Future of ICTs and Pedagogy- con't

3 Future of ICTs and Pedagogy

3.3 Three mindsets

Bigum (2012) proposes that much of what passes for the integration of ICTs into schools is locked into an on-going cycle repeating itself. A cycle where educators are locked into a cycle of

1. Identifying the "next best thing" in ICTs.
2. Buying the "next best thing" in ICTs.
3. Domesticating the "next best thing" into existing education practices.

The idea is that you can replace "the next best thing" with any ICT, such as IWBs, computers, tablets, smartphones etc.

Bigum (2012) argues that this is largely because schools and educators are stuck within the first of three mindsets around schools and ICTs. A mindset that can't escape the "grammar of school" mentioned a few pages ago.

The following table summarises those mindsets.

Mindset	Description
ICTs to improve schools	Schools are doing well in preparing students for the future. The curriculum focuses on the right answer and teaching is focused on helping students achieve the right answer. TPACK is used to understand the complexities of teaching. There's a lot of time wasted trying to identify "benefits" from the use of ICTs in learning.
Schools can't be improved	Schools are broken. They can't be fixed by anything, let alone ICTs. Education will undergo a transformation just like newspapers or record companies.
Focus on change	There are significant challenges facing schools and they need to change. Don't focus on replacing them with a single solution. When you introduce new technologies, unexpected changes happen. Need to consider both the technology and the social. Need to explore lots of different ways of doing it differently. Need to explore how to disrupt traditional relationships between: schools and knowledge, knowledge and children, children and teachers, learners and communities.

Experience during my prac

I just finish my prac in Taska Rainbow Montessori. Taska Rainbow Montessori is situated at middle to affluent place in Malaysia; most of the students’ families have stable economic background. The school is a Montessori school where the teaching group is practicing Montessori principles. In a Montessori setup, individual attention is given to children based on their nature. Teachers have to adapt their style of instruction to suit the children. Most of the lessons are planned according to children’s need. Instead of using ICT, the school are using most of the hands on materials or real life objects for teaching. However, the mentor of the school allows the incorporation of ICT in teaching. The school contains some facilities or equipment that support integrating ICT in teaching. It includes computers, laptops, printers, digital and video cameras and USB’s. The school emphasises creative teaching and learning to prepare learners for the globalisation. The school believes in changes in making a better society. I enjoyed myself during my prac in Taska Rainbow Montessori.

What does the future hold?

What does the future hold?

3 Future of ICTs and Pedagogy

3.1 Predicting the future is hard

Predictions about the future are almost entirely wrong. Here are just some of the predictions made by very smart people about how ICTs were going to revolutionise learning and teaching:

·         Thomas Edison in 1913 on the potential of movies.

Books will soon be obsolete in the schools. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years.

·         Sidney Pressy from the 1920s on the potential of automatic teaching machines.

Within the next twenty years special mechanical aids will make mass psychological experimentation commonplace and bring about in education something analogous to the Industrial Revolution. There must be an "industrial revolution" in education in which educational science and the ingenuity of educational technology combine to modernize the grossly inefficient and clumsy procedures of conventional education.

·         Patrick Suppes in 1966 on computer-based learning

the processing and the uses of information are undergoing an unprecedented technological revolution......One can predict that in a few more years millions of school-children will have access to what Philip of Macedon's son Alexander enjoyed as a royal prerogative: the personal services of a tutor as well-informed and responsive as Aristotle

Why?

There are many reasons for this failure of prediction. We'll focus on two. I encourage you to think about these as you are working on your Part D Essay, reading and watching the following resources and thinking about your future as an educator.

Amara's law

This "law" suggests that

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

We always think that "technology X" is going to have a huge impact in the next year (it usually doesn't) and we struggle to see just how "technology X" may change society in 10 years time.

Schema

Let's return to the T. S. Elliot quote that started this learning path

Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have always thought, and at the same time imagine that they are thinking something new and daring: it combines the advantage of security and the delight of adventure.

The way we understand the world is based on our internal schema, which are in turn based on our experience. How we see the future is constrained by our schema. It's difficult for us to break out of our schema, our assumptions.

If it's hard for individuals to break out of their schema, it's even harder for institutions. Schools are based on a set of schema. Tyack and Cuban (1995) describe the "grammar of school" to refer to the set of assumptions or schema that are embedded in how school's operate. Any innovation (e.g. ICTs) which doesn't make sense within that grammar is seen as nonsensical, or very soon gets appropriate and used in a way that makes sense within the grammar of school.

Hence radical change of school becomes difficult. Seymour Paper draw on these ideas to write an article titled "Why school reform is impossible".

Future of ICTs and Pedagogy

Future of ICTs and Pedagogy

3.2 The Horizon Report

What is the K12 Horizon Report?

In short it is an attempt to predict the future of ICTs and Pedagogy in K12 education. It happens every year and attempts to identify and describe "key trends, significant challenges, and emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years". The K12 version of this report is released each June at a conference in the United States.

2014 predictions

The following table gives a summary of the 2014 reports findings. You may like to read the preview report to learn a little more about these terms.

Key Trends	Significant challenges	Technologies
Fast trends - 1 to 2 years Rethinking the roles of teachers Shift to deep learning approaches	Solvable challenges Creating authentic learning opportunities Integrating personalised learning	Adoption in 1 year or less BYOD Cloud computing
Mid-range - 3 to 5 years Increasing focus on open content Increasing use of hybrid learning designs	Difficult challenges Complex thinking and communication Increased privacy concerns	Adoption in 2 to 3 years Games and gamification Learning analytics
Long range - 5 or more years Rapid accelerations of intuitive technology Rethinking how schools work	Wicked challenges Competition from new models of education Keeping formal education relevant	Adoption in 4 to 5 years The Internet of Things Wearable technology

The 2012 K12 Horizon report identified 6 technologies and related time frames in which they will become mainstream in K-12, they are:

• Over the next 12 months
  • Mobile devices and apps.
  • Tablet computing.
• Two to three years
  • Game-based learning.
  • Personal learning environments (PLEs).
• Four to five years
  • Augmented reality.
  • Natural user interfaces.