I recently came across an award-winning  blog post from Karl Fisch which poses the following question…

‘Is it okay to be a technologically illiterate teacher ?’   Fisch is clearly of the opinion that it is not. He goes on to make this rather bold statement..

“If a teacher today is not technologically literate – and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more – it’s equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn’t know how to read and write”.

I think that this is a debate that is going to rear its head more and more often over the coming months in Scotland as GLOW is rolled out in LA’s and schools across the country. Is there really such a sharp digital divide through our profession ? and perhaps more importantly, is this divide also apparent in the intentions and aspirations of Scottish teachers with regard to ICT use within subjects and schools?

I was at our LA head teacher’s conference today, and there was a significant part of the day devoted to GLOW. Many of the assembled throng were keen to see how it could be taken forward in their schools, but there were issues raised about access to computers or lack of hardware. Now, GLOW can be used in lessons as a focus for activity, stimulating group work , demonstrating pupils’ work, video-conferencing without necessarily getting each pupil logged onto their own machine. Creative subversion comes into play here, with the teacher using the available tools to enhance teaching and learning. Using the available resources. Because we don’t live in an ideal world and we have to work with what we’ve got sometimes rather than what we might want. To quote from the Rolling Stones…

“You can’t always get what you want…but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need”.

Now I think the problem some people at the conference today had was that they could not get past the perception of GLOW as an ICT/Computer issue. It has to be viewed as just another set of teaching and learning tools available for teachers to use, and to help them deliver A Curriculun for Excellence. And sometimes the form our use of GLOW takes might not be what the original designers and developers envisaged or what LA managers might want but the important thing is that it works in the particular teacher’s classroom at any particular moment in time for the benefit of the pupils. I think the work of my SLC colleague Caroline Gibson with her use of GLOW with her primary class is a fantastic example of this creativity (check her Blog – link on the blog-roll to the right). And I’ve met many others who are doing great work all over the country.

The literature review for my research on embedding ICT into secondary school subjects has thrown up some interesting stuff about this resistance to change. Amongst this was a paper by Cuban who used the phrase ‘dominant cultural norms’ to describe the ethos in some subject departments which impacted negatively on attempts to introduce ICT  and acted to neutralise development. This of course has a major impact on student teachers and probationers who need to see ICT in action enhancing the classroom experience for the pupils in these subjects. Fisch has some suggestions for dealing with this, as well as other issues surrounding the use, or lack of it, of ICT in our schools. Here is the link to his post..

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-it-okay-to-be-technologically.html

I wrote about this myself in TESS last year, and that article can be found on this blog…

http://mimanifesto.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/the-challenge-of-change/

I don’t think I would want to go completely down the Fisch route, (although he makes some good points about a professional responsibilty to regularly update our skills) but I do think we are in a battle for hearts and minds on this. There is no going back with GLOW and it will change the face of Scottish education. The lights are on and they are not going to be extinguished. The political will to deliver has been demonstrated and Scotland is unique in having its own schools intranet. How do we build on this?

Those of us who have been involved in the roll out of GLOW need no persuasion. Our SLC headteachers have now seen the kit in action. What we have to do is engage them in the process of winning the hearts and minds of our colleagues. This partnership-leadership will be crucial for individual school roll-outs. The influence and support of our Headteachers could advance the progress of GLOW in schools significantly. Lets hope we’ve made some progress in further cementing this alliance today.