Display technology

The biggest breakthrough in the classroom use of ICT came with the arrival of data projectors five years ago. With these tools teachers are driving and mediating digital resources for students. These have now become increasingly bright and quiet - two key pointers for those considering purchase. Many schools have taken the next step and added an interactive whiteboard to bring front-of-class interactivity to the projected image.

As last year's "must have device", the electronic whiteboard has marched into most schools across the UK and now guidance on best practice is starting to emerge. The Lisa project in Islington aims to learn and share the lessons from classroom use of these new tools. "It's all about going beyond display," says Linda Dawson, project leader with the north Islington EAZ. "We are convinced that the way forward is enhancing classroom talk and discourse around this tool. One of the dangers of the whiteboard is that it's a lovely presentation tool and if we use it only to present it can become 'pretty wallpaper' and we lose classroom interaction." The project is working with teachers, providing model techniques, gathering examples of successful practice and feeding them back as annotated video clips on CD, including a masterclass by the end of the project next year. Over 70 teachers have now been through the training programme. Information on the first Lisa disc is available from admin@nieaz.org.uk

Mobiles as learning tools

What brave future-gazer would have guessed five years ago at the current levels of mobile phone ownership among schoolchildren? And yet many spoke mistakenly of a laptop in every satchel. Search for the smallest and the neatest technology and you get a glimpse of the future.

A recent pilot project called e-viva, developed by Ultralab, a leading research institute on ICT and education, involved 10 schools where students used mobile phones to send text and voice messages to a website to record and assess their progress in key stage 3 ICT. After registering with the project website, students built a portfolio by sending up examples of work with nnotations, and eventually choose five questions which they would work towards answering as part of a telephone viva (oral test of knowledge).

As they work, the students build a portfolio posting annotated work on the website. A text messaging facility is also built into the site so that students can send text messages of ideas and reflections straight to their portfolio online. When students feel ready for viva they phone a freephone number where they answer the questions prompted by pre-recorded voice. Answers can be re-recorded if the students wish and the final versions are stored as sound files in their area of the site accessible only to students and their teachers. Calls are free from the Orange network, which provided some support for the pilot, and most other providers. The system is also about to go into use in New Zealand and several exam boards in the UK are exploring its potential.

Professor Stephen Heppell, director of Ultralab, sees small portable devices such as the latest generation mobile phones as "key technologies for future learning". At a recent conference he gave a number to headteachers and asked them to text their thoughts straight from their phones to a web page. "The response was incredible," he says. "It's so immediate, you send text and it's there."

Now he gives out a phone number at the start of his presentations and his audience can text what they think about his talk as it proceeds - the responses appear in a small window on his presentation screen. Imagine that as a tool in the classroom.

Ultralab is now involved in a project using mobile phones and PDAs (small personal digital assistants) for disengaged youths past school leaving age in the UK, Holland and Italy. As the price drops, devices such as the Sony Cli¿, the Palm Pilot and the Compaq Ipaq - the size of a pack of cards with full internet access - will soon become mainstream educational tools. The new Sony Cli¿ PEG-UX50 (right) sets a new standard for this format with a digital camera, full wireless networking and Bluetooth (local communication between devices) built into a unit a little larger than a small stack of credit cards.

Intranets

There will always be a tension between the worldwide connections now possible for schools and the local sharing and celebration of achievement on internal networks via an intranet (as such storehouses are known). One key future challenge for all schools in the next five years is to achieve their own balance between linking outwards and building their own intranets within. At Cramlington community high school in Northumberland they have made the intranet the fulcrum for most learning experiences and a repository for a variety of learning materials linked to specific learning styles. Three graduate web designers are employed full-time in building and managing the intranet, which is accessible at lightning speed from all 700 networked computer stations around the school.

A visionary head, Derek Wise and his staff have built the technology around the latest research in accelerated learning cycles and, by Christmas, all year nine lessons in all subjects will be available via the intranet. This means each learning topic is connected to previous work, and resources include visual and auditory points of access.

