ImpacT 2001: Strategies for Learning with Information Technology in Schools
[ Last Updated 17 February 2006 ]
A Submission to the
New Zealand Government
by the
Minister for Information Technology's
Information Technology Advisory Group
This paper is distributed in association with
Contents
About this Paper
The Minister for Information Technology’s IT Advisory Group (ITAG) comprises 13 executives of IT related companies, academics, and others with an interest in the impact of IT on society. Our role is to provide advice to the Minister and to the Government in general on the impact of IT and the Government’s response to it.
In the 1996 Coalition Agreement the Government stated:
The Government will develop and implement an "Information and Technology in Learning" strategy that will ensure that all New Zealand children are equipped for the information age by an education system which is fully attuned to New Zealand in the 21st century.
In 1997 ITAG, together with the IT industry association ITANZ, published Impact 2001: Learning with IT - The Issues which identified a number of problems currently affecting the ability of the New Zealand education sector to make use of IT. ITAG received a considerable amount of feedback on the paper, much of it endorsing the paper as a good statement of the issues, and some of it challenging ITAG and the Government to move from words to actions.
Last year's paper defined problems, this one proposes strategies for action.
Improving the use of IT in learning in schools requires a combination of actions, discussed in more detail below. Installing computers with no other support to schools is not particularly effective, and neither is merely training teachers without sufficient IT being available to them in their schools. This paper aims to propose strategies which lead to all the factors being addressed, either by central Government or by schools themselves.
ITAG accepts that the Government faces tightly controlled budgets, and that a redesigned education system cannot be implemented at a stroke. Nevertheless, ITAG believes that well managed IT in schools can be a very cost effective learning tool. The proposals in this paper are of modest cost to the Government, but will provide significant benefits to school students throughout New Zealand. Their implementation would demonstrate commitment by the Government to specific action consistent with the overall vision of the Coalition Agreement.
This paper focuses on those areas in which it is appropriate that central Government act directly. Most of the urgent issues raised in Impact 2001 are addressed; wider issues such as the level of operational grants are not discussed. We believe that the proposals are achievable and can be delivered in a relatively short period. As well as providing direct benefits they constitute incentives for schools and their communities to take a greater part in providing IT in learning.
IT in New Zealand Schools Today
Concern about the extent to which effective use is made of IT in learning in schools has been evident for some time. A number of reports, including ones written by the Education Review Office and by the Futures Trust for ITAG and ITANZ, have recommended greater use of IT to improve information literacy.
IT can be frightening to schools. It is often seen as a technical area which is fraught with risk. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many schools are concerned about their abilities to acquire IT, to use it in teaching and to support it when it fails to work or just does something unexpected. These factors weigh heavily when schools decide where to spend discretionary funds.
A recurring theme of commentators in this area has been the lack of strategy for IT in schools. Schools can purchase, or sometimes are given, computers and Internet connections. A relatively low proportion of the teacher population have been given IT training, and not generally as part of a coordinated plan involving hardware, software and support networks.
In the absence of a coordinated approach to wider use of IT in learning in schools we see a wide variety of initiatives, some by the Government, some by companies and community groups, and some by schools themselves. Most of these initiatives are geographically localised, and none are part of a comprehensive strategy designed to address all concerns of a school facing a project to implement IT more widely.
IT in the Schools of Tomorrow
ITAG would like New Zealand to lay a foundation upon which to build primary and secondary education for the knowledge society. Concrete objectives which ITAG would like to see met are:
- All New Zealand schools use wide area and local area IT networks in learning and administration.
- Teaching resource material relevant to all parts of the curriculum is available on-line.
- Teachers have ready access to support, both technical IT and pedagogical at no additional cost to their school.
- All teachers are aware of the potential of IT in learning and have the equipment and skill to use it.
- Almost all information provided to schools is in electronic format.
Specifically, ITAG believes that over the next 3 years:
- We must ensure that information gathering and analysis skills using modern technology are learned by all students.
- New Zealand's schools and teacher training programmes should be staffed by teachers who make appropriate use of information technology. These teachers should be confident in the use of electronic information resources and make regular use of IT in their teaching programmes. They should also be aware of the potential for the further use of educational technology.
