How Gove and Exam boards can help us embed Technology in education.

Michael Gove's office is due to respond to recommendations put forward by Naace on the topic of "Technology in Education". The key quotation from this response is that,

"the Government believes that the effective use of technology can support good teaching and help raise educational standards.  It is critical to effective learning in the 21st century."

I remember a colleague of mine informing me that the new specification of GCSE Business Communication Systems (also known as BCS) requires students to be able to compose a Tweet. I do not teach BCS, but this is indeed exciting. However, our school, like many does not currently allow the use of mainstream social media/virtual spaces such as Facebook or Twitter. There was once a block in our school on all blogs and Youtube, but as OCR Media Studies requires students to keep a blog, the ban on blogs was lifted. The ban on Youtube was also lifted as we discovered many educational videos on there, as did the students. Even SMT couldn't deny the educational value of Youtube.

In many schools, they still only use Microsoft Internet Explorer and refuse to install the more efficient and effective Google Chrome or Firefox. It is only when the Applied ICT A-level specification stipulated "testing websites in multiple browsers" that some schools have installed Google Chrome.

There is an obvious theme here, technology will be blocked unless the curriculum specifically states that it should be taught and used. I would ask the government and exam boards to put their money where their mouth is. If they really do want our students to be well-prepared for working in the 21st century, then I plea for them to explicitly state the use of virtual networks, mobile learning devices, Youtube/Vimeo and Twitter in their official policy documents and specifications.

It doesn't take much, a simple sentence such as "Students should upload their video production coursework to an online streaming video service". Most centres would know how to interpret that and will be able to pressure their service providers/headteachers/governors. At present, all our student coursework is uploaded on Youtube for the exam board to access. But it is the teachers that do the uploading as students do not have privileges to login and upload video. By restricting technology access and requiring teachers to bridge the gap and access blocked sites, tweets, videos, we are depriving students of that very basic pedagogical technique-learning by doing.

So the three steps that are required:

1. The government and the exam boards take responsibility and lead our young learners into the 21st century by explicitly stating the use of mobile tech, social networking, social media and virtual networks. (All of these are in use in the real working world and our schools should reflect this)
2. Schools develop watertight policies for the use of the aforementioned technologies which are specific to the school's learning environment and circumstance. Although sharing these policies would help others tweak and tweet them for mass benefit.
3. Schools finally start preparing learners for the real world by reflecting the real world using real mobile technology, social networking, social media and virtual networks.

I praise those exam boards and subjects such as Media Studies and BCS, which despite often getting a lot of bad press for being soft subjects, have already got the ball rolling. They have innovated and adopted new technology early. Now we need more subjects and exam boards to follow!