Preparing students for the knowledge economy.
Guiding students through the virtual universe.
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A
dissenting view
“When students
venture into the virtual landscapes, they are often dazzled and confused by all the
choices available. A Montreal teacher visited some 40 elementary schools to find
out just how the Internet was being used and discovered that the grade 5 and 6 students
changed sites on average 15-25 times per hour. He also found they were unable to
take in what they were seeing. After observing 1,000 or so students, he concluded
that most of them simply weren’t absorbing anything of any value. Teachers must also
become conversant with new varieties of plagiarism made possible by computers. Before
the Internet can be of use to anyone, and to prevent it from being an expensive distraction
in the classroom, a human scaffolding must be put into place. There may be no filters
on the Internet, but in schools, there are filters, and they’re called teachers.”
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Canada’s
ambitious vision of computer learning has made it one of the most connected nations
on Earth. But in the country’s classrooms, teachers are not getting the help they
need to make the most of new technology
At Toronto’s Holy Family
Catholic Elementary school, grade eight teacher Irene Korbabicz-Putko yearns to help
her students make the most of computers. Her school board offers instruction to the
teachers, but in a suburb a good 45 minute-drive away in rush hour. Not surprisingly,
Ms. Korbabicz-Putko sometimes has other commitments.
Halfway across the country, at Calgary’s Glendale Elementary School, the local school
board has received funding not only for on-site teacher training but for an innovative
programme that sends experts in computer education into classrooms to serve as mentors
to the teachers.
Schools like Glendale are finding that new technology holds extraordinary promise.
But Canada’s experience with computers is very much a tale of two schools. Holy Family,
for instance, has just one computer connected to the Internet for 600 students from
kindergarten to grade eight. Glendale has several per classroom. Nationwide, the
computer revolution is still in its early stages.
“Clearly we’re in pioneering days,” says Richard Smith, the director of Simon Fraser
University’s Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology, who is studying
the introduction of computers into the country’s classrooms. “There will be missteps
and mistakes made, but something is changing in education and clearly computers are
part of it.”
Back in 1994, Canada set a goal of having a computer connected to the Internet in
every school and library. Federal politicians felt that for Canada to thrive, it
must move beyond its traditional resource-based economy and prepare its young people
for the knowledge-based world. By 1999, the country could boast that it was the first
to hook up every willing school and library to the Internet. Only Sweden has a higher
percentage of its students logging on at school.
But education in Canada remains the responsibility of the provinces. Each one has
its own education budget to allocate. And each has its own views on how and when
to integrate computers into the curriculum. In Alberta, for instance, computers are
integrated in grade one, while in Ontario they are not generally given that kind
of prominence until as late as grade seven. Alberta, after years of squeezing the
schools for money, is now making extra funds available for innovation, and Calgary’s
school board has been quite bold in tapping into those funds. The Galileo Educational
Network is one of its innovative projects designed to bring schools into the age
of the knowledge-based economy.
Explore
and discover
The
three-year project, funded by $600,000 from the province and matching funds from
industry, is in place in ten schools, including Glendale Elementary. The idea is
that teachers learn to use computers not only as a means of instruction, but as a
tool for changing the very nature of the classroom. “Schools are set up on the industrial
model. Children are educated to be workers for industry,” says Pat Clifford, the
president of Galileo. “They learn very early on the virtues of compliance. They are
moved on every year. The learning is very structured and hierarchical.”
Now, she says, students must take more responsibility for their own learning, with
the teacher acting as a guide and facilitator. But it is unrealistic to expect that
teachers can do this alone. The Galileo programme works closely with school principals
and the local school boards, and allows teachers to take time off to chart out new
approaches. When given this support, teachers can afford to confidently test out
different ways. Susan Marinucci, a Grade Five teacher at Glendale Elementary, has
woven computers into projects involving team work and real-life situations. When
I recently visited the school, her 28 students were enthusiastically involved in
a math and chemistry project. With their teacher’s help, they had made soap and were
discussing the best price to sell it at. The whole exercise had involved searching
for recipes and pricing information on the Internet. In another class, younger students
had to imagine they were on a desert island and design survival tools with very few
resources at hand. Again, with the teacher’s help, they drew some inspiration from
pictures of tools found on the Internet.
These fledgling efforts reflect Smith’s vision of computers as “providing an opportunity
to engage students in a new style of learning—the explore and discover style.” This
includes opening up connections to new people and information sources. For Marinucci,
the prime benefit is obvious: “we’re connected to the world,” she asserts.
An
end to the sage?
Connection,
so far, is probably the key word to describe a flurry of initiatives across the country,
inside and outside the classroom. The Writers in Electronic Residence programme,
for instance, connects budding student-writers at several schools to far-off professional
authors who act as readers and mentors. In the eastern province of New Brunswick,
a programme keeps teenage mothers in electronic contact with their schools after
they give birth. In numerous schools, students are developing CD-ROMs documenting
environmental and heritage issues, creating web pages and producing online magazines.
Through its SchoolNet programme, the government works with the private sector and
education groups to finance and promote these innovations.
Teachers experienced with computer learning understand that their roles must change,
but that they are still vital to the learner. Larry Danielson, of Garden Valley Collegiate
Institute in Winkler, Manitoba, has been teaching an English course available partly
online for students enrolled in a co-operative programme (combining schooling with
part-time employment). But his first principle stresses human contact: “We really
focus on personal relationships, whether on-line or face to face.”
“What we’re seeing,” says Elise Boisjoly, the executive director of Canada’s SchoolNet,
“is gradually the teachers are becoming less of the ‘sage on the stage’ than a ‘guide
on the side.’ It’s a cultural shift, and one that will take a bit of time.” Her hope
is that such methods begin as early as grade one. “If you start early it will be
in the culture of the learner. That’s part of the larger goal of building a lifelong-learning
culture.”
But she acknowledges that there is a long way to go. Lack of teacher training is
a major barrier, she says. In Ontario, for instance, the number of annual professional-development
days has been cut from nine to four. And money is short for maintaining and repairing
the computers. “If computers aren’t used in the right way, they can impede learning,”
Boisjoly says. “The guidance of the teacher is critical.”
But as the experience of Irene Korbabicz-Putko suggests, Canada has only begun to
address the issue of how to train its 300,000 public school teachers. “There are
exceptional cases of well-trained teachers, but overall it’s not one of our bright
lights,” says Smith. Until teacher training receives its due, the country will miss
out on the real benefits of the computers it has installed at such expense and effort
in the classroom. |