A full-time video technician helps teachers to film and digitise video clips and a dedicated video server has space for 4,000 10-minute clips stored in the avi (digital video) format. Teachers also make their own audio commentaries to accompany images and text files online. Over 80 interactive whiteboards are now in use in the school, so teachers are confident that they can access these resources whatever their location - a cohesive whole school approach built around a common system.

"For new technology to transform education it must accompany new thinking on teaching and learning," says deputy head Mark Lovatt.

This year saw the launch of the tablet PC, a laptop which can be driven by pen input as well as keyboard, and it is starting to prove a huge success in education. Manufacturer Research Machines has seen explosive sales in the education sector. This intuitive device - a throwback to the slate - sets new standards in computer use. I used one as part of an information gathering project in China for a Department for International Development (DFID) education project.

Travelling into Inner Mongolia and up into the foothills of the Linxia region, I met with headteachers and worked with them on detailing their project experiences with the UK-funded school development and classroom rebuilding programme. Three headteachers in remote regions who had never used a computer before took the tablet - a delightful Portege 3500 from Toshiba - and wrote and saved their message in Mandarin which I then emailed to DFID headquarters in the UK. It was a perfect example of technology facilitating communication without substantial learning curves.

Carol Webb, advanced skills teacher at Cornwallis school in Kent, has just finished a training day for staff on the use of tablet PCs. "Staff were desperate to get their hands on the tablets because they see the benefits," she says. The school has just bought over 200 tablets to augment their laptop project - part of a larger investment from Kent county council which has seen over 1,000 tablet PCs purchased.

At Cornwallis they have pioneered the use of wirelessly linked laptops. Two classes of students have had their own laptops for home and school use. Over the past four years the students have logged substantial learning gains and, most impressively, only two laptops have gone missing. "Wireless connection is very successful - the real bonus is teachers can use it in class and it becomes an integral part of the lesson. Our wireless works everywhere, even in the playground," says Webb.

Virtual learning environments

Alistair Wells, head of ICT at Netherhall school, Cambridge, feels virtual learning environments have made the most difference in pushing ICT forward in the school and in building home school links. "We use www.think.com," he says. "It's a free electronic on-line community builder for schools provided by Oracle. As head of department, I can reach out to a class group, a whole year or parents with a single message posted across various groups."

Another key strand in the school's ICT provision is the investment in netbooks - small palm-sized computers with full keyboards. "They cost less than £500 and set-up is simple," says Wells. "They're also Citrix-enabled (a clever way of leaving the processing to the server and just sending the display to the networked computer)." Add in that the netbooks can be connected to printers via infrared for printing and transfer to other netbooks and the benefits are obvious - many pupils have bought their own machines.

A final strand in its digital outreach is the use of the uniservity web service (www.uniservity.net) which allows the school to bulk email information to parents. "We have potentially three email [addresses] for the family: pupil, mum and dad (in cases of separation). The system will also allow us to send a text message direct to a parent's mobile."

"It's another ingredient in the outreach to homes and community," says Wells. "Eventually, money will be recouped by sending out information by email only. At the moment we duplicate on paper but over time we won't."

The future

In the next five years, technology will help make learning environments beautiful after having made them ugly for so long. Large, bulky computer monitors will disappear and svelte LCD displays, projectors and tablet devices will proliferate linked via the airwaves as wires disappear. Some companies such as Sony and Apple have long understood the need for the device to delight by form as well as function, and this message will be welcomed by every school building with their own unique and delightful variation on the classroom of the future. Students and teachers will tap into the digital catalytic effect using a range of tools that are powerful for learning, culturally cool and intrinsically portable and personal.

John Davitt Islington

Staff: 70 staff from local schools trained so far; non-timetabled time: 10 days' training and peer work over eight months; kit: standard PC with soundcard, Philips CSmart projector and Promethean whiteboard with ACTIVStudio software; cost: about £10,000 per teacher - training costs rise as hardware costs fall; technical support: EAZ and Promethean.