Vignette 1: the student

Young people’s media cultures and relationships with screens, social media, new technology and gaming

have been extensively explored by scholars of childhood and youth, and sociologists and cultural studies

academics interested in new media. However, schools often respond by deriding or excluding them, seeing

them as hostile to educational goals and values, and constructing both children and teachers as ‘at risk’ from

their supposed reconfiguring of professional and intimate boundaries.

What does the vignette, below, suggest about young people’s:

- literacies

- (gendered and sexual) identities and communities

- concepts of privacy and ethics

- visibility and participation in online world

- ideas about labour and enterprise?

Coco and her ‘virtual schoolbag’*

* the idea of the virtual schoolbag comes from Pat Thomson - the things that students bring to school but that many of them never get a chance to unpack because the school isn’t interested in

them (from a SoE lecturer during discussions)

Coco is 14 and in Year 10. She is a J Cat – that is, a fan of the boy band Union J - and is interested

in youtubers such as JacksGap, Tyler Oakley, danisnotonfire and amazingphil. The latter she

discovered ‘through a random link on Twitter’ before they rapidly became well-known, with a show

on Radio One. “There’s this thing on YouTube, like YouTubers, there’s loads of them and that’s

their job they just get paid to make videos, all these skits and things. Some do pranks, some do advice,

some do things about their life. They’re really lucky because they don’t have to get up and go to

work. So now everybody wants to be a YouTuber because it’s like a super easy job, but you get like

paid really well”.

As part of her fan activities she has a Twitter account (plus several ‘fake’ ones created with a

friend), with over 500 followers, mostly people she doesn’t know. Other J Cats have ‘update

accounts’, where they pool their knowledge of where the band members are at any point by

deciphering their twitter feeds. Or as Coco puts it, update accounts “tell you what they are up to

and where they are in the country so you can try to meet them…. Stalking them basically!”. For

instance, they might deduce that they are returning from a tour and turn up at the airport to wait

for them. Coco hasn’t yet done this, although her friends have. Her mother is currently considering

whether she would be prepared to accompany her on such an excursion.

Update accounts are often in ‘ship’ names. Ship means, “who you would like the band members to

be in a relationship with”, so for instance ‘Gosh’ means band members Josh and George.

Coco also uses wattpad.com, a fan fiction site for posting one’s own writing and reading others’

work; Instagram, what’s app and iMessage for talking to her friends.

She doesn’t really use Facebook – “Facebook is for school, but I don’t really go on it cause it’s really

boring now. But usually, like, school fights happen through Facebook and stuff like that”. She is also

cautious and distinguishes herself from others who “tend to put themselves out there”. She explains: “I don’t post much. I’m mainly tagged in things. There’s just some embarrassing photos of

me that I’ve been tagged in. Nothing too bad. If it was my news feed there would be a lot of stuff,

but that’s not to do with me.”

She and a friend have a youtube channel on which they post short films. She explains that she

doesn’t tell anyone she knows about it: “no one watches it, which I don’t mind because then no

one’s being mean!” She is reasonably confident that it would be difficult to locate, since there are

thousands of similarly named channels. She describes a friend who posted a link to her youtube film

on her Twitter account being deeply embarrassed when friends saw it – she’d ‘forgotten’ that she had some friends as well as strangers following her on Twitter, and her carefully managed

boundaries were breached.

Coco presents a blunt ethical position that to upload a video is to invite all types of audience

exposure: “I think when people are being mean on YouTube it’s kind of like, you shouldn't have

uploaded the video then”.

She cannot use Twitter or iMessage at school as she does this on her iPad which she doesn't take

in. The school bans the use of mobile phones “but everyone has them. Loads of people like text

under the table [in lesson time]. As soon as the teacher leaves the room everyone gets them out

and starts taking photos… If a teacher sees someone texting they will take their phone off and tell

them to collect it at the end of the day or if it happens a lot then end of the week”. Coco claims

only to text herself for something really urgent “like if I forget something, I’ll text my mum can you

bring this”. She also however uses her phone for legitimate learning purposes: “I look up the

definitions of words in English I don’t understand, cause I tend to be a bit too shy to ask”. But this

would still be against the rules and result in confiscation. All the same, she will risk using her phone

more on a Friday because “they have to give them back on Friday anyway”.

