![yet so capable of development, to place the highest value on the
preservation of this restless, active, and eminently useful element;
one only requires to open one's eyes and look at the facts
dispassionately to deny utterly and absolutely what the Turks have
tried to make the world believe about the Armenians, in order that
they might go on with their work of extermination in peace and
quiet; one only requires to have a slight feeling of one's dignity as a
German to refuse to condone the pitiful cowardice of our
Government over the Armenian question.
The mixture of cowardice, lack of conscience, and lack of foresight
of which our Government has been guilty in Armenian affairs is quite
enough to undermine completely the political loyalty of any thinking
man who has any regard for humanity and civilisation. Every German
cannot be expected to bear as light-heartedly as the diplomats of
Pera the shame of having history point to the fact that the
annihilation, with every refinement of cruelty, of a people of high
social development, numbering over one and a half million, was
contemporaneous with Germany's greatest power in Turkey.
In long confidential reports to my paper I made perfectly clear to
them the whole position with regard to the Armenian persecutions
and the brutal jingoistic spirit of the Young Turks apparent in them.
The Foreign Office, too, took notice of these reports. But I saw no
trace of the fruits of this knowledge in the attitude of my paper.
The determination never to re-enter the editorial offices of that
paper came to me on that dramatic occasion when my wife hurled
her denunciation of Germany in my teeth. I at least owe a personal
debt of gratitude to the poor murdered and tortured Armenians, for
it is to them I owe my moral and political enfranchisement.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This and other works on the subject came to my notice for
the first time a few days before going to press. Before that (in
Turkey, Austria, and Germany) they were quite unprocurable.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/68624-250622101434-151c0b0f/85/Issues-in-Teaching-Using-ICT-Issues-in-Subject-Teaching-1st-Edition-Marilyn-Leask-59-320.jpg)
Issues in Teaching Using ICT Issues in Subject Teaching 1st Edition Marilyn Leask
- 1. Issues in Teaching Using ICT Issues in Subject Teaching 1st Edition Marilyn Leask pdf download https://ebookgate.com/product/issues-in-teaching-using-ict- issues-in-subject-teaching-1st-edition-marilyn-leask/ Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookgate.com
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- 5. Issues in Teaching using ICT Issues in Teaching using ICT explores the communicative potential of new tech- nologies. The book addresses the key political and philosophical issues of using ICT in schools, its implications for teaching approaches and children’s learning and the wider issues for the educational community. The issues discussed include: • making and using multimedia: a critical examination of learning opportunities • developing a sense of community on-line • setting authentic tasks using the internet • special educational needs issues and ICT • the teacherless classroom: myth or reality • lifelong learning in the electronic age • building on-line communities for teachers This book encourages students and newly qualified teachers at both primary and secondary level to consider and reflect on the potential of using ICT in schools and in new ongoing professional development and make reasoned and informed judgements about the part it should play in their own teaching. Marilyn Leask is a Principal Research Officer at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). She has worked on a number of innovative national and international educational projects exploring and developing the use of ICT and the internet in education.
- 6. Issues in Subject Teaching series Edited by Susan Capel, Jon Davison, James Arthur and John Moss Other titles in the series: Issues in Design and Technology Teaching Issues in History Teaching Issues in Modern Foreign Languages Teaching Issues in Music Teaching Issues in Physical Education Issues in Religious Education Issues in Mathematics Teaching Issues in Science Teaching Issues in English Teaching Issues in Geography Teaching
- 7. Issues in Teaching using ICT Edited by Marilyn Leask London and New York
- 8. First published 2001 by RoutledgeFalmer 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeFalmer 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2001 selection and editorial matter Marilyn Leask, individual chapters the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Issues in teaching using ICT / edited by Marilyn Leask. p. cm. – (Issues in subject teaching series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Educational technology. 2. Information technology. 3. Computer-assisted instruction. 4. Internet in education. I. Leask, Marilyn, 1950– II. Issues in subject teaching. LB1028.3 .I89 2001 371.33′4–dc21 00-062757 ISBN 0-415-240034 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-23867-6 ISBN 0-203-18526-9 (Glassbook Format) ISBN 0-203-18511-0 Master e-book ISBN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. (Print Edition)
- 9. Dedication This book is dedicated to the memory of Sally Tweddle, a teacher, researcher and an innovative educational thinker who has led the way in her research and development work based on the use of the internet for educational purposes. Her work in IT in school-based education provided the foundation for her innovative work to develop Cancer Help UK, an internet-based resource for cancer patients and clinicians. The project is located in the Institute for Cancer Studies at the University of Birmingham. Cancer Help UK provides an example of how in her words ‘education and learning theory can be harnessed in the medical world’s quest for evidence-based practice’.1 The model she developed provides an example for others concerned with evidence-based practice in different professions to follow. Marilyn Leask Christina Preston Michelle Selinger 1 S. Tweddle (1998) ‘Development and use of a theoretical model for understanding how Internet texts are used in learning’, Occasional paper, CRC Institute for Cancer Studies, Clinical Research Block, University of Birmingham, B15 2TA.
