(This article was published in 'ICTs in the Primary School: Teaching and Learning for the 21st Century' by Robbie O' Leary and John O'Mahony and published by Dublin West Education Centre (DWEC, 2010). A copy of the book was provided by the Department of Education and Science (DES) to every primary school in the country in March 2011).
I blame “Granny’s Garden.” It was 1984 and I was in my second year of teaching in Presentation Primary School in Terenure. A few of us young and enthusiastic teachers had attended a computer course in St Thomas SNS in Jobstown, Tallaght and we had really enjoyed the experience. We held a table quiz (another new and exciting phenomenon at the time!) for parents in a local hostelry and raised £800. It was enough to purchase a spanking new Acorn computer, a trolley, a printer and a few pieces of software that included “Granny’s Garden.” What a buzz there was in my second class! Children were so excited and motivated by the programme. It was when I heard one of the pupils in the schoolyard offering her bag of popcorn to another in exchange for Granny’s password that I knew there was real potential for learning in this machine. I was hooked, along with my pupils.
I have undertaken a few different roles in my career path since then and each of those experiences has served to further persuade me that my initial gut instinct was correct. ICT can indeed be an exciting tool for teaching and learning. I will outline some of those experiences here, in the hope that other teachers will be convinced of its potential and can, hopefully, learn from some of the mistakes I made along the way.
I used various computers and software programmes in my classroom in subsequent years with varying levels of success. Adventure games were always popular and we played them early in the school year. I used them principally to “reel them in” so that the children loved when they saw the school’s solitary computer being wheeled into our room for the day. We negotiated rotas so that, ostensibly, all children had equal time on it. I had to intervene more than once when one child was seen to be taking a minute more than their allotted time. We also tried word processing and I noticed the pride that children had, especially those with poor handwriting and spelling skills, when their printed efforts looked just as neat and ‘professional looking’ as their peers.
Having attended another course, in St Patrick’s College this time, I tried experimenting with LOGO. I had vague memories (even then!) of Piaget and constructivism during my years in the college, but this was the first time that I really saw this concept come to life in my classroom. It was not long before the pupils were much better at LOGO than I was, and this too was a new, and somewhat disconcerting, experience for me.
In 1987 I attended Boston College to undertake a Masters degree. I was so lucky to get the opportunity to study under the guidance of Dr Walt Haney who was doing some exciting and innovative work at the time in the area of ICT and learning. I took a module on the topic of software evaluation and development. We had an assignment each week to critique a piece of software, ranging from drill and practice to simulations to content-free packages and we had to defend our critiques of the software in class. As a final assignment for the module, I used a piece of authoring software on an Apple Mac machine to develop a simple spelling programme (“Which Witch?!) This learning experience really opened up for me the possibilities for different ways of learning for different kinds of learners. It exposed me to the notion of how technology could open up new pathways to learning for those children with very different learning styles.
As part of my work on a thesis at this time also, I undertook research in “Computerising the (elementary) principal’s office.” Little did I know that some twenty years on, I would still be struggling with this topic, only this time in practice, not in theory!
When I returned to my Junior Infant classroom in Terenure, I was all ‘fired up’ for using the computer as a tool and I wanted to know more. I duly enrolled for a part-time course in one of Dublin’s third level colleges to earn a Diploma in Computers in Education. At this point, I had better explain that I am one of those people who drives the car and never looks under the bonnet. When asked what kind of car I drive, my answer is red. I feel the same about computers and technology. I have no interest whatsoever in how they work, in examining what is inside them or in finding out more about how to keep them working. My only interest is in what they can empower me to do as a teacher and how they can motivate the children in my class.
However, this was not the kind of empowerment and motivation that the esteemed college offered at that time. Only for my previous experiences, I would have been turned off technology forever!! I spent the entire first term learning how to programme in a programming language called COMAL and I spent endless hours working on a programming project. As you can imagine, I used not one scintilla of my learning in my Junior Infant classroom. I persevered to the second term and was then taught how to troubleshoot technical problems and how to set up a simple network. I duly decided I would never again take the back off a computer. In the final term we learned about artificial intelligence and PROLOG. No, I have never heard of it before or since either. What that year really taught me was how not to ‘train’ teachers in ICT. I decided that it was important to keep ‘tecchies’ and programmers away from teachers if we ever wanted to see ICT being used in classrooms! This ‘learning’ was to stand me in good stead a decade later.
