Pleasant noises coming from the Welsh

I’ve recently come across some very encouraging reports about the uses of social media in Welsh schools. The Education Minister of the Welsh Assembly, Leighton Andrews, commissioned a review of digital classroom teaching in September 2011 which resulted in the publication of The Digital Classroom Teaching Task and Finish Group’s Find It, Make It, Use It,Share It: Learning in Digital Wales in March 2012. The recommendations are eminently sensible as shown in their vision, “that teachers and learners now live in a world where communication and knowledge are routinely digital, ubiquitous and highly interactive, and that the processes of learning and teaching can, and must, take advantage of what digital technologies offer.”

I was very encouraged to read the suggestion to “Use existing tried and tested web-based products and services to disseminate existing and new content.” I strongly believe that we should not be wasting resources on trying to develop bespoke programmes for each individual school. These Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are often poorly conceived and exceptionally difficult to maintain in terms of relevance and ever-changing technologies. As a colleague eloquently said to me at the Scottish Learning Festival in September when discussing VLEs, ‘you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig’.

 

I was also pleased to read the recommendation to “ensure that learners and teachers have the freedom to access rich learning and teaching resources from anywhere, at any time and from any device.” Politicians and school leaders often like to wax lyrical about the uses of new technologies, but for many I feel this still means shiny ICT suites. New technologies are the emergent mobile devices whether phones or tablets which are already owned by a large majority of students and teachers. We like the idea of being at the forefront of new technology but too many still cringe at the idea of allowing students to use the mobile devices for the purposes of learning – devices that they have on them at all times, not just when an ICT room can be booked out.

The Welsh are not just saying positive things in glossy publications; changes are also taking place in their schools. St Julian’s School in Newport, for example, have announced a refreshing policy change in relation to the use of mobile phones in classrooms and the bold decision to convert their library into a ‘cyber centre’ replete with iPads and plasma screens.

This kind of coordinated approach to facing the challenge of adapting our rather conservative and out-of-date educational institutions is absolutely necessary and I hope that the Welsh Assembly see through their plan and that other government officials might adopt similar initiatives across the rest of the UK and further afield.