Techlearning blog

My original list of questions was:

1. Is it always better to use a computer than pen and paper, in terms of productivity, creative output or better learning?

2. Do computers always enhance pupils' self-esteem?

3. Does government funding lead to better spending on educational technology in schools? Is it better or worse if caveats are attached to the spending?

4. Is it always better to use templates to guide pupils' work?

5. Do free resources supplied by governments enhance or diminish the quality of teaching (and therefore, subsequently, learning)?

6. Do the standards laid down by various national curricula or schemes of work really level the playing field, or do they merely mask inequalities of provision caused by other factors?

7. Does it matter if schools do not embed educational technology in the curriculum?

Today I'm looking at the fifth one.

Incidentally, I've been working my way through these both here, and on my own website.

When I originally posted the questions, Carl Anderson said this about #5:

"Somehow the distribution of these resource will be linked to some kind of extrinsic system meant to coax some kind of behavior"

I think that is true, although not necessarily a bad thing because of it. Some of the resources produced free of charge in the UK have been very good indeed, and take a lot of the hard work out of delivering lessons.

But that, in a sense, is one of my misgivings: the key word is "delivering". In my opinion, some of these resources reduce the teacher to the level of a mailman or a salesperson. All they need to do is go through a series of steps without even understanding them properly, and the end result will be satisfactory. It may be a good way to counteract a skills teacher shortage, but is it a good way of teaching a subject?

In this context it's also worth bearing in mind the view of the schools inspection agency in England, Ofsted, that if all or most lessons are "satisfactory", then the overall provision is poor. Why? Because the school or department as a whole should be aspiring to do better than merely "satisfactory".

Another issue for me is that it skews the market. Every school has a duty to ensure that it gives best value for money, and that includes not spending money on resources when you can get free ones instead. Now, it may be that the free ones are not as good as paid-for ones, but that doesn't matter. The decision is never "Is resource A better than resource B?", but "Is Resource A superior enough to Resource B to justify my spending money on it that could be spent on something else instead?"

The answer is almost always "no", and even where it isn't, given the need to justify every decision in our blame-ridden cultures I would suggest that most people would take the line of least resistance. After all, I have never heard of anyone being hauled before the boss and asked to account for the fact that they managed to obtain resources for free.

Because of that, the supply of paid-for resources is much lower than it otherwise might have been, because potentially interested suppliers cannot compete with a government-run or government-subsidised free resource.

There is also the issue, which relates to Carl's comment, that all resources channel you into a way of thinking, because they all embody a particular world view as it relates to the subject in question. I would contend that governments are always conservative, and so the agencies employed or commissioned by them must be conservative too, in order to ensure that they meet their targets. So, in the case of educational technology, there is every chance that government-sponsored resources will not be cutting edge in their approach, and will seem somewhat old-fashioned.

That may be what the market wants, of course, but unless the market is genuinely free to decide, we will never know.