(Critical) history of ICT in education – and where we are heading?
The use of computers in education is much more a series of failures than success stories. I agree with Erik Duval that in general, in a large scale the impact of technology on the way people learn have been minimal. In open distant learning and military training (simulations) there are examples of success, but these models do not fit very well to school and university context. So, I wouldn’t call them “good examples”.
It can be claimed that from the learning perspective the only proof-of-concept cases of using computers in the school and university environments for learning, are the small-scale experiments with CSCL (Computer-supported Collaborative Learning) tools such as the classical CSILE (and Knowledge Forum),Belvedere and later the experiments made with web-based social software tools, such as Fle3 and blogs.
Why is the impact of technology on the way we learn so marginal, even though millions of dollars and euros has been spent on to develop educational computer technology? Could it be that there has been some principle conceptual bias and all the minor changes made in to it do not help much, as the principle is wrong?
With an analogy: if you are sailing somewhere in equator and take a course by mistake to south, even that you should go north, it does not help much if you every year fix your course 5 degrees. You will still end-up to Antarctica.
Let’s try to make a critical analyse of the history of ICT in learning. How the history will look if we try to pull down the mental models and educational thinking behind the promises of different times?I see four major phases in the history of using computers in education. The fifth: the era of social software and free and open content is still to come – I hope. The phases are:
(1) Late 1970’s – early 1980’s: programming, drill and practice;
(2) Late 1980’s – early 1990’s: computer based training (CBT) with multimedia;
(3) Early 1990’s: Internet-based training (IBT);
(4) Late 1990’s – early 2000: e-Learning;
(5) Late 2000: Social software + free and open content.
From the history of media we know that new forms never replace the old one. TV didn’t kill radio and Internet didn’t kill TV. New forms of media rather complement the old once, but do not countervail them. This naturally leads to greater choice for people, but also causes fragmentation. Different media devices and formats also get mixed with each other and this way generates new forms that contain features from each of them. iPod is a good example of this. It is a kind of walkman of Internet era that can be used to have personalized radio shows (podcasting).
As noticed by my friend Pauliina Seppälä this seems to be the case with sub-cultures, as well. New forms of sub-cultures, such as youth cultures, are often considered to be some kind of fashion that come and go, but actually all the old forms seems to stay with us. We still have mods, punk rockers, pot- and acid heads with us, although we may consider them to be rather passé. They also mix to each other and formulate new forms of sub-cultures.
I think this is the case with educational technology, as well. All the old paradigms live with the new once and get mixed to each other. The old models just never disappeared but are present in a form or another in the new paradigms.
The old paradigms seem to get fashionable once in a while, too. For this reason we should not be surprised if many people are excited about the drill and practice exercises and quizzes online: they still live in our minds because we want to believe that the paradigm is right.
Lets have a closer look on the phases in the history of computers in education.
(1) Late 1970’s – early 1980’s: programming, drill and practice
This is the era when I got into computers in my own school. It was in the early years of 1980’s and our math teacher was teaching also the new school subject called in Finnish “ATK”. The abbreviation stand for “automated data processing” – and the name of the subject already tell you pretty well what it was all about. We were using Nokia MikroMikko. There were not many software at all, but there were the MS Basic for programming and naturally that was what the ATK lessons were almost all about.
The pedagogical reason to teach programming was not to train programmers, but the believe that it will develop students’ logics and math skills, as it most likely does. In some point there were some educational software running on the MikroMikko. I think they were written by the teacher or maybe she got them from some colleagues. However, the software were very simple drill and practice exercises for math and language learning. These exercises didn’t help much students to reach any deeper understanding, as they were mainly simulating students’ short term memory and “trial, error, trial, error, trial, past” kind of activity. Anyway these programs kept the wild children quiet (for a while) when teacher was teaching those who were more into programming.
(2) Late 1980’s – early 1990’s: computer based training (CBT) with multimedia
Same point when the multimedia computers, with advanced graphics and sound came to the mass markets it was presented a claim that the drill and practice exercises failed to teach much because they didn’t contain multimedia. It was said that students would learn if they could watch animations in colours, small video clips and then do the exercises.
This was the golden era of CD-ROMs and multimedia computers. This combination was seriously expected to have a huge impact on the ways we learn. The times were good for CD-ROM producers and of multimedia PC manufacturers.
The pedagogical mantra behind this phase was that human are different and some students learn better by watching movies / animations and listening audios whereas some learn better by reading or watching still images. The drill and practice component (now in colours) was kept in there, too, but now it’s role was more to control yourself if you learned what the multimedia was trying to teach you.
