Powerful Learning starts at the Basis

Being a teacher brings with it the privilege of long summer holidays. That quite some teachers are not idle during that time, becomes clear when you read the great number of posts on the online 'Future Classroom Scenarios' course I am taking currently, by European Schoolnet Academy. I started this course while on holiday in Italy, and trying to connect to the EUN site proved very difficult. Wifi is sporadically available here, and very unreliable. I repeatedly have been kicked out of the site, only to find that my half-written posts have disappeared in some cloudless space. It reminds me of our school situation, and serves as a practical reminder that our utopic classrooms where freely roaming students interact, create and research online, are quite some broadbands away. Until the day that connectivity is as basic a provision as sidewalks, teachers have to improvise in order to be as effective as possible. Start with the basics, such as 'write offline, post online'. In the mean time, we need to focus on the pedagogy and didactics involved with, for instance, BYOD, while the technicians (read; wired teachers) work on practical solutions. I teach a bilingual English/German class at an international primary school and am lucky to have 2 classrooms and a fantastic co-teacher, enabling us to work in smaller groups whenever there is a need. Keywords in our school are collaboration and student-led learning. To organise this better, we are looking to replace our awkward and huge square tables that were devised for 'chalk and talk' teaching, with round tables that could fit 4-6 children. According to the self-organised learning environments (SOLE) theory by professor Sugata Mitra,  four kids are ideal for group work. But again, in order to achieve those noble, higher-end goals, we have to start with the basics: where to find round tables that are suitable for the classroom? Recently I saw the perfect set-up at a highway McDonalds, but we decided against that big M in the centre - so if anyone has any ideas?

21st century teaching - a shift in focus

Chances are that you remember your teacher as the person who stood at the front of the class, talking and writing things on the blackboard. When he or she wasn't talking, you were copying what was written on the board or diligently working your way through the grammar or math exercises in your book, by yourself. If you had a question, you raised your hand and waited for the teacher to help you out. There hardly was an alternative, was there?

Enter the 21st century classroom. Children are working in groups or teams, either reading in the library corner or working on one of the four classroom PC's, surfing the Internet and locating information. Two migrant children are using a computer to create a presentation in PowerPoint. They have accessed and collected information in their native language and are now translating it into English, in order to present if to the rest of the class at a later stage. The electronic whiteboard shows one of the teacher's favourite websites, a collection of realistic 3D animations showing the movement of plate tectonics, resulting in an earthquake. In the mean time the teacher uses his laptop to update his pupils' e-portfolios.

Back to the future. 21st century Germany. Berlin's schools receive pc's and printers from the Schulamt. They are working but not equipped with proper software. Licenses are too expensive, so the PC's can only be used for simple text applications such as Wordpad. The necessary licenses are bought after a few agonizing and frustration filled years, but by then nobody is available to install the software. Wireless applications are down half of the time and several PC's have stopped working entirely. Scanners and other equipment just disappear for lack of supervision. There is no budget for IT-maintenance. There are no teaching hours for IT-education. Electronic whiteboards are things that exist in a different reality, certainly not in this one. Teachers do not feel called upon, nor are they required to use IT in their lessons. They resort to good old reliable text books, pen and paper. Children sit and work by themselves and copy whatever the teacher writes down on the board. Sounds familiar?

WAKE-UP CALL
A Unesco report on ICTs in teacher education claims that 'with the emerging new technologies, the teaching profession is evolving from an emphasis on teacher-centred, lecture-based instruction, to student-centred, interactive learning environments.' Well, yes - it should be.

But new technologies require new teaching methods, different learning strategies. Teachers will have to become learners, life-long learners even, in order to keep up with the latest technologies and to use these in today's classrooms. If schools are properly equipped and maintained and if teachers are informed and IT-knowledgeable, we have come a lot closer to the 21st century classroom. But WHY should schools and teachers embrace and adapt current technologies?

ICT, therefore I AM.

It's a given; ICT tools have changed the world we live and work in. Schools need to prepare students for the e-world.

The teacher as e-gatekeeper?

7000 technical and scientific articles are published every DAY and the world's knowledge base doubles every 2-3 years (source: Unesco report). Teachers need to lead the way, become e-guides or rather gatekeepers. There is so much information that needs to be selected on reliability and usefulness, which is the task for the 21st century teacher. IT is a tough job - but someone's gotta do it.