Do ICT Rooms still have a place in education?
Do ICT suites have any place in 21st century primary schools? Katy Potts weighs up the research findings and comes to a decisive answer: ‘No!’ So why do so many school leaders still press for ICT suites? And what’s missing from ICT strategies that leads them to seek the supposed safety of obsolescent solutions?
Pupils at St Jude and St Paul’s CE Primary School, Islington, enjoy the benefits of using ICT as and when it is needed most - in the classroom.
Learning with ICT in a typical UK primary school consists of an ICT suite with on average 15 PCs, often a room on the top floor away from the rest of the school – or a trolley of laptops for the whole class to use once or twice a week.
Back in the classroom there’s an electronic whiteboard, and one or two PCs for the children to share. There have been pockets of innovation in local authorities around the country where children are provided with their own mobile device - but these are still exceptions, not the rule.
The limitations of delivering learning through ICT in weekly timetabled slots in an ICT suite have been discussed widely in research and publications. The question most often raised is, how personalised is teaching 30 children a dedicated lesson once a week?
Think about it – could you save up all the times you need to use ICT into one slot a week? And when your slot does come round, what happens if it clashes with other events? And if you can’t rearrange the timetable, then the room is often left unused. (As a visitor to many schools I have been shown to the ICT suite as a spare empty room to work in!)
These suites can restrict ICT to under-used spaces and prevent it from being used in those places where it is most needed – back in the classroom, across all subjects and across all learning. It should be used routinely, with a flick of a switch, as and when it is needed to support transformational learning.