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Category: digital technology

Published on Leave a comment on Teachers have more power than they think

Originally posted 18th April 2019

Schools and teachers are constrained by accountability and assessment regimes. However, in my experience schools and teachers have a great deal of agency - they can and do respond very differently to similar external pressures. For example, in one school I visited the children were doing addition problems on a drill and skill maths app. Once they completed the set of questions the app indicated which were correct/incorrect. The children then proceeded to copy the sums into their exercise books for the teacher to mark. When I asked the teacher why they did this she explained that they needed a paper trail for Ofsted.

In contrast, in another school that I visited the head teacher strongly resisted changing practice for the benefit of the inspectors:the head teacher strongly resisted changing practice for the benefit of the inspectors:

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Published on 1 Comment on What NP3 Taught Us About Children, Digital Technology, and Schools

Between 2014 and 2017, a team of researchers from the Open University, Lancaster, and Manchester Metropolitan universities set out to explore the ways children use digital technology outside school and the extent to which that connects with what happens inside school.

The project was called NP3 — New Purposes, New Practices, New Pedagogy. It was funded by the Society for Educational Studies and ran over two years across 13 primary schools in England and Scotland. More than 100 children and 60 teachers took part. Forty-three 'log children' used digital cameras to capture their home digital technology use and were interviewed individually. More than 20 of their carers were also interviewed. Thirty-one teachers were each observed teaching at least one lesson and interviewed at least twice. It was a substantial piece of work.

What it found was, in retrospect, predictable, but the evidence matters. Schools and children were, in effect, living in parallel digital worlds.

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Published on Leave a comment on The Digital Technology Impact Framework (DTIF)

Originally posted 30th November 2018

How do you describe how digital technology is being used in education in a way that is concise yet allows useful comparison across contexts?  The Digital Technology Impact Framework highlights key elements of practice involving digital technology across three dimensions.

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