- All primary and secondary students should be comfortable with and regularly use information technology tools and information resources across a variety of curriculum subjects at all education levels.
- The potential of IT in special education, and in teaching in te reo Maori should be developed.
- A range of resources should be in place to support teachers in the development of further educational resources.
- The adequacy of schools’ income to permit IT purchase and maintenance should be ensured.
The Role of the Government in the Schools Sector
Any actions by the Government or others in the New Zealand schools sector have to be seen in terms of the governance model introduced by the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms. Each New Zealand state school is governed by a board elected by its parents. Boards are responsible for ensuring that students are taught the curriculum, employing staff, and providing equipment and educational resources. The Government provides funds to schools based on rolls and other variables, but the extent of direct Government involvement in the running of schools is limited.
The Government does, however, provide many services and goods to the school sector. School properties are owned and managed directly by the Crown, teachers are trained by Crown-owned colleges, and the curriculum is defined and promulgated by the Ministry of Education.
The Government, then, manages directly those aspects of school education which it would not be practical or prudent for schools individually to provide, while schools themselves run the others. In ITAG’s view this model has been working reasonably well and we are not proposing changes to it.
Given that schools are centrally funded but locally managed, it may be seen as more appropriate that the Government use its funds to address issues that are better addressed centrally, rather than for instance purchasing computers in bulk for schools.
Many of the obstacles seen by schools to their use of IT could be alleviated by appropriate advice services, e.g. on how to purchase and install computers, on how to use them in the curriculum, and what to do if the computer does something unexpected. While such services could in theory be locally arranged and funded by schools, they tend not to be, presumably because these schools have no way of determining quality, and because the cost on a single-school basis can be significant.
Applying central Government resources to this issue will reduce the entry barriers currently faced by many schools and create incentives for schools to use their own funds for computers, software etc. This is a strong argument in favour of central funding and arrangement of services providing focused advice relating to the implementation and use of IT for learning.
Such a move by the Government would be entirely consistent with the role of the Government in the schools sector since it would involve the Crown directly addressing those issues which affect schools collectively.
Since the amount of each service which would be required by each school is low, economies of scale would apply to the central funding of IT support services. This is a further argument in favour of centrally funding them.
Potential Elements of a Strategy for IT in Learning
Any central strategy for IT in learning should be composed of elements where central funding and arrangement is appropriate, as discussed above.
Teacher Training
This is the subject of a review currently being undertaken by the Ministry of Education, and ITAG has made a submission. The Green Paper from this review suggests that IT training requirements are being taken seriously, particularly in pre-service teacher training. ITAG agrees with the suggestion in the Green Paper that teacher training be "opened to non-traditional providers" - that is, tendered for rather than simply arranged by funding the colleges of education. This would be consistent with the current Ministry of Education IT professional development proposals, which involve contestable funding.
A more open tender model would allow the Government to specify in more detail the content of teacher training, and should ultimately result in a teacher training sector which is more responsive to the needs of New Zealand schools and students.
In-service teacher IT training, i.e. the education of existing teachers in the use of IT in learning, has hitherto been piecemeal and has been delivered to relatively few teachers. Over the last few years the curriculum has been revised, causing transition costs in schools, particularly in the area of in-service teacher training. The Government has funded and arranged this training rather than leaving it to schools. This same argument applies to in-service training in the use of IT in learning in ITAG’s view, since the use of IT is required across much of the revised curriculum.
Local Area Networking
This is an example of an area more suited to local school initiatives as discussed above. NetDay, a community initiative to provide basic LANs in schools, is being heavily supported by IT companies and by IT aware individuals. ITAG fully endorses NetDay and commends it as a model of promoting school self-help in areas where direct Government involvement is inappropriate.
As well as providing the opportunity to share resources and distribute Internet access, school LANs can be used as the basis of Intranets which are likely to become as important to schools as they are becoming to businesses.
ITAG is gratified to see that Ministers are endorsing and promoting NetDay, but it does not recommend that the Government intervene directly with large scale financial support.
The Government should, however, consider allowing school cabling costs to qualify for the Financial Assistance Scheme1, an action which would signal the importance of IT as well as increasing the numbers of schools able to take advantage of it.
