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Technology should be invisible
An interview with David Buckingham (Institute of Education) and Rose Luckin
(Sussex University)
By Kim Thomas |
The pace of technological change in recent years has been so fast that it's been easy to imagine that the classroom of the future will be transformed by technology. Electronic whiteboards, wireless networks, video-conferencing... surely the schools of 20 years' hence will be radically different from those we have today?
Academics who specialise in the field, however, are cautious. A more likely scenario, they argue, is that the classroom of the future will be similar to the classroom of the present; technological innovation won't replace our current system but it can make it work better.
"People are very ready to say the school as an institution is finished, or the school has failed to evolve and what we have is a 19th century industrial conception of what education is," argues Professor David Buckingham, of the Institute of Education. David believes this is misguided, arguing that the social function of schools has changed little in a hundred years. Technology, he says, has an important role to play but is not a substitute for traditional classroom-based learning: "Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I think there is a need for teachers and children to come together physically. I think from that point of view schools are massively under-used community resources."
Rose Luckin, Reader in Informatics at Sussex University, agrees that the tried-and-tested methods of learning are here to stay for a while. "Technology is rubbish at doing lots of things that humans are really good at," she says. "But it is good at doing things we find quite hard and time-consuming, so let's use it for that."
So what can technology offer education? One of the most useful technological developments, says Rose, has been the network, because it can enable teachers and learners to collaborate more effectively: "For me all learning is collaborative learning. Even when you're doing it on your own, it's influenced by social interaction that you have had previously. I think collaboration is key and that technology can enable that collaboration." Rose's current project, Homework, is doing just that by bringing together several technologies to create an interactive TV system that primary school children can use both at home and at school.
David agrees, pointing out that the radical educator Ivan Illich foresaw the benefits of technology in helping learners to work together: "Although the internet didn't exist at that point, Illich is talking about using technology to create networks of various kinds, and he's talking about different kinds of institutions - convivial institutions rather than the rather forbidding institutions many schools currently are."
As an example of how network technology can help, David cites the Notschool.net project, which is looking at ways of re-engaging young people outside the school system back into learning (because they are ill, for example, or excluded from school). The project, says David, shows the "potential for kids to be doing learning in other contexts outside the school that don't isolate them" - an alternative to traditional one-to-one tutoring methods.
Despite the grandiose claims often made for technology's usefulness in education, David believes that the reality differs sharply. Much of the problem, he argues, derives from the fact that the current debate on education is driven by a 'Daily Mail' agenda of standards and discipline. This is reflected in most educational software which, he says, "is in the service of very restricted definitions of what counts as learning. If you look at so-called educational software that's being used in the home, a lot of it is incredibly limited. It's not even about teaching, let alone learning, it's about testing what kids already know in a very limited and restricted way."
Both Rose and David believe that this can change if developers look at what teachers and learners actually want from technology, rather than deciding what they should have and giving it to them. "What teachers are looking for is something that's reliable, that's easy to use, that they can just take and use in a way that fits in with their current practice," says Rose. She cites the USB drive as one of the most useful recent pieces of technology: "It works reliably, and you can plug it into any computer. It just does one very simple thing; it stores stuff. This simple technology enables you to do quite complex things in terms of sharing with your friends, sharing with your colleagues."
The route to making technology simple is to find ways of making it more user-centred - to involve users in the design of software from the start, rather than simply showing them a prototype and asking them if they like it. David, for example, is currently involved in a project in which schoolchildren work with software designers to create their own computer games. The children are involved right from the beginning, and are able to discuss their ideas with the designers.
We should stop thinking of technology as an end in itself, argues David: "We don't think of the book as a technology, but the book is a piece of technology on one level." Increasingly, he says, young people regard ubiquitous technologies such as mobile devices in the same way - as media rather than as technologies. Rose agrees, citing the argument of Don Norman's book The Invisible Computer that technology has to be so easy to use we don't even notice it: "You've got to be thinking about designing the learning experience for your pupils and not worrying about the technology. The technology should never be the focus; it should always be the learning that's the focus."
We are still a long way from this ideal, however, and there are many pitfalls along the way. We should be worried by the fact that 30% of children don't have an internet connection at home, says David. But the real challenge facing educators is to rethink the way we approach learning. "We have to start recognising the value of learning that isn't something that can be quantified in a tick box, says Rose. "The biggest thing we could do would be to legitimise creativity, and the technology could help support that process."
January 2005
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