Young People and Learning with ICT

Rosamund Sutherland

Graduate School of Education

University of Bristol

Projects Overview

• ScreenPlay: 1998-2001– Questionnaire Survey of 855 children ( aged

9-10 & 13-14), SW England & S Wales

– Group Interviews in school: 112 children

– Family Case Studies: 16, 5 visits over 18 months

• Pathfinders: 1999-2002– Questionnaire Survey, 1818 children (9-17)

10 Pathfinder LEAs across England

InterActive Education2000-2004

• ESRC TLRP Project, covering all aspects of T&L in schools – classroom practice, management and policy, subject cultures, out of school use and access

– Surveys 2001 & 2003• 2001 1818 children, 9-17, Bristol and Sth Glos. • 2003 1471 children, 9-17, Bristol and Sth Glos.

– Group Interviews, • 192 children, low & high users

– Home Studies, • 11 families, 2 visits

Learning in a socio-cultural approach

Learning is a dynamic process which involves interaction between a person and their social and physical environment and through which a person emerges changed in some way

This change appears as abilities to use ‘tools’ in order to produce things, to engage in discourses and act differently in the world.

A person-plus view of learning

The environments in which humans live are thick with invented artefacts that are in constant use for structuring activity, for saving mental work, or for avoiding errors or they are adapted creatively almost without notice. These ubiquitous mediating structures that both organise and constrain activity include not only designed objects such as tools, control instruments, and symbolic representations like graphs, diagrams, text, plans and pictures, but people in social relations, as well as features and lanmarks in the physical environment”

Pea, 1993 p 48

Learning and life

Human beings are learning all the time but there is a distinction between:

‘formal’ and ‘informal’ learning

‘Formal’ learning

“Formalization involves orchestrating and channelling familiar interactions such that they become dense and probing encounters with disciplinary material”

Crook and Light, p 158

Information, Communication and Technology

The modern computer is a multipurpose environment which incorporates the following potentialities:

productive tool

information resource

communications tool

entertainment device

ICT in the home

Patterns of ownership & use 1998-2004

• Computer Ownership– ScreenPlay : 69%

– InterActive 2001: 88%

– InterActive 2003: 91%

• Internet in the home– ScreenPlay: no reliable figures (modem 25%)

– Pathfinder: 64%

– InterActive 2001: 75%

– InterActive 2003: 81%

Personal Ownership of Technologies

76

12

74

15

39 43

7366

7

81

40

25

48

68

0

20

40

60

80

100

Own gamesconsole

Own pocketcalculator

Own pager Own mobilephone

Own mobilewith

internetaccess

Ownelectronicorganiser

Owncomputer

2001

2003

Ownership patterned by socio-economic status & technology type

9687

48

84

9486

58

8793

84

61

9081

65 62

87

0

20

40

60

80

100

Computers Internet Digitial TV Consoles

High

Medium-High

Medium-low

Low

The computer in the bedroom

The computer in the dining room

The computer in the kitchen

Mum When it came to eating we had to sort of eat round the computer

Q So did you have it on the kitchen table because that was sort of central?

Mum Well partly that, and partly because it was the biggest table so I could spread all my notes out, writing dissertations and stuff. Yeah, it was nice to be sort of, you know, if the phone rang or someone came to the door you didn't have to run downstairs. It was the most convenient place.

Activities with ICT in the home

Weekly Activities on the Home Computer

69 68

5754

3630 28

2319 18 17 16

11

7672

63 65

44

2832

2821 21 19

26

18

0

20

40

60

80

Play games

Write

Fiddle around

Look upinformation

Draw/play withimages/photos

Use

educationalsoftwareMake/design

thingsOrganise

files/memory

Make upcomposemusic

Make/usecharts/graphs,

tablesProgram

Watch

DVDs/videos

Make

films/animation

2001

2003

ScreenPlay 1998 Pathfinder 2000 InterActive Education 2001

Games Writing Web for funWriting Games Games

DrawingLooking up info on internet Writing

CD-ROMLooking up info on CD-ROM Fiddle around

Educational Drawing/designing EmailsInternet Email/chat CD-ROM

Spreadsheets Educational software Draw/images

Make music SpreadsheetsEducational software

Email Making Web pages Chat rooms

Films/animations Make/design

Program Organise computer

Make Websites Make charts/graphsPowerpoint Make music

ProgramWatch DVDsMake websitesMake films/animations

Relative rankings of computer activities at home

Computer Use and Personal Interest

Janine Wordprocessor and writing; Body Works and interest in medicine; Playing with foreign languages and travel

Nick/James X -Wing Tie Fighter and Star Wars

Faezal Clip art and long-term aim to write games software

Paul DTP and art

Alistair Programming and interest in the ‘machine’

Samantha Medical encyclopedia and need to know about cancer

Learning with ICT in the home

Young People are Resourceful

If I want to use something new my Dad’s always sort of usually in a helpful mood. Or I try and work it out myself. Because we’ve got a computer and we’ve got the case of manuals behind us, so if my Dad isn’t there then I usually sort of like to look it up because I’ve usually got loads of time to do that and that’s how I usually work it out. Or if there’s the help thing on the computer I usually go to that as well.

