“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”

Mr. Gradgrind

From Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

Does this sound familiar to you? Many schools all over the world have as their educational philosophy something similar to that of Mr Gradgrind’s. The sad thing is that when Dickens wrote that it was for an age long gone, namely, the Industrial Revolution.

Yet such a view about what schooling should be all about is still very much prevalent, even in a country like Singapore, which is often lauded for its “good” education system. The emphasis is on stuffing the brain. Just fill the brain with facts. The teachers’ job is to fill the brains with facts, or more accurately, as David Perkins has pointed out, with “factlets” or disparate bits of information with little relevance except for the great Trivial Pursuit game that most high stakes examinations are.

Never mind if the facts make little sense to the students. What is important is that they pass their examinations which for many is just a ticket to a place in a university or a job. For many, they will never see the relevance of the thousands of bits of information that they have learned in school. Makes one wonder if all that learning has been a monumental waste of time and money?

I know it is not always an “either or” issue. But I thought that I should revisit this issue of what is more important between the two after reading this article especially after reading the comments by readers that followed it. The article was reporting on ICT trends in education for the year 2010 (is that enough for a trend?).

I am not talking about an ideal scenario where schools have well-trained teachers and lots of funds for ICT purchases. It is rarely like that. Even in a rich country like Singapore with its massive MasterPlan for IT in Education (MPITE) didn’t escape this problem. When I was with the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore as part of the team pushing MPITE, I knew that the teachers in general were not quite ready to use ICT in education. And mind you, these were trained teachers.

I am not against the use of ICT in education. But I think ICT in education, especially its use in the classroom, must be accompanied or even preceded by good teaching strategies and good instruction. Too often in my experience with teachers, I have found that they were unable to make a successful transition to the use of ICT for teaching and learning. This was because they needed to make a few changes before they can successfully use ICT in the classroom.

To make that transition more successful and less foreboding for the teachers, there is a need for teachers to first change perhaps the way they teach. Cooperative learning methods and a shift away from the traditional frontal teaching is a pre-requisite. There are others but I think these two are essential.

Among the most important purpose of using ICT in the classroom is the opportunity for students to explore and collaborate. If the use of ICT does not reflect these, then I think the use of ICT in the classroom is severely curtailed. In order to do these, teachers must undergo a paradigm shift in the way they teach. They must be willing to take a more “hands off” approach. They will have to design meaningful learning activities that involve collaboration. There is no point in having 21st Century tools and yet teach as if it is a 19th Century classroom. At the other extreme, you may have teachers who enjoy using ICT so much that they lose sight of the learning goals.

Schools would do well to invest more in teacher training and development to make this paradigm shift among teachers. Of course, there is also a need to change the syllabus and move away from traditional written high stakes examinations but that is another story. If schools move into ICT in education without these changes, they will find their teachers teaching ineffectively in an old mode in a high tech environment or having lots of classroom activities involving the use of of ICT but with little learning done.

Recently, I wrote about eReaders being used for school. I wrote that eReaders may not be the panacea for to improve reading in school. Today, I came a cross an article in the New York Times (NYT) where it is pointed out that eReaders are generally not suitable for school textbooks. Anne Eisenberg wrote in her article, “Devices to Take Textbooks Beyond Text” in NYT:

“Even dedicated e-readers with their crisp printlike displays can’t handle textbook staples like color illustrations or the videos and Web-linked supplements publishers increasingly supply.”

This is a valid observation. But she goes on to highlight a better alternative which are “two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color.” Until these type of eReaders become the norm, school textbooks will remain un-digitised.

In addition, another article, this time from by Annie Gowen of the Washington Post, describes how the digital divide has developed and has led a greater advantage to those who are well-off. This reinforces what I had written about the cost issue of eReaders, and this issue can be applied to all the ICT equipment that is used for education. Of course, this has implications for equitable educational opportunities for all. Will those without be severely disadvantaged in the learning process in terms of speed and efficiency?

This digital divide can lead to issues in assessment of learning. A teacher must be very mindful that ICT does not give undue advantage to those who can afford, for example, laptops or PCs. These tools give students greater efficiency and also makes it easy for them to produce a nice report compared to those who probably have to resort to photocopies and a cut-and-paste work. Those without will be severely disadvantaged if teachers do not take note of this digital divide.