Educational Institutions and ICT

Educational Institutions and ICT:
Learning, Teaching, Organizing, and
School Leadership — An Example of Practice

Menntaskólinn á Akureyri (Akureyri Junior High School) is a traditional secondary school preparing students (aged 16 — 20) for university studies. Until 4 years ago the view of the institution was to focus on academic learning and preparation for university and avoid ICT. Now in the year 2001 the school is recognized by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research as a developing school in ICT on national, Nordic and European level, working fast on implementing ICT into the institution in relationship with the school activities.

The view of the institution is that technology is a tool for improving learning and teaching in the school, meaning that technology is chosen based on the needs expressed by learners and teachers. The school is now well equipped technically including wireless LAN connection for students lap top computers, terminal servers for lap top connections to the local network, own mail and web services.

The history of Akureyri Junior High School (MA) is retraced to early 11^th century school at Hólar in Hjaltadalur in northern Iceland. It was reinstated in Möruvellir in 1880 and the current building in Akureyri was built 1904 after the school burned down at Möruvellir. The history has always been important for the school, which is now the biggest boarding school in the country with 600 students. There are strong traditions in the school and active students both within the studies and social field. The students hold the national championship in public speaking and there are leading students in physics competition in the school. Students opened up the first national student magazine on the Internet spring 2001; they have song competitions, bands, sport, festivals and active recreation. While holding to old traditions the school staff is also innovative and strongly supports development in various fields such as ICT in education.

The formal ICT project started in the school in spring term 1998. Prior to that many teachers had done individual experiments but ICT didn’t hold strong focus until 1998. To lead the change an ICT department was established in the school that should work on supporting development of ICT into the institution in general. The school has 4 main aims concerning ICT they are:

By saying that ICT will be used in all topics that we teach it means that every teacher knows that he or she needs to focus on ICT in their work. It doesn’t mean that a teacher has to use ICT in every course but it is something that needs to be focused on in every subject’s department. We feel that the factor of avoidance can be strong for some when it comes to ICT and therefore it is important to state that it is meant for all. To be able to meet the aims teachers need to get support both through further education as well as personal support to be able to participate meaningfully in implementing ICT in their teaching. We have offered 15 different developer courses for teachers on tools and pedagogical issues in relationship with ICT. The courses are mostly held in our school so that teachers can study in their own environment with the same tools as they use every day. Far too often teachers go to another location, learn in an environment that is not the same as they are used to and can not communicate with colleagues on opportunities and obstacles. The school’s staff teaches most of the courses, when we cannot teach ourselves we get teachers from outside and they teach either on location or via the Internet.

Courses are not enough; teachers need to get support while they are preparing their classes and in some instances when they are trying out new teaching method or material in a computer classroom. Teachers are not used to teach classes in a classroom full equipped with computers, all kind of things happen that they have never seen happen before and it can sometimes make them very stressed which might then lead to avoiding ICT in the classroom. Therefore it is important that the teacher knows that he or she can get support either in the classroom or that they can call for help if needed.

We do not define any standard knowledge on ICT. We firmly believe that teachers know best how to teach their subject. We trust them to teach it without our interference when they are not using ICT and it is important to respect that issue also when ICT is involved. Teachers are using different teaching methods and they have to be able to select ICT tools and pedagogical methods based on how they think they teach best. We have found out that this view gives good result since it is the teacher that is responsible for own development and knowledge.

Based on teachers' description on what they need, we then create courses and even if a teacher is the only one asking for it, we try to teach him as an individual. Sometimes the request is so specialized that we cannot meet the needs and try to find alternative solutions. Due to this, teachers can develop ICT into their teaching in harmony with their pedagogical believes and personalities.

This method takes time and it is clear that nobody can get everything he or she needs each time they ask for what they need but we try our best. Teachers also help each other, consult with peers from other schools. Thus they and have gained extended knowledge on how to use ICT in education at least so much that at the latest national conference on ICT in education, where there where over 100 talks and workshops, they complained that there was "nothing new". But then it is common to think that when it comes to ICT there has to be "something new" all the time.

We try to avoid telling teachers what to do but we use to give them information on what could be done and let them choose. When someone "tells" a teacher how to teach or to use some software it is not clear when the teacher is selecting or refusing ICT instead of the teaching method. Therefore it is very important to provide teachers with tools, methods and ideas based on their own pedagogical views and teaching methods.