- 11. Contents Dedication v List of figures ix List of tables x Contributors xi Introduction to the series xvii Foreword xix Preface xxi Acknowledgements xxiii PART I Political and philosophical issues 1 1 Electronic professional networks for teachers: political issues 3 MARILYN LEASK 2 Connecting schools and pupils: to what end? Issues related to the use of ICT in school-based learning 15 NORBERT PACHLER 3 The Virtual Community of Teachers: ‘power stations’ for learners nationwide? 31 NIKI DAVIS 4 ICFT: Information, Communication and Friendship Technology: philosophical issues relating to the use of ICT in school settings 49 LAWRENCE WILLIAMS 5 What stops teachers using new technology? 61 LYN DAWES
- 12. PART II Implications for teaching approaches and pupil learning 81 6 The role of the teacher: teacherless classrooms? 83 MICHELLE SELINGER 7 Setting authentic tasks using the internet in schools 96 MICHELLE SELINGER 8 Special educational needs issues and ICT 105 GLENDON (BEN) FRANKLIN 9 Videoconferencing across the curriculum 116 LAWRENCE WILLIAMS 10 Creating and maintaining the school website – meaningless task or educational activity – luxury or necessity? 130 ALASTAIR WELLS 11 Key skills in the post 16 curriculum – an innovative approach 143 PHILIP LANGSHAW AND RICHARD MILLWOOD 12 Making and using multimedia: a critical examination of learning opportunities 158 STEVE BRUNTLETT PART III Wider issues for the educational community 179 13 Intranets: Developing a learning community 181 DARREN LEAFE 14 Lifelong learning in the electronic age 190 CHRISTINA PRESTON 15 Developing a ‘cognitively flexible literacy’: from an industrial society to the information age 206 SARAH YOUNIE 16 Building on-line communities for teachers: issues emerging from research 223 MARILYN LEASK AND SARAH YOUNIE Author Index 233 Subject Index 236 viii Contents
- 13. Figures 1.1 Influences on the development of professional knowledge through which the impact of government policy is felt 7 2.1 The shift from broadcast to interactive learning 18 2.2 The relationship between N-Gen culture and the new culture of work 26 3.1 The phases of organisational transformation according to the MIT’90s project 42 3.2 T3 holistic principles for ICT in teacher education 43 9.1 Planning a UK–USA Music Festival 123 12.1 Sala 1 – Ballroom – Artist’s house – Animated Dancers 165 12.2 Cabeca – Portuguese Graphic Design Tutorial – Shading 167 12.3 Namescost – page from Multimedia Textiles Materials – Names of costume items 169 12.4 Colete2b – page from Multimedia Textiles Materials – Stitch Spotter 171 13.1 Ways of using an intranet 183 15.1 The dynamics of implementing change in classrooms: an analytical framework 211 15.2 Shifting epistemologies: developing a cognitively flexible literacy 215 16.1 An emerging typology of users 227
- 14. Tables 1.1 Ways in which a website could support the GTC 9 5.1 Features of institutions which make a difference 63 5.2 Questionnaire: Situational factors and ICT use 75 5.3 Teachers as users of ICT: Categories 76 5.4 Category change 77
- 15. Contributors The editor Marilyn Leask is a Principal Research Officer at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). As TVEI co-ordinator she had email in her classroom in 1985. She has since worked on a number of educational projects focused on the use of IT and the internet in education. She co-ordinates the pedagogical research on the EU funded European Schoolnet Multimedia project. She is also the chair of TeacherNetUK, a professional organisation concerned with the effective development of the internet to support teachers’ professional development and a MirandaNet Fellow. As part of a professional commitment to disseminate findings from research directly to teachers, she has published a number of texts in initial teacher education, management and quality issues. She is joint series editor of the successful Routledge Learning to Teach in the Secondary School series covering all subject areas. Recent texts include Learning to Teach with ICT in the Secondary School with Norbert Pachler and, with John Meadows Teaching and Learning with ICT in the Primary School. These report the work of innovative teachers, pupils and lecturers. Her particular research interests are in the devel- opment of internet-based resources to support teachers’ professional development. She has directed and been adviser to a number of national and international projects in this area sponsored by OECD for example the DfEE, British Council, European Schoolnet. Contributors Steve Bruntlett is Senior Lecturer in Art and Design Education at De Montfort University. He teaches on the PGCE and MA (Art and Design Education) courses where his teaching and research focuses on new technologies in art and design education and multicultural multimedia. He is currently working on web materials for the Contemporary and Traditional Black and African Artefacts project at DMU and the Portuguese Patrimony project which he is co-ordinating with a colleague at Coimbra University. He is currently running NGfL and NOF Art and Multimedia training and working as a member of the BECTA Curriculum Consultation group for Art.
