How can Teachers use Technology effectively in the Primary Classroom?

Technology is becoming increasingly popular as a tool for education, but why?                                                 

Estyn (2013) claimed to have spent £200 million on ICT initiatives between the years of 1998 and 2013, which is a large amount to spend on one aspect of education. Is this because they see the potential value of technology in education?                                                   

Technology can be used in a variety of different ways; whether it is to aid admin tasks and planning, to engage and support learners or to extend understanding, there are countless ways technology can be of help in a classroom. I will be speaking more about some of these areas later in the blog.

To show how technology can be applied in education, we can look at the Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition (SAMR) Model. This model shows us how technology might impact teaching and learning in lessons. The model involves taking a standard piece of work, for example a written essay, and progressively introducing technological devices and abilities stage by stage, which eventually leads to a multimedia project that can be edited and seen worldwide. I have inserted the link to a video below, which explains the SAMR model in greater detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC5ARwUkVQg

From the SAMR model we can understand how technology can be used to create a different learning environment, however technology is not always accepted as it should be.

Almost all children respond to ICT in a positive way and are motivation by the use of ICT in lessons (Trevor, 2015). Despite this, not all teachers are willing to adopt the method of using technology to teach. It has been said that ‘teachers have always had a love-hate relationship with technology’ (John and Wheeler, 2008, p15) and this then has a huge impact on the use of technology in classrooms as teachers do play a significant role in integrating ICT in their classrooms. The more motivated the teacher; the higher levels of ICT use within their classroom (Uluyol and Sahin, 2016). Besides the teacher’s beliefs and attitudes to technology, there are other reasons that it may not be widely used within a school and these are known as barriers. These barriers include aspects such as lack of resources and time, insufficient technical support or inadequate training (Ertmer, 1999, Becta, 2004). These aspects may seem small but can have huge impacts on the use of technology in a school.

From speaking to relatives who attend primary school in England, it is clear that many English schools are behind Welsh schools in terms of introducing and using technology within lessons. The schools attended by relatives give no option of the use of an IPad in lessons, choosing to focus on the use of the interactive whiteboard. Children are also only able to access the internet once per week during a one hour computer session. In my opinion, this is not a positive use of technology as it is not opening the eyes of the children to the possibilities that technology can have. I believe it is essential that these schools introduce technology into lessons as soon as possible, as it is a known fact that technology has some huge benefits.

Technology can have huge positive impacts on education. As I mentioned previously, there are many different ways in which technology can be used in a classroom or in a school. Below is a list of a few of the key areas in which technology can be advantageous.

Assessment and Record Keeping

Effective assessment of a child’s work is important in education and poor record keeping can be a barrier to this. Technology can be an extremely useful and effective tool for assessment as it allows for good quality databases/spreadsheets that can be kept up to date easily and able to be transferred to other storage space if necessary (John and Wheeler, 2008). Technology also allows for pictures and videos of a child to show progression to be easily stored and sent to parents which may be more valuable than a small written piece of marking in a textbook.

Inclusion

Technology has an important role when it comes to inclusion in education as it allows children with disabilities to fully participate in mainstream education. It also allows for children with different learning styles to be able to work in their preferred/dominant learning style due to the multi-modality capabilities of technology (John and Wheeler, 2008). Rahamin (2004, cited in Beauchamp, 2012) states that technology is particularly good when it comes to children with Special Educational Needs as it allows them to achieve things that may otherwise be impossible. Examples would be using touch screens, having large track balls instead of a mouse or having height adjustable technology so wheelchair users can access it.

Home-School Link

Parents are now more involved in their child’s education than ever before. Technology means that a school can have more and better links with parents. This can be done via website, for example, the school website providing term dates, contact details or lunch menus as well as email. Email is so predominantly used in today’s society that is has become a key method of communication (John and Wheeler, 2008). Email is so much more time and cost effective than sending letters to each child’s home address or teachers trying to find time to speak to individual parents.

Digital Divide

Some children are not connected to the Internet or do not have a computer at home. Although this is not common, there are still a small percentage of children who have no access to technology outside of school. Technology in school allows them to develop skills that they wouldn’t be able to elsewhere.  On the other side of the spectrum, having technology in school and at home allows for the creation of a dynamic virtual environment in which children can create, store, retrieve and use learning resources anywhere – learning is not limited to school (John and Wheeler, 2008).

Collaboration

Using platforms such as blogs in education can be really positive as it allows the children to research topics and contribute together to a piece of work, all whilst in a safe environment. Public exposure is not a required feature of blogging therefore a private restricted access blog is safe but is also giving variety to the ways in which children write (Savage and Barnett, 2015). These blogs can also be shared with parents and potentially other schools. This idea of collaboration can be linked back to the SAMR model as the children are able to produce a multimedia blog, rather than a simple written piece of work with the added opportunity to share with others and work together.

