dblteach

Just listening casually to a NAACE podcast. David Baugh’s question. (paraphrase). “OK that’s England What about Wales, Scotland, Ireland…” Answer: “I’ve no idea”.

Reminds me of a hospital consultant who told me: “Of course, you know there isn’t a national health service anymore,just regional health services”

The situation in Wales is very depressing. Millions spent on the deeply embarrassing nGFL Cymru (God knows who uses it). Meanwhile funding for ICT in school has disappeared completely (ELC letters to our schools from publishers only increase the bitterness of my colleagues when I explain again that “no, ELCs are for English schools”…Don’t the publishers know?)

Whilst Wales wrote its own ICT National Curriculum (ie moved out control -too expensive- and re-arranged the paragraphs), we still use the English KS4 board exams so we have to come back to the same material anyway. (DiDA, which we do, expects KS3 strategy to have been followed as a baseline) Meanwhile the last documents created in Wales re KS3 ICT standards go back to the last century. Officially KS3 strategy documents are English so there has been no use of them here, but no alternative either.

Recently I tried to find out whether the material for DiDA being put together by the NWLG (http://dida.nwlg.org/), would continue to be available this side of the border. I found a contact address in England for a Regional Consortium and asked them what they knew. Within 24 hours I had a helpful reply with a Welsh e-mail contact for his opposite number. I mailed there. Weeks later… still no reply!

As for ACCAC (our QCA). Try its ICT section for yourself  (http://www.accac.org.uk/eng/content.php?cID=3&pID=21) A one page link to the sad NC document.

Next year our paltry school budgets are being squeezed again. Even our best-run schools are slashing budgets and grimly hoping that enough staff will retire or leave through natural wastage. Councils, top heavy with executives with titles longer than the medal ribbons on a comic dictator and salaries to match, are passing on the worst cuts to where they consider they matter least: other people’s children and services for the elderly!

What is really depressing is that several years ago the Assembly adopted a really sensible report written by Neil Harries. It contained excellent recommendations (some basic but so seldom stated: eg fair pay for Network technicians, minimum ratios of computers) and was adopted by the Assembly. Money was even promised….

Now, it is a practical question. An average secondary school is supposed to have about 200 computers available for pupil use (1:5). To replace those over a 5 year timetable in a rolling programme (and industry uses a 3/4 yr cycle) will cost about £15,000 a year. A good technician (forget managed services out here!) about £20,000 minimum. Servers about £2,000 a year, printers say £500, projectors £1,000, scanners £500. This doesn’t allow for expansion of course! So about £45,000 per year. Once you cut this minimum figure then the final bill, when everything falls apart, will be too large for anything except some exceptional central grant and meanwhile pupil and staff confidence in the technology will have collapsed again.

Well ,its not all bad. Peter Cochrane claimed recently ( http://www.edugeek.net/  for their grassroots campaign. (xborder too, how daring..). Solidarnosc even.

PS Next year I am sure they will realise and start another ICT funding initiative. Can I make a suggestion: Give every headteacher a free laptop then they’ll have the set.  

This was a rant. Do I care? Not a jot.

I think the answer to the people (sometimes me) who complain about a loss of literacy is becoming apparent. Surely communication via the printed or spoken word is more intense now than ever. Voicemail or texting, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, all mix commentary with other forms of communication in exciting ways. Teenage bloggers often write far more creatively in their personal blogs than they do in the classroom. Jokes, puns, topical allusion, cynical/rueful aside, heartfelt commentary, angry denunciation, bursts of poetry or apposite quotation are all present in many of these often lengthy letters to the world.

Graham Greene characters usually seemed to agonise about their loss of faith. Lately I am feeling their pain - despite being an atheist. I feel that traditional (yes, hehe) ICT teaching is beginning to miss the point (as the point is very much changing). I also feel that a lot  of the commercial software we peddle is over complex and can only be accessed by pupils at home by piracy anyway as it is way to expensive for their parental pockets. (Think of MS Office, or Macromedia Studio at commercial rates! Oh and yes, I do ritually explain about how piracy is wrong, but I still accept their homework and ask no questions…) So the 24 hour learning by doing that is the logic of ICT now is not going to happen that way.