- 16. Niki Davis is Professor of Information Technology in Education in both Iowa State University of Science and Technology in the USA and the University of London’s Institute of Education in England, where she leads the creation of a global degree programme for leadership in educational technology. She has collaboratively developed and researched information and communication technologies in teacher education for over a decade, mainly as the first UK professor of Educational Telematics in the University of Exeter School of Education. In 1999 she was awarded a prestigious Marie Curie Research Fellowship to assist her native country Ireland’s oldest university to establish a centre in this field. She is President Elect of the International Society of IT in Teacher Education. Niki edits the UK Association for IT in Teacher Education’s scholarly refereed journal of IT for Teacher Education and has spoken and published widely on paper and electronically. Lyn Dawes works at BECTA. Previously she was a Research Student at De Montfort University, researching the impact of the National Grid for Learning and the introduction of ICT into schools, with a particular interest in the professional development of teachers. She taught in schools for many years and as science co-ordinator at a middle school, carried out action research with staff from the University of East Anglia and the Open University evaluating the quality of children’s talk whilst working in groups at the computer (Spoken Language and New Technology (SLANT) Project). This research developed into the Talk, Reasoning and Computers (TRAC) Project and continues in the Raising Achievement Through Thinking with Language Skills (RATTLS) Project. Publications include chapters in: Wegerif, R. and Scrimshaw, P. (1997) Computers and Talk in the Primary Classroom, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters; Grugeon, L., Hubbard, L., Smith, C. and Dawes, L. (1998) Speaking and Listening in the Primary School, London: David Fulton Press; Monteith, M. (ed.) (1998) IT for Learning Enhancement, Exeter: Intellect Books. Glendon (Ben) Franklin is a special needs co-ordinator at Plume School, the largest comprehensive school in Essex. He is a MirandaNet fellow where his main interest has been in encouraging teachers to use computers and developing their use as a special needs administration tool. He is looking at ILS products as a way of improving literacy. Glendon has been a keen advocate of portables since his first Z88. He is an active contributor to the SENCO Forum run by BECTA and is constantly being surprised by just how useful the internet really is. Philip Langshaw is head of art and design at a large comprehensive school in north-east Essex, where he is principally responsible for A Level, vocational education and ICT within the art department. He has been teaching for 20 years, most of which has involved the latest developments within ICT. Work is regularly undertaken with local businesses by the students themselves, which reflects the standard of work produced. This work has included graphic design, photography, digital animation, video production and web design. In April 1998, Philip, with four students, had the honour to attend the launch of HRH Prince of Wales’s ‘Young Artist’s Britain Award’. Follow up work included xii Contributors
- 17. students working with one of the Princes’s artists, James Hart Dyke, during a field trip to ‘Constable Country’ at Flatford Mill, Suffolk. A recent OFSTED Inspection recognised that the art department was a major leader in the country with regard to the application of ICT to art. Indeed the ULTRALAB project itself was awarded an OFSTED Commendation of Excellence. Philip has been awarded an OFSTED Certificate of Excellence in recognition of his commitment to quality and innovation within art education. Work in progress involves integrating digital animation and live action video, together with music and sound design. Philip’s art department was selected as one of only ten schools in the UK to develop material for a major exhibition of art in schools for the Royal Academy Outreach programme, London, March 2000. Darren Leafe has worked in both the primary and secondary sector and has been involved in a number of national and international curriculum projects using ICT e.g. the British Council Montage Project http://.av.Org/montage. His interests include the effective use of new technologies in education and he is currently responsible for all content development at NETLinc, Lincolnshire’s response to the UK government’s National Grid for Learning (NGfL) initiative. He is vice-Chair of TeacherNet and his work on planning and implementing internet based curricular projects is reported in Leask and Meadows (2000) ibid. Richard Millwood is a Reader in Educational Technology and Deputy Director of Ultralab, at Anglia Polytechnic University, Chelmsford where he has been involved in a wide range of innovative projects for many years. Ultralab undertakes development work for many commercial and government agencies. His particular research interests are in the development and applications of interactive work spaces on the web and profiling software which would mean that individuals could use the web in such a way that it responds to individual needs. Ultralab are the prime movers behind the TescoNet 2000 