Assignment 1 - ICT and the VELS

1.                 ICT provides a rich and flexible learner-centred environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding.

From personal experience I find that ICT is an interesting facet of our educational repertoire, and that it functions as a tool that can be used both appropriately and inappropriately by educators. The thing that is emphasized here is the idea of ICT being a tool, and that, contrary to the implications in the VELS, it cannot, on its own, “provide a rich and learner centered environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding.” It can, most certainly, assist in this endeavor, but in and of itself does not inherently contain any special factor that ensures this outcome.

A whiteboard is another example of a tool in a teachers arsenal, and, like ICT, it is something that can be used creatively and well, poorly, or not at all. Do not misunderstand, the comparison I make is not to say that ICT is the same as a whiteboard, or anything else in the class for that matter, indeed ICT has the broadest range of possibility and breadth that is available to the student, the comparison instead is to highlight that the influencing factor in whether or not ICT provides this environment is the teacher.

VIT standard 5 “Teachers create and maintain safe and challenging learning environments”, essentially maintains that it is the teachers duty to establish routines and practice that creates a classroom of respect that encourages learning. This is true across all disciplines, and, as I have found in both my English and Humanities classrooms, without this prior establishment of a learner centered environment, no higher order thinking can take place. There seems, to me, to be a deep correlation between this aspect of the VELS and the VIT standards, one that perhaps assumes prior actions taken by the teacher.

That being said, ICT used properly can allow for far more complex thinking and interaction from students with discipline content. This is particularly evident in the case of the humanities discipline, which essentially functions of an inquiry model base and allows for students to effectively conduct their own research, carry out multi-modal projects, and to embrace the higher order levels of thinking such as creating and evaluating more effectively. However, the key idea here is that the students have to be scaffolded, both in understanding of the technology in question, and in attitudes towards it, in order to reach this level.

As is present in the previous entries in my blog, such as, Mouse Difficulties and Distracted Students, ICT is a medium that is heavily dependent upon reliability and accessibility. Assuming that these conditions have been met, that the teacher has managed to establish a classroom conductive to learning and that the students have developed a rudimentary understanding of the technologies that they will be expected to utilize, then, and only then, can ICT be effectively extend a students education and allow them to safely feel they can take risks and develop a deeper understanding of the topic.

The question of risks and safety is a key one to the student mindset. In my experience students only feel safe to explore new approaches to an idea, and a technology, if they feel that they have enough understanding of the task at hand and if they feel that the environment is conductive to that exploration. In other words, they have to have time, be anonymous, and be taught the basics. This is supported by the ZPD, the idea that the learning needs to be aimed at the right level for the students needs. If a task asks too much of the student then that student will not feel safe to explore it and make mistakes. What we, as teachers, can often forget is that the learning of the uses of the technology that we expect the students to use is in itself a task. If a student doesn’t know how to use word processor, or PowerPoint, or the Internet to research things, and these are at the most basic levels of ICT interaction, then you cannot expect them to be able to satisfactorily complete an inquiry based research task using the ICT because you have threatening environment where the student feels alienated and overwhelmed.

The key to this entire discourse I that ICT is a versatile tool, but that it is a tool only. If the teacher doesn’t know how to use or present it, if the students don’t understand what they are expected to do with it and if the task doesn’t lend itself to the ICT use, then that use of ICT is more likely to threaten students and cause harm rather then learning. In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, ICT is an invaluable asset that can open up worlds of possibilities for those teachers’ students. However, we, as teachers, need to be wary of that trap that is thinking that ICT, alone, is the solution. The VELS statement only touches on the possibilities afforded by ICT, but only if its use is scaffolded correctly.