Wide Area Networking: Internet
Most schools now have the Internet at some level even if it is just installed on one PC. There are proposals to provide wider Internet access to schools, and also to control Internet costs through caching of relevant sites.
A proxy cache2 can be used to control costs, and to some extent content, for Web traffic. It has been argued that a central proxy cache should be set up for all schools. This approach has some advantages but this would entail a central management overhead as well as access control systems. More significantly it would not address the Internet access charges faced by schools who would require to be connected to the Internet in order to use the cache.
An alternative approach would be for a cache in each school. This could control connection cost by constraining students to access only material which had already been downloaded into the cache. On-line teaching resources can be kept far more up to date and relevant than textbooks, while maintaining (in Internet terms) a relatively infrequent update regime, such as daily or weekly. This would provide an extensive teaching resource under the control of the teaching staff in each school.
Schools would be free to open their Internet connection (and incur network charges) when they wished to do so for particular lessons, students, or teachers.
This approach would give schools the ability to balance the learning benefits that can accrue from being able to roam a resource like the Internet against connection costs, while providing continuous free access to the resources in the cache, which could be quite extensive.
How schools would manage the cache, the availability of suitable software, the best configuration of hardware to facilitate good use of the cache and the wider Internet all need to be evaluated and published to schools. ITAG suggests that the Government do this as part of a wider initiative to advise schools on IT.
Hardware and Software in Schools
Most schools have some hardware and software, although anecdotal evidence suggests that some is old and may be unserviceable. Providing IT hardware and software to schools on a national scale is very expensive and may not be the best use of central resources. It also falls within the area which is normally the responsibility of school boards, i.e. the provision of teaching equipment.
It is likely that with continuing developments in IT, and the move away from paper toward electronic formats, the cost of accessing information will continue to decline. Schools will not need the latest high speed hardware and memory intensive software throughout in order to run the basic features of Internet browsers and word processing packages. Specialist hardware will still be necessary for certain functions, for example PCs with CD drives in libraries, but these will be the exception.
There may be a role for the Government in setting standards for new equipment and for software, or at least in facilitating schools’ access to reviews of education software offerings.
Strategic IT Advice and Guidance to Schools
Effective use of IT, as opposed to mere purchase and installation of hardware and software, requires that schools plan their purchases from a position of knowing how the equipment will be used, and with access to a reasonable amount of technical knowledge. This is difficult for those schools without a highly knowledgeable individual on their staff or board.
The Government should consider whether the existing schools advisory service operated by the Colleges of Education can meet these needs, and whether it represents a good model for flexible provision of services. In ITAG’s view advisory services should be specified and tendered in the same way as teacher professional development is proposed to be. Part of the advisory services to be tendered should include assisting schools in planning and implementing IT.
It is important that IT in schools, as in business and the Government, be well managed if it is to reach its full potential in cost-effectiveness terms. To help schools achieve this it is proposed that a new IT advisory service be used in part to disseminate best practice for IT in schools. This could, and should, be done through a web site.
Developing technology may soon offer schools alternatives to the existing model of networks of stand-alone personal computers, such as cheaper network computers connected to a server. The proposed new service should be able to provide schools with advice on the best model to suit them.
ITAG would like to see assistance on developing an IT strategy delivered to schools by IT means - which would allow limited resources to be spread far better among schools. A web site would be the obvious means. A school would answer a reasonably detailed questionnaire at the site which would then generate a strategy for the school. Building this site would involve specialist resources and a reasonable time input, but this would be trivial compared with the cost of supplying individual advice to each school.
There would also have to be a mechanism to promote and provide access to this web site for those schools which have no Internet access of any kind. This could be achieved by compiling the site’s contents on to a computer CD and distributing it, or by having a central facility which would use the site on behalf of schools at their request.
Such an initiative would qualify for central funding in ITAG’s view, since it is subject to considerable economies of scale.
Help Desk
A trial of an IT help desk (a service providing immediate support via the telephone) for schools was well used. A help desk definitely falls into the category of services which should be provided centrally. The lack of such a service may prove a significant disincentive to use of IT.
In ITAG’s view a centrally funded IT help desk service for schools would be one of the most cost effective services the Government could provide to increase the use of IT in learning. It should be accessible both through the Internet and by telephone. It may be appropriate to combine it with some of the other central facilities proposed in this paper.