project, support for the Learning Zone in the Greenwich Dome, and the government impetus to place all school pupils on-line with their own learning community and email address through the Oracle Millennium Project – Think.com. Norbert Pachler is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Education, University of London, with responsibility for the Secondary PGCE in Modern Foreign Languages and the MA in Modern Languages in Education. His research interests include modern foreign languages teaching and learning, comparative education as well as the application of new technologies in teaching and learning. He has published in these fields. Christina Preston has long been an advocate for using advanced technologies as a catalyst for change in teaching and learning. She established a non-profit making professional development model, MirandaNet, in 1994 which is supported by partnerships with industry including Oracle, BT and Xemplar. Before founding MirandaNet, Christina Preston spent 15 years teaching English, drama, media and ICT. She was then adviser in ICT in Croydon LEA and London. Contributors xiii
- 18. Christina advises on ICT teacher-education issues with governments including Chile, Brazil and the Czech Republic; Christina Preston and the Chair of Czech Miranda, Bozena Mannova won the 1998 European Women of Achievement Award for their humanitarian ICT projects. She is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Learning Circuit, a south-west London community regeneration ICT project supported by Aztec and the Roehampton Institute, She is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London. She writes for the educational press and has published ‘Scoop’, a best-selling education adventure game and ‘Newsnet’, an international newsroom simulation with BT and King’s College, London. Michelle Selinger is an education specialist at Cisco Systems. She was previously the Director of the Centre for New Technologies Research in Education (CeNTRE) which is a research and multimedia centre dedicated to research and development in ICT at the University of Warwick. Michelle’s own research interests are in telematics, particularly text-based computer conferencing, and in defining effective pedagogies for ICT. Michelle was chair of ITTE (the UK Association for IT in Teacher Education) (1997 – September 1999), and is consulting editor for InteracTive, a journal for the management of ICT in schools, and co-editor for the Journal for IT in Teacher Education. She is currently leading a project funded by RM plc to explore effective pedagogies with ICT and looking for ways to encourage teachers to use ICT. Alastair Wells heads the information and communication technology department at the Netherhall School, a local education authority comprehensive school in Cambridge. The school has a sixth form centre and 1,450 pupils aged 11 to 18. Currently Alastair teaches GCSE and sixth form students as well as co-ordinating cross-curricular ICT for all pupils. Netherhall has a whole school ICT policy with all teachers using computers during lessons. Some of the teachers have very high levels of expertise. Resources include Acorn, Macintosh and PC computers, including multimedia work stations, a weather station and satellite receiver, data loggers, scanners and internet access to over 100 computers via an ethernet, fibre optic, and an ATM network. Alastair designed and now edits the school’s website which was created by a student. Alastair provides the INSET training for staff and oversees a multimedia authoring team of 40 sixth form students who are producing interactive television and world wide web materials. He has been in teaching since 1976 and involved with information technology since 1978. During that time he has designed many educational software programmes, interactive video and interactive television materials, multimedia CD Roms and ICT curriculum support materials including assessment software for National Curriculum Key Stages 3 and 4. He also lectures on aspects of ICT both in the UK and Europe and currently has a one day a week industrial placement to develop on-line learning materials. His main aim at the moment is to extend the school ICT resources into the community and make on-line learning a reality in the homes of students through networked computers. Netherhall School website can be found at http://www.netherhall.cambs.sch.uk xiv Contributors
- 19. Lawrence Williams is Director of Studies at Holy Cross Convent School, Surrey. He has been Guest Lecturer at Baylor University (Texas, 1996); at Osaka Kyoiku University (Japan, 1997 and 1998); and the University of Wroclaw (Poland, 1999). Lawrence has given presentations at conferences in the UK (Media ’98, CAL ’99, and Association for Science Education, 1999); in the Czech Republic (Webwise, 1998, and Poskole, 1997, 1998, and 1999); in Japan (Schools and the Internet, Tokyo, 1998); and in Poland (Informatyka w Szkole, 1998 and 1999). He has also been a frequent speaker on post-graduate courses at the Institute of Education, London, under Project Miranda, where he is an Honorary MirandaNet Scholar. His work in cross-curricular and ICT methodology is published as part of the National Education Centre’s guidelines for headteachers throughout