Cultural change needed to exploit ICT in schools

This week’s article “Cultural Change Needed To Exploit ICT In Schools” was an interesting article that I found raised some very valid points about the use of ICT’s in today’s society. The article starts by raising the point on how many schools would raise the debate of computers and the access, cost, training and quality involved with these new technologies. It goes on to discuss how some teacher's who are inexperienced with ICT may tend to skip over the usage of technology and not try to integrate it into their teaching, therefore not encouraging educational innovation. Due to this happening readily in many schools, Elliott discusses how there are little students who are faced with the knowledge needed in ICT.

As the article begins it discusses how teachers are lacking the confidence with technology today. The next point which captured my attention was "As real-world technology rushes ahead, many schools are lucky to have last decade's technology, let alone last year's". This really schocked me, as here we are being brought up in a very technological society, yet how are these children supposed to keep up if the technology they are forced to use is not up to date. It does make learning a lot more difficult, but even more so, teaching with this technology would have huge implications on the teacher and his/her needs to know or keep up with the rate technology moves.

One point that really stands out in the way of this article and what it is trying to say, is the motivation levels between the students and the teachers towards ICT. As teachers aren't as familiar with computers as most children, it will be hard to get the teachers motivated enough to want to encorporate ICT more into their lessons. I think that this is because once you hit a certain age, your brain tends to become comfortable with knowing what it knows, and more or new information seems to get blocked, as if your brain doesn't want to let anything new or difficult in. For children however, they are still learning, have a lot more to learn, and want to learn new things. This is why computing skills come so easily to them and before realising it, they are virtually teaching you!

Many points Elliott raised throughout this article have been very factual and i have agreed with most of them. We need to try increase the amount of computers in schools, because it is becoming a phenomenon and we need to encourage its use to students. Keeping up with the technology in schools should be encouraged, as how will inexperienced teachers teach children what they will need to take with them into the future. Computers have such a huge impact on our daily lives now, especially within a school setting. Simple things such as keeping parents up to date with current information, even newsletters are emailed to parents to encure they get to them, schools now all have a website to access current and important information such as important dates on the school calender, the list goes on and what Elliott is saying is exactly what should be encouraged.