Educational
 technology with impact

Let’s look at some schools. We’ll say School 1.0 could be defined as a ‘traditional’ one where the classroom is demarcated by four walls, desks, chairs, paper, pens and a central focus for the transfer of knowledge. Change rarely happens overnight and the evolution of School 1.0 involves many steps forward, and back, including successful and not so successful, ventures into the application of technology for learning. However, we are perhaps now emerging into the light of a common approach: School 2.0, which could be defined as a ‘connected’ approach to providing learning opportunities where the classroom extends seamlessly beyond its four walls and learners choose the tools appropriate to their task and their mode of learning.
    
With the pace at which technology is evolving, this would make good sense, says James Penny, solutions director at European Electronique. “We are starting to see a real change in the model of IT in schools; gone are the days of the traditional computer room. Instead, many schools are welcoming a new model where learning can happen in any classroom, school building or at home, on a device owned by a learner or the school.”
    
Getting mobile
This movement towards a less confined learning environment is underpinned by mobile technology. “There is now a staggering amount of choice in terms of mobile devices available to users to enable this sort of freedom. While these may vary in operating system, size or cost, they will have two things in common: they can be connected to a wireless or mobile network and will offer some form of web browser. It is these capabilities that enable the freedom in teaching and learning that 1:1 schemes are seen to provide,” says James.
    
This is not just a case of the latest technology being used just for the sake of it, there’s a clear case for schools to make sure that technology is seamlessly embedded in the learning experience. “A key role of education is to prepare children for their adult life,” says Andy Bush, electronics product development manager at TTS-Group Ltd. “We very much live in a technological society and that’s highly unlikely to change; children should leave school feeling confident to use any technology and able to get the best out of it. That applies to their future personal and work related use.”

The essentials
What’s considered essential technology differs from school to school but most value interactive and mobile technology. “A large display, ideally interactive,” is one of the first things Andy cites. “This allows ideas and work to be shared with groups or the whole class. Teachers who are established users of interactive whiteboards say they would struggle without one.”
    
James Betts, managing director of Kudlian Software, agrees: “The schools that we work with value hardware that allows students to share work but it needn’t be complex kit; a simple device that allows teachers to stream the screen of pupils’ tablets to a projector or large screen, enables pupils to quickly and easily share what they are working on, often having a dramatic effect.”
    
Andy also sees mobile technology as vital. “Classrooms should have tablets, laptops or other mobile technology. A number of schools have found that instant access to the internet is hugely beneficial. It has become an essential tool for teaching, and schools need good internal infrastructure and external connection to get the best out of it.”
    
School 2.0 will be characterised by efficient and effective wired and wireless networks supported by appropriate broadband access. This, Andy sees as key. “Having more mobile devices often means that schools are having to reassess their wireless networking.”
    
James Penny also agrees: “More personal devices means that more users are using more web based resources so it is important to ensure that your internet connection is able E 
F to cope with this rise in demand, to allow lessons to flow smoothly.”

In addition to robust infrastructure, School 2.0 will offer learners access to a range of technologies to support their learning, from individual through to collaborative devices and from general access through to specialist applications. Tracking progress will remain as imperative as it is now but schools will also become more collaborative in this.
    
Chris Smith, head of education technology at Essex Education Services believes that software enabling this sort of collaborative approach will play an important part in the classroom. “If you find there is a weakness in your school, you can look at one of the other schools within your collaborative group and say ‘ah, they’re really good with pupil premium, for instance, I really want to go and see how/what they are doing.’ International research shows that where schools work together – especially where good schools are working with schools that are struggling – significant improvement can be achieved.”
    
Increasingly it will be possible for learners to use the same technologies in school that they use out of school because the school will be agnostic to the technology. The school will simply be providing a safe environment through which the learner can address their learning and which, by proactive management, the school can support the learner in achieving the focus necessary to maximise their achievement.
    
If School 2.0 is defined by the technology, physical or virtual then, in order to make a step change to learning and achievement, the school will need to rapidly develop further. By analysing years of evidence from schools engaged with the Naace Self Review Framework and those submitting themselves to external review for the Naace ICT Mark and, more recently, those schools engaging with the Naace 3rd Millennium Learning philosophy, it is possible to draw some conclusions.
    
School 2.1 or even School 3.0 still needs to be wired and interactive in all the right places, but just as importantly, it needs to be interactive in a very tangible and human sense.

What the future holds
It’s impossible to predict exactly which technology will be ubiquitous in future but some resources seem to be a fairly safe bet. Scholastic’s Chris Ratcliffe believes that mobile technology will continue to be a growth market. “I think there’ll be more hardware companies offering alternatives to iPads with more classroom management and integrated assessment. Handheld technology, and bring-your-own-device schemes, will be more prevalent in schools and I think the market for e-books will grow, particularly in upper primary and secondary schools.”
    
“Ultimately, the most critical question schools should ask, before spending money, is ‘Will this technology allow us to do things better than we do now?” says Kudlian’s James Betts. “Technology for the sake of technology can often hinder rather than enhance learning so schools should be ensuring that investment in technology is for the right reasons.”
    
This is a good point, one worth making but what of the barriers that technology should break in the future? Imagine a school where the traditional classroom ceases to be. In its stead: classrooms that are ‘hackable’ emerge allowing the room to be restructured based on the learning, breaking into teams, writing on the walls, and engaging with the technology now present to communicate with learners on the other side of the world.
    
It’s not that these types of classrooms don’t exist; it’s that they are still all too commonly an anomaly sitting in a School 1.0 structure and mindset where the physical (think traditional), may have changed, but a complimentary radical approach to pedagogy is still to emerge. The evidence from schools engaged with Naace strongly suggests that School 3.0 re-examines teaching models that are rigidly one directional, engages learners in finding creative solutions to real world problems and provide them with constructive audiences that pushes them to solve greater problems that help shape their world.
    
New approaches
In School 3.0 classrooms and devices don’t just sit there all ‘wired up’; they exist in a context where learning experiences have been collectively redefined, new approaches to teaching have been devised and learner/teacher relationships have been transformed. Highly transparent and flexible spaces connect and interconnect globally into cross collaborations with learners at similar institutions worldwide, and with individual students anywhere so that they can address real issues in the developing world while solving problems in their local workshop environment.
    
Increasingly, learners as Digital Leaders are stepping up to co‑construct this space in collaboration with their teachers; along with other creative solutions there is currently a proliferation of strategically located ‘genius bars’ in the emerging School 3.0.
    
Today’s learners bring to the world enviable skills in researching, filtering and applying Information, virtual communication and technology; not to mention the phenomenon of a digital generation, the new capability (because it did not exist before) of ‘multi-techno‑tasking’. Schools that are recognising these facts of life are engaged increasingly with learners who not only demonstrate their achievement in raw attainment scores at GCSE and A-Level but who increasingly demonstrate their relevance to tomorrow’s world, with digital skills and capabilities that will only become more relevant in future.

Further information
www.naace.co.uk