She anticipates and expects certain forms of digital surveillance in school. She recounts an incident

when she was taken ill and school and was sick on the stairs. She tried to pretend it wasn’t her, but

the teacher “knew anyway – she’d seen it on the cameras”.

Coco uses her on line activities as reward and inducement for doing homework: “When I come

home I try to do my homework, then spend like ages on my ipad, on youtube mostly. We have

three pieces of homework, so I do one, then think I can spend 20 minutes on twitter and you tube,

then I do another”.

Vignette adapted from research data gathered as part of the project: Face to Face: tracing the real and the

mediated in children and young people’s cultural worlds (PI Rachel Thomson), funded by the Economic and

Social Research Council National Centre for Research Methodologies (2013-2014)

Vignette 2: the student teacher

How do new teachers come to understand the scope of the school curriculum subject they are preparing to

teach? What models of teacher knowledge might be helpful or not in their teacher education? How might

‘learning in a digital age’ be enacted and understood in a student teacher’s experience?

Alex: where is the knowledge? Before I became a student teacher I loved my ipad, I thought it was the best thing ever, but

gradually I have realised they are just so incompatible with so many things in school as they are.

In my first school I used my iPad for everything, I would mark students’ work on the sofa, even

though I began to resent the intrusion into my personal space. The school issued iPads to students

and identified a massive improvement in behaviour as a result. But whenever I went to the back of

the classroom, all I would see there was the blue of the Facebook logo. And why do we talk about

an ipad generation anyway? Why not just tablets? The danger is you are branding schools.

But my next placement was very different. I went into teaching thinking, paperless teaching, this is

the future! And now guess what, I have a huge pile of paperwork. I am not allowed access to

students’ online coursework folders, and there is only one printer per department, based in a different classroom, so you can imagine the chaos if 25 students are trying to print out what they’ve

done for me at the end of a lesson. So I end up giving out a sheet and taking it back in at the end of

the lesson, because then at least I have something to take away and mark! I don’t even bother

trying to go through the school networks, I connect to the internet through my mobile phone.

Sharing documents, forget it, they are often behind firewalls, or difficult to reach, or in incompatible

formats.

My mentor at my second school had never had an ipad, never even held one! He played a video

and didn’t know how to turn the sound down. After a week he said no, he was not going to go

there.

There are two proprietary kinds of interactive whiteboards, which are incompatible. So I end up

doing everything in Powerpoint because you want to be able to take it with you to your next

placement. Plus, to use them interactively, you have to recalibrate them at the start of every lesson,

and you don’t want to spend 5 minutes doing that in front of kids.

I used Edmodo in one lesson to do a baseline test – little did I know it has a chat function I didn’t

even know existed, and in no time kids hunted it out and had some completely off-topic chat! The

real danger with all these things is: give them the internet and they will find games. Close down the

internet and they will send flash games to each other by email. Close down Flash or their email and

they will find games embedded in Excel, and you can’t shut that down. They will always find a way

round it.

A big issue that faces teachers is the one around protecting the data held on and by students. There

is a big scare about, you can’t monitor what they’re doing, who they’re sharing with. But someone

needs to do a risk-benefit analysis, or we will be held back by fear and be slow to make use of the

tools we have. As someone said: "no one is suggesting bricking up all the windows because it is

possible to get nasty wounds from glass".

But more than that, the schools that I’ve seen are reluctant to embrace new technologies and the digital, because there is a gap in knowledge, the child already knows more than they do about social

media, Twitter, about mobile phones, about sharing things. There is a big gap between what the

teachers know and the children know and what teachers feel confident they can bring to children.

