Lára Stefánsdóttir
Head of ICT department
The Akureyri Junior College

How do we implement IT into education?

Abstract:
Many pioneers have been working on IT in education for years. I am one of those mainly focusing on Internet in education. In my view the same people are doing great projects year after year but relatively few new people join in. We who have believed that IT should be implemented into the education have been frustrated because we are so often all alone in our journey towards implementing IT into education. In order to find out what really makes teacher change I decided to go from talking about things towards doing them. From travelling between conferences to working in a school, tying to find out day by day what really supports a real change.

This paper discusses what I have learned so far, based on quantitative and qualitative data I have collected through the last two years. My focus is on IT in every subject in every class, implementing the educational methods from distance learning into the ordinary classroom, project learning and self directed learning.

Key words: Teachers – IT and changing, learning, Development courses for teachers, IT in every subject, Distance Education, Project learning.

Admiration

The pioneers like the attention they get and the admiration their projects get. It makes them feel good. They are mostly independent people that do not fear failure. Most of them are willing to spend many extra hours in order to get their project so good that it gets the admiration and praise they do need. Is there something wrong with that? No there isn’t, but how are we going to implement IT into all subjects and all classes if it is only done by working extra hours and going into things that are insecure, unstable?

The pioneers often get frustrated because although they get the attention and admiration their projects very often die after they move on and start travelling a new unknown road towards a new project. If their projects are so good and they get all this admiration, why don’t the other teachers use their ideas? How does a teacher go from not using IT towards using it in a meaningful way in his or her classroom?

Decision

First and foremost the teacher has to decide by him or herself that it is time for a change. Why that decision is taken might vary very much from person to person. Teachers are not all the same just as students aren’t all the same. We have teachers that believe that lectures are the best teaching method, project work, self-directed learning, co-operative learning and more.

The decision might be because a teacher sees how IT is affecting the society more and more. It could be that authorities decide and the teacher sees that it is not possible to avoid it any longer in order to keep his or her job. Than it can simply be because one day the teacher decides it is time and feels ready.

Answers from some teachers at my school about why they decided to start to use IT were: “when a decision was taken and person hired to work on IT in my school I decided I had to take part in it” and another “I got interested when I saw interactive tests in computers and saw possibilities in my teaching”.

Mastering the tools

First and foremost the teacher has to learn to use the software he or she can use in the classroom and feel at ease using them. No one jumps into the classroom one sunny morning and starts using IT in the classroom. Teachers plan, they organize, they find objectives, and they want to see part of the possible outcome. Many teachers know how to use word-processing program, many how to search the Internet and use e-mail. When they have started to focus on implementing IT in their classroom they first focus on tools they know. But they might not know how.

If you want to influence a teacher to use certain tools you have to make the education on how to use them available to them. Teachers are learners, they have been students, became interested in teaching so they do want to be taught. Development courses for teachers on software that they can use in the classroom are very important in order to support a change. These courses also have to have some focus on the teachers job in order to support the teacher to see how the change could be done.

In my school the teachers were very motivated towards using IT in their classrooms. Very few did have any ideas on how they would do it. We provided them with development courses on: E-mail, Internet, creating web pages in FrontPage, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. The outcome was that the teachers had activities where the students searched the Internet for information. Still the teachers didn’t feel very confident and when we taught them about WebQuests they liked that model very much and made many WebQuests in subjects like: German (music and places), Icelandic, Sports and Danish (literature). Many of them as well as some results are on the web.

Comments teachers had: “I want to learn about things but I am not sure I am ever going to use them myself”, “I want to perform during my teaching, I might ask students to do assignments using IT but not change my teaching, I am told I am good as I am”, “I have been talking to teachers in my department and we decided that it would be very interesting to do some WebQuests”, “Well my colleague decided that it would be good to use IT in our subject. It took a lot of time, but it is interesting”.

Experimenting

The teacher starts to use IT in a way he or she knows. Small assignments and tasks that are well defined are suitable for the teacher in the beginning. Although most teachers are leaders in their classroom they still want to begin with some defined projects or activities. They might want to use WebQuest a model, a defined project such as in Kidlink or I*Earn but still not a big project.

During this period of time it is important for the teacher to have support. A teacher that already has done similar projects or is participating in the same activities could provide it.

Computers are still unstable machines so teachers might worry that they do not work properly when they have to use them. Therefore it is important to provide the teacher with support. It could be in the way that they can call someone within the school for support if they need or that the school provides the teacher with an assistant in the first sessions.

In my school comments that teachers make are: “Can you be with me for the first 3 sessions and teach them now to do web pages and I take it from there?” “I don’t think I need support during session but if you could be in your office so I could reach you if something happens it would be very good”. “I think this is exciting, I don’t think I need any help, I will tell you how things work out”.

