ICT and Education Conference at
Norwegian University of Technology and Science
Introduction
The National Conference on the Use of ICT in Education and Learning was held in the city of Trondheim, Norway, from the 11th
to the 13th of May 2016. The conference took place at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)’s science and technology campus, Gløshaugen. The
conference is an event for working teachers, pedagogy students, ICT companies,
governmental offices, publishers and researchers/ speakers delivering a packed
program of presentations. I spent most of my time looking through the stands, but
also had time to attend a few presentations. In this blogpost I’ll highlight
some of the things that caught my eyes. It won’t be a complete overview over
the whole conference, but in keeping with this blog: the blend of technology
and creativity, and also technical education-facilities will be central.
This
blogpost will be segmented into two:
1. The post
you are reading will deal with publishing, networking, trajectories and
reflections around ICT in education.
 |
| Presentation: learning-design in context. |
Trends in Publishing
Large Media Companies
National broadcasters NRK (Norway’s version of the BBC) and TV2 have taken a great leap into the education sector by creating online platforms that lets pupils and students tap into the companies’ wells of recorded material. Comprehensive new material has also been created to address the need of Norwegian schools. I have not yet used their platforms, but judging from presentation, TV2 seems to hold the leading edge. The companies are operating as publishers (as opposed to traditional media-companies) when delivering services in the education sector.
Using
platforms where extensive video-material covers (at least in the long run) the
entire school curriculum has obvious advantages. Topics like modern history and
social sciences are perhaps the areas where these platforms are most self-explanatory.
However, content for topics like mathematics, science and language also seems
to be well developed or under way. I do however, feel that a word of caution is
in order. Norway is politically a country that for many decades have embraced
left-of-centre politics. This has trickled into its media-coverage, and it’s a
well-known fact amongst media-researchers that the media in general covers
current events with a slight left-bias. Looking back at my own education it
took me many years of travelling and higher studies to un-learn many accepted
truths from my school-years that were clearly politically biased, especially in
social sciences, but also in history. I’m all for presenting both sides of the
story from a neutral middle-ground and if I have one concern with Norwegian
media-companies now educating minors, it is an accentuation of an existing
political bias. I am not trying to advocate removing certain views from
schools, but rather complementing them in a more neutral and holistic sense.
Let’s see what the future brings, but for teachers who use these platforms this
is currently something one should look out for! To end on a positive note, the
tools that have been developed by these media-giants seems packed with
interesting content. The companies express a work-in-progress attitude, which
tells me there will be more development of content (perhaps also on the
delivery-platforms) in the very near future.
 | |
| Views from around the conference- area, and the stands. |
Other Publishers
BS Undervisning (translates ‘BS Education’) provides a platform for coordinating sales and use of both printed and digital media. They have over 1500 digital learning resources in their catalogue and sports some of the biggest names in Norwegian educational publishing as collaborators. Amongst other things they provide a service that lets you search and link to the online resources that your institute subscribes to. BS Undervisning is part of a larger corporation that provides goods and services for libraries and places of learning.
One of my
personal favourites was Norwegian publisher Gyldendal’s stand. Gyldendal had
resources, tools for teaching and assessment in one place through their SMART programme. What caught the attention of the music producer in me the most, was
that they are now offering guitar-course videos through one of their online
platforms. They don’t have immediate thoughts on developing their music-teaching
content, but were very open to the idea. As a ‘Sound and Music Production’
lecturer I used Lynda and AskVieo/ MacProVideo for students in vocationally angled higher education.
These are great resources as a supplements, and sometimes even as radical
improvement from traditional printed resources! It is therefore really good
news for the future of music education in schools to see creative and artistic
content becoming available alongside theoretical topics. Gyldendal seems to be
a publishing house to watch for this sort of development.
Professional Network
for teachers
and Online Safety for students
‘Senter for IKT i Utdanningen’ is an organisation that was set up under the Royal
Norwegian Ministry of Education in 2010. It can be translated ‘Centre for ICT in Education.’
The centre is there to help lift the quality of ICT use in kindergartens,
schools and for pedagogy students. In addition to working with the quality of
ICT-education, the centre focuses on internet safety and the training of pupils
to exert good judgement in ICT-based interactions. They are one of the
initiative-takers behind the webpage and printed material for http://www.DUbestemmer.no/. ‘Du bestemmer’
translates ‘You Decide’ and is a resource that deals with healthy conduct, law,
plus positives and negatives a person encounters when interacting across the
internet. The ‘Centre for ICT in Education’ also provides research and
initiatives that it goes outside of this blogpost to cover. These include
development of regional leadership in the school sector and help with finding
the right digital resources for use in education.
‘Klassetrivsel’
is a term that describes how pupils feel (positive or negative) about their
class and their social interactions. It is an online tool for teachers that can
assess how students feel about their every-day life and social interactions in
school. It provides feed-back to teachers that helps them assess and address
the experience of being a pupil in their class. It started as a project at a
school in 2007, and is now a tool available for all Norwegian schools who
subscribe to the service. Their webpage is: http://www.klassetrivsel.no/
Creative Software
Creaza is a platform
where you can make mind-maps, video and audio presentations, and cartoons.