This is partly about policy. Schools are focusing on the assessment value, because that’s what policy

is chasing them up on. Teachers won’t change schemes of work because they know them inside out,

they already have enough workload, and they don’t have the capacity to teach them differently. If

you are not trained in how to use that machine or that programme, you are going to stay in your

safety zone. Because you know you can get the kids through that, you can confidently deliver

learning in that space. If there’s a space over there that you’re not confident in, you’re not going to

enter it, and for good reasons, there are risks associated with it, for you and the kids. What I see is very safe technology – we know what you do with this, this is what you’ll do, there will be no

surprises.

But also, part of your security is in your subject knowledge, you know a bit more than the kids -

that makes you feel confident. If you take that away, what are you left with? What is your role? Just

to steer them, push them in a different direction, counterpoint what they are doing and do things

they wouldn't have thought of doing? But that is a very different role from delivering a curriculum.

You can say, “I’m not the person who knows everything, we’re here to trade ideas, what can you

do with this? This is what I can do, how can you go further?”. And you can be the mediator, “look

let’s share what this person has done”. Well, it served me for a couple of lessons!

But there is a danger in saying children know everything, that they are ‘digital natives’. They are

specialists in their own concerns!

For myself, I am excited about technologies, I’ve had to teach myself some subjects, technologies

and topics. Youtube is very handy for that. But in one school, we had a 3D printer delivered and a

student spent all his free time, all through his breaks, working out what to do, because he was so

excited, then he taught everyone else how to use this programme. The kid liked being the one who

taught them, he had the motivation - and as a teacher you just don’t always have that time and

passion to find out. Is it fair enough to say, “we’ve got this new 3D printer. I have no idea how to

use it, we’ve got an hour, let’s see what we can do with it then come back together and share what

we’ve learnt” – it is fair enough to do that?

For me personally, I have virtually given up on Facebook. You’re just horribly aware that if you post

anything it could affect your whole career. Avoidance is key. If I’m not on it, it can’t go wrong. But

there’s a cost. I have lost friends whom I used to message through Facebook all the time. Before

doing this I was a professional artist and I have quite a big presence online. In fact, just yesterday

some of my pupils came to speak to me about it. This is still very precious to me and not something

that can be deleted or hidden anyway (thank you, Facebook, for removing my ability to hide my

profile so now anyone can find me...!). I have no option but to hope my pupils never abuse this access to my personal life.

As a parent, I don’t want my child to be on a screen all day at school, because that’s what they do

when they come home too. They will be on it all day from morning til night! I want my children to

use a pencil and paper. If our future doesn’t include something that works without electricity, we

might be causing more trouble in the long run. How do kids react to the withdrawal from

technology? They have grown up with technological babysitters, if the battery runs down, they

don’t know what to do, they’re lost. There’s a lot to be said for them having a break from

technology… But of course I am also excited by all these beautiful new things they can make!

This vignette is a construction of a student’s experience, from interviews with teacher education trainees

undertaking their initial teacher education in a university/school partnership on a Postgraduate Certificate in

Education course.

Vignette 3: the school

Digital and social media have long been surrounded by expansive claims about their educational value and

utopian potential to transform learning, teaching and indeed schools as institutions. Can practice experiences

can help us to ‘think otherwise’ about this rhetoric?

– What do the examples below reveal about the provision, use, monitoring of and access to

technologies, surveillance soft- and hard-ware, and social media in schools?

– What advice would you offer schools to help develop e-learning policies and practices more focused

on ‘digital rights’ than ‘personalised responsibility’ (Hope 2014)?

The school bans the use of mobile phones. Students have to switch their phones off at the start of

the class and are expected to put them in a box on the teacher’s desk. If it goes off they get a

warning, if it happens again they are sent to the deputy head and there are consequences. Most

teachers do not see the relevance of mobile phones for learning, instead viewing them as a

distraction. The school policy arose partly because they had problems with sexting and cases of

bullying, on an almost weekly basis.

One consequence of the policy is that students learning to design for phones using Google App

have to use a simulator on a computer to test the results. However, actual practice does vary

within particular departments or from teacher to teacher. For instance, one teacher allows phones

in the class for learning purposes, arguing that because he teaches Technology he has a loophole –

phones are technology. Another teacher allows students to listen to music on their phones while

completing coursework provided they use them responsibly.

