This document discusses the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in modern pedagogy. It argues that ICTs have become essential tools in classrooms as students are accustomed to using digital media at home. The author reflects on their experience integrating ICTs like SMART Boards, videos, and online discussion platforms in their English classes. While students were digitally fluent, teachers needed to demonstrate the educational value of new technologies. The document also examines challenges of ICT integration like lack of teacher time and whole-school professional development support.

1. In the literature I felt that, despite opinion, there was a prevailing sense from all readings that
Information Computer Technologies (from here on abbreviated to ICT's) have become an essential
component of modern pedagogy. Moreover, I aligned myself with the view that ICT's are the
instigators of a supplanting brand of engaging and effective teaching revolutionising what it means
to be both teacher and student1. Sherry Hsi (2007), for example, captures this sense of cultural
change. She uses the term “the Digital Kid”; avid consumers of traditional media, as well as
electronic games and web based information (Hsi, 2007, 1). With such entrenched home-taught
practice of synchronisation with these technologies, it is only logical for the modern teacher to
bring ICT into the classroom to utilise these skill-sets for learning. Certainly there are
complications involved, well documented by Hashemzadeh and Wilson's article, which will be
discussed later in my reflection. Despite this, the opportunities, I feel, are far too exciting and
advancing to pass up.
Working as a High School English teacher, with two years of experience at a well performing and
well technologically resourced school, Killara High School, I have felt that ICT integration is very
relevant for redefining my teaching practice. To give a sense of school's technological funding,
each room had broadband access and a computer linked to a digital projector. The school had
equipped SMART Boards in half of the twelve rooms for each faculty block. In each faculty
walkway was a television network showcasing school events and student activities daily. In my
own practice I would routinely use ICT's; most commonly through a combination of videos and
Prezzi in class instruction, BlogEd for group online discussion work and electronic homework, and
the internet for student-led research projects. For one class in particular, a low-performing Year 9
boy's class, I would daily use SMART Board activities to make literacy activities more engaging.
Regardless of ability and age, the students at my school were avid users of computers. They
were largely from socio-economic backgrounds where computer use was encouraged from a very
young age, which echo Hsi's trend arguments. However, despite their obvious digital fluency, new
digital technologies always required a lot of explicit instruction across all classes at first, to show
their value to students at this school. This I attributed to attitudinal change, reflected in Garland
and Noyes (2008) argument, that a demonstration of ease and effectiveness was essential for
showing students that they would want to want to begin to engage with the ICT (Garland & Noyes,
2008, 195). Equally, Hsi's article argued the need to make ICT relevant to the students (Hsi, 2007,
1 Advocated most by Ron Oliver, Sherry Hsi and Shanti Divaharan.

2. 10), so they would want to use the software past an initial stage of becoming familiar with the
program - I was conscious of this when choosing which ICT and then demonstrating its relevance
to the students. Equally, it was clear from watching students at this school that digital media, such
as the internet, was stressed from home as a tool for educating. I rarely encountered students
using these resources for entertainment. However I could see how this could easily be otherwise
without these values reinforced from home, such as in the criticisms of technology asserted in
Hashemzadeh and Wilson (2007), and D'Angelo and Woosley (2007). Both articles show survey
results suggesting technology can prove to be too much of a distraction for those students who
don't view it as an informational tool (Hashemzadeh & Wilson, 603, D'Angelo & Woosley, 465).
Oliver (2002) highlights the teaching transition occurring in the classes stating, “Quality Education
has traditionally been associated with strong teachers having high degrees of personal contact,”
but that this is shifting however through the proliferation of ICT's “to more student-centred
learning settings.” (Oliver, 2002, 1). Further, he stresses that the era of information recall is over,
like Bitter and Pierson do in their text. With the internet's opportunity for large quantities of
information from a variety of sources (Oliver, 2013, 2, Bitter & Pierson, 2007, 3), students learn
“...how information will be used rather than what information is.” (Oliver, 2002, 2), and society
now gears toward a “populace of synthesisers filtering divergent information into a cohesive
whole.” Therefore new pedagogies must be in place to “test the acquisition of these skills by
students,” (Bitter & Pierson, 2007, 3). Teachers, like myself, should no longer dictate content but
instead mentor students in information evaluation skills, as they inquire and decide what is
meaningful. Oliver's article, of all the articles listed for pre-reading, speaks to me the most for my
own teaching practice, as I would like to move my typical class planning away from teacher-
centred explicit instruction to student-centred information discovery and group knowledge
construction.
As one past case example, for a Year 8 I had them do group presentations on books they
were reading in their spare time, as part of a larger literacy project within the English department
targeting reading. Over four lessons, the students were asked to research their story, author and
the conventions of the genre it belonged to. They storyboarded a video with this information. The

