I’m a huge advocate
of exploiting new technology in education and have spent the last couple of
years promoting the informed use of social media in schools. However, I’m a
much bigger advocate of meaningful learning experiences and opportunities for
creativity and engagement. A tension often exists between the prevalence of
modern technology and remembering what effective teaching and learning is. At
his recent BETT speech, Professor Brian Cox suggested replacing interactive whiteboards
in school with blackboards, and I would agree that using technology for the
sake of it can undermine more traditional strategies that work. Is it time that
we had a fresh look at the role of technology in education rather than pursuing
the rather lazy assumption that all technology is good for learning?
I started my NQT
year in 1999. It very quickly dawned on me that the impact of my lessons had a
positive correlation with the amount of time and thought I put into planning
and assessment. Teaching through the use of ICT had been touched on in my PGCE
year but was very much seen as a sideshow for the main event and engagement in
lessons relied heavily on the imagination and creativity of my planning which
often aimed to give my students the opportunity to be imaginative and creative
in class. Images and quotes were displayed on the Overhead Projector,
worksheets were often homemade and bespoke for individual classes and students.
My classes were teacher-led without being didactic and students were given
opportunities to engage in content using various activities and assessment
tools. In 2000 my classroom became the first in the school to have the
blackboard replaced with an interactive whiteboard. People came to observe me and
my magic board and I was sent out to other schools to help train staff on how
to make the best use of this new technology. I desperately searched in vain for
software which would exploit the capabilities of the whiteboard so that it didn’t
just become a glorified OHP but eventually I, like the majority of the
profession since, settled on the tool which seemed most relevant: Microsoft
PowerPoint.
PowerPoint made us lazy.
Like all these things, it’s not the fault of the software, which can create
amazingly engaging presentations, but the way it has been used in our
profession. I used to start planning lessons with a key question in mind which
would lead to some creative thinking about how best to engage my students in
the topic followed by creative resource-making. Now I was starting my planning
with this:
PowerPoint was not
designed with teaching and learning in mind. It is a presentation tool.
Effective lessons are not presentations. Presentations are used, largely in the
world of business, to inform or persuade. The presenter usually has some information
(e.g. sales figures) or ideas (e.g. marketing strategy) which the audience,
either through genuine interest or because it is their job, are willing to
listen to. Teachers may well have information and ideas that they would love
their audience to absorb in this way, but this is not the reality of children
or schools. Presentation/lectures clearly have a place in higher education, are
just about possible at times at post-16 level but are definitely a no-go area
for a year 10 class on a wet Thursday afternoon.
So why have we
persisted with PowerPoint presentations for the last decade? I blame the
assumption that new technology is always a good thing in education. We have
been encouraged to ask questions of the use of ICT in lessons – if the
technology is available, why isn’t it being used? Every staff INSET, parent information
meeting, training course and student-led presentation is delivered on
PowerPoint (or Keynote, Prezi etc), so, we concluded, should every lesson. This
has made us lazy. Consider the amount of time that has been spent on summarising
content into bullet-points, searching for appropriate images and adding
animation effects and how this time could have invested in considering creative
learning opportunities. PowerPoint appeals to our lazy gene – we even steal
presentations off other teachers so we don’t have to expend effort on creating
our own (some call this sharing best practice).
The presentation is
not the presentation. Starting with PowerPoint just encourages us to deliver
content. That’s bad enough on its own, but delivering it in a dull and
inspiring manner is as bad as my old Deputy Headteacher dictating from the
Bible in RS lessons.
PowerPoint is a
great example of how technology can kill creativity. It is not alone. The
all-too familiar practical obstacles of using computers in class must be bane
of ICT teachers’ lives - ‘I’ve forgotten
my password’, ‘I’m still waiting for it to log-in’, ‘let me just finish this
level’. Yet we all still clamour to book that period in the ICT room so we can
deliver a tired PowerPoint presentation to our class before letting them free
to produce their own tired PowerPoint presentation so they too can deliver
content to a disinterested audience. Where’s the learning?
This was less of an
issue in 1999. Most classrooms didn’t have computers and ICT suites were used
to teach ICT competencies. Good teachers used planning time to create engaging
activities. Good teachers still do this, but there is a danger that PowerPoint
and the availability of online resource sharing sites has made teachers spend
more time on the presentation than the way in which their students might learn
the skills or knowledge.
In my next post I’ll
propose how we might consider ways of embracing technology and social media
outside of the classroom while at the same time resisting the shackles that
these things can bring to the creativity and imagination of what actually
happens in our lessons.
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