What is ICT anyway?

ICT as a separate subject has been a bugbear for some time for me. I felt like having this rant because I have spent the last few weeks tutoring 2 student teachers who recieved a NZ $30,000 allowance to train as Technology teachers. Their task was to create a scheme of work for NCEA level 1 which in reality they will probably never teach, a fact that was confirmed when one of them got a job teaching maths. Money well spent Auntie Helen. I ended up tutoring them because no one teaches NCEA achievement standards in ICT, it is all based on computing unit standards. It should not be called Technology, it just uses technology and it should not exist as a subject. Heres why…

Back in 1986 I was a first year at Bishop Wordsworth Grammar School for boys (Salisbury, UK) and my father was head of the Technology Department. Next door to my form room was the computer room and it had 16 Acorn Electron computers arranged in the same way as many computer rooms are still designed today. The computer room was run by one of the physics teachers because that was the field in which computers were derived from.

A couple or three years later the school upgraded to the Acorn Archimedes and later the A3000 at which point my father managed to get one in his workshop with Techsoft Design Tools software and an A3 colour plotter.

It wasn’t until I grew and spent time appreciating a beer with my father that he explained how difficult it was to get a computer in his classroom. He argued at the time that the computer was another tool and that its place was in the classroom along with other tools like the lathe, bandsaw etc. The physics teacher argued (weakly) that computers belonged in computer rooms, the only reason for this is control.

Does all this sound familiar to you? In the late 80′s my father was fighting the same fights that I still see happening. I.C.T. teachers and technicians (in general) control the most valuable and versatile tools in the school. On the whole the best computers are used for teaching word and excel, essentially processor light applications, and the hand me downs go to other departments who potentially use processor hungry applications. Art and Graphics use software like Photoshop , Archicad and other 3D applications, In Technology we use Sketchup, ProDesktop and Vectorworks amongst others, Music uses garageband or protools, English uses iMovie or final cut. In fact ICT should not exist at all but it does and will continue to dictate computer use in schools.

Having all the computers in one place makes it much easier to manage, keeping the expertise to yourself makes it look more important than it is or maybe it prevents people from finding out that teaching senior computing is a cushy number (juniors are quite different).

I have nothing against teaching computing but call it business studies and use the old computers and let the rest of us use computers to their full potential. Lets put web design and movie making into media studies or graphics, desktop publishing can go into English, photoshop and blender should be part of Art and Design and maybe there is a place for computer programming.

So why after 20 years is there still this problem in the majority of schools?

• Computers are still unreliable and often require some technical knowledge to operate especially when the unexpected happens.
• Subject teachers outside ICT have limited knowledge and don’t push it.
• Hand me down computers are slow and breakdown and that becomes the dominant experience of many staff.
• New computers in classrooms other than locked computer rooms are often abused and damaged during wet breaktimes etc.
• The way schools lock down the internet cripples the experience, especially with web 2.0 applications.

Many of you will have had similar experiences and maybe for different reasons but I have yet to meet anyone who has something positive to say about ICT as a subject but I could be wrong.