I've missed two conferences recently. One was the Naace conference, which I was unable to attend due to a bout of flu. The other was the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators, which I missed because it conflicted with the Naace conference.
There has been a lot of metaphorical dancing in the street about the latter conference, with some well-known names presenting or simply being there -- Dave Warlick, Will Richardson, David Jakes, Steve Denbo, to name but a few. I've no doubt it was a good conference and I'm glad people had a good time, but what worries me about all this self-referential, mutual back-slapping is the nagging question: what if we're all wrong?
At the Naace conference we attempted to tackle this head-on by inviting, as our first keynote speaker, a journalist called John Clare, who has written for the Daily Telegraph for a number of years. For those who don't know, The Telegraph has the reputation of being somewhat to the political right of Ghengis Khan, and is usually known as the Torygraph (the Tory party being the Conservative party). John Clare himself has a reputation for being sceptical (I believe that is the polite way of putting it) about the benefits of ICT in education. For example, he once made a comment to the effect of schools being infested with computers to nobody's obvious benefit, and often complains about the content-free internet-centred curriculum.
So, we invited him to do the first keynote, as I say, and we did that for two main reasons. First, what better way to get the conference going than a presentation which is going to get people talking, angry, vigorously defensive (in the positive sense of the word) and so on? Second, if we are all so sure of ourselves, we ought to be able to be able to engage in a robust intellectual argument with someone who does not share our world view.
(After all, all these self-congratulatory, mutual back-slapping blogs, apart from making me want to reach for the nearest bucket, remind me of how I misspent some of my youth: going to so-called new age groups where we did things like stand in a circle and say nice things about the person to your immediate right. You might not know him from Adam, he could have cut you up on the road coming in, and he may be there to cure his penchant for serial killing, but you still had to find something nice to say.)
Anyway, it had the desired effect, especially coming, as it did, after we had had a very friendly and flattering address by Lord Adonis, the government minister responsible for educational technology in the UK, and a very friendly first-name terms forum involving 650 Naace members (25% of the membership) and the national leaders of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland (the Welsh representative withdrew at short notice).
John Clare started his talk by expressing his admiration for the executive committee of Naace for having the courage to invite him along to speak. (From our point of view, we thought exactly the same about his willingness to accept the invitation!).
In the course of his talk, John laid into, for example, Becta, Fischer Family Trust, Nesta FutureLab and Stephen Heppell -- but it wasn't a rant or a diatribe. He presented a well-argued case, backed by facts and figures, which, broadly speaking amounted to this:
1. ICT has a number of important potential benefits for education.
2. The degree of hype and misplaced funding has been such that the potential real benefits are being obscured by illusory ones.
3. After massive funding in the UK (around �4bn so far) over the last decade, the research evidence about ICT's effectiveness in raising attainment is still either superficial or ambiguous.
4. Much of the software we laud is actually anti-educational: it institutionalises short attention span, and provides a raucous, cacophonous environment which is anything but conducive to learning.
Now, here is the interesting thing. Leaving aside the fact that John Clare's definition of attainment, and his view of the purpose of education, are not necessarily wholeheartedly shared by the rest of us (at the risk of being simplistic and therefore misrepresentative, attainment = recitation of facts, education is for transmitting the culture of the nation from one generation to the next), there was very little in his talk with which one could disagree. Indeed, some very prominent (in the field of ICT in education in the UK) people stood up and said as much. I would have too, had I been there, because I already believe that we as a group are far too uncritical, as I've said elsewhere.
He received rapturous applause and, I was told, people were surrounding him up to 5 deep in the bar afterwards to ask him questions.
In effect, John Clare has set our members a challenge which, expressed crudely, is: put up or shut up! Show us evidence of transformed teaching and learning -- not anecdotal stuff, but measurable gains and, I would add, examples which are both scaleable and replicable, and which stand the test of time (ie short-term gains are sustained in the long-term).
The question I would ask the edublogging community (of which I count myself a member!) is: are we prepared and able to rise to this challenge?
What do you
think? Please leave a comment.
© Terry Freedman Fri, 3 Mar 2006
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"ICT in Education"