During this time I continued to network with other teachers who were enthusiastic about ICT through regular CESI (Computer Education Society of Ireland) meetings and conferences and by attending monthly ICT support groups administered by Dublin West Education Centre. It was through these opportunities for professional dialogue and exchange of ideas that my interest was kept alive and I saw the great work that other teachers and schools were doing in this area. I strongly believe that teachers are the central agents for their own professional development. We are particularly lucky in Ireland that we have such a skilled and talented pool of teachers who continue to do some innovative and valuable work, often without the necessary supports and infrastructure.
I next had the privilege of being charged with setting up a dedicated computer room in our school. With a student population of almost 1,000 pupils, six or seven computers in the school at the time and a range of ICT experience among the teaching staff, it was sometimes ‘hit and miss’ as to whether a pupil would be exposed to ICT in their eight years. Teachers agreed to take one or two extra pupils in their classes to allow me to be freed up to set up a computer room and put a school-wide programme of learning incorporating ICT in place. Those two years, 1995-1997, were definitely a highlight for me. We set up a room of networked Apple Mac computers and a class attended with their teachers for an hour at a time. On Wednesday afternoons I met with each class group of four teachers to plan for the month’s work ahead. From the start, insofar as was possible, the work in the computer room was integrated with or reinforced classroom work. If third class were studying the life cycle of the butterfly, then that is what we researched and wrote about in the computer room. When sixth class were covering fractions, then we used a maths programme to reinforce what they had learnt in class.
We also designed and maintained our first school website which was an exciting development. Now, the world was our pupils’ audience for their creative writing, art and other project work. We got involved for the first time in on-line communications with children in other schools across the globe. I remember being involved in an email project with third graders in Alaska who were experiencing many hours of darkness during a long winter. We also exchanged emails with children in Coolderry NS and the Dubs discovered how different life was in a rural setting two hours down the road! It was a fascinating time. I worked with Blackrock Education Centre to deliver summer courses to colleagues also at that time and was on a working group within the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), a process that culminated in the publication of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Primary School Curriculum: Guidelines for Teachers some years later.
During those years a number of us primary teachers were invited to contribute to an INTO policy document on ICT for teaching and learning. When a position was advertised for an ICT official in the Professional Development Unit in INTO, I applied and was successful and began three really interesting years work in September 1997. It coincided with the Schools IT 2000 initiative and the establishment of NCTE and it was a time full of hope and possibilities. With funding from Telecom Eireann (later Eircom), we identified Magnet Schools, primary schools that had proven track records in using ICT as a teaching and learning tool. Through that network of schools, teachers willing to become designers and tutors nominated themselves to work with us and NCTE to design and deliver ICT courses for teachers. As you can imagine, we ensured there was no COMAL programming or lectures on artificial intelligence! Courses such as ICT and the Primary Curriculum were developed and delivered very successfully to hundreds of teachers in summer courses around the country.
I had the good fortune also to work with Seaghan Moriarty and we added a new dimension to the INTO website by setting up mailing lists, discussion fora and chat rooms. The DICTAT (Developing ICT Among Teachers) mailing list still continues to thrive from that time and has proved invaluable for me and for many others seeking help from colleagues on various ICT issues. Another interesting project during my time in INTO was collaborating in the development of a piece of indigenous software called ‘Children of Lir’, the first bilingual piece of Irish educational software on the market.
I returned to school in 2000 and was fortunate to be appointed as principal of St Louise de Marillac Junior School in Ballyfermot in 2002. It was a new phase in my career and, though I retained my enthusiasm for ICT, I was on a steep learning curve in learning to lead. Technology was just one part of the intricate tapestry of survival, administration, management and leadership. Unfortunately, even in the heady years of the Celtic Tiger, primary schools and ICT in primary schools was either not funded or poorly-funded. It is a constant struggle to pay the day-to-day running costs of the school, not to mention to purchase new and maintain older ICT equipment. We were lucky to have a Summer Works scheme that allowed us to rewire the school and take advantage of the broadband initiative. Through begging and borrowing, we have managed to purchase a few interactive whiteboards and the teachers who use them are really enthusiastic about their potential.