The multimedia CD-ROMs didn’t either get people to deep learning and understanding. They failed to be useful almost in all other study subjects than language learning where part of the study work of many people really requires hard practicing and repetition (vocabulary, grammar etc.)
(3) Early 1990’s: Internet-based training (IBT)
The third wave or hype of using computer in education came with the raise of the World Wide Web. The failure of CD-ROMs were claimed to be related to the challenges to update the content in the CD-ROMs. The promoters of the new paradigm claimed that information changes so fast that one should update it almost every day. The solution is here: the Internet and the Internet-based training.
At this point computer-based training was brought to Internet, but again without the multimedia. All you could do on Internet, that time, was text and pictures and some early experiments with animations, video and audio. Pretty fast it was noticed that clicking and reading e-learning course materials online didn’t make people very smart. And again some people claimed that the problem was the lack of multimedia. 
The educational ideas behind Internet-based training were not pedagogical at all. The purpose and reason to promote it was the believe that it is cost-efficient as there were no more travelling to training or absence from workplace. Finally it was not that cost-efficient at all. In the end of the day there was very little under the bottom line – people didn’t learn much.
(4) Late 1990’s – early 2000: e-Learning
The Internet-based training got mature in late 1990’s and early 2000 in a form of e-learning. The hype around e-learning is a kind of classical example of creating needs. Thousands of websites, articles and companies made it clear for all somehow related to education that this is something you must be involved it. The IT managers of thousands of educational institutions and organizations were asked by the educational experts to come up with e-learning solutions and companies were happy to help the IT managers. The e-learning industry was build, even though it was not proven that anyone (except the IT managers) needed these products. The markets for e-learning courses and especially for Learning Management Systems (LMS) were created.
The pedagogical thinking around the e-learning is closely related to the computer-based training. The point is to deliver courses for students. Later on the learning platform developers has become more aware that learning requires social activities among the learners themselves and the learner and the teacher(s). Still the user interfaces of the LMS systems are at least implicitly telling you that you should first read the content and if there is something you do not understand you may ask your peers or your teacher.
On the otherhand the e-learning field is nowadays so wide that it is hard to say what is the pedagogical thinking behind it. E-learning is no more one. It could be said that all the earlier paradigms live inside the e-leaning plus some clues of the future: social software and open content.
(5) Late 2000: Social software + free and open content
I really hope that in the late 2000 social software and free and open content will make a real breakthrough in the field of educational technology. Blogs and wikis have already brought web back to its original idea: simple tool for your personal notes that are easily accessible and even editable by your peers and your potential peers.
Such projects as the GNU-GPL, Creative Commons, Wikipedia andOpencourseware have shown that free content benefits all – and that people are willing to contribute to the common good. Digital content is such that when you give it away you do not loose it yourself. This makes giving much easier for many people.
The pedagogical thinking behind the social software and the free and open content can be located to the social constructivist theory and cultural-historical psychology. “Any true understanding is dialogic in nature” wrote Mikhail Bakhtin and Lev Vygotsky wrote that “all higher [mental] functions originate as actual relations between human individuals”.
Learning with computers is not about programming or drill and practice, nor about multimedia, nor about fast updating or cost-efficiency – it is all about people sharing ideas.
Reference: http://flosse.blogging.fi/2005/06/23/critical-history-of-ict-in-education-and-where-we-are-heading/
ICT in education:
The dawn of new era or the development of an accessory?
1. Is ICT in education still an open question
During the last decades, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been
introduced in a dynamic way in society and in a far lesser degree in education. Formal education (i.e. primary, secondary, higher education) or informal education of various modes
(i.e. professional training, lifelong learning etc), are all affected by ICT.
By ICT in education we mean all the contemporary digital tools, such as computers, accessories and Internet that can be used in education helping to fulfill its goals.
A lot has been said about the impact of the introduction of ICT in education. Some believe that ICT is a basis for a revolutionary reform in this field. Some believe it is a panacea. Others consider ICT in education as a very useful tool that will not necessarily change the function of education dramatically. In general (and this is the common ground of the above points) it is widely expected that ICT will solve at least some of the problems that education faces. It should be noted that the academic and scientific dialogue concerning the effectiveness of ICT in education remains still an open issue. At the one edge there are those who believe that ICT should be applied in every discipline expecting that its penetration will improve the performance of every educational process. At the other end there are those who believe that penetration of ICT in education will not change things radically hence it should be dealt with caution, leaving no room for excitement.
