Reading+Two+-+E

The growth of enterprise pedagogy: How ICT policy is infected by Neo-liberalism. By Mark Brown GROUP E: Ekaterina Malioukova. Samantha Relihan, Christina Messiha, Justine Putnam, Gregory Tyszkiewicz, Theresa Bowen, Melissa Simeone

Question:
How can schools improve ICT being taught in NSW? Apply this reading to what you have seen or might see occurring in schools currently.

Questions:  GROUP E: Ekaterina Malioukova. Samantha Relihan, Christina Messiha, Justine Putnam, Gregory Tyszkiewicz.

How can schools improve ICT being taught in NSW?  Apply this reading to what you have seen or might see occurring in schools currently.

In many NSW schools, the use of technology is not up to standard - with many teachers overlooking its potential effectiveness to extend students beyond basic skills. An example of this is where teachers implement a technological resource, but don't have the skills to utilise it themselves and/or provide instructions for students in how to make use of it.

To improve the teaching and use of ICT in NSW schools, money and resources should be invested in promoting the training and education of teachers and support staff to build up confidence and develop new application strategies in ICT usage. Schools should encourage the integration of as many ICT skills through a variety of different learning engagements and contexts as possible. 

My thoughts.....By Tess Barns As outlined by Brown (2005) Australia sees the development of ICT as vitally important for their student’s development in the world. The growth of ICT in schools is located in the backdrop of wider debate surrounding the role of new digital technology in education (Brown, 2005). The current status of ICT in schools helps create the type of critically informed students and citizens. However due to many educators not being equipped with the necessary/appropriate skills and knowledge the teaching of ICT is not as effective as it could be. There is also a tendency to overlook the potential of technology integration as it gets put into the too hard basket. ICT as a sole tool/strategy cannot improve learning alone and the instructional context is a contributing factor into improving teaching and learning with the assistance of ICT. In improving ICT in schools, schools need to use enhance the holistic goals of education which adopts ICT into every aspect of teaching and learning. ICT should also be used in schools to develop a new kind of digital curriculum where students learn how to be critical thinkers, critical consumers and critical. Taking this all into account schools in NSW need to use their funding wisely integrating effective technology into the school which will work hand in hand with the curriculum. The influence of the government will be a contributing factor to this as it will reflect was is being put into the school to help support this digital age.

Vanessa Maynard Brown’s article details the possible pitfalls of ICT use in classrooms. The key point that stood out to me in the article is the amount of time and money that has been put into ICT integration in classrooms and the lack of evaluations that have been done concerning this integration. Brown suggests that for ICT to be highly effective evaluations must be done as to its usefulness rather than just spending more money to update it and hence use todays generation as the guniea pigs for technological change. I agree with this statement by Brown. Technology in classrooms has “deskilled” many students. To this I would like to add other pitfalls I have identified with the use of ICT. Often at university you hear of students whose spelling has rapidly decreased because of the use of “spell-check” and students are becoming lazy as the computer will generally fix most mistakes. This also reaises the issue of formalised language use. Due to the rapid increase is SMS messages, student’s formalised language is deteriorating. abbreviations are becoming part of everyday language and basic grammatical components of writing are becoming lost.

This article questions the basic assumption made by many that ICT is so important within Australian schools. It has been described by Armstrong and Casement (1998) that children particpating in technology in schools have become part of a 'huge social experiment' and that so much money has been spent on the implementation of technology with "very little serious evaluation" being made. Postman (1996) says that it what we need to know is "not how to use them but how they use us". Basically the article discusses that the growth of ICT in schools is problematic. It argues many reasons why it is a social activity and should not be apart of the curriculum. It tells us that it is a very misunderstood tool. Christine Bakhos