Japan in Mizukoshi, T. (1998) Unique Educational Methodologies in Foreign Countries, Tokyo: National Education Centre; in Murakawa, M. (1998) Exhortation towards a Cross- curricular Learning Model, Japan Educational Publishing; in Vosatka, K. (1997, 1998, and 1999) Poskole, Czech Technical University, Prague; in Syslo, M.M. (1998 and 1999) Informatyka w Szkole XIV, and XV, Ministry of Education, Poland; in Leask, M. and Pachler, N. (1999) Learning to Teach Using ICT in the Secondary School, Routledge; and in Milosevic, L. (1999) School Improvement in the UK, British Council. Lawrence has also acted as adviser for ICT education to the ministries of education in Poland and in Japan (1998 to the present). In 1999 he received a Guardian Award for the ‘Most Creative Use of ICT in Secondary Schools’, and his pupils’ work has been seen on television programmes made by the BBC (Blue Peter), by Anglia (ICT on TV), and by NHK Japan (Media and Education). Sarah Younie is Senior Lecturer in Education at Montfort University. She has experience teaching BA, PGCE and MA courses where her teaching and research focuses on the impact of ICT in education, in particular the opportunities ICT provides for innovation in teaching and learning. Previously she was a secondary school teacher in a city comprehensive and rural community college with experience of teaching KS3, KS4 and Post 16. She is currently involved in delivering NOF ICT training to teachers. She is Research Officer for ‘The Learning School’ project, which is part of the EU funded European Schoolnet Multimedia project supported by 20 ministries of education. At De Montfort University she was involved in the Electronic Campus project and is currently working on the SOURCE project (Software use, Reuse and Customisation in Education) in partnership with the Open University. She has delivered research papers at international conferences and published articles on ICT and education. Contributors xv
- 21. Introduction to the Series This book Issues in Teaching Using ICT is one of a series of books entitled Issues in Subject Teaching. The series has been designed to engage with a wide range of issues related to subject teaching. Types of issues vary among subjects, but may include, for example: issues that impact on Initial Teacher Education in the sub- ject; issues addressed in the classroom through the teaching of the subject; issues to do with the content of the subject and its definition; issues to do with subject pedagogy; issues to do with the relationship between the subject and broader educational aims and objectives in society, and the philosophy and sociology of education; and issues to do with the development of the subject and its future in the twenty-first century. Each book consequently presents key debates that subject teachers will need to understand, reflect on and engage in as part of their professional development. Chapters have been designed to highlight major questions, to consider the evidence from research and practice and to arrive at possible answers. Some subject books or chapters offer at least one solution or a view of the ways forward, whereas others provide alternative views and leave readers to identify their own solution or view of the ways forward. The editors expect readers of the series to want to pursue the issues raised, and so chapters include suggestions for further reading, and questions for further debate. The chapters and questions could be used as stimuli for debate in subject seminars or department meetings, or as topics for assignments or classroom research. The books are targeted at all those with a professional interest in the subject, and in particular: student teachers learning to teach the subject in the primary or secondary school; newly qualified teachers; teachers with a subject co-ordination or leadership role, and those preparing for such responsibility; mentors, tutors, trainers and advisers of the groups mentioned above. Each book in the series has a cross-phase dimension. This is because the editors believe it is important for teachers in the primary and secondary phases to look at subject teaching holistically, particularly in order to provide for continuity and progression, but also to increase their understanding of how children learn. The balance of chapters that have a cross-phase relevance, chapters that focus on issues which are of particular concern to primary teachers and chapters that focus on issues which secondary teachers are more likely to need to address, varies according to the issues relevant to different subjects. However, no matter where the emphasis