During the 2006/2007 school year four of the teachers in our school became involved with the NCCA School Based Developmental Initiative that piloted the use of the ICT Framework in schools. This is a really useful framework that spans across three levels from Junior Infants to Junior Cycle. The ICT Framework offers schools a structured approach to using ICT in curriculum and assessment by identifying the types of learning with ICT (including knowledge, skills and attitudes) appropriate for students. The ICT Framework is not a curriculum area or a syllabus. It is not presented as an add-on to teaching and learning, but as an enabling tool to help teachers to integrate ICT in teaching and learning. It provides a guide to teachers for embedding ICT in curriculum and assessment across curriculum subjects. The real empowerment for primary teachers comes from the fact that, at levels 1 and 2, the learning outcomes complement the Primary School Curriculum (1999).
This experience again whetted my appetite for learning more and I was enticed back into what is by now a pattern or a cycle, whereby I seem to be ‘at the coalface’ for a number of years, I step out to gain some new knowledge or work on an initiative and then I return to school (re-energised and invigorated). I am, since September 2008, on a two year secondment as Director (Primary) with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). The recently-launched ACTION (Assessment, Curriculum and Teaching Innovation On the Net) section of the website at www.action.ncca.ie has enormous potential for showcasing innovative work in Irish schools and I am enjoying (and being challenged!) in my engagement with the work associated with it.
The NCCA is beginning to work in a new and exciting way of directly engaging with schools and teachers through a network of schools and it plans to share the outcomes of this work. It is intended that multi-media materials such as videos of teaching and learning, photographs, samples of children’s work, samples of teacher planning materials, podcasts, vodcasts and tipsheets will be made available on ACTION. One of the current projects on ACTION is the ICT Framework. In my opinion, the site brings the framework to life by making it an accessible, ‘living’ document. Teachers can access the framework in a traditional linear way by reading through it systematically, but it can also be accessed through curriculum content objectives or by ICT learning outcomes. The most exciting part of the site is the ‘Sample Activities’ section where, in the case of the ICT Framework, teachers working in schools that have achieved Digital Schools Award status in collaboration with NCTE, have shared some of the work that they do with their pupils, using multimedia such as video, photo, text and audio. Other current projects on ACTION include English as an Additional Language (EAL), Assessment for Learning (AfL) and Children in Detention/Care Framework. The site will be further developed over time. For example, in the coming weeks, we plan to upload podcasts with Irish experts on the topics of Assessment for Learning and standardised testing.
In my current role, I am also working with the NCCA to respond to the outcomes of the Primary Curriculum Review process which identified, among other findings, the concerns of teachers around the issue of curriculum overload and the lack of time to meet the needs of all learners in classrooms with large class sizes and in multi-grade classes. During the review process, teachers also identified the need for additional resources, including ICT supports.
I am also interested in new definitions and concepts of literacy, in the types of learning associated with new and emerging web 2.0 technologies and in the areas of research that the Digital Hub and others are doing in digital literacy and 21st century learning skills. I am very encouraged by the increasing range of digital learning material becoming available for the Irish curriculum, often designed and developed by practising teachers.
Despite the current economic downturn, I would encourage teachers to continue to explore the potential of ICT for teaching and learning in their classrooms. And, in an unashamed plug for the newly-developed website, I would urge teachers to ‘Get into ACTION!’
Kathryn Crowley graduated from St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra in 1982. She began her teaching career in Presentation Primary School, Terenure, Dublin and in 2002 became principal in St. Louise de Marillac Junior School in Ballyfermot, Dublin. In the intervening years she studied for a M.Ed. degree in Boston College, USA and was also awarded a Diploma in Computers in Education in Trinity College, Dublin. She worked for three years as an official with the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) in their Professional Development Unit and is currently on a two-year secondment as Director, Curriculum and Assessment with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).
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