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Digital Learning in Schools: 3 Common Mistakes
Let’s start with a very basic interpretation of what ‘digital learning means’: it simply means using digital technology to allow students to learn in new (engaging, relevant, impactful) ways. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to stick with the basics of digital learning - because once you have the basics then the rest will come. Conversely, if you skip the basics, the rest won’t come and the technology will get blamed. Which is a little like blaming a car because you never learned to drive!
When I was in primary school in the 80s, digital learning could only be basic, it had no other option. It involved wheeling a BBC computer into the classroom on a trolley for some 80s style digital literacy (i.e. what a computer is!). It couldn’t have been more basic but it worked really well - the students were engaged and the teachers found it to be an exciting resource to bring into their classrooms. The technology has obviously advanced somewhat since the 80s, so why hasn’t the presence and impact of digital learning advanced with it? What has gone wrong? We look at three common mistakes that can be easily overcome and are holding many schools back:
Change management: there is a ‘change management’ involved for staff and students - this needs to be taken seriously
Focus: don’t be overwhelmed by the limitless hardware and software options available (if you try to do everything you end up doing nothing)
The ‘digital native’ conundrum: there is a misconception that all students are computer experts. But even if they are (and most of them aren’t), digital learning involves using computers to engage the curriculum, and most students aren’t experts on the curriculum (yet!)
1) Change Management
Let’s assume you drive a car…when you first exchanged your bicycle for a car once upon a time, you were embarking on a big change that would positively affect the rest of your life. But you didn’t just buy a car and instantly change your life. You had to learn to drive, pass your test, get a car, etc etc - you had to manage the change from cyclist to driver and everything that goes with it. You were patient with yourself and ultimately, it paid dividends. Of course, it’s likely that you didn’t just retire your bike to the shed when you started driving - impactful change often involves supplementing, not replacing.
If your school isn’t already integrating computers seamlessly into the curriculum then you are introducing a fundamental change to how teaching and learning is happening when you decide to do so. Just like going from cyclist to driver, you need to first be patient with yourself and realise that it’s not going to happen simply by buying a car - or in this case, by buying computers. There are steps to go through before you are metaphorically driving down the motorway with the roof down!
With digital learning developments in your school, you are likely managing a team of teachers to bring about this fundamental change in their classrooms - so it’s not just your own development you need to consider. You’re not just introducing technology to the school, you’re managing the change for teachers (the ‘teacher journey’) from running a traditional classroom to one that integrates technology into learning. This is a lot of change that requires your attention as a part of the school leadership team.
Benjamin Franklin said that ‘by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail’. If you prepare properly, and fully consider a patient, results-driven approach to ‘change management’, then you are preparing to succeed. Think about the different changes you are bringing about, build a stepped-out development plan within your digital learning plan (even a bullet pointed list will do!) and consider SMART goals (see below) to help you prepare for, and ultimately achieve, your plan:
Specific: create specific targets, e.g. staff and students will be able to do X by X date, and Y by Y date.
Measurable: make sure the targets are measurable, i.e. that when X date comes you can clearly see if the target was achieved - if it wasn’t achieved, or if it was too easy, or it went perfectly according to plan then you can act accordingly in terms of your next steps (i.e. you will keep going with the original plan, you will amend it, or possibly provide specific support for specific staff members to help them stay on track).
Achievable: the targets should be achievable. Unrealistically difficult targets are as damaging as not having targets at all.
Relevant: the targets will be relevant to the skill levels of your staff/students and the school vision, i.e. a teacher can see immediately how and why this skill will positively impact learning in their classroom. For example, keyboard skills or Google Workspace/ Microsoft 365 skills will always be relevant. But if you are a huge fan of something more specific or advanced such as virtual or augmented reality, this may not be relevant to some teachers.
Timebound: map your changes over the school year with dates for the different targets, and make sure it starts with a sturdy first step. This will closely tie in with, and evolve with, the ‘Measurable’ aspect
Most importantly, make a plan you can be proud of. Make a plan that you can see yourself standing up and presenting to parents at an open evening: detailing the school’s vision, how you are going to achieve it and what the future of learning looks like at your school for their children. Fundamental change requires an ongoing process. Use your SMART plan and make progress one week at a time, one half term at a time, then one term and one school year at a time. Manage the change in a respectful way to you, your staff, your students and your school community - and, of course, enjoy it!
2) Focus
There are limitless options out there when it comes to software and hardware for digital learning. Every training event, every expo, every ‘anything’ you go to or read will have something else new and amazing - and if you’re not careful, they’ll just stress you out. You will get overwhelmed by the options and end up choosing none of them, and you won’t be the only one to do so! So what can you do?
