RTL2 Assignment 3 Video Script

Daniel - Welcome to Teacher Talk, the podcast that prepares teachers for the future. My name
is Daniel and my KLAs are ICT and Business. Today we have some guest speakers joining us.
Today we’ll be talking about our findings and research of ICT and it’s effectiveness in the
classroom. Before we begin, lets introduce ourselves:

Lizzie - Hi my name is Lizzie, currently undertaking my Masters of Secondary Teaching and

majoring in PDHPE. I based my research for today on the question ‘How are Australian schools
implementing ICT?’

Alannah - Hi, i’m Alannah, im a pre-service teacher studying English. I focused my research on
Student Engagement with ICT in the classroom and whether or not students find it helpful in
their learning.

Daniel - So before we go into our literature reviews, lets explain to the audience at home what a
literature review is. Alannah, care to answer that for us?

Alannah - I believe a​ ​literature review​ is an evaluative report of information found in the

literature ​related to your selected area of study. The ​review​ should describe, summarise,
evaluate and clarify this ​literature​.

Lizzie - The first topic for discussion is, where is Australia at in terms of Technology.

● In the context of Australian schools, considerable advances have been made in the
introduction of ICT into schools over the past 10 years with results such as increased
ICT Literacy scores in the NAP ICTL test.

● In 2008 the Digital Education Revolution was introduced to increase ​access​ to

technology. This scheme provided enough ​funding​ to supply computers and software to
all students from years 9 - 12 in all Australian state and territory schools.
Daniel - I missed out on a free laptop.
Alannah - I was fortunate to receive one.
Lizzie - For example, studies have shown that for ​every three students, they have access to
one computer​ at school which is more than the international standard, this isn’t including their
own personal devices. So if research suggests there are minimal concerns for resource
availability within schools , what are the reasons they are falling short in implementation to
reach it’s full potential?

Daniel - I guess the issue is that teachers just lack experience. My research found that in China
for example, university students who undertake an ICT class in their Master’s of teaching
degree find a disconnection between their tutorials and lectures. To further back this, Lux did
research looking at experiences that preservice teachers have with ICT. He found that if
teacher’s were given a chance to experience ICT early on, they were more inclined to use it in
their lesson plans. However, most preservice teachers enter the world of teaching with a lack of
support for using ICT.

Lizzie - In talking about lack of support, studies I looked at outlined the importance of
reinforcement from the top down. So for example school leaders, in particular Principals or
faculty head teachers, should be the driving force of integrating ICT into their programs correctly
and effectively. Teachers should be encouraged and supported by their coworkers to use ICT
for it’s growth and development in the classroom.

Alannah - Well considering the fact ICT is now embedded within the Australian Curriculum, it is
very important that ICT is implemented appropriately, there is more responsibility for teachers to
integrate within their lessons a repertoire of ICTS that assist to enrich students learning and
engagement, however there appears to be a lack of structure around the particular learning
area surrounding ICT. And again, with any teaching and learning resources, including ICT there
is always the potential to be successful or to be unsuccessful depending on how that resource is
implemented.

Lizzie - Common themes that emerged from the literature i reviewed include the ​lack of
curriculum structure ​around teaching ICT - it is imbedded throughout rather than being a
learning area in its own right. It would benefit if schools would require a ​clear set of skills ​for
students to achieve in the form of ​learning outcomes​. This way, teachers can outline
indicators for successful learning ​specific to ICT outcomes.
Alannah - Now we are going to take calls from the public. Hello Rima on line 1.

RIMA ON line1

Daniel - Great stuff. I’m also inclined to believe that teacher’s especially preservice teachers will
form beliefs about what ICT can do in the classroom. Negative experiences will result in minimal
use of ICTTeachers have ​insufficient professional learning​ to acquire new skills, ​not enough
time to prepare lessons and lack of incentive to implement ICT​ into the classroom
.

Alannah - The articles i reviewed discussed in great detail, student motivation when it came to
using ICT. In Taiwan four schools participated in the International School CyberFair, this is
where students created websites using the Project Based Learning Framework and chose a
topic of their own choosing.The findings revealed that students within each group that
participated showed signs of being highly motivated in their learning through the extensive use
of ICT.

Daniel - When I taught in Taiwan, the students were capable users of ICT and were highly
motivated to follow instructions in PBL pedagogies.

