February 2003 Insights Education Issue #1

DEEP impact: teachers and technology

While issues of access and the relative merits of satellites or solar power are being discussed internationally, a project in South Africa and Egypt is exploring what actually happens at the classroom level when ICTs are introduced. How do ICTs change the way teachers teach? How do pupils respond to ICTs-enhanced teaching?

Research from the Open University, UK, highlights DEEP (the Digital Education Enhancement Project), a new project funded by the Department for International Development, that is helping teachers use ICT to improve teaching and learning in primary schools. Although still in its infancy, the project already shows that the impact of using ICTs extends further than pupil achievement and classroom practice to also benefit teachers’ professional identities and the community as a whole.

In the Eastern Cape, DEEP is working with 12 disadvantaged primary schools, the majority of which are rural, three have no electricity and four have no telephone connection. The project uses rechargeable laptop computers and relevant websites on CD-ROM to help teachers where they have to overcome problems of poor or fragile infrastructure.

A pair of teachers from each of the schools has been given training materials such as website mediated activities and study guides. At workshops, they tried out a variety of curriculum focused ICTs activities such as researching scientific information about endangered species, or writing illustrated autobiographies. As teachers discover new ICTs-enhanced teaching methods, they present them to colleagues from other project schools in the region. For example, one teacher created an animated folk tale in Xhosa and English to support literacy work. Each project pair shares a laptop computer and each teacher has a hand-held computer supporting electronic books as well as video and audio files that focus on teaching strategies. Additional equipment such as digital cameras was introduced gradually in order to avoid ‘technology overload’. Most of the project teachers meet regularly in informal groups for additional support.

Prior to the project, 16 of the 24 teachers had never used a computer but after four months they all considered ICTs important or very important for learning and felt confident in their use of ICTs.

The researchers also found that:

• By introducing a printer halfway through the project, teachers learn to use the computer to support new approaches to classroom teaching, rather than for reproducing materials or for school administration, unlike many of their counterparts elsewhere in the world.
• Students are using the equipment to learn in new ways such as creating spreadsheets on animal classification from data found on websites, creating multimedia texts and playing Afrikaans language games.
• Where computers are used in rotation by small groups, students work on ICTs- enhanced activities which span several days such as carrying out research, rather than have occasional ‘computer lessons’.
• The equipment has been used widely outside the classroom for tasks such as community council minutes, school meeting agendas, funeral announcements, or recording a speech by Mark Shuttleworth, the first African astronaut, for pupils to study.
• Teachers say that their confidence, enthusiasm and standing in the community has increased since being involved in DEEP. One of the project’s schools was featured on a radio programme, while another has experienced a rise in enrolments.

DEEP highlights the potential of ICTs for transforming teacher development and learning, as well as professional support. The project also makes the following policy implications:

• ICTs have enormous potential for facilitating teacher training and enabling new forms of teaching and learning.
• Training that focuses first and foremost on curriculum skills and processes, rather than ICTs skills, can empower teachers to use ICTs purposefully and effectively in the classroom.
• Working together and sharing laptops can result in effective peer support, create more enthusiasm and ensure high levels of equipment usage, making ICTs provision more cost-effective.
• Providing teachers and schools with ‘professional’ equipment and enabling them to use it for professional learning can raise their knowledge and status and that of their community; even - or perhaps especially - in contexts which might have previously undermined their dignity and self-esteem.

Jenny Leach
Centre for Research and Development in Teacher Education,
Faculty of Education and Language Studies
Open University
Walton Hall
Offices IX, Level 3
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA
UK

J.Leach@open.ac.uk
www.open.ac.uk/deep

See also
'Building teachers' professional knowledge through ICT: experience and analysis across the "digital divide"', presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Lisbon, by J. Leach, R. Moon and T. Power, September 2002
www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002349.htm

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