I have always liked to describe school systems in terms of a natural ecosystem, where the various players play roles that they have worked out over time that allow them to ’survive’ in the system. The technologies of the classroom have evolved to support the needs of the players, like desks for students to write on, store books and stationery and keep the student in fixed in one place so that they can be easily managed! There are a thousand other components, human and material, in the system that have evolved to do the business of teaching in a particular way.

Regularly, over the last few decades at least, new ideas (and technologies) come along and challenge the balance in the ecosystem. Bright sparks in the ’70s in South Australia changed desks into tables that can more readily be placed in groups, moved and did not provide storage. The Open Space teaching model did a lot more than this little example. So to continue my little story, teachers had developed teaching methods that relied on students having immediate access to their work-books, stored in their sturdy desks. When tables came along, books were stored in book trays around the walls of the classroom. So the teachers had an organisational problem caused by the innovative tables. I’m not interested in whether having work-books on hand is a good thing or not, but am making the point that every innovation has lots of negative implications because it does not fit all the existing components in the school ecosystem. It is difficult to change one thing without changing lots of things.
So this is why I thoroughly agree with the point Bill made in a comment on my previous post that incremental change is unlikely to work in getting new technologies embedded in the school ecosystem. Change needs to be bold, as he points out Papert has been urging for a long time. New technologies, be they tables, ballpoint pens or internet access pose a threat to many existing activities. If they are introduced into the environment incrementally, a bit of equipment here, a bit of training there, they will be ‘nibbled to death by ducks’ (Garth Boomer). Radical change recognises that we are not introducing the new technologies to tweak the existing ecosystem but to change it in fundamental ways.

That’s another reason for sparing a thought for those planning the introduction of new technologies into classrooms. Radical requires courage and lots of confidence.

I don’t think it is blaming teachers to say that most have not had strong experience in teaching in an open style, or have a clear ideology towards this type of teaching. Why should they? They have been working in a system that has placed priority on other approaches to learning. They have not had technologies that allow remarkable access to information or efficient collaborative tools. I do not have strong experience in they openness that web 2.0 tools will encourage and allow (and I am a baby of the open space years and the open education revolution of the ’70s!).

I think we young radicals can take some heart, though, because the web 2.0 tools are in the main free, easy to use, only need an internet connection, available from home, and most of all, can be introduced subversively by individual teachers (who can get the filter blocks removed).

Just finished reading the report produced for VET titled Social Software for Learning and published April this year. It is very positive about the benefits of using social software and the writers clearly see it as an almost inevitable trend. The report is based in large part on the views of 70 respondents to a survey. At first glance this seems a weakness of the report because the number in the survey is quite small, and because they are a relatively sympathetic group who already use web 2.0 tools to some extent. Half are within VET and half from elsewhere. But of course people who are not familiar with web 2.0 are hardly qualified to comment on its potential and functionality. And 70 is enough to give a good feel for the topic.

This points to a major problem with seeing the future of social software in education. First, it is very very new, and second, its growth is explosive. So the planner is faced with limited evidence and no time to waste!

“Four key conclusions have emerged:

1. Social software is valuable in enhancing and enriching knowledge sharing, capability development and the teaching and learning experience and should be seen as ‘another tool’ in the organisation’s and VET practitioner’s toolkit.
2. The successful use of social software relies on a spirit of openness and a willingness to share and collaborate as well as an enabling culture, both within the organisation and the classroom environment.
3. The ‘Net Gen’ is a significant client group of the future. It is critical that VET is able to provide them with enriching learning experiences and this will require the use of social software in some form. Other drivers, including economic drivers, may lead to a broader application of social software across the VET demographic.
4. Like email, social software may well become ‘ubiquitous’!”

No 1 conclusion is the most important: that it is a powerful tool for learning because it fosters our human need to learn in collabration with others. No 2 points to the big implementation problem. Most teachers do not have a strong experience in working in an open manner, and fewer are ideologically commited to this approach. The hope is that many will see the new tools to change their approach. But it will take a lot of selling and clear perceptions of early success. No 3 and 4 suggest that there is a groundswell of success for the new tools that will feed through into education. But many of the old guard teacher have seen the promised land of constructivist education promised over and over again since the ’70s.

The onus of those of us who believe in the power of the new tools and the need for a different focus for learning, is get some examples to show it works. And who better to be the recipient of some collaborative learning processes than the teachers themsleves?