Own ideas

When the teachers have tried out something “safe” they start developing their own ideas, if they didn’t loose interest during the first steps. They sometimes do, especially if they find out that they have to spend many extra hours in order to use the IT. To support the teacher when developing own ideas it is important to provide them with defined ideas on how to use IT in the classroom. Inside stories from teachers, talking to others and working with others.

Teachers at my school often develop their own ideas without contacting the computer department at all. Some come with their plan and ask us to read it through and comment on it.

Own activities

Each teacher has his or her ideas on how it's best to teach. In order to implement IT into every classroom it is important to support the teacher in his or her own way towards using IT in the classroom. Although one thinks that the “correct way” has been found it might be totally wrong for another person. We need to keep in mind that the teacher is usually his or her own master when the door to the classroom is closed. So a teacher will always find his or her own way about doing things. If we want to support teachers to use IT in their classrooms we need to support them to do it their own way.

Teachers have come up with their own activities and ideas on: communication projects, web on languages and tales.

The Akureyri Junior College

In the Akureyri Junior College we have a headmaster that is very motivated and says “Six years ago I thought that a traditional junior colleges as ours focusing on academic studies could avoid IT. Now I am just as convinced that we can not and that IT will play an important role in student studies in the future”. The teachers are motivated and while working on future focus IT was one issue they wanted to work on. The school has it’s own IT policy and each year the policy is revised, a new plan done for activities during the year, a financial plan, a plan for each department (subject).

As we expect the teachers to implement IT into their classroom so do we expect all the staff to use IT in their day-to-day work. More and more e-mail is used within the school to inform, discuss, point at things, exchanging documents and more. Students are now more and more expected to deliver their assignments via e-mail instead of paper.

We have a laptop computer program, 60% of the teachers bought computers with the school where they themselves paid half the price and the school half the price of the computer. This has lead to many more teachers are now using of personal computers instead of using the same computer as many others. Many students have started to bring their own laptop to school and we are planning to put wireless connection to the local net so students can hook up to the local network and the Internet wherever they are within the school building.

Distance teaching methods in the traditional classroom

One of the aims in the school policy is to work on how distance educational methods could be implemented into traditional teaching. Experiments are made in this field for example on using project work methods changing 3 points class which has 6 study hours obligation pr. week (each 40 minutes) into putting one study hour as obligatory that is for students to be in the classroom. Instead each week the student delivers work that is equal to the work one might expect from 6 obligatory sessions and homework. We are in this experiment right now but more can be told about it when more data has been collected.

There are many things that do change when a school decides to implement IT into every subject in every class. It affects all the school activities and there are many hurdles to jump. We are all still experimenting with IT in the classroom and there are many things to learn. The change isn’t as simple as one might think in the beginning. I have been travelling a lot meeting teachers as well as meeting them on-line. The same things are in focus in most countries, maybe not exactly the same but all leading to finding the same answer “How do we get teachers to develop IT into their classroom?” When seeing the exact same things happening in the two countries I have worked most away from Iceland that is Slovenia and Sweden it got me more interested in finding solutions.

This paper doesn’t provide the answer but it hopefully gives information that might help others seeking the same.

Literature:

Lára Stefánsdóttir. 1999. Upplýsingatćkni og kennarinn. Not published. Akureyri (This article is about qualitative research on two teachers and the changes they have went through starting to use IT in their classroom).

Ţuríđur Jóna Jóhannsdóttir. 1999. Frumkvöđlar og annađ fólk í ólgusjó upplýsinga. Not published. Reykjavík. (This article is about qualitative research on pioneers using IT in education).

About the author:

Lára Stefánsdóttir. Born 1957 in Reykjavík Iceland. Lives currently at Akureyri in northern Iceland. Married and has two children and one grandchild. Has worked with computers since 1981 as programmer, advisor, teacher and more. Education in computer science and educational theories. A Junior College teacher. Chairman of computer teacher association 1990-1993. One of 4 founders and educational director of The Icelandic Educational Network 1992 that connected over 90% of Icelandic school to the Internet. Worked in a group on the first national IT educational policy in Iceland for the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, valid 1996-1999. Advisor on recent creation of national curriculum for primary and secondary (junior college) schools in Iceland on IT in every subject. Writer of IT curriculum for both school stages. Represented Iceland in various collaborative works for The Nordic Council of Ministers such as on: The Nordic Educational Network (1994-1996) and IDUN (Information technology and data pedagogy in education) 1996-1999. Has given talks and taught courses in: Brazil, Denmark, Norway, Peru, Puerto Rico, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States. Member of the board of the international Kidlink project until 1998 representing Europe and one of 4 top team members until 1999. Currently the head of the computer department at the Akureyri Junior college.