Three and a half years later
Everyone wants tutors to use new technology but little of the money poured in to Government educational training agencies ever seems to reach them or buy them a bit of spare time to be trained.
Friday 28 November 2008, 8:41 PM
When will they ever learn?
There is a huge gap now between those institutions who have moved ahead with new technology and funded roles like Directors of E-learning, ILT Co-ordinators and staff to support them and those who, with the dmise of ILT earmarked funding, have disbanded ILT groups, returned Champions to lecturing duties and hope that enough people have figured out enough about this e-learning lark to get them safely through next Inspection.
It may have seemed reasonable, on the face of things, to say "Hey, we've given you quite a bit over the years, now it's up to you to apportion the pot you get as appropriate from here . . " or words to that effect. With e-maturity assessments having presented the Powers That Be with the statististics they want to verify that the previous monies have been, overall, well spent and agencies conscious that another LSDA begat LSN behoving to QIA and CEL and now LSIS and a myriad other new sets of initials replacing even ones I hadn't yet figured out what they stood for, wondering how much longer Becta will stay Becta or JISC Regional Support centres remain Support Centres, aren't inclined to want to delve too deeply into what those statistics may comprise.
Let us say that ministers were told that there had been a 10% increase in something that they wanted to have a 10% increase in, probably e-something. What they weren't told was that there had been a lovely 40% increase in, say, a quarter of the sector but a standstill in the other three quarters. Still adds up to a 10% overall. The standstill may have represented a small advance by some and even a small fall back by others. No-one really knows. The ministers certainly didn't.
My concern is for the students at the institutions where things really haven't yet happened, technology-wise. Yes, they've got Moodle. Yippee, now they have course pages with lists of Office documents. actually, that's probably the case amongst some of the so-called best too! Yes, there may be a smartboard in their classroom and some nicer flat screen monitors and faster processors. But no, there's not really much happening on the ILT front. A few dedicated staff valiantly do their best, mainly because they love it, not because they have any extra time to do it. The really smart ones will have figured out that putting good materials on-line and utilising some web tools actually saves them time and gets students' appreciation but they're few and far between and getting snapped up by the 40% guys anyway.
The big problem is that the focus seems to have moved from ILT now and on to other things. The trouble is, things are changing so fast, new tools, new software, new ideas coming through so quickly - and being so much more user friendly and better designed than early efforts, that many staff are feeling left behind. They see Office 2007 on students' machines but hope and pray that they don't get asked how to change a header in Word or adjust a template in PowerPoint. Things they might just have got the hang of have changed, and dramatically.
Moodle is terribly ancient now and clunky in use. It takes several steps to do what some new alternatives can do in one. But Moodle puts a smile on an Ofsted face. Some other software they've never heard of doesn't.
Staff and students are taking pictures and videos now. Great. But how do they edit them so that they aren't piling huge files onto their VLE or zapping their e-mail systems with 10MB attachments? Students can do things at home, no problem. Some staff can too. But, in college, there are still many desktops with no image editing software other than Microsoft Picture Manager (if the can find it) or good old Paint. One college has just bought the Serif suite and will be making Picasa available across the board. It only took 4 years. Now there could be some super staff development sessions and some inspiration when they realise what they can do with pictures and movies but who's going to train them if there is no ILT role? Or no time for anyone else to do it?
There are some great web tools out there that need cost nothing to make available but no-one seems to have time any more to learn about them. Once we had all sorts of things like LSDA Q Projects where I could give a college a few thousand to buy that staff development time and get the good practice shared. They've been long gone. There are still glossy booklets and DVDs issued with pages of excellence here and there but those with a full teaching timetable seldom ever see them let alone have a chance to read them or do much about them.
There is so much happening these days. So many brilliant opportunities but we are going to let down those who are unable to keep up if we continue to look at global statistics and praise or award status only to those who already have it. Is there anything more bizarre than giving special status and more money to thriving businesses so they get more and more of the best students in an area while those who attend the other places get nothing. There is a real need for honesty amongst those institutions who simply have not been able to keep up and for some carefully targeted spending to enable them to provide time for staff to learn.
It may have seemed reasonable, on the face of things, to say "Hey, we've given you quite a bit over the years, now it's up to you to apportion the pot you get as appropriate from here . . " or words to that effect. With e-maturity assessments having presented the Powers That Be with the statististics they want to verify that the previous monies have been, overall, well spent and agencies conscious that another LSDA begat LSN behoving to QIA and CEL and now LSIS and a myriad other new sets of initials replacing even ones I hadn't yet figured out what they stood for, wondering how much longer Becta will stay Becta or JISC Regional Support centres remain Support Centres, aren't inclined to want to delve too deeply into what those statistics may comprise.
Let us say that ministers were told that there had been a 10% increase in something that they wanted to have a 10% increase in, probably e-something. What they weren't told was that there had been a lovely 40% increase in, say, a quarter of the sector but a standstill in the other three quarters. Still adds up to a 10% overall. The standstill may have represented a small advance by some and even a small fall back by others. No-one really knows. The ministers certainly didn't.
My concern is for the students at the institutions where things really haven't yet happened, technology-wise. Yes, they've got Moodle. Yippee, now they have course pages with lists of Office documents. actually, that's probably the case amongst some of the so-called best too! Yes, there may be a smartboard in their classroom and some nicer flat screen monitors and faster processors. But no, there's not really much happening on the ILT front. A few dedicated staff valiantly do their best, mainly because they love it, not because they have any extra time to do it. The really smart ones will have figured out that putting good materials on-line and utilising some web tools actually saves them time and gets students' appreciation but they're few and far between and getting snapped up by the 40% guys anyway.
The big problem is that the focus seems to have moved from ILT now and on to other things. The trouble is, things are changing so fast, new tools, new software, new ideas coming through so quickly - and being so much more user friendly and better designed than early efforts, that many staff are feeling left behind. They see Office 2007 on students' machines but hope and pray that they don't get asked how to change a header in Word or adjust a template in PowerPoint. Things they might just have got the hang of have changed, and dramatically.
Moodle is terribly ancient now and clunky in use. It takes several steps to do what some new alternatives can do in one. But Moodle puts a smile on an Ofsted face. Some other software they've never heard of doesn't.
Staff and students are taking pictures and videos now. Great. But how do they edit them so that they aren't piling huge files onto their VLE or zapping their e-mail systems with 10MB attachments? Students can do things at home, no problem. Some staff can too. But, in college, there are still many desktops with no image editing software other than Microsoft Picture Manager (if the can find it) or good old Paint. One college has just bought the Serif suite and will be making Picasa available across the board. It only took 4 years. Now there could be some super staff development sessions and some inspiration when they realise what they can do with pictures and movies but who's going to train them if there is no ILT role? Or no time for anyone else to do it?
There are some great web tools out there that need cost nothing to make available but no-one seems to have time any more to learn about them. Once we had all sorts of things like LSDA Q Projects where I could give a college a few thousand to buy that staff development time and get the good practice shared. They've been long gone. There are still glossy booklets and DVDs issued with pages of excellence here and there but those with a full teaching timetable seldom ever see them let alone have a chance to read them or do much about them.
There is so much happening these days. So many brilliant opportunities but we are going to let down those who are unable to keep up if we continue to look at global statistics and praise or award status only to those who already have it. Is there anything more bizarre than giving special status and more money to thriving businesses so they get more and more of the best students in an area while those who attend the other places get nothing. There is a real need for honesty amongst those institutions who simply have not been able to keep up and for some carefully targeted spending to enable them to provide time for staff to learn.
