Understanding the imagination gap that leads to technical breakdowns

Understanding the imagination gap that leads to technical breakdowns

A factor which adds to the diffi culty of interpreting research outcomes is the nature of ICT as an innovation in progress in which, at the same time that schools and teachers are attempting to integrate its use, the technology itself is constantly changing and developing. This makes considerable demands on technicians involved in procurement and systems management, as well as teachers, so that despite large expenditure by governments researchers frequently fi nd that teachers’ attempts at innovative practice are impeded by technical breakdown. Writers such as Cuban et al. (2001) rightly point to the devastating impact of systems defects on teachers’ confi dence and motivation to use technology, but seem to assume too readily that these failures are endemic to technology rather than being effects of mismatches in assumptions and differences in vision between administrator-managers, technicians and teachers. This is a process which I will call the ‘imagination gap’ and seek to understand in terms of competing interest groups within organisations, in particular differences between technician-users and teacher-users, bearing in mind that the former are constantly under stress attempting to keep up with technological change and keep systems up and running.

Inside innovation 29

Recently my colleague, Matthew Pearson, was helping fi ve-year-old children and their teacher to make videos with digi-blue cameras. The teacher organised the children in teams of producer, cameraman and presenter and they embarked on designing and making an instructional video for other children on how to make a paper windmill. The children produced all the necessary bits of the paper windmill, planned the sequence of activities to be fi lmed and shot several ‘takes’ of all the sequences. They were very engaged in what they were doing and by midday were ready to begin work on editing. With diffi culty they were persuaded to take a break and eat their school dinner. At this point it became essential to transfer the digi- blue fi lms which were currently on a stand-alone PC in the classroom to the school network which had suffi cient memory and the necessary software for editing, but this could not be done because the software had been designed to allow the transfer to a single machine only. Once the transfer of fi les was complete, the software erased the video fi les from the camera which meant sharing them across a number of machines was not possible. By working throughout the lunch break, Matthew was able to work out a method of transferring the fi les onto the network and provide a ‘mirror’ of the original fi le structure downloaded to the single machine so that pupils could work on clips taken from one camera on a number of machines and save their edited versions back on to the network. Without this intervention, the teacher’s planned lesson would have been seriously compromised at lunchtime and only one group at a time would have been able to edit the video shot in the morning session.

This is a fairly typical example of the kind of practical problem that frequently occurs when children are carrying out fl exible and creative tasks with ICT. Although apparently all the facilities needed to make the video fi lms were available, the technology infrastructure had been set up without envisaging that teachers and children would need to transfer digi-blu fi les from the stand-alone PC to the network. There was an ‘imagination gap’ between the technical experts who set up the system and those who would learn over time how to use it to transform pedagogy and learning. Teachers, who make innovative use of ICT for teaching and learning, moving beyond uses which merely ‘fi t in’ with their existing practice, are of necessity depending on the way the technology has been installed. However, the presumption that ICT will fi t into existing practice is usually embedded in the minds of technicians who procure and install ICT systems, and they tend to assume a simple transmission model of pedagogy. As a result there are frequent examples of this imagination gap built into the installation and operation of ICT systems. From the point of view of individual teachers the problems resulting from infl exibilities in infrastructure are compounded by issues relating to power and social status within the organisation.

This is why strong leadership, which provides formal support structures and informal encouragement and championing, is a crucial factor in the success of ICT innovations. In organisations without strong leadership the main barriers to innovation may be the gate-keepers of technology rather than technology itself. This often arises not from ill-will, but from a desire to keep things simple and ensure that the system is easy to maintain. The job of technical experts procuring and installing new ICT systems in educational settings is very demanding, partly because of the high costs of equipment. Often they do not have control over budgets and decisions

30 Understanding innovation are made by senior managers or administrators, on the basis of their advice, within

the existing fi nancial constraints. What teachers and children will need the system to deliver is impossible to predict in advance, but will emerge over time as they develop new pedagogical practices mediated by ICT. The affordances are latent until ICT becomes, in McLuhan’s (1964, p. 3) terms, an extension of the teacher’s and students’ body and mind. Therefore, the more fl exible the system that technical experts are able to install, the more affordances the system will offer users. Because we know from Wartofsky’s work (op. cit.) that it is impossible to imagine how ICT might be used if you have little or no user experience, the opportunity to learn from those with experience is invaluable. Technical experts and school principals could almost always procure and install systems that are better value for money if they visited schools already engaged in innovative pedagogy with ICT before taking any decisions.