- 22. is, authors have drawn out the relevance of their topic to the whole of each book’s intended audience. Because of the range of the series, both in terms of the issues covered and its cross-phase concern, each book is an edited collection. Editors have commissioned new writing from experts on particular issues who, collectively, will represent many different perspectives on subject teaching. Readers should not expect a book in this series to cover a full range of issues relevant to the subject, or to offer a completely unified view of subject teaching, or that every issue will be dealt with discretely, or that all aspects of an issue will be covered. Part of what each book in this series offers to readers is the opportunity to explore the inter-relationships between positions in debates and, indeed, among the debates themselves, by identifying the overlapping concerns and competing arguments that are woven through the text. The editors are aware that many initiatives in subject teaching currently originate from the centre, and that teachers have decreasing control of subject content, pedagogy and assessment strategies. The editors strongly believe that for teaching to remain properly a vocation and a profession, teachers must be invited to be part of a creative and critical dialogue about subject teaching, and encouraged to reflect, criticize, problem-solve and innovate. This series is intended to provide teachers with a stimulus for democratic involvement in the development of subject teaching. Susan Capel, Jon Davison, James Arthur and John Moss January 2001 xviii Introduction to the Series
- 23. Foreword There is a page on the Cancerhelp UK website headed Hope. It carries a reproduction of a 12 year old’s painting and is accompanied by a written and spoken description of the painting recorded 18 months after the boy’s Father dies. This page was the first of a site that now has many thousand pages, both literally and metaphorically it is the heart of Cancerhelp UK. When I show the page to visitors, it never fails to connect in some way with their experience, more often than not they cry. The picture depicts a Father’s struggle with his cancer and the efforts of Family and Friends to support him. The boy is my Son, his Father was my Husband. The extract above is taken from the unfinished PhD thesis of Sally Tweddle. The poignancy of these words is heightened beyond feeling by her own death from cancer on 14 December 1999. Sally introduced her thesis this way for a reason. It was to explain why, with the help of many others, she dedicated herself to developing Cancerhelp UK, a website to provide information on cancer to patients and medical professionals. Sally was concerned about the one-sided nature of the patient–professional relationship, particularly in their ability to access information, and Sally had the vision to see that the emerging internet offered ‘a new paradigm in meaning making which challenges traditional practices in relation to information-giving and which may also have a potential to modify the focus of power in lay/professional relationships’. Sally goes on in her thesis to identify a similar change in the teacher/learner relationship. Her work is challenging to all of us who work in education. First, it forces us to recognise that learners come with personal and emotive needs that affect their use of the technology; second, that the technology can shift the power balances that exist in the system; and third, it forces us to realise that lifelong learning is more than government rhetoric. It affects us all and we will all need it at different stages of our lives. As well as developing the website, she carried out research on its use. She looked at the patterns of usage in considerable detail, tracking individual users, categorising them into different types of readers. She also developed a theoretical framework for the interactive nature of the website based on socio-cultural theory and the work of Engeström, Wertsch and others, extending Vygotsky’s ‘subject,
- 24. means, object triangle’ to consider the interactive nature of computer based technologies. She created a theoretical framework that took into account the importance of the direct user feedback which these technologies provide, often leading to a blurring of the roles of authors and readers. Her desire to create a strong theoretical framework for her empirical research was typically brave, far-sighted and much needed; too often developments in the field of educational technology are under-theorised and lead to no new under- standing. Sally’s work and her vision sets a challenge for all of us to be equally brave and farsighted, we can listen to her message even if we can never over- come her loss. She is desperately missed both personally and publicly. Peter Avis BECTA January 2001 xx Foreword
- 25. Preface Contributions in this book focus on the exploring the communicative potential of new technologies through addressing a number of themes. In their different ways and from their different perspectives, contributors examine issues related to: • developing a sense of community on-line with those with whom we can now communicate regardless of time and place. The work of Lawrence Williams (Chapters 4 and 9), Richard Millwood (Chapter 11), and Christina Preston (Chapter 14) is particularly focused on the human factors which have to be accommodated if the technology is to facilitate real human interaction. • understanding and identifying new ways of learning which are facilitated by the technology and issues related to the integration of these into classroom work. Michelle Selinger explores the opportunities provided by the tech- nologies to create authentic learning experiences and she challenges the notion of ICT supporting the teacherless classroom in Chapters 6 and 7. Ben Franklin (Chapter 8) looks at the issues from the point view of teachers concerned