I have recently returned from attending the annual trans-Tasman ICT conference, NavCon 2005. The conference’s key theme was whether schools can remain relevant to students now and in the future.
Keynote speakers including Australian social researcher Mark McCrindle, ex-pat American educational consultant Tom March and Australian entrepreneur and speaker Fabian Dattner, explored the theme further under the subheadings of thinking, eLearning and leadership.
Held two hours north of Melbourne in the historic gold mining town of Bendigo, the conference attracted 450 delegates, approximately a quarter of whom were Kiwis hailing from schools or education-related agencies from around the country.
Aware that I’m in the unusual position of not being a teacher or from an education background, I was truly surprised to find how much knowledge and understanding I have gained about the importance of ICT in education today in less than a year in my role as editor of this website. I found none of the speakers’ ideas, concepts, practices or beliefs fanciful, incomprehensible or scary.
Most of them reiterated and confirmed commonly held beliefs – that teachers need to accept ICT is here and is the future, and get on board with it; school administrators need to provide comprehensive and ongoing professional development to teachers, and school infrastructure has to be sufficient to cope with the demands ICT will place on it.
While it was comforting to have all I know and think reconfirmed back to me, I was also looking for a bit of inspiration and food for thought. One speaker who did that was Greg Gebhart.
A teacher for 25 years, Greg has been teaching ICT for 15 of them, and is the ICT manager at Lowanna College in Gippsland, Victoria. Greg is also advisor to the Australian IT safety advisory board, Net Alert; manages a principal and teacher mentor programme sponsored by multi-national firms; and is the recipient of the 2004 Westfield scholarship which recognises teachers’ services to teaching.
His session looked at ICT leadership in schools, and questioned who it is driven by – teachers, principals or government?
Greg says strong, focused leadership is the key to the successful implementation of ICT into any school, but more often than not weak processes, poor communication and lack of understanding sees many teachers, principals and government agencies make ill-informed, visionless, and financially imprudent decisions around ICT budgeting, purchasing and future direction.
The majority of principals are not experts in ICT and with tight budgets to manage they can be short-sighted, often going with the cheapest ICT option which serves an immediate need, but in the longer term becomes costly to maintain, upgrade or replace.
He calls it ‘smart leadership’ when principals take the time to seek professional advice on ICT planning and purchasing. Greg says that principals need to listen more closely to the ideas of staff as their input and long term buy-in to the ICT direction of the school is critical.
“Dare to give teachers responsibility and stimulate and empower teachers to be innovative with ICT,” says Greg.
However, teachers also have a responsibility towards judicious planning and use of expenditure. All too often teachers are focused on their own immediate ICT wants, but are unclear how the technology can be incorporated into the curriculum and provide the desired learning outcomes. Whim generally results in a blown budget and a white elephant in the classroom.
“The system at my school is we say to teachers, the school will find the money if you can show where this ICT fits into the curriculum.”
Greg suggests that budgeting needs to be done on a three to four year time frame rather than annually.
He also advocates the celebrating of IT successes. Everybody knows when IT goes wrong, but principals regularly fail to ring the praises of an IT success.
At a State level, Greg says government agencies throw technology at the schools but fail to provide funding for basic things such as professional development. As an example, Greg uses the Victorian State Government’s recent policy statement that all curriculum subjects must include an ICT component. All very laudable, but there has been no funding or time set aside to train the teachers in how to incorporate the ICT into the curriculum before it becomes compulsory.
Even more basic, Greg says he can walk into a classroom which has wireless and broadband and the teacher will be using wireless rather than the bigger capacity of broadband.
“They’ll be three inches from a cable socket and be using wireless. The teachers don’t know the difference between wireless and broadband because they haven’t had the training explaining when to use one rather than the other.”
Another failure of the system is the lack of ICT training an Australian graduate teacher receives, a paltry 20 hours in a three-year training course. ICT should be core in teacher training says Greg, adding that IT savvy students will bypass teaching as a career option because it’s not seen as a technology-friendly or a IT progressive career.
Greg published a paper on leadership in ICT in a Victorian ICT Education Gazette, and has kindly allowed DigiOps to reproduce it. For further discussion on ICT in Education. A reflection in leadership, please click on the link.
Also during his session, Greg talked about his role at Net Alert and said the biggest ICT social problem facing schools is cyber bullying. Although not such a major issue here yet, Greg expects it to become an issue in the next three to four years if North American and European trends are anything to go by.
Recent studies into cyber bullying have shown that 70 percent of perpetrators are girls. Greg says schools need to be ready for the rise in the insidious use of ICT and make aware and educate staff, parents and students.
Schools and parents also have to be vigilant about who students are in contact with via the web. Nearly half of one of Greg’s class have been or were in contact with a person they did not know. Children he said were blissfully naive about potential cyber stranger danger, with their main concern being a slow connection. Alarmingly, one female student had been having regular conversations with a 50-year-old man for six months, but felt safe because “he was married.”
Greg’s talk also included his tour looking at best practice in joint community and education ICT partnerships in schools.
As a recipient of the Westfield Scholarship Award, he travelled for a total of four months visiting schools in Singapore, Scandinavia, UK and Ireland, USA, and South Africa.
I found this part of his talk most interesting and conveniently, Greg has created a website about his visits and his findings at the schools. Some of the projects are not too dissimilar to some of the DigiOps projects. For more information on Greg’s visits to the schools, please click on http://www.lowanna.vic.edu.au/greg/greg.htm
Greg is happy to share and discuss his and your ideas. If you would like to contact him, please email him greg.gebhart@lowanna.vic.edu.au