There are grounds to believe that ICT will improve education. Thus:
¬ ICT can be used as a substitute for almost anything in the class: pencil, book, telephone, TV, encyclopedia, map, library and many more.
¬ Practically, with ICT, all the applications can be implemented using repeatedly very few basic techniques and devices, as well as a symbolism that becomes more and more standardized. It is noticeable that using only a PC (which is a multi-tool in education) and the Internet (which is a big river of information and communication), a lot of solutions are offered in various issues and fields. This certainly facilitates the learning process. Since technology has helped many other branches of activity or areas of human life we expect that it will help education. It is a fact that indirectly ICT has started affecting all people hence all groups of educational communities – learners and teachers. There are also grounds to believe that ICT will help them in a direct way too.
2. There is inertia of education related to ICT
a. A Global Issue of mass character
Education is a global-scale issue of huge “mass” and concerns a very large number of people. Its mass character is the result of an evolutionary process that reflects democratic ideologies and the adoption of human-centric social policies. This mass keeps increasing, furnished with new ideas and practices; lifelong learning is one of them.
Such a huge, non-elitist mass character is certainly good in a democratic world, since it offers to an increasing number of people (if not to everyone) the opportunity to become educated. However it has also a corresponding huge “inertia” against changes; in other words the fact that education is a huge sector of activities obstructs any change especially if this change involves expenditure -as is the case with ICT.
b. An investment with no immediate return
Worldwide, a very large part of formal education (primary, secondary and higher) are organized and run by the state. As far as a government is concerned, investment in education yields returns in the far, if not in the remote, future. Especially when acute and immediate needs are encountered, as in cases of severe poverty, such educational targets as the introduction of ICT become of secondary priority. However it is in these cases that ICT could provide real solutions, offering at the same time the chance to improve the development rates of poor societies in an extended time scale.
c. A Cultural Issue
The real inertia of education is the lack of technological culture that exists in most parts of the world. There are historical, social and psychological reasons for that. Thus: For a very long time in the past, the school provided an environment, which differed substantially from the environment in which other functions of society were taking place. School uniforms, conservative ideas, political, social and religious stereotypes, formal way of addressing pupils and teachers, even a different way of speaking, formed a military-like culture to which everybody had to conform. The modern character of ICT culture seems to contradict the strict culture that dominated behavior in most educational environments. Nowadays, all these have changed and the atmosphere in a class is very different from that in the past. However there is still some noticeable backwardness. In a modern society, nowadays, outside school, everybody uses technology, plays with technology and works with technology. In today’s class in many cases the only equipment that exists (depending of course on the specific social environment) is the same old traditional blackboard of past ages.
3. Change due to ICT has already started
Some important changes are already under way in education, due to ICT. It is a fact that some widespread, cheap and simple technical solutions have already produced substantial changes attributed to ICT. Such changes are in the following:
(a) The teaching and learning practice in institutions of any level (schools, universities etc). e.g.
• Mathematics (Formulae calculation, trigonometry, algorithmic solutions, logarithms, square roots etc)
• Language (Spelling and syntax corrections of sentences, voice recognition)
• All other subjects (Multimedia)
(b) New teaching ideas, approaches and methodologies have being developed, relying on ICT
and applied on different levels of education. All of them are used at an increasing rate; e.g.
• Distance Education (The traditional teacher - student scenario is eliminated)
• Home Schooling (Many American kids do not go to school but work at home)
• Cross-curriculum Applications – Multidisciplinary (Part of school curriculum involves multidisciplinary activities and subjects)
• Virtual reality (Still at a pioneer level. It promises to give an insight in many
educational fields, especially in developing dexterities and producing first person learning i.e. not through symbols. With virtual reality, the learner can “live” virtually dangerous phenomena or phenomena with no other access, apart from a virtual one, such as the solar system, volcano, human body, historical events etc.)
4. Development theories support ICT in education
The theoretical background concerning economic development can be considered as an advocate in favor of ICT in education. Reference here is made to the theory of human capital.
Specifically: Individual human capital may be defined as the sum of knowledge and experiences that an individual possesses. Social human capital is defined as the sum of knowledge and experiences that a society possesses.
The rationale in the heart of the human capital theory is that:
¬ the better the quality of human capital the higher the productivity.
¬ The higher the productivity the more the (economic) benefits for the individual and for the society. This is so because high quality of human capital is associated with:
o Better understanding of ideas,
o Better communication skills
o Better expression of ideas
o Higher adjustability to new working environments.
