Education technology is often touted as a panacea for all that ails the education sector. Internet connected laptops, tablets, smartphones and smart-boards are supposed to be the magic tools that deliver universal access to the so-called information superhighway. Yet in practice, education technology has been more hype than reality.
Plans for the connected classroom are missing an important ingredient: real, reliable broadband Internet access. Forget broadband "to the school;" it's time for broadband to all students and teachers IN the schools.
While Internet service providers make marketing boasts of broadband-to-school initiatives and governments promote laptop and tablet in school programs and other digital learning initiatives, there remains a vital missing link. Too often, the onramp to the information superhighway is blocked by horrendously slow and unreliable Internet connections.
In the real world of schools and university campuses, teachers report that education technology is often more a hindrance than a help in the class.
Limited teacher technical skills; poor or no Internet connectivity; and inadequate or inappropriate tools and facilities add more overhead and teaching load to already overburdened, resource constrained and often technologically under-prepared learning environments. Efforts by students to take advantage of their connected devices for learning are also being frustrated.
Students search for and herd around weak Wi-fi signals at school, in town centres and community halls like desert nomads in search of an oasis. Something is terribly wrong with this picture and it's time to get it right.
Education and technology: A special relationship
Information and communications technologies and services have always played a significant role in education. Before the advent of today's world of broadband Internet access, cloud-computing, apps and mobile devices other, academic researchers were among the first users of what became known as the Internet.
As the Internet grew, so did the sophistication and diversity of the content and tools. Learning management systems, like Moodle and Blackboard, are now being widely deployed through the education sector. Massive education content repositories, like Khan Academy, now deliver information once housed only in physical textbooks and libraries. Online and social media platforms are also providing new ways for students to collaborate and educators to connect and share.
Today the Internet has become an essential part of the education process. From pre- and primary school through the secondary and tertiary levels, students and teachers are using the Internet to do research, organise assignments and to prepare and present classwork.
Physical textbooks are gradually being replaced by more interactive e-textbooks, spurred on by initiatives such as The Global Text Project and Project Guttenberg, a volunteer effort to digitise and archive cultural works. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets offer the promise of further transformations by personalising the learning experience and creating new opportunities to interact with content.
Without proper broadband and reliable connectivity in schools, the dream of the connected class quickly turns into a nightmare of frustration. Internet connection speeds at most schools is simply too slow to service the demands of 21st century education. Too many schools have a far more fundamental challenge, lacking the basic wired and wireless networks for students and teachers to access educational content.
Access for all
Schools should be given the best opportunity to make better use of technology and the Internet to promote more effective and widespread access to education. Given the significant impact of technology on learning, it is critical that all students and all teachers have proper Internet access.
A top priority is to ensure that all schools have sufficient bandwidth to meet the needs of connected learners and connected educators. It is no longer sufficient to speak only in Internet connectivity terms of megabits to the schools. Connectivity plans and policies must consider and track connectivity speeds per school user. The reason is simple. When every student can be online at any time, from any location in school, the requirement for broadband Internet access is much greater. And the demand for broadband is only going to continue growing as teachers and users consume and create rich multimedia content.
The shift to technology-enhanced learning is imperative, not optional. Schools that are serious about integrating technology in education must secure enough bandwidth to facilitate every student being online simultaneously. They must also invest in the necessary in-school support infrastructure to deliver that bandwidth over wired and wireless networks to user devices.
Once upon a time, it was reasonable to focus on providing broadband connections to a few computers in a school computer lab. Not any more. With students and teachers increasingly likely to be using mobile personal devices rather than desktop computers as learning tools, access needs to be delivered to every device and in every classroom.
Enhancing the learning experience
The availability of proper broadband in schools, supported by appropriate networking and technical infrastructure, promises a powerful new platform for learning. High-speed Internet access in schools will not only enhance the learning experience, it will also better enable students to acquire the skills that they need to flourish in the digital era.
If we truly want to prepare our children to their place in this hyper-connected world, we have to provide them with access in schools to the same technology that surrounds them in the rest of their lives. The technology exists and the bandwidth needed to support is available. Now we need to ensure that the investment, strategies, policies and leadership needed for all our educators and students to have proper broadband access, is also in place to make the dream of connected learning a reality.
Bevil Wooding is the an Internet strategist with US-based research firm Packet Clearing House and the founder and executive director of BrightPath Foundation, an technology education non-profit organisation. Reach him on Twitter @bevilwooding or on facebook.com/bevilwooding or contact via e-mail at technologymatters@brightpathfoundation.org.