Sorting out problems at homeInterActive (200-2004)

Strategies when chidren 'get stuck' on computer (2003)

86

56 53 52 4942

33 3227

23 20

10

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

play aroundtalk to Dadhelp buttons

Give uptalk to Mum

talk to friends

manuals/mag's/books

internet for helptalk to brothertalk to sister

friends of parentstelephone help desk

% of home computer users

Resources for learning

– Time

– Playing and experimenting

– Interacting with people

– Creative copying

– Learning from texts

– Knowledge-building communities

– Working alongside more knowledgeable others

– Families as knowledge building communities• Children as teachers

Time

Boy1 School's boring because you're not allowed to ...

Boy2 School's more limited.Boy3 Yeah. Because they say

'Right, you've got to do this, you're not allowed to do this this and this ...’

Boy 1 And you've got a certain time but ... my mum gives me a certain time and I say 'Oh, can't I have 5 minutes more?' and she gives me about 5 minutes and I keep on getting 5 minutes

Playing and Experimenting

Janine Yeah I do. I like poking around with them to see what it looks like. I like to change them to bright colours. I don't like the boring screen savers like the dinosaurs walking across the screen, I'd have asteroids walking across the screen or something like that.

Int And how do you find those? Janine I just look. We go to the control and

it gives us a list of like colours and mouse controls and things like that. Just look in and see what they do.

Interacting with people

Karen I sometimes know more than Dad..when there’s a problem on Microsoft Publisher and we don’t know what to do, I just go into the help thing. Dad doesn’t bother, he just plays around with it.

Dad I’m actually doing some computer courses on a Friday afternoon so that I know more than Karen does, so it’s not the other way around.

Boy 2 I got to learn how to use a computer by my brother. He was telling me ‘You use it like this’, ‘Do that’ and “Do this’.

Boy 3 And PC magazines often have good advice and that. I’m always like looking up things, how to do things.

Boy1 My uncle, he is qualified in IT something, and he comes once in a while from Birmingham and teaches me a little bit of stuff.

Interacting with people

Interacting with people

Int: Do either of you use Excel at home (Alan shakes head)?

Ray: Sometimes. My Dad uses it for his paper workInt: And when you use it what do you use it for?Ray: Umm, he uses it, cos when he’s got paper

calculations and some are hard like for him, he puts it in Excel and then he puts, he circles it and then presses the equal button and it tells him what the sums are.

Int: What do you use it for?Ray: Maths homework.Alan: Cheat.

Creative copying

Alistair Well I was sort of fiddling around with it. I was trying to figure out how it worked but I never succeeded until I got this one book out of the library and at the beginning it gave a small list of a Basic program.

Int And you put it in did you?

Alistair Yeah, it sort of told you how to write some text to the screen and how to ask for input from the user. That's what I'd been searching from for ages. And from that I could read a bit more in the book, how to use maths in my programming.

Knowledge-building communities

•participants who actively want to know something•a willingness to share knowledge around a common set of activities — collaborative activity•valuing of the members of the community and the expertise which develops

Learning as a ‘by-product’

Engagement with the computer inevitably leads to some form of learning.

This learning is usually incidental and non-intentional — not the purpose of the activity.

This ‘informal’ learning often overlaps with what schools are trying to teach.

From Visual Basic to Java.

From Print Master to CAD.

Resources in the home cannot always meet these challenges.

Could schools draw on this desire to master a challenge by functioning as facilitators of access to appropriate resources ?

Learning in the home can reach ceilings

Constraints

The diversity of young people’s activities on the computer in the home tends to be constrained by their personal interests

In the home, learning could be characterised as ‘deep’ rather than ‘broad’.

Could schools help overcome these constraints by providing access to diverse activities?

Leisure, Pleasure and Learning

Computer use for pleasure almost always includes playing games.

Computer use for pleasure often involves activities which provide rich sites for learning which relate to school education.

Computer use for pleasure tends not to involve producing finished products.

Young person chooses activity.

Time for exploration.

Learning is incidental.

Expertise celebrated.

Extensive resources.

Depth model

Teacher chooses activity.

Insufficient time for exploration.

Learning is the purpose.

Expertise not recognised/rejected

Limited resources

Breadth model

ICT and LearningAt Home At School

School: Increasing Disaffection

“One of the IT staff shouted at me for going into Windows Explorer, everyone used it at [xxxx school] to open files and stuff.

They had made a custom start menu and there was no desktop , so couldn't they just take it off the start menu..

... and he threatened me with 'being kicked off the network for all the time I was at the school' - such a threat!” (Alistair, letter to researcher)

City Academy Bristol - learning villages

• Five specialised

learning “villages”

• Breaking down City

Academy into cohesive

managable communities

• Promotes stronger sense

of “belonging,

responsibility and

accountablitiy

• Interweaving villages

along a clear

circulation route

City Academy Bristol - Overlapping spaces

• Central spine “city

street”

• Complex heirarchy

• Internal/external

dialogue