Update

A quick post.

The survey has now been drafted and sent to Jennifer. I await feedback, but am already aware of a few ethical issues. The opening instructions to the survey state:

You have been randomly selected to complete a survey concerning homework and learning which requires the use of a computer and/or the Internet. Please answer the following questions honestly as your input will be used to help improve ICT-related learning across the school; all answers will be kept confidential.

 

On completion, please return this form to Mr. x  or Ms. y.

Whilst this should ensure honest completion, it does not emphacise the importance of the survey enough. Some students may still not fill it in, not realising how it could benefit them. This will be combatted by giving this to students at the beginning of their ICT lesson and collected at the end. Then again, what happens if they don’t study ICT-this will cause minor logistical complciations.

Another obvious issue regards research ethics-essentially we are lying to students in order to ensure they answer honestly. Is it right to “camouflage” the true purpose of a survey in order to achieve good results. i.e. does the ends justify the means?

Lastly it regards who we should give this survey too. We will automatically omit year 13 as they leave in 3 weeks. But what about year 10, 11 and 12.

Year 10: Some may leave at the end of year 11 and so it will have to be amde clear that if they do so, the laptop should be returned. I hope this does not automatically force them/affect their choice of sixth form study-although it is something worth considering.

Year 11: Should we omit them? We should check their VIth form offers/status as they may be returning to the school in which case they are as eligible as anyone else.

Year 12: Similar to Year 10, they will definitely leave in 1 year’s time. In which case, their laptops will have to be returned. This also seems a bit illogical as the students will certainly need these if they are to continue to higher education.

I have begun to acknowledge the dilemmas of being a participant researcher. Whilst being involved in the research and also trying to follow the guidelines of a scheme, you are also aware of “real-world” issues and practicalities.

Selection of pupils and questionnaire design.

After reading Altrichter et al’s Teachers Investigate their work I felt ready to continue discussions with Jennifer, my head of faculty. We discussed our selection process and what priorities existed. The laptops are already in school, and despite initially having the incorrect amount of memory installed, this was corrected yesterday. The web ‘n’ walk has been paid for since March and so it is in our best interest for both this action research and for the students for this scheme to be initiated asap. 68 students need to be shortlisted to 30, these have all been pre-screened as the most neediest students (i.e. on the free school meal register).

We will try to filter this list of 68 down by firstly constructing a questionnaire which would essentially be an ICT audit of the pupil’s primary residence. i.e. do they have a computer and internet access, is this shared or not. Obviously the top priority will go to students who have neither access to a computer or internet access.

These questionnaires will be handed out in ICT lessons and pupils will be informed that they have been chosen at random to complete an ICT survey, any mention of the “computers for pupils” scheme may influence students (to be dishonest about their ICT provision) in their answers. This would also falsely raise expectations which has ethical issues especially considering the economic profile of this group of students. For these same reasons, parents will also not be involved until a later stage.

Two further issues arose; firstly the scheme is a two year scheme, and we therefore agreed to rule out students in year 13 and also those in year 11 who will not continue to study at the school after July 2008. We also thought about students currently in years 10 and 12 and the connotations if they left the school 1 year into the scheme. If this were to happen, students would have to return the laptop and this would have to be written into the contract/end user license agreement (EULA). We will obviously be submitting ourselves to the risk that students do not return these laptops.

The second issue is that the head of social inclusion, Anne has already prioritised one student for one of the laptops. For an unestablished reason she has not taken the same route as all other potential students and she already has a laptop-although this was given to her several weeks before I became aware of (and involved in) the scheme. Anne has also given her “input” as to who she considers the priority students are based on her (confidential?) knowledge of the student’s socio-economic status. I will try to be a positive as possible in involving Anne, however myself and Jennifer (my Head of Faculty) are standing by the underlying ethos of only giving laptops to the most neediest students which will be assessed by research  conducted by ourselves. The first step of this research as aforementioned will be the questionnaire. This questionnaire will be designed over the weekend and once approved by Jennifer, will be handed to students to complete in their ICT class.

The results of the questionnaire will be analysed and the students will be shortlisted, this shortlist will also be presented to Anne (Head of social inclusion) to see if we have missed off any students which would appear to be a priority student to her.

Feedback from Peter Grimes from notes dated 21st May 2008

Notes to be scanned.

Thoughts from notebook dated May 2008

The school has started to pilot Fronter a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) in some year groups. Creating online content, homework and quizzes. It was worth considering piloting this with my year 7 class and measuring the effect on learning. However after some thought, I felt it would be unwise to do so. Mainly because this was a system that I was unfamiliar with and trying to assess progress and the effect of this technology on learning would be flawed if I myself was learning the software.  Differences in progress could simply be attributed to poor teaching of an unfamiliar system.

My Head of faculty mentioned a scheme that the school is in the process of initiating called “Computers for pupils“. The scheme is targetted at students on the Free school meal’s register and aims at providing students with a computer to use at home. Whilst the scheme had initially budgetted for 68 students at our school to have a laptop for 2 years, this would only include 1 year’s boradband Internet access through web ’n’ walk services. The software included was also quite minimal.

My head of department therefore decided on upgrading to a 2 year web ‘n’ walk contract and to have software which would be fully compatible with the school system. With this specification, the budget allows for 30 students to gain benefit from the scheme.

I therefore planned to assess the impact of this scheme on student learning and progress.

Reactions from Peter Grimes

The study is far too broad for an action research study at this level. There is also an issue regarding access. Would this severely disadvantage students who did not have Internet access at home?-This question in itself could be an action research project. In summary, simply trying to monitor one of these technologies would be sufficient.

Initial thoughts-from notebook dated January-February 2008

I wish to research the effect of E-learning-using blogs, e-mail, Virtual Learning Environments (VLE’s), bulletin board forums and instant messaging on student learning. I would pilot these different technologies with one group of year 7’s and assess the progress before the introduction of these technologies and after. I expect that students will where possible try to use these technologies to discuss their homework with each other whilst not at school. They could also post questions to myself to clarify points. Homework could be e-mailed instead of handed in on paper.