ITAG urges the Government to reinstate the schools IT help desk as a centrally funded service.
Providing Information to Schools Online
The Internet is a delivery mechanism for information and as such it is entirely appropriate that schools make increasing use of it. Currently schools receive a large volume of material (education and administrative) in paper form, from a variety of sources including Learning Media, the National Library and directly from the Ministry of Education. The exclusive use of paper in this regard must be questioned.
It is not clear that Government understands in any detail the changing information needs of schools, which makes it hard to determine the best way of meeting those needs. It would be reasonable to assume that almost all information going to and from schools could and should be delivered electronically, which would both improve its usefulness and save money.
To inform future decisions the Government should consider undertaking a research project in this area at an early stage.
Teaching Resources Online
ITAG proposes that the Government fund a Web site containing resources useful to teachers. This could be maintained centrally or in a distributed fashion. ITAG would envisage that a core of currently serving experienced teachers (who would be paid for the additional work they would be required to undertake outside school hours) would be the best people to provide such a service. Contributions from all teachers should be encouraged.
Resources might include lesson plans, curriculum materials, links to useful sites, and teacher-only discussion areas. To some extent this is beginning to happen with the curriculum, teacher contracts and other material being made available on-line by the Ministry of Education. However it should in ITAG’s view be formalised and resourced.
As well as rendering useful assistance to teachers, such a service would provide teachers with concrete experience of the power of IT and networking. It could also be used to deliver professional development, and generally to strengthen teachers’ sense of belonging to a profession.
IT has the potential to provide significant effectiveness gains for teachers who use the medium of Maori language since it allows scarce teaching resources to be pooled and would also allow Maori teachers to develop their own support networks. This should be addressed as part of a formal attempt to place teaching resources on-line.
Learning Clusters
This proposal derives in part from suggestions put to the Minister of Education by Professor John Tiffin, and partly by observing some highly successful initiatives involving rural schools.
Clusters of schools which already have some IT would be identified and assigned technical and pedagogical support, in order to develop their use of IT in learning.
Each cluster would be provided with a full time teacher, or rather teacher support person, who would develop teachers in the clustered schools in the use of IT. Some technical IT support would also be provided to the level of half a full time equivalent per cluster. These people would make use of the central IT support facilities such as the help desk and the central teaching resources web site.
Central to the clusters approach is evaluation of the early clusters to ensure that lessons learned are applied in later clusters. In the second and subsequent years, different clusters would be chosen and the use made of the IT would be modified in the light of what has been learned from previous years.
Clusters would need to be funded mainly from central resources. School clusters could pay some of the cost from their teacher professional development budgets.
1The Financial Assistance Scheme is a contestable pool of funds of fixed size held by the Ministry of Education and applied for by schools on a matching funds basis to upgrade and replace buildings.
2A proxy cache is a computer which retrieves web pages from the wider Internet on behalf of its users. It stores copies of recently used pages thus reducing upstream traffic charges.
The Way Forward: Tasks for Government
Under the current system of school governance central Government has comparatively little say in how schools achieve the delivery of the curriculum. The Government is unlikely to compel schools to adopt any specific teaching methods or use particular equipment. The Government can however help by disseminating best practice and addressing those items where central provision is sensible.
It is important that the Government cooperate with rather than ignore the widespread existing private initiatives already mentioned. Given that the Government does not have the extent of resources required to implement IT at a stroke throughout schools, and that such a move would in any rate cut across the current governance model, making the most of such initiatives is crucial to achieve the best outcomes.
The Government’s efforts should therefore be devoted to those areas which are not well served by existing initiatives, and which will "fill in the gaps" between others, such as facilitating communication among schools. To do this well, the Government needs a clear idea of what is needed for a complete IT in learning strategy, and then needs to focus its own efforts accordingly. By providing some pieces of the "IT jigsaw", the Government will provide incentives for schools to make better use of the IT equipment and networking they have and possibly acquire more.
Proposed Strategies
ITAG proposes that the Government pursue some specific focused strategies, listed below under central and regional headings. We have also supplied indicative costs. We believe that together these strategies represent an effective use of constrained central funding to improve the use of IT in learning in New Zealand schools.