¬Quality of human capital depends on the quality and quantity of education and training.
The above rationale supports the view that:
The higher the penetration of ICT in education, the better the quality of schooling, hence the better the quality of human capital and the higher the productivity. In the same sense, according to the human capital theory, education, not only increases productivity of the person who possesses it (hence this person is rewarded - paid better), but also creates the conditions for more non-financial benefits for the society (more sensitivity to social issues as health, environment, family etc).
5. Different skills will be needed in the work market
With the introduction of ICT, the teaching – learning process will change and new skills for the teacher and the learner should be developed. Thus:
Methodology and content of teaching will change so that the learners will benefit most from the new technology.
Learners will not be evaluated only according to their knowledge but mainly with respect to their ability to achieve goals with all the technological means available to them.
The situation reminds of writing open-book exams. More specifically:
• The teacher has to organize and arrange all the technological means available in the classroom, to spend time for planning well and scheduling his performance and for choosing carefully the educational material for which the options are dramatically increasing. More structure has to be developed and new ways of interaction/dialogue have to be devised. The teacher will have to act more like a manager/director and not simply as an actor in the simple teaching model.
• From an information point of view, the pupils -through ICT applications- have certainly more information available to them than what they need. Hence they have to develop the skills to choose. For example, in the past, reading in depth was an important skill for a scientist. Now speed-reading is of great importance too.
6. Are there limits of ICT in education?
Technology evolves in an accelerating and non-linear way. Hence, not only it develops very fast, but also discoveries in science and technology, from time to time, produce a discontinuity in the impacts of technology on our lives. ICT is becoming cheaper, smaller in size, friendlier and more effective (a good example is the evolution of the basic switching device, from electronic valve to transistor and to integrated circuit). To the limit of the foreseeable future could one anticipate the end of education, as we know it? In order to consider this question, it is worth looking at an example from another discipline:
Thus, technology has affected the field of medicine in a dramatic way. Nowadays,
• Medicine can show how the human body works (Genetics, Biology, etc)
• Medicine can alter and change human parts and improve the body’s functions
(DNA changes, implants, artificial parts etc are an increasing reality)
• It seems that at present the only area that Medicine has not gone too far is to understand and to intervene to the way the human mind works. However, what will happen if progress is achieved on this front? Though frightening, it may be argued that in such a case, advances in medicine may change the way we are, the way we think and the way we function. Turning now to education, the prospect is that in the foreseeable future there will always be an educational system in a country (Ministry of educations, teaching institutions, educational levels etc) in the same way as there will always be a health care system.
However, what will happen if progress is achieved on this front?
The prospect that education will be replaced by a bioelectronics’ procedure is at the moment a favorite subject for science fiction. For how long will it remain unforeseeable?
7. Conclusions
The goal of education is to help people, especially young people, to participate in the functions of society, to acquire knowledge and to develop skills that will help them to confront the needs of the future and to be productive and competitive in tomorrow’s world. It is our experience that many people in the developed world are working in jobs that did not exist some years ago. It is certain that the future holds a lot of surprises. It is another major task for education to give young people the qualities and the skills for the jobs that do not exist yet -and ICT can help a lot towards that! It should also be a major task of the educational system to provide these qualities and skills in an enjoyable and modern way. ICT offers a chance for reform in education along such lines. Will educational factors reciprocate?
Alternative Learning System: meeting the Philippines’ Education for All (EFA) Agenda
Alternative Learning System: Transform existing non-formal and informal learning options into a truly viable alternative learning system yielding more EFA benefits
Action: Cost-effective alternative learning options for achieving adult functional literacy in first language, Filipino and English are defined and propagated. National government funding is provided to finance the integration of these alternative learning options for the effective acquisition of functional literacy of adults as an essential and routine part of every public, private and civil society socio-economic development initiative reaching disadvantaged persons and communities. Adult literacy organizations work more closely with organizations already involved in community development and poverty alleviation.
Over the years, many non-formal and informal learning options emerged initially as remedial responses to meeting the basic literacy needs of people that the school system had failed to equip with the necessary basic education competencies. Meanwhile, it has been increasingly recognized that diverse educational needs of different groups of people in society are both legitimate and urgent to meet. Yet the mainstream public schools, even in the best of circumstances, are largely unable to meet these educational needs even as effective nonschooling methodologies for meeting these different needs rapidly developed. Thus, the country now aspires to evolving an alternative learning system (alternative and complementary to schools) that is organized and governed in order to provide choices for learning not just as a remedy for school failure but as an addition even to good schools.