Some of the ideas that teachers come up with in the beginning might sound totally out of the question for teachers experienced in using ICT in the classroom. But although it is good to express doubts, it is important for teachers as other professionals to test out ideas in their own circumstances, they might work different from class to class or subject to subject. Teachers are professional educators and it is important to give them support based their profession but not with the view that they are novice computer users.

Students are the reason schools exist and we use ICT in schools for their benefit. Although some of them are very confident computer users most of them are not familiar with all kind of different tools and methods used in school. Furthermore one cannot expect all teachers to be able to teach students how to use the technology; they need all their time to focus on the topic they are teaching. One of the reasons many teachers complain about how time consuming it is to use ICT in education is that they need to teach basic computer skills so that the students can solve their tasks. Therefore all the students take one course on using ICT in learning. We use the teaching methods such as learning-by-doing and project based learning and base the evaluation heavily on creativity as well as linking most tasks to other subjects taught at the same time. Although some of them know how to use variety of software, very few of them are experienced with using ICT for learning in a fruitful way. Furthermore we try to asure that all students know how to use most of the tools teachers might want them to use to solve tasks. However, most important, they learn to be independent computer users and be able to find out how to use software they have never seen before. For many of them these teaching methods are very difficult, even if they are good students used to get good marks in primary school. Very often they say: "just tell me what to do and I will do it well". But we just give them tasks each week and they are supposed to solve them by themselves. They can of course always ask for help and they meet teachers for two 40 minutes study hours per week for the whole first school year.

To give some examples on their tasks then one of the first tasks they get is to learn to search the Internet, finding reliable sources. The last task is to "travel" to Denmark; they get all kind of obstacles they have to solve not in very clear manner so they have many possible ways to solve it. Furthermore the task is a collaborative project with learning Danish. They then have had to deliver the assignment in Danish.

We have also created the eWizard project (http://www.ma.is/ewizards) that is integrated with subjects like sport, sociology, writing, English and more. There they have to create their own world of mythology on the web. They have to define their work themselves and just get guidelines on what is expected. This project was made available to other schools and participants came from Bulgaria, Sweden and Romania. Furthermore it was discussed on the Innovative Forum on the European Schoolnet web (http://www.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/en/innovation/ sub_area_frame.cfm?sa=55&row=1) as task in the University of Education in Iceland and Bemidji State University in USA. It was selected the web of the month by the Icelandic Educational Network http://www.ismennt.is and project to look at by the European MyEurope project http://www.en.eun.org/myeurope in June. The reason for the success of the project is students work their own creation. Ms. Rodica Doina Predescu an English teacher from Cluj-Napoca, Romania will talk more about this project and her participation in another paper.

We organize the classes so that two "laptop students" from Iceland work together with other two students from another country. Through their dialogue they also learn and for most of them it means more learning but then sometimes an enthusiastic students pairs up with a lazy one and therefore we allow them to reorganize groups now and then through the school year. At the beginning of every week they get task to solve and have to solve it before they come to class a week later. If they miss class for some reason or the other they still have to deliver their assignments. They can always find them on the web and can therefore work on them although they miss the class.

When planning ICT into whole school environment, learning and teaching are not the only factors, even if they are very important. Each year we analyze the needs of our staff for hardware, software and training. Funding for ICT in schools is very limited and it is not possible to run the school computer system like we would like to. Therefore it is vital to do as much as possible for as little as possible. Each year we create a plan based on the analysis of past work, in which our staff defines the needs and priorities based on our financial abilities. We publish on our web how we prioritize so that staff knows what can be expected. If it is something we cannot do, we try to get extra funding, but it is not a secret that ICT in an educational institution has extremely limited funding and what we want to do is far from what we can do, but we don’t complain.

Teachers are encouraged to develop new ideas and can get financial support from special fund in the school. They can also seek grant from the Ministry of Education Culture and Research given that they have good ideas. But although this sounds much, it isn’t. The funding is very limited, the amounts are not very high and not everybody can get them but still it is better than nothing. Therefore our main focus is to develop ICT in the institution in harmony with the time available. If it takes a teacher day and night to do some project we define it as failure, teacher should be able to do his or her work within normal working hours. If much more is needed over time it is not something we can expect people to use on normal basis.