3. students used Animoto2 and chose images to complement their video from Flickr Commons 3.
Students were then able to watch each other's videos and directed to the class BlogEd4 account,
where the students could discuss each other's videos. After this they were instructed to comment
online on each other's book choices for homework, they could say three positive and negative
things about three other student's presentation and the information on the genre of novel they
had presented in the videos. They were further encouraged to discuss a book if it took their
interest. Outside of general chat about how they created their Animoto, this lead to a lot creative
debate about genre conventions and inspiration for students to try new novels. They then wrote a
letter to a person in the class describing why they like to read their novel based on its genre
conventions. After talking with the library staff these videos were formatted to be shown around
the school, in a daily hour slot on the faculty television network. It was an enjoyable activity,
appreciated by the students for not being another didactic teacher-led set of lessons, in an area of
the curriculum that should be student led inquiry. While this project was certainly in the vein of
student-centric learning advocated by Oliver, I feel more could be done generally to tailor class
activities to be more student-led. It is a lack of confidence and competency to develop units of
work in this way that has stopped this so far.
Bitter and Pierson (2007) state currently “... newer teachers, those with less than 5 years’
experience, are no more likely to use technology than teachers who have been in the classroom
for twenty years” (Bitter & Pierson, 2007, 19). They suggest that on face value this appears to be
an anomaly - it challenges the mainstream disciplinary attitude of ICT as an agent for change
embraced by young teachers, but they surmise it shows the situation is more complex than
institution’s simply having technological facilities and the optimism of their fledgling teachers
(Bitter & Pierson, 2007, 19). With my personal experience within Killara High School, I am inclined
to agree with the authors' point. I am reminded of the number of problematic concerns raised by
Divaharan and Lim (2010), who discusses the issues of time, organisational support and
professional development as a hindrance to integration. I can readily link these concerns to my
own experience.
2 An online video editing program, that is highly accessible to use – ideal for stage four students, for its ease and
interactivity. Students add videos of themselves made, adding frames of text, images and musical scores (listed on
the site) and the site compiles thevideo and adds visually interesting transitions (a hard thing to perfect for
amateur video editors).
3 Provides a gallery of online images that allow for common use, good for negotiating issues of image copyright.
4 Department of Education and Training's student blog site. A very useful resource.

