So what’s this ‘e-Strategy’ all about and how is it likely to impact on the day-to day lives of teachers and students? Announced by the DfES earlier this year in their paper Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children’s services, the Government’s e-Strategy is intended to provide a framework for emulating a more strategic approach to the future development of ICT in education, skills and children’s services. Although we have grabbed the arrival of digital technologies and broadband with both hands and embraced it, the feeling is that if we adopted it in a less piecemeal way, students could reap more educational rewards in the future. This would have positive implications for personalising education to the needs of individuals, school management and assessment, and it would also be more cost-effective.
By applying some method to the madness, as the e-Strategy suggests, we can potentially transform teaching and learning and help to improve outcomes for children and young people by making lessons more exciting, sharing ideas and providing online help for educationalists. Another vision of the strategy is to engage ‘hard to reach’ learners with special needs support, more motivating ways of learning, and more choice about how and where to learn. Citing the importance of building an open system with more information and services online for parents and for students of all ages, the document envisages more crossorganisation collaboration to improve personalised support and choice.
Another key motivation behind the strategy is that of achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness, access to shared ideas and lessons plans, and easier administration. The Government intends to put a greater emphasis on benefit driven technology to evaluate this. Linking in with home-school learning, increased transparency between parents and schools will enable parents to be able to see what their children are learning about through their school’s website. On a personalisation front, young people and adult learners should be able to see courses tailored to their needs, and those working in education will benefit from more online support and technological solutions to streamline assessment and administration.
Main Priorities
The six key priorities of the strategy include:
■ an integrated online information service for all citizens;
■ integrated online personal support for children and learners;
■ a collaborative approach to personalised learning activities;
■ a good quality ICT training and support package for practitioners;
■ a leadership and development package for organisational capability in ICT;
■ a common digital infrastructure to support transformation and reform.