Consultation on the development of a Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy for Scotland

Understanding of what computers are and how they work?

There is clearly a great deal of inefficiency and waste in the procurement of equipment. Much of this, I am sure, has to do with central buying contracts. My experience at an Edinburgh primary school led me into contact with dozens of ancient looking dell machines with easily breakable little latches on the front that were costing hundreds of pounds to fix. Surely if a laptop costs £150 we can do with less of these dinosaurs?

The report chooses to restate the Building Society claim that “ICT to enhance learning” is a dated concept. In all, the research presented seem to support both embedding it more in every subject, as well as introducing a separate idea of “digital literacy” that will allow its explicit teaching. In light of the research presented, the recommendations for future action seem vague.

“Work with stakeholders to review the aspects of Curriculum for Excellence relating to the use of digital technology, considering their place within the curriculum structure and ensuring that they are relevant, ambitious and forward-looking.”

We wondered if this meant the return of ICT as a specialist subject? Will this take into account that most coders laugh at what they learned in ICT, or that the term “ICT” itself sounds horribly dated. As a friend who works in network architecture said, “anything I need to learn I find on google”.

We wondered; how ambitious are we trying to be? All children could feasibly learn how to code simple HTML websites, but there are not the teachers for it. Perhaps websites like “textadventures.co.uk” could be useful scaffolding tools that provide a purpose for coding.

“ Work with SQA and other key partners to support, develop and embed approaches to assessment that make full use of digital technology.”

Working with SQA and and others appears to be a good idea, however, we feel there needs to be more specific details regarding the type of support they may provide. The world of digital technology is so vast amongst our culture now that we feel there are a great range of opportunities for learning provisions to take place within the curriculum for excellence. This could be through creation of portfolios, through storylines, through programing…the list is almost endless!

“Explore ways in which digital technology can support the individual needs and capabilities of learners, and provide feedback to practitioners that is specific to the individual learner.”

We thought that this seemed like the most promising line of usage of digital technology. Children could advance through a series of games as their understanding develops. Investment in a set of well scaffolded and fun activities for each subject could easily consolidate and advance knowledge and encourage children to take responsibility for their own learning.

This approach already exists in the private sector; language learning apps like Duolingo and Plecodic take much of the drudgery out of the repetitive processes of language learning and allow learners to advance at their own pace. If these activities gave automatic feedback, it would allow the teacher to

There are of course, still large problems; quick obsolescence of hardware and software could result in a lot of wasted investment. Children who do not engage with the computers at all would need some other way of engaging with the course content. Lastly, over reliance on screens might lead to the neglect of other important social classroom behaviour such as group work, presentations and creating displays.

Is it deliberately vague? There is very little that could be disagreed with in the whole document, as such, I am not sure if it is of much use.