As you can see from the list above, there are many ways in which technology can be used effectively within education. It is important to remember that as children develop and grow older, they become individuals with their own interests and values. Technology can help stretch this idea of being individual as it gives more choice in the way that children can work, for example through sound recordings, creating web pages, posters or PowerPoint. Technology provides a wide and supportive learning that can promote intrinsic motivation, a sense of ownership in their work and enable deep learning (Savage and Barnett, 2015).

The final thing I want to comment on in this blog is the Digital Competence Framework (DCF). Learning Wales (2017) states that the framework encapsulates the skills that will help learners thrive in an increasingly digital world. The DCF is the guideline that teachers should follow when teaching ICT and was developed by practitioners from Pioneer Schools. It has four main strands:

• Citizenship
• Interacting and Collaborating
• Data and Computational Thinking
• Producing

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Some of these areas – Interacting, Collaborating and Producing can be taught effectively through the regular use of technology within a classroom. Interacting and Collaborating involves things such as communication, storage and sharing and Producing involves planning, searching, creating and improving. All these areas have the potential to be learnt and developed whilst the children work.  Creating online blog posts with fellow pupils for example, promotes all of these skills. Therefore just including technology in a classroom not only aids learning but it also indirectly teaches digital skills that are required to be taught. I will speak more about the DCF in a later blog on E-Safety.

To summarise, the internet is now the most important technology for learning as it provides children with the opportunity to access learning resources at any time and in any place. It is important that we embrace digital technology as schools that do not, will risk falling behind in the race to create lifelong learners who have the ability to work and live in a world that is constantly changing (John and Wheeler, 2008). One major barrier to the use of technology in classrooms is the resistance teachers have to using it. Teachers often do need to re-think their teaching styles and edit their methods in order to allow technology into their classrooms (Wheeler, 2001), however I believe doing so will create a much more productive and efficient environment for both themselves and their pupils.

Prensky (2001, cited in John and Wheeler, 2008) showed that by the time a child reaches the age of 21, they will have 

played 10,000 hours of video games, sent 200,000 texts, yet they will have spent less than 5,000 hours reading. This shows us that technology is becoming more and more influential in our everyday lives and most people cannot go a day without technology. This along with the idea that the majority of occupations do utilise technology in some way; it is essential that we allow children to become citizens in an ever progressing technological world, and this should begin at the earliest stages of their school lives (English, 2010). We cannot predict the future; however we definitely can say that technology will have a major role in it.

This is a link to a video I created in a seminar, along with peers, about how technology has changed within the classroom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru7lpWE_hMY

References

Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School: from Pedagogy to Practice. London: Pearson.

Becta. (2004) A Review of the Literature on the Barriers to the Up-Take of ICT by Teachers. London: Becta.

English, R. (2010) ‘The Role of ICT’, in: Thompson, I. (2nd edn) Issues in Teaching Numeracy in Primary Schools. Maidenhead: Open University Press, pp. 97-107.

Ertmer, P. A. (1999) ‘Addressing first and second-order barriers to change: strategies for technology integration’, Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(4), pp. 47-61.

Estyn (2013) The Impact of ICT on Pupils’ Learning in Primary Schools. Available at: https://www.estyn.gov.wales/sites/default/files/documents/The%20impact%20of%20ICT%20on%20pupils%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2%20learning%20in%20primary%20schools%20-%20July%202013.pdf (Accessed: 19^th February 2018).

John, P.D. and Wheeler, S. (2008) The Digital Classroom: Harnessing Technology for the Future. London: Routledge.

Learning Wales (2017) Digital Competence Framework. Available at: http://learning.gov.wales/resources/browse-all/digital-competence-framework/?lang=en (Accessed: 20^th February 2018).

Savage, M. and Barnett, A. (2015) Digital Literacy for Primary Teachers. St Albans: Critical Publishing.

Trevor, K. (2015) Cross-Curricular Teaching in the Primary School: Planning and Facilitating Imaginative Lessons. 2^nd edn. London: Routledge.

Uluyol, Ç. and Sahin, S. (2016) 'Elementary school teachers'  ICT use in the classroom and their motivators for using ICT', British Journal Of Educational Technology, 47(1), pp. 65-75.

Wheeler, S. (2001) ‘Information and Communication Technologies and the Changing Role of the Teacher’, Journal of Educational Media, 26(1), pp 7-18.