with special educational needs. Phil Langshaw’s work (Chapter 11) on key skills provides an example of what innovative use of ICT can mean in practice as does the cross-curricular approach at Holy Cross school (Chapters 4 and 9). Both Phil Langshaw and Steve Bruntlett share a vision related to the ways in which the new technologies can unleash creativity and new ways of working and learning (Chapters 11 and 12). Norbert Pachler (Chapter 2) and Sarah Younie (Chapter 15) argue the case for new literacies: ‘We need to move beyond traditional notions of literacy in our school curriculum towards critical media literacy, visual literacy, electronic/infomatic and global cultural literacy’ (p. 16, Chapter 2) to what Sarah Younie calls a ‘cognitively flexible literacy’ (Chapter 15). • the support needed for change: innovative practice in the UK is being achieved by visionary teachers who through a variety of means have access to the appropriate supportive infrastructure, technical support, hardware and software and who are supported by the senior management in the school in achieving their vision (see Wells Chapter 10 and Leafe Chapter 13). Evidence from research in which I have been involved (e.g. the Learning School Project within the European Schoolnet: EU funded contract MM1010; Chapter 16;
- 26. Chapter 1) indicates that supportive networks within the school and the teacher’s own personal and professional community coupled with support for and acceptance of ‘just in time’ learning is necessary if teachers are to be able to incorporate ICT across the curriculum. Lyn Dawes explores these issues more fully in Chapter 5. • the challenge to traditional power structures: that the technology poses challenges to the traditional power exercised by governments both over teachers and over the community in general cannot be doubted. Chapters 1 and 3 explore these issues. Teachers are now able to discuss ideas and share practice internationally. Moves to make research more easy available to teacher practitioners (e.g. the EU/Socrates funded European knowledge center within the European Schoolnet; the Campbell collaboration) may in time provide educators with a sound and publicly available evidence base in which practice can be deeply rooted and with reference to which practice can be justified. Such a resource may support the depoliticisation of educa- tion although clearly the content and form of education must always be a legitimate concern of any government in their role as representing the interests of society. That the technology now available can potentially offer access to all the knowledge and resources, both print and human, required for an individual to achieve high levels of learning in many subject areas is not in doubt. Virtually anyone, any age, anywhere, at any time will within the foreseeable future be able to access learning resources and on-line expert tutorial support coupled with assessment to enable them to complete programmes of study leading to inter- nationally recognised accreditation. Access to finance may be the most important limiting factor but even this depends on how much of what is freely available on the internet now remains free, and, as new material becomes available whether people decide to charge for this or not. For example there may be sufficient altruistic teachers, lecturers and writers in the world that high-quality materials in a wide range of subject areas can be provided free of charge. It is not inconceivable that benefactors will step forward to fund low-cost virtual international on-line schools/colleges/ universities with perhaps scholarships for those in areas where the costs of connectivity (hardware, software and connection charges) are beyond the reach of potential students. Benefactors have after all in the past undertaken such activities in real environments. I hope you enjoy considering the ideas expressed in this book. If you wish to have access to more practical ideas about the use of ICT in schools then the companion texts may be of interest to you: Leask, M. and Meadows, J. (eds) (2000) Teaching and Learning with ICT in the Primary School, London: Routledge; Leask, M., Dawes, L. and Litchfield, D. (2000) Keybytes for teachers, Evesham: Summerfield Publishing; Leask, M. and Pachler, N. (eds) (1999) Learning to Teach with ICT in the Secondary School, London: Routledge. Each text in the Learning to Teach in the Secondary School Series (Routledge) contains a chapter related to the application of ICT to the specific subject. Marilyn Leask January 2001 xxii Preface
- 27. Acknowledgements My thanks go to the teachers, student teachers, LEA, government and university staff as well as industrialists with whom I have worked over a number of years, on various ICT projects which provide the foundation for the ideas in this book. Inspiration and the development of innovative practice has particularly come from colleagues on the TeacherNetUK, MirandaNet, OzTeacherNet and European Schoolnet initiatives. Colleagues who have contributed to this book have played their part in furthering the work of these initiatives. Marilyn Leask January 2001
- 29. Part I Political and philosophical issues