The school also has interactive whiteboards, but the pens are accumulating dust since the screens

are mainly used to display Powerpoint slides, as presentation tools.

The school in fact has not just one 3D printer but two generations of them. However, these have

never been used because teachers didn’t have the time to work out how to use them, nor a way of

teaching children how to use them.

Students do now have their own laptops, recently introduced to KS4 with the aim of spreading

them through the school. The school initially created its own intranet school system in an attempt

to control what students were doing, but found that students were more interested in Facebook

and Twitter, and backed down under pressure from them and parents.

Now, the school has constant monitoring on the students’ laptops. For instance, it monitors

inappropriate words which are then screen shot according to red amber green priority alerts. Since

this is on the school laptop, not through the wifi, it works even when students are at home. Senior

managers look through it, check all the red ones, scan the amber. In school assemblies, findings will

be discussed and students reminded that they are being monitored, that the teacher has the right to

monitor anything that has potential to cause any problems. However, the art department is

currently complaining that access to many online art collections is blocked since these fall foul of

screening for ‘flesh tones’.

Recently the school is thinking of changing its policy, not least due to competition from a nearby

Academy that has issued iPads to all students and is known colloquially as ‘the iPad Academy’. Parents are now coming to Open Days asking why this school does not do the same. The school is

also conscious that offering students iPads that they can keep if they stay on to sixth form might

give them some competitive advantage. However, in the short term this would mean that parents

would have to pay twice, since some have already paid out for the laptops.

So far the school has issued iPads to their senior managers and is trialling a system in which

teachers can email senior managers to come and take a student out of the classroom if discipline

issues arise.

There are CCTV cameras around the school - so far in corridors, playground and in a bird box. The

latter can be watched in the foyer. Managers can see the former from their offices. Currently staff

are very resistant to a proposal to introduce CCTV in classrooms, despite SMT assurances that this would offer protection to teachers. It is planned that cameras will be introduced as part of the

gradual refurbishment of classrooms.

Thumbprint technology is used for students to purchase lunch and snacks. This means students do

not need to bring cash to school and risk having it stolen. However, some students with Special

Educational Needs whose accounts are preloaded with cash equivalent to their Free School Meals

allowance are apparently going hungry at lunchtime having used the money to buy snacks and drinks

at breaktime.

The Local Authority has invested in software to generate data on school and teacher performance

relative to other schools and national statistics. The staffroom currently carries a board displaying

students who are at risk of bringing down the school’s overall performance indicators.

This vignette is a composite based on discussions with teacher education trainees undertaking their initial

teacher education in a university/school partnership on a Postgraduate Certificate in Education course.

Learning in a Digital Age: what can universities do?

How might Higher Education play a role in creating complex understandings of knowing in a subject area?

How are universities responding to the challenges of digital cultures?

The following is based on PGCE student teachers’ comments about approaches in one School of Education

and aims to explore what HEIs currently do and might do better.

It constitutes an account of the ‘value of (real and virtual) spaces for reflection’, possibly for internal (within

the SoE and HEA) rather than public use and discussion.

Space for reflection and ‘playing’

A popular module for student teachers in all curriculum areas on the two-year Subject Knowledge

Enhancement PGCE is ‘Learning in a Digital Age’ (LIDA), which adopts a pedagogical model of group

activity on topics such as digital games, social media, multimedia, learning spaces, and subject-

focused applications. There is a requirement to use online spaces for group tasks, blogs, wikis and

presentations, and an assessment that uses recently encountered digital tools to represent the trainees’ learning from the range of experiences.

“I’ve been quite lucky, we have done a whole year on LIDA – that’s been really good, that alongside

another module on mathematical technologies, it’s kind of pulled the two lessons together, on the

one hand we are using the technologies, but on the other, we’re relating it back to people like

(Richard) Skemp, all these different influences coming together, it’s been really interesting to see

how things are changing but they always have the same key principles. It’s a reflective space because

of how it’s set up. Each three weeks would be set up in a certain way, we’d have a lecture about

Vygotsky, the next one some kind of non-contact activity, we’d go away and watch You tube videos,

read stuff, and the third week, the first hour everyone would discuss everyone’s different

experiences and opinions, then we’d all write a 500 word thinkpiece that’s shared on a blog, I’ve got

a lot out of it.”