Central Strategies: IT Support for Schools
| This would provide: | $000 |
|---|
| a. Help desk for schools | 750 |
| b. IT Advice and implementation planning guidance to schools including best practice | 300 |
| c. Central teaching resources on-line | 750 |
| Total per annum cost of central initiatives | 1,800 |
|---|
This relatively modest cost would provide considerable support to those schools who have achieved some measure of IT success but need support to improve. It is also essential for the regional initiatives discussed below.
These services could be provided through contracts with separate providers, but there may well be synergies from letting them as a single contract through one provider.
This proposal is highly consistent with those of the teacher education review to provide contestable teacher support services along the lines of the existing advisory services. Support for IT in learning has to be seen as part of overall support for the learning process, although a part which may require a relatively high level of input until most teachers are skilled in using IT in the classroom.
Consequently it may be worthwhile to integrate this group with the overall teacher support group, whatever shape that takes. What is important though is that IT support is provided well, and standards must be specified in any contracts let to cover it.
Regional Strategies: Learning Clusters
The learning clusters approach offers a way for the Government to affect schools’ IT capabilities directly. However, implementing it across all New Zealand schools is more expensive than the central measures considered in this paper. Nevertheless it will have a considerable impact on New Zealand schools.
As well as the direct benefits, the programme will provide a clear signal to schools that considered purchase of hardware and software is appropriate and necessary to fit their students for the knowledge society.
In the first year of the program, 10 clusters would be started, 25 in the second year, and 100 per year thereafter until all schools had participated. It would take 7 years to complete all schools. A longer ramp-up period could be allowed, in order to allow more time to analyse the results of the early clusters, although this would of course increase the total time taken.
As the proposal contains elements of in-service teacher training as well as research, it is appropriate that funding comes partly from the Ministry and partly from participating schools.
ITAG'S recommended approach to learning clusters is to set up clusters of 6 schools (although cluster size might vary with school size and other factors.) These should be funded centrally at $100,000 per cluster in the first year and $50,000 in the second. This would be expected to pay for a full time teacher support person and part time technical support in the first year reducing by 50% in the second year.
Evaluation of early clusters is crucial if most schools are to derive maximum benefit from the programme. An additional $200,000 would therefore be required in the 1st and 2nd years to cover this.
As a related but separate issue, Government needs a better understanding of the information needs of schools to inform thinking as to the most appropriate media for delivery. ITAG recommends that the Government commission a research project in this area. ITAG estimates a cost of $100,000 to complete this project which should last no more than 1 year.
| | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Year 6 | Year 7 |
|---|
| Clusters Started: | 10 | 25 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | - |
|---|
| Schools Completed: | | 60 | 210 | 810 | 1,410 | 2,010 | 2,610 |
|---|
| Cost $m: | 1.3 | 3.2 | 11.25 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 5 |
|---|
In ITAG’s view the Government should carefully consider the benefits of an approach like the scenario above, but only embark on it if the Government is prepared to meet the costs involved in later years. Running the clusters program on a subset of schools only would leave the Government open to charges of yet more undirected pilot schemes.
Recommendations
ITAG recommends that the Government:
- recognise the benefits that greater use of IT in learning can bring students, schools and New Zealand in general;
- agree that the proposals in this paper are sound and appropriate ways to deliver many of these benefits for relatively modest investment of $3.1 million in the first year, rising to $16.85 million in the 4th to 6th years;
- direct its officials to scrutinise the proposals and in particular to confirm the costs; and
- implement the proposals as soon as possible.
All the elements in the proposals could, and should, be tendered. It is not recommended that Government fund existing Crown-owned facilities to produce these outputs except where they provide the best cost benefit as tested by public tender.
Conclusion
Greater use of Information Technology in learning in schools is essential if New Zealand is to remain competitive into the next century, and if we are to minimise the growing gap in our society. IT can provide a cost-effective learning tool.
The Government, through the Ministry of Education, should focus its attentions on those school IT services which can best be provided centrally, thus providing an incentive for schools to take advantage of the opportunities IT can offer them and their students. The recommended actions in this paper will provide a high degree of cost effectiveness in improving the use of IT in learning in New Zealand schools.
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