Start by being patient and discerning. Just like choosing a car, there are many options - but you will choose the plan that’s right for you and gradually evolve it. Once you buy your Volkswagen, and it’s doing the job for you then you stay focused on doing all the other things that you bought the Volkswagen for (i.e. getting to work, seeing friends and family, your life in general). Before you bought it, you chose it with your budget and needs in mind. There are more software and hardware options out there than car options - so start with your budget and needs, not by assessing the options.
You likely know your budget quite clearly, so have a look at your needs next. Many teachers and school leaders don’t know their needs, or get stressed even thinking about them. They don’t know what they don’t know. Don’t worry, you’re not alone if that’s you. Whether you feel like you know nothing, or you know everything, it’s always a good idea to start by speaking with peers in other schools to learn what has worked well for them. Don’t get too bogged down in the details, particularly with the 100s of apps they may be using. But ask and try to understand what the devices are capable of doing, how they are meeting the needs of their digital learning plan, how they are providing a return on investment (buying the cheapest device isn’t always the best option!).
Project your existing values and vision onto technology: probe and find out if their school has the same vision and values as your school. You don’t need to be a digital learning expert to have vision and values. For example, if you know nothing about computers you could still have a vision for the school that involves computers being used to advance literacy skills, perhaps visually for some year groups, perhaps creatively, or perhaps in good old fashioned black and white only. Maybe you value collaboration and group work at your school, or you are constantly seeking ways of increasing more engaging lessons in specific (or all) subjects. Perhaps you want to build closer home-school relationships in a seamless way, removing (not adding) stress for teachers. You could start with that and very quickly understand if you want to buy iPads or Chromebooks, or another option you have in mind.
You don’t have to solve everything in one go: you could buy a set of devices now, assess their impact and buy more next term - once you have had a chance to assess them within your SMART plan. There is no magic pill for digital learning, and trying to start with the silver bullet will be stressful and ultimately produce little in the classrooms. Start at the start, remember your change management, and be patient with your development plan. Be discerning with your choice of apps and software. 2-4 incredible apps in a thought-out plan will deliver much better results than 20 apps and crossed fingers that they will be your silver bullet.
3) The ‘digital native’ conundrum
Thinking back on the days of being a classroom teacher wheeling a laptop trolley into my classroom is simultaneously (A) an eternity ago and (B) just a couple of years ago! This particular day I have in mind was like most other days, I brought the laptop trolley into the class and distributed the devices to the students. This was in 2009, before the term ‘digital native’ had raised its ugly head.
As a class teacher, who loved tech, I spent the first 10 minutes dealing with helping students turn the laptops on, explaining why they were waiting or were seeing updates, or why their battery was going dead…and after that 10 minutes, I somehow resisted the urge to put all the laptops back in the trolley and whizz it back out of the class quicker than it got there. I battled on. But I love digital learning and have a deep appreciation for the impact it can make.
Fast forward to today: most hardware issues such as batteries dying inexplicably are a thing of the past, if the devices are managed properly. Students are generally very confident with jumping on any computer or any app and giving it a go - what to do when they get there is a whole different story, BUT the entire headache I had in 2009 is now an irrelevant anecdote. Computers are better, and ‘digital native’ students are very happy to learn as they go. This is the extent of their digital native skills though. It ends there. It goes no further.
Students aren’t magically able to use a device to engage with the curriculum just because they were born in a world where everyone has a smartphone. They are born with a comfort and confidence around technology though, that enables teachers to skip so many headaches of yore when it comes to introducing digital learning. For example, imagine you are doing a project on Ancient Egypt and you want to create it in Google Workspace. Students will be using the device to research information, they will use it to create a slideshow or other document and they will be focusing on narrative, story development, sentence structure, understanding of the history topic, and expressing their understanding in a creative, relevant way. This is not something that they sit around doing at home or are naturally able to do because they are ‘digital natives’. This is an opportunity for teachers to leverage the comfort and confidence of their students around technology to build a dynamic learning environment.
Remember, computers are there to achieve curriculum goals - just like pencils, paper, limitless A1 fluorescent sheets and pritt stick, encyclopaedias, books etc. Computers are all this and more, all wrapped up into one neat little box capable of creating projects in a huge variety of creative ways. But isn’t there still a place for A1 fluorescent sheets with facts and pictures stuck all over them? Yes. Do you think computers should just replace all this stuff? No. There are many ways to learn, computers are just one of them - a new and increasingly important one, but they must fit within every teacher’s existing teaching and learning environments.
Conclusion
These three common mistakes are easily avoided, that’s the good news. Avoiding them will help you to grow an impactful digital learning environment within your school. It will help your students keep moving into the 21st century when it comes to engaging the curriculum and growing as mature, responsible digital citizens.
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