This evolution is envisioned to unfold in three over-lapping stages to enable everyone to obtain school-equivalent competencies and, if so desired, school-equivalent credentials through learning processes within as well as outside schools. The first and most urgent stage is to make fully functionally literate the core population of adults and youth outside schools who do not yet possess essential functional literacy competencies. As this stage progresses to cover all those who are functionally illiterate, second stage interventions have to be implemented that serve the wider population with other educational needs that require learning options in addition to those provided by good schools. This population includes legitimate minorities, such as differently abled children who can best achieve their learning goals outside schools and children from ethnic communities who want to acquire basic competencies desired by all Filipinos while preserving their own unique ethnic identity and culture. The successful implementation of these two overlapping stages, i.e., meeting the needs of the functionally illiterate and serving the educational needs of minorities, would eventually converge towards a third stage which involve the emergence of a true, coherent and organized system for lifelong learning that will include, but will extend beyond good elementary and secondary schools.
Two specific strategies in developing the alternative learning system will maximize its contribution to the attainment of EFA goals. First, the most cost-effective alternative learning interventions for achieving adult functional literacy would be integrated with the wide variety of socio-economic and cultural programs reaching disadvantaged people who are also likely to be educationally disadvantaged. Second, a parallel delivery system dedicated to providing alternative learning programs to those who cannot meet their needs through schools would be evolved. As the school system improves its efficiency and effectiveness and the large pool of youth and adult illiterates shrinks, the diverse educational needs of various groups in society assumes greater importance and visibility. Meeting these needs would become the impetus for the emergence and organization of the alternative learning system. Finally, as good schools meet the common needs of most children, the parallel alternative learning system grows and develops to meet the special needs of different groups of children and adults. This alternative learning system initially focuses on meeting basic education needs of all but eventually serves other education needs even beyond basic competencies.
The specific actions to be undertaken are the following:
1. The existing Bureau of Alternative Learning System of DepEd and the Literacy Coordinating Council should be developed, strengthened and mandated to serve as the government agency to guide the evolution of the country’s alternative learning system. Among BALS functions should be to promote, improve, monitor and evaluate but not necessarily deliver alternative learning interventions for functional literacy of out-of-school youth and adults, for ethnic minorities and other groups with special educational needs that cannot be met by schools, and for desired competencies that are part of lifelong learning. Such an agency for ALS should be able to harmonize and assure the quality of programs by various service providers. It should also be able to contract with or provide grants to providers of non-formal education, define and set standards for adult literacy programs, accredit and recognize providers meeting standards, and monitor and evaluate adult literacy outcomes among individuals and populations.
2. Public funding made available for ALS programs of various government and private entities should be subject to the policies and guidelines of the proposed ALS reconfigured structure. Public funding for basic literacy of out-of-school youth and adults should be allocated in order to integrate adult literacy interventions into the most effective socio-economic programs already reaching many communities of educationally disadvantaged people. A survey should be made of socio-economic programs most likely to be reaching communities with high concentration of educationally disadvantaged or illiterates. Such a survey should cover national and local government programs, as well as programs of the private and non-government sectors. Programs should then be assessed in terms of their potential for integrating adult literacy interventions such as their current reach among illiterates, level of demand by illiterate potential clients, and opportunities available for integrating adult literacy in program operations, among others.
3. Effort should be made to build and develop a constituency for ALS development. There are many groups and persons who already recognize the value of non-school options for meeting education needs. They may not readily step up and advocate alternative learning system because of the dominance of schooling in education. Positive examples and promising initiatives in alternative learning should be recognized and given greater appreciation. Media as an alternative and potent source of informal education should be strengthened.
4. The actual form and structure of the delivery system for alternative learning is still not yet
clear. Research and development work will be needed to test cost-effective options for delivering high quality and reliable alternative learning.
clear. Research and development work will be needed to test cost-effective options for delivering high quality and reliable alternative learning.
5. The ALS agency should undertake an inventory of available resources in localities foradult literacy interventions outside schools. Service providers, course-ware, teaching materials, and facilities with special usefulness to adult literacy programs should be identified for potential use by various welfare and poverty alleviation programs. Available local capacities for high quality non-formal education for adult learners should be promoted among managers and operators of socio-economic programs reaching the poorest households which also likely to have members who are illiterate or educationally disadvantaged.
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