Technology skills are crucial for 21st-century students

Technology skills are seen as crucial to providing students with the skills for the 21st-century workplace. But how are do our schools compare internationally?

“We are inclined to beat ourselves up and say that other countries are much farther down the line on this front than we are but in fact – and I’m on the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Seville – they are not. The meeting of teaching and technology is a new area, so there’s no ranking as such,” says Sean Gallagher who heads up the ICT section of the Professional Development Service for Teachers.

The PDST, which comes under the auspices of the Department of Education and Skills, provides support for teachers across the primary and secondary school curricula, including the use of technology in the class room.

“Some countries have introduced coding in the classroom but others feel that coding is just the inputting of data and that, without the computational thinking teaching, it isn’t of enormous value in and of itself,” says Gallagher.

Finland

While Finland regularly tops world education rankings, it has not stolen any march in relation to technology and teaching, he feels.

“Comparing Finland to Ireland is like comparing apples and oranges. Finland gives a lot of autonomy to its teachers; they don’t undergo the same inspections we have here, for example, and you have to have a masters degree to become a teacher, so it’s a cultural thing. Equally, you can’t compare how we are doing with countries like the US because you’re not going to get uniformity there from state to state, or even within states.”

The best way solution for Ireland in regards to technology and teaching therefore is to “think of this in terms of what would be best for us”, he says.

A significant part of the direction any education system takes comes from employers looking for workers with the skills they need. As part of that technology, education increasingly encompasses classes in handling digital content properly.

Provenance

Resources such as Scoilnet, for example, an information database managed by the PDST, provides material whose provenance is known and authenticated. “Too often we see students just log on to search engines and copy and paste material, without regard to the source,” said Gallagher.

Scoilnet enables them to footnote research properly, and to handle and manage images and material in a way that does not infringe copyright. This is an increasingly important area for employers. “It’s a safe way to develop your research skills,” he says.

The new curriculum is based on active learning, another development that aims to prepare students for their working life, he says.

“The traditional model was didactic teaching, where the teacher stands at the top of the room or writes on the board, and the students read and learn. The new curriculum is based on active learning and open-ended investigation. With ICT too, it’s not just about consumption of content. If you only use technology to replace what you are doing on the board or in books, you are just replacing one form of didactic teaching with another.”