Wednesday 26 March 2008

Not a foregone conclusion Q2

Not a foregone conclusion Q2

In recent weeks I've been exploring some questions, mainly to clarify my own thinking in these areas. Regard these posts as my thinking out loud. Feel free to chip in with your own reflections.

My original list of questions was:

1. Is it always better to use a computer than pen and paper, in terms of productivity, creative output or better learning?

2. Do computers always enhance pupils' self-esteem?

3. Does government funding lead to better spending on educational technology in schools? Is it better or worse if caveats are attached to the spending?

4. Is it always better to use templates to guide pupils' work?

5. Do free resources supplied by governments enhance or diminish the quality of teaching (and therefore, subsequently, learning)?

6. Do the standards laid down by various national curricula or schemes of work really level the playing field, or do they merely mask inequalities of provision caused by other factors?

7. Does it matter if schools do not embed educational technology in the curriculum?

Today I'm looking at the second one.

When I posted this list on the Technology & Learning blog a few weeks ago, Carl Anderson said "No: think of cyberbullying". That's a good point, though not the one I had in mind when I wrote the question. What I was thinking about at that time was the tendency of many writers to say that computers enhance pupils' self-esteem. They often have in mind children with behavioural or learning difficulties, who have somehow been branded as a "failure" by the "school system".

I see a number of issues here. Firstly, at the risk of sounding out of step with the times, or just for the sake of argument, why is it up to schools to enhance children's self-esteem anyway? I'm not saying we should do the opposite, of course, ie deliberately set out to make children feel bad about themselves, but is not pandering to some sort of  narcissistic complex to say that we have to look for ways to boost kids' egos?

In "real life", employers don't have "Boost employees' self-esteem" as one of their objectives. Well, not in any of the places I've worked in, anyway. As a rule, self-esteem comes from doing a job to the best of one's ability. When you do, getting a pat on the back is a nice bonus, but that is all it should be: a bonus. So what we really ought to be doing is teaching children to obtain a sense of satisfaction from doing the best they can.

But leaving all that aside, the reasons that children's esteem is said to be enhanced by the use of computers are that it enables them to present their work nicely, and if they get something wrong the computer seems more impersonal, and therefore not as bad, as a real life teacher giving you the same message. In fact, neither of these is true without substantial work "behind the scenes".

For example, helping children produce nice-looking work may entail the use of templates, word banks, and a limited range of formatting options. Making a correction message seem less unpalatable requires careful thought about the wording of the message, and how the child is helped to get to the next stage.

Certainly, merely having a computer in the classroom, with not much thought about the programs on it or how they will be used, is not likely to enhance anybody's self-esteem.

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