Let’s say, the teacher shares a mind-map with the students. The students pick
up the mind map and follow up with their own research. In the end a multimedia
presentation is produced by the students over a topic given by the teacher. The
tool is very well geared towards creative responses to assessments and
incorporates ICT-skills in a fluid way. The video and audio editors looks
familiar for users of Mac-software. I don’t believe tools like Creaza can take
the place of reading and writing in a traditional sense, but it is a very
diverse ICT-supplement. It is diverse in the sense that it covers all the bases
of muli(ple)-media in óne platform — this should make it easier for the
teacher, who don’t have to relate to three or four different software-packs but
who rather can relate to óne. Creaza has won several awards and I encourage you
to:
1) Look at
their web-site, as the different tools
included in Creaza is described in a very accessible way by clicking on the
banners under the ‘Product’ banner. There is also a Creaza-blog that keeps you
up to date on news about the software.
2) Look at Creaza’s
YouTube user, which is packed with tutorials and examples.
In my own
teaching experience, I’ve worked with higher-/ vocational education. We used
softwares like Cubase and ProTools which are professional tools from the
creative industries. Creaza, as far as I can see, belongs in primary and
secondary education. The ICT-skills acquired from Creaza should be easy to
transfer to professional platforms when pupils/ students reach a higher level
of studies. I believe I would find it easier to train higher-education students
who are familiar with platforms like Creaza on professional platforms. Apart
from the obvious use in a modern classroom, I can see two other uses for
Creaza:
1) Students
who struggle to follow regular teaching for various reasons. Creaza is engaging and forces you to create, and not
just respond like to a computer-game. It also looks particularly good at
creating ‘narratives.’ Work with narratives is no foreign thought in pedagogy
or social sciences. In 2012 I wrote about the research of Electro Acoustic composer Louise
Rossiter, who
explored the use of Electro Acoustic composition as a therapeutic tool for pupils
from troubled backgrounds. The results were positive. Creaza is not an Electro
Acoustic composition platform, but if used in similar ways I’d expect results
pointing in the same direction.
2) Use for
adult learners with limited skills, either in: 1) ICT, or 2) the topic of the
class (including language). A good example would be for teaching immigrants
with limited language and ICT skills, and limited skills on local society.
Creaza would combine an intuitive ICT platform, and basic use of language in
presentations; while allowing the learner to feel success in making a good
product while still not in full command of the language. (As opposed to a
presentation where everything is resting on language.) Examples of interaction
and aspects of society can be animated in the simple-to-use Cartoonist
application.
As this
software caught my imagination I’ll add a quick YouTube video just to give you
a visual idea of what it looks like:
Trajectories in ICT
New Media Consortium’s (NMC) Horizon Project has published a rapport about the trajectories the use of technology in Norwegian education. The rapport was published in 2013 and covers 2013-2018. It analyses the matter on three time horizons: one year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. The Norwegian rapport is a collaboration with The Norwegian Centre for ICT In Education. NMC have done rapports on several countries. Here is the link to the Norwegian rapport. NMC runs a conference and the website has a blog with their current news.
Is ICT The Way?
ICT is
certainly a buzzword in education right now, but can we trust that ICT-tools
really can take over for traditional learning tools? I think the answer is both
yes and no. A future with more ICT and automatization clearly needs a workforce
who is able to address the new tasks. But I’m also worried that we sometimes
are over-emphasising the constantly changing technical aspects of the future at
the expense of the not-so-changing human aspects of the future.
I guided in
the Norwegian mountains for many years and I remember a study from the early
2000’s stating that children who attended ‘outback kindergartens’ (close
proximity to outback, and much use of outdoor activities. Norwegian expression
is: ‘friluftsbarnehage’) were better at a range of things, including
problem-solving than children from inner-city kindergartens. Studies like these
remind us that modern society is built on harnessing the potential that exists
at the core of creation and of the human mind. Basic inter-human skills will
not be addressed sufficiently through online platforms for collaboration, and
the future will not be secure for job-seekers in decades to come just because
they are proficient at today’s technology. With a growing number of companies
not just addressing, but also helping to create demand for new technology in
education we have to constantly evaluate whether we are developing the human
potential in pupils and students as much as we develop our ICT-skills. I’ll
underline this with an example from one of my own areas of study, Music
Technology. I go to trade-shows and know several distributors and manufacturers
of music production gear. Every year there are new equipment-releases and
you’ll be constantly reminded you need the new products to really stay at a
current professional level. However, most of the classic albums we teach in
music-history classes are more than a decade old, and hence the technology is
practically from the stone-age in the world of the technology-manufacturers.
But tomorrow’s musicians, music educators and producers won’t be much effective
if they can’t play low-tech wooden guitars, collaborate in bands and appreciate
the potential in the tools at their disposal. To put it to its edge, I believe
in a future where the most adaptable persons can chop down trees for fire-wood,
counsel someone in trouble and write with a pencil; while operating technology,
making global interactive collaborations and assessing the deployment of the
tools they have available.
*
Thanks to NTNU for creating a meeting-ground for an
impressive array of educators, researchers and ICT industry! This was more of a
meeting-ground and an ideas-exchange, than an academic conference in a
traditional sense. I’ll be going back!