The schools leadership is very important when one wants to be successful with ICT in education. The schoolmaster and other leaders at the school are very supportive and ready to change working methods; they use ICT themselves in their work. The schoolmaster and other administrators inform teachers through e-mail, so that teachers are better informed on what is ongoing in the institution. Throughout the development phase the leaders have changed their work due to our findings. One example is that sometimes students break rules and do things with the computer system they are not supposed to do. When this happens, it is the assistant schoolmaster who handles it just as any behavior problem that occurs in the school. In many cases it has been the computer people that handle everything that has to do with computers but it is important that similar things are at similar places whether computers are used or not.

Since autumn 1999 we have been extending the use of laptop computers in the school. The first school year (1999-2000) teachers got the opportunity to buy computers in partnership with the school, that is the school paid half and the teacher half. Some criticized and stated that the school should provide teachers with all the tools they needed at work while others wanted to share the ownership with the school since then they could use the computer as they wanted in their spare time. Instead of sharing a computer with many other teachers, they have changed to using "personal computers", so that they have all their work at hand in their own computer on their desktop. Now 78% of the teachers do have their "own" laptop computer. Other teachers share desktop computers like before.

In June 2000 The Ministry of Education, Culture and Research decided that the Akureyri Junior College as one of three official ICT development Junior Colleges in Iceland should become a "laptop school". Since the school is a development school one of the issues should be finding out the Ministry's official policy on laptop computers schools. This meant amongst other things that although some students had laptop computers before the school started to plan wireless connection for them to the school local network as well as the Internet. Students can now connect to the Internet wherever they are located in the school’s buildings. It is interesting to see students work in the library, in the classrooms and in the halls and web pages flowing through the air to their computers.

The development of laptops in education slowed down in the school year 2000-2001 due to two months strike of junior high school teachers from November to January. After the strike students and teachers had to work as fast as possible to finish the school year so lesser development work could be done. Still we had one laptop class, 4th year linguistic line with 15 students whom we lent laptop computers. Five teachers took part in experimenting how to teach this way in history, literature, German, French, English and mathematics. Furthermore they had small ICT class for support and sharing experience. Through this we gained experience that will become very helpful for next school year when we expect to have 5 laptop classes, two in first grade (age 16-17), two in second grade (age 17-18) and one in fourth grade (age 19-20). The class that began last year will continue and we will get 4 new laptop classes.

Until now our experience is that teachers of "laptop classes" tend to use project-based learning and problem solving more in the laptop class than in the traditional class. That is also what teachers who are going to teach laptop classes’ next school year say now that they will do. They say they need to prepare different kinds of learning materials for students and complain that it is a lot of work. So we need to increase and change our developer courses for teachers as well as to support them create learning materials.

Students that either have been in laptop class or have laptop computers in a traditional class state very strongly that their notes are better organized and easier to use, there is better access to get further information on their studies on the Internet. Many say that learning is more fun, more interesting and that learning methods are better. They also say that they tend to do "other things" that is playing and surfing on the Internet and therefore not to pay attention to the teacher. Furthermore some say that the teachers have to learn to teach classes when laptop computers are used. The computers are heavy and the access to electricity is sometimes difficult when many computers have to be plugged in at the same time. We have learned that we need to teach teachers how to design a class where there is a computer in front of every student. Experienced teachers are used to these problems, while others are not.

In relationship with our laptop project we will focus on distributed teaching and learning, meaning using methods used in on-line distance education. That is also the focus of the new Project plan of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture for e-Learning which is called "Advantage for the Future 2001-2003" http://www.menntagatt.is/engl/index.html One teacher will focus on using mobile telephones in classes with iPulse software (http://www.oz.com/Products/ index.asp) since the majority of students now own mobile phones. Many more projects and activities are planned for next school year so there are constant challenges for the school’s staff in this field.

Developing ICT into a whole school environment is a huge task. it is difficult to select what to write about and what to leave out. Those who are interested can go to the schools website at http://www.ma.is/portrait to get further information on the school and the development projects and activities. The main issue that happens when a school starts to develop ICT into education is that many other issues start to get focus, such as the classroom schedules, staff development, teaching and learning methods and many other things. Therefore the words of our schoolmaster Mr. Tryggvi Gíslason are maybe the most descriptive when he states that "we began as development school in ICT, now we are a development school" since so many things are changing in relationship with the project.