However, practice appeared to vary across modules. For instance, one student argued: “we’ve done

multimodality, differences between static and moving texts, the theory behind it, we’ve

experimented with different ways of presenting material. But where it’s not so good is to be given

the time and space to play with the technologies, to play with Scratch for example, if you are going

to be teaching it. At KS2 we have to be Jack-of-all-trades. But where Maths specialists have been

using it almost from day one because it’s so fantastic for maths, we in English didn't get as much,

then suddenly in our computer programming we English people were tasked to produce a maths

game and vice versa, to test us out, and we just melted! So there is a tendency for Maths to use the

technology a lot more, to get a lot more input. Also there’s almost a tendency to assume, you know

all this stuff already, you need no instruction, or, you can catch up – but I’m not fresh out of school,

I’m a mature student, I don't know all these things at all although I love new programmes… There’s

such a huge gap in knowledge between us, on the course, and we end up going to the few who do

know and saying, can you do it for me as I have no idea! There’s quite a gap between the practical

implication of using technology and the theoretical use of technology in the class”.

Yet another argued that there was ample time to experiment with resources, but less on teaching

and learning: “we’re just told, go play, here are the resources. But how to get things in presentations across so children can learn from them, that’s what you do in your own time! It’s

‘Now you’re in school, go and see what other people are doing and just tailor it, go and google it’!”.

The formally taught modules in the University include audit, exposition and experiential group

work. The audits of the range of subject knowledge, expertise and areas for development represent

a model of definitions of topic areas and ‘top up’ opportunities for any perceived ‘deficits’. This was

seen as both an encouragement to survey the breadth of the curriculum, and as a daunting challenge

to attempt to cover every area. Expositions from academics and visiting speakers on topics

associated with the subject area or more general education studies were welcomed in new fields

and unfamiliar areas of experience, yet were felt to be irksome if they repeated or simplified

concepts that were already well understood from previous personal experience.

Cross-disciplinary encounters and support

Fellow students, lecturers, teachers and professional associations are a key source of advice. “I

learned how to use the app Showbie from another student in half an hour”.

“Meeting up was great. I think that is what professionals need - a space where you can talk and

laugh and be critical - sharing knowledge of how it is elsewhere is vital, technology is changing so

fast and people are taking great leaps in so many ways. We need to share this. We need to get out

of the slightly myopic 'my school does it like this' way and into the 'hey look what we just did over

here' kinda way – in my humble opinion. Meeting up with peers and discussing what's working and

what isn't, for each of us, is so valuable, and its often only in these situations that we have to defend

our decisions and can share solutions and ideas as freely.”

“What I liked best was the cross-disciplinary, that in our groups after the lectures we met people

from all different subject areas.”.

“In terms of what HE can do, I guess you have the physical spaces, you have the relationship with

new and open-minded teachers, and you have a pipeline into research. Maybe that also puts you

into a good position to provide intelligence in this area and drive policy from the ground up. It is a

valuable knowledge base that could be mined”.

“The mix of all of us coming together from all kinds of different schools and being in the classroom

right now, with actual kids, seeing all those different perspectives, cause generally the people on the

course have pretty bright minds, sharing our views, that was great”.

“It has been interesting to see that other students have gone through the same experience, that it is

not only one school not having technology or supporting it. I thought it was just my school!”

Potential for networking and professional development for the future

“What I do is, whenever I see someone who knows how to use something, I take their contact

details and ask if I can contact them if I’m stuck. But a lot of students don’t do that. They need to

know that they need to build up a network of people, a black book of people you can go to. It’s

professionalism to network like that, it’s how you create professional conduct. It’s not just

becoming a teacher, it’s that whole professional body”. Perhaps HEIs need to be more upfront

about the importance of networking skills and how to develop them.