Alannah - Thats very interesting Daniel. Another study looking at Arabic schools focuses on the
usage of digital videos and their impact on the teaching and learning process within
classrooms.The case study specifically looks into student satisfaction and motivation to use the
videos along with the overall impact on their learning. However, the use of such videos in the
classroom needs to be combined with supportive activities to engage students in learning within
an environment which is motivating for them.

HOLES of our literature review

Daniel - Within the literature I looked over, I found one common fault which is background
knowledge. Only 1 of the journals conducted a pre and post test to see how much changed with
the survey sample’s understanding and positive attitudes towards ICT. Also the literature I came
across varied and I found it difficult to find only Australian research.

Alannah - The literature i reviewed had various limitations. The data that they collected was
insufficient due to the limited participants, focusing on either one school or only a handful of
schools which does not provide enough data to accurately say that students became engaged
while using ICT. It was also difficult to find articles based in Australia, which doesn’t allow for a
global perspective.

Lizzie - I found that a ​limitation of the research​ I looked at was only conducting the studies in
specific demographics. For example, access to ICT resources in urban areas would be very
different from access in rural schools, therefore giving very skewed data and conclusions. The
above themes definitely open up more avenues for research and leave room for opportunities to
put new ​policies​ in place from these findings.

Alannah - I agree, in my own data collection which i will expand upon later, there was a small
percentage of students who do not have access to ICT due to financial instability and have not
grown up with it in the household even though we live in a generation where ICT is so common.

Data Collection
Daniel - So, I believe we’ve all conducted our own bit of research to find answers to the
question, is ICT implemented effectively in the classroom?

With my own research, I went out to ask 4 preservice teacher’s if they could spare some time
and tell me about their experiences on prac and within their Master’s of teaching degree. This
qualitative research found that all the interviewees were implementing ICT. However, the types
of ICT used depended on the teacher and their background knowledge. I found the teacher’s
who had an ICT background found it easy and ideal to use the smartboard in the classroom for
other things than using it as a projector. The issue primarily lied in training. Most teacher’s were
not aware of Web 2.0 technologies which are necesary to collabarate and do project based
learning.
Lizzie - In my personal data collection, the qualitative research method I used was to analyse
artefacts in the form of lesson plans to see whether teachers successfully integrated ICT into
their lesson.
● I found ICT use was dependant on what the school as a whole was promoting. For
example, one school I looked at used Google Classroom as a benchmark for student
teacher communication. Teachers could post up work and students could
comment/submit via there as a collaborative approach.

Alannah - I used the data collection method of surveys, where i gathered qualitative and
quantitative information from 20 student participants. In my data analysis I found that most
students use a variety of different forms of ICT within the classroom on a daily basis. Search
Engines were the highest rating form of ICT used, most students saying it is easier to find
information this way than using traditional forms such as textbooks. Interestingly, YouTube and
other online medias received the second highest rating.

Lizzie - Thats interesting as I found that many lesson plans I looked at used very basic
resources such as YouTube videos to introduce or outline a topic. Not many resources were
used to actually engage the student and make them interact with the content.

Alannah - Yeah, I also found that most students found technology easy to use as they
commented stated having grown up with technology in the household and that they would prefer
modern learning methods than traditional. However, some students did state that they prefer
traditional learning methods as technology can be distracting, and also break often.
Although my data collection states that ICT is engaging students within the classroom, there is
no way to measure how effective the engagement is and how helpful it is with student learning.

Daniel - So tying this all together, comparing where we are currently at in terms of ICT use in the
classroom to where we want to be in the future, let’s strategise an action plan. To start, from the
pre-service teacher’s perspective we could hold classes out of school hours to assist them to
become more competent with using ICT in the classroom.
Lizzie - From a whole school’s perspective, Principals could implement ICT as part of the
teachers’ Professional Learning. This would give them an incentive to use ICT in their practice
which would go towards their accreditation.

Alannah - From my research focussing on evaluating student engagement, schools could

formulate assessments for students that require different forms of ICT which would increase
student learning and proficiency in the use of ICT in the classroom. Another method would be to
hold classes for students in the library to ensure they are knowledgeable in how to use ICT
which would then increase how effective they are in using ICT for assessments.

Lizzie - Leading on from what our caller Rima discussed, teacher’s could engage students in the
lesson to teach THEM how to use the ICT. This type of role reversal will break down the
teacher/student barrier to create an engaging, collaborative environment.

Daniel - So thats all folks. Thank you to our guest speakers and thank you to our listeners.