Virtual Learning

virtual learning

Introduction


	Downloads Virtual Learning The Impact of ICT on the Way Young People Work J. P. Cuthell PhD Introduction The Context to the Research Methodologies Some Research Perspectives Research into Patterns of Computer Use What Teachers think About ICT Multi-tasking Cyborgs Concepts of Mind Students' Minds Towards a New Theory of Mind Why Can't Teachers The Autonomous Learner Methodology Conclusion Personal Epilogue Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Bibliography This paper is a shortened version of the book, and has been published in various iterations by a number of journals during the past three years. Virtual Learning: paper

For more than twenty years successive British governments have proclaimed the importance of computers and computing and made significant investment in schools. Current initiatives seek to place online learning facilities at the heart of the curriculum for both teachers and students, and use it as a vehicle for Life Long Learning. School communities - students, their parents and their teachers - have struggled to manage technological change when resources, particularly those of time, have been stretched by the curricular and administrative changes they have had to implement.

The impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the classroom transforms management, organisation and conventional pedagogical approaches. Many teachers still struggle with the demands of ICT in the classroom: the ICT training programme provided by the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) aims to provide the skills and theoretical framework within which educational praxis can absorb these changes. ICT is seen as an integral part of each strand of the National Curriculum, and the performance of teachers is to be judged on their ability to integrate ICT within their teaching and their students' learning.

From the mid 1990s, however, a significant number of students have gained access to a personal computer at home. The ways in which they have learned to use the machines, and the uses to which they are put, are shaped more by personal experience and input from their peers than by their schools. The programs they use, the ways in which they learn and the work they create mean that the education system struggles to meet the demands and expectations of these young people. What follows, of course, is that those who do not have this technology at home are doubly disadvantaged if their schools and teachers cannot compensate.

During this period these issues have been investigated by the author, and this book is based on several years' research into patterns of computer ownership and use among young people. A six-year longitudinal study by John Cuthell of some 1800 students at a comprehensive school in West Yorkshire provided the data from which the results were drawn. Student work was examined during this period, and students themselves commented on the ways in which computers had changed their work. Teacher use and teacher attitudes were also examined. The results clearly demonstrate the disparity between student computer ownership and use and that of their teachers. The citizens of the twenty first century are being taught in classrooms of the twentieth century whose praxis is shaped by the 1870 Education Act.

Computers present students with powerful tools for learning. Young people who use them have been set free from conventional expectations of learning. This raises profound issues for the educational system of the new century.