Office 2007. Schools doing so will either face a complete replacement of all their computers as it demands a very high specification or will have to live with a mixed environment. However as time goes on the latter will be more likely as older systems become unavailable for replacement. The “training for work” view doesn’t stand up to inspection anyway as, by the time they need it, any particular system that they have been taught will be obsolete.

Although it may seem attractive to have a connected network of uniform systems, this is not possible in the long term. It may be just about possible for a single subject class but across the whole school it will be impractical. I believe that schools should take advantage of this now and convert some systems to use free products. Start with those systems that you would otherwise have to retire, install something simple like OpenOffice Writer, a modern fully functional word processor and put them in to a class where only text document creation is required. Then, on the next purchase round, negotiate a system with new hardware but free software and use the savings to make the budget go further.

Footnote

An additional burden often placed on school IT departments is having to support the day to day maintenance of the school systems from finding lost mouse balls to deploying new networks. Other subject staff are required to prepare and present material in digital form, from reports to lesson material so they need systems in the staff room. These also need to interact with office systems for secretarial and finance. With the move to wireless networks, an online presence for PR and, now, work-from-home teaching materials this world is getting ever more complex and demands an adequately resourced and dedicated IT infrastructure support independent of the academic staff.

This entry was posted on 17 Mar 2008 at 14:16 by Rick and is filed under Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.