Whole school development,change and leadership - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 117

• Jointprojectswithothercountriesdependontheschool'stechnological
infrastructure.EveninEurope,schools/collegestechnologyprovisionis
unreliable and in developing countries it may be more unreliable.
• Accesstorelevantprofessionalnetworks:theforumsrelevanttoindividual
teachers are scattered in too many different places, making it hard for teach-
ers to keep up with or find relevant discussions.
Leask and Preston (2010) report teachers' concern that the digital divide is widening.
For some families, poverty is the issue; for others a lack of the level of literacy needed
to access the Internet is the barrier, as it is still text-based in the main.
A majority of learners who do have computers at home only use them for infor-
mation retrieval, so creative tasks, collaborative networking and publication are not
in their repertoire.
Teachers' engagement in the digital culture is also variable. Teachers may work in
a pedagogical climate driven by a 'tick box' approach to education. This appears to
generate a mechanistic approach to technology among teachers which prevents further
exploration of creative technology uses. The emphasis on teaching tools - for example,
interactive whiteboards rather than learning with and through technology - appears
to lead to a distortion in the ways in which the resources are being used. School lead-
ers will wish to check pedagogical strategies for the use of technology in the school to
ensure teachers are not just focusing on short-term and low-level uses of technology
rather than more challenging applications.
One model of pedagogy uses technology for low-level information dissemination
rather than offering creative opportunities for learning beyond the classroom.
Leask and Preston (2010) reported that, while the introduction of learning plat-
forms has led to opportunities for connections between staff, students, parents and
other stakeholders, there are barriers to uptake which in many institutions need to
be addressed.
These include:
• confusioninseniormanagementteamsaboutwhoshouldbeincontrolof
the platform: administration, senior management or curriculum specialists?
• inappropriateinteractionstakingplaceonsocialnetworkingsitesincluding
incidents of cyber-bullying
• newlearnerswhoarriveinthemiddleofsessionsfromcountriesorcul-
tures where they do not have technology resources and the same easy access
to the Internet
• acultureofindividualismandareluctancetoshareresourcesbetweenstaff
members
• thecreationofmaterialsforsupportingteachingthatcanbedisproportion-
ately time consuming
• thedangerthat,whenresourcesareuploadedtothesystem,someteachers
will become ossified in their use of them
• aminorityofteachersnotwantingtosharetheirworkwithothers
• anindividualusingamemorysticktoremovedatafromthesystem