4. The results of Divaharan and Lim’s Singaporean schools survey suggest that time
constraints on teachers are a major hindrance to ICT integration. At Killara, where there was high
culture of expectation and performance (driven by its desire to remain the leading comprehensive
school in the state), I felt there was rarely time during free periods or even after school to actively
investigate new ICT strategies in the classroom, most time and goodwill filled by literacy projects
being pushed by the English department. Divaharan survey results demonstrate that teachers
need to be given time to achieve substantive integration and build a level of comfort and
competency (Divaharan & Lim, 2010, 743). Another area of note in Divaharan and Lim’s article is in
the area of organisational support and professional development, Divaharan survey results
demonstrate that there needs to be a whole school principle-down focus on integrating ICT at a
school for it to be truly effective (Divaharan & Lim, 2010, 751). This was an area I felt lacked at
Killara, that while the school was well technologically resourced, I felt the culture hadn't changed
enough to see ICT truly shape curriculum construction across the faculties, with the exception of
the PE department who had gone someway digitising all their lessons on PowerPoint. I felt this
was the result of a general reluctance from teachers and heads of faculty, reminiscent of the
adamantly chalk and talk economics teachers mentioned in Hashemzadeh and Wilson's article.
Bitter and Legacy state that “...the power of technology in the end comes from well trained
teachers not well stocked classrooms (Bitter & Legacy, 2008, 7). The school did offer a “3 for
Three” program, where teachers with existing knowledge about an ICT such as Moodle or Excel
would offer to train other teachers for an hour session after schools, and in exchange for
attending three employees were entitled to a day off work. This program was only spread by word
of mouth and unofficial staff emails, asking for you day off after three sessions was actively
discouraged by faculty heads. The principal, despite being very vocal about his ideals for
enhancing teaching within the school, failed to mention digital literacies once during my two year
working period.
Hashemzadeh and Wilson's survey make an argument from students for keeping chalk and talk
lessons, for example their results suggest this type of instruction helps students to make logical
connections between key pieces of information and feel more connected to their teacher
(Hashemzadeh & Wilson, 2007, 603).5 I agree with their summary that chalk and talk method is
5I felt that for a survey to be modelled purely on PowerPoint was going to lead to the responses from students they
had (eg 43% of students claim to dose off during lectures). This is because PowerPoint, though widely recognised, is
no longer an effective ICT; it is too under-stimulating, formulaic and slide-to-slide fragmentary to view. Even a internet
program like Prezzi, offers similar slideshow like features but with a lot more fluidity and visual stimulating graphic.
SMART Board functions equally offer more interactivity for students. I wouldn't consider using PowerPoint for younger
year or low ability classes unless it was necessary, for fear of boring them too much.

5. not a wholly passive experience for the student. However their survey raises concerns, I feel like
their anti-technology survey responses may be because the technology is not fully utilised by their
teachers6 – ultimately the quality of ICT integration is the real concern in classrooms. It is my
desire that my own ICT integration will transition beyond being a supplement to my traditional
teaching practices, towards the core of my regular lesson design. I wish to see my students
become Oliver's student-centric constructivist learners. Divaharan and Lim article asks pragmatic
questions of Oliver, Bitter and Pierson, and Hsi's positive sentiments – but this simply prompts the
teacher-reader to not assume this process will simply eventuate as a result of the changing times,
but instead to creatively negotiate these barriers and actively pursue it.
List of References:
Bitter, G.G., & Pierson, M.E. (2007). Using technology in the classroom. Seventh Edition. Boston,
MA: Pearson.
D'Angelo, J. and S. Woosley (2007). ‘Technology in the classroom: friend or foe.’ Education, 127:
462-471.
Divaharan, S. & Lim, C.P. (2010). ‘Secondary school socio-cultural context influencing ICT
integration – A case study approach.’ Australasia Journal of Educational Technology, 26: 741-763.
Garland, K., & Noyes, J. (2008). ‘A review of changing attitudes towards computers in educational
settings’, Leading Edge Educational Technology, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Hashemzadeh, N., & Wilson, L. (2007). ‘Teaching with the lights out: What do we really know
about the impact of technology intensive instruction?’ College Student Journal, 41: 601-612.
Hsi, S. (2007). 'Conceptualizing Learning from the Everyday Activities of Digital Kids',
International Journal of Science Education, 29: 12, 1509 — 1529
Oliver, R. (2002). ‘The Role of ICT in Higher Education for the 21st Century: ICT as a Change
Agent for Education’, Proceedings of the Higher Education for the 21st Century Conference. Miri,
Sarawak: Curtin University.
6 The Hashemzadeh and Wilson survey was done in 2007, the technological possibilities (eg. PowerPoint) available
at the time of this survey, and teacher knowledge of how to use different ICT software engagingly, is not what it is
now. I also feel this is a very limited sample of specific group of university students, which affects the quality of
their particular survey findings.