“Funding Education Technology Is A Huge Challenge – But It’s An Investment Worth Making”
Primary teacher and former 'tablets in class' sceptic Andrew Riley looks back on what happened when his class took part in Samsung's Digital Classroom project…
- by Andrew Riley
Who would have thought, just 10 years ago, that the nurses you see in hospital would log your notes on tablets, or that staff in restaurants would be taking orders on smartphones? The overwhelming majority of workers in this country, if they studied ICT, would have worked on clunky desktop computers at school to develop their skills.
So it stands to reason that the children we are teaching today will engage with as yet unforeseen technologies in their later lives. With that in mind, is there any point in filling their classrooms with equipment that could belong in antiquity by the time they reach their 20s?
A tool, rather than a toy
In short, yes. Obtaining quality technological provision is a huge challenge, with the funding squeezes upon schools – but the evidence from my classroom strongly suggests that it’s an investment worth making.
The Samsung Digital Classroom project approached my school in 2014 with an offer so outrageous that it seemed too good to be true. A whole class would be provided with their own tablets, Chromebooks and a smart screen so enormous that it could illuminate the street.
Our brief was to explore how the equipment could impact upon pupils from deprived backgrounds in Year 6. A great year group for trying a new way of teaching, yes?
Many of the stories and case studies I’d read of using technology in the classroom, particularly regarding tablets, hadn’t filled me with enthusiasm. Often, the best work seemed to happen in schools far removed from the social context of my pupils. But with the provision we had, I spent a six-week holiday investing an enormous amount of time in researching and trying out apps. I’d always considered myself tech-savvy, but there was a whole new world out there when I started treating technology as a tool, rather than a toy.
By knowing my way around different apps, methods and possibilities, we could get going immediately. Children loved the chance to take responsibility for something – even those who already had tablets at home – and we are, incredibly, still awaiting a broken screen. Assigning the children their own Google accounts, which I can control, straight away introduced a vital e-safety aspect.
I knew which apps could extend each child during lessons and deliver more than a ‘getting on with’ activity. It’s a funny feeling to see children convinced that they’ve got one over on you finish their work and recap fraction equivalents or practise reading skills.
Children from deprived backgrounds are more likely to have communication and language issues from their entry into school. Being able to record voice, images and annotations electronically and review them often provides my pupils with something they’re not proud of at first – but by collaborating with each other and competing to show what they know, every pupil in my class is always keen for their work to be shared on the big screen via Google Classroom. It gives a new impetus to learn and promotes confidence in the quality of their work.
Embrace digital pluralism
And then we come to results. The first cohort to use the technology were challenged by our local authority to exceed 40% meeting national expectations. They ended up at over 80%, with 100% achieving the national average or better in reading.
Last year, when we expected Armageddon with the new tests, a cohort with even lower KS1 results ended up leaving Y6 with 75% at the ‘expected standard.’ Those children worked phenomenally hard. I worked phenomenally hard. But the technology, literally at their fingertips, played a huge role in delivering that progress.
The people to win over when it comes to using technology successfully are not your pupils. It’s the school leaders who hear that ‘tablets are great’, so buy half a dozen in a two-form entry school. It’s the support technicians constantly being called out to deal with security and connectivity issues on a creaking infrastructure built for Windows 95 and 1MB broadband.
Your senior leaders need to be shown how incredible lessons can be, invited in and made to sit with children. Make them scan that QR code on the wall and see how children can independently solve their own problems. The technicians need to be made cups of tea and allowed to talk – these people always have skills beyond plugging a USB lead back into a smart board, which they will be happy to share with you!
Finally, don’t tie yourself down to one form of technology in school. Embrace digital pluralism. In the future, we won’t want to see nurses who can’t log notes because Android is different to iOS, or a waiter who confuses ‘send’ with ‘off’ because he’s used to placing orders via a different brand of device.
Yes, technology is an expensive thing to explain to governors. Yes, it takes a huge investment of time for classroom teachers. And yes, it can be an immense headache when trying to deploy new apps and programmes. But the confidence, ability and growth I’ve seen in our children over the past couple of years tells me that every penny and minute would have been wisely invested.
Andrew Riley is a Key Stage 2 teacher at Bede Community Primary School in Gateshead
Samsung Digital Classroom – How did it work and what was learnt?
Samsung’s Digital Classroom was a three-year project conceived to explore the impact technology can have on teaching and learning. Working with 15 primary schools in situated in underprivileged areas around the UK, Samsung provided a full suite of classroom technology with accompanying technical support and a rigorous research and evaluation programme for monitoring the resulting impact.
The findings included the following points:
• 89% of pupils believe that the classroom equipment helped them learn new digital skills, with 81% now finding it easier to perform a variety of tasks on computers and 79% stating that they now work better with their classmates
• 88% reported saying that they felt better-equipped for their next academic years of study
• 83% of pupils now find using apps an effective and easy way to learn new things, compared with 64% at the start of the year
• 80% of pupils are now more aware of how to stay safe on the internet, compared to 60% at the start of the year
The full Samsung Digital Classroom impact report can be seen here; for more information about Samsung’s education programmes, visit www.samsung.com/uk/citizenship