- 31. 1 Electronic professional networks for teachers Political issues Marilyn Leask Introduction This chapter charts the development of ideas about using the communicative potential of technology to support web-based networks for teachers’ professional development in the UK and Europe during the latter part of the 1990s and early part of the twenty-first century. Various developments supported by governments in the area of national and international electronic communications networks in the UK and in Europe are outlined and discussed. The purpose of this chapter is to provoke a debate about the basis on which such networks are established, developed and funded and to raise the question about the sustainability and usefulness to the teaching profession of networks which are controlled directly by governments. The suggestion is made that while the teaching profession may benefit in a variety of ways from the establishment of such networks, there may be a tension between their capacity to serve the needs of pupils and teachers and the political needs of government. At the time of writing, the General Teaching Council (GTC) for England is being established and, as part of its provision for members (all teachers), it will develop a website. What professional role could this organisation play given the technologies at its disposal? To what extent is it of value for teachers in England to have a central professional website independent and protected from government intervention and control? Can professional needs be satisfied through government run ‘professional’ networks? These and other related questions are discussed in this chapter.1 Background to UK and European networks This section focuses particularly on the development of the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) (UK government funded),2 the Virtual Teacher Centre (VTC) (UK government funded),3 and the European Schoolnet (Swedish Government funded initially, moving to European Union funding with support of the ministries of education in member states). Discussions about the foundation of a national professional website for teachers in the UK began to my knowledge in 1996 with a consultation conference funded by the British Council and attended by subject association representatives, teachers and representatives from the various government organisations (Leask 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46
- 32. and Pachler 1997). A steering group was established with representatives from these organisations and practising school teachers, and several meetings over a two year period were held to develop the ideas. The government at the time, (January 1996), the Conservative government led by John Major, accepted that the idea was sound but indicated that no money could be made available. The group (by then called TeacherNetUK) then spent many months establishing possible funding options including developing relationships with private companies. Much of the summer of 1997 was spent on establishing funding strategies for what was expected to be a national, independent, financially self sustaining, professional website. The change of government to Labour in May 1997 brought in a government committed to ensuring Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) had a high profile in education and policies were introduced that accelerated the rate of development of national networks and prioritised development of ICT use in schools. By October 1997 the new Labour government had distributed a consultation paper (DfEE, 1997) about what they called the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) which was intended to encompass many activities through which learning takes place in a society and which was to start with a Virtual Teacher Centre (VTC). These developments clearly indicated a very positive commitment to education and the notion of a professional website for teachers. However, experience with web developments indicates that what can be developed overnight at a political whim can also disappear overnight. The government organisation now with the brief to develop the VTC (BECTA previously NCET) was unable to act under the previous government as the political will was absent. Hence, when the political agenda changes e.g. if value for money is not demonstrated, current government funded provision may just disappear or alternatively it could potentially be used for overtly political ends. In England, the concerns of teaching professionals are not necessarily directly linked with those of politicians. The European Schoolnet (EUN), a network of networks for European teachers, is potentially on a much firmer footing. The initiative was funded initially (Yohansson 1997) by the Swedish Government with some start up contributions from the European Commission (following the Cresson and Bangemann (1996) initiative) and matched funding from participants who were drawn from industry, government and universities and other educational organisations. By the end of 1998, various ministries of education had agreed to underwrite part of the cost and the number of ministries involved has continued to grow. Details about those involved can be found on the website (http://www.eun.org) together with the documents related to the initiative. Long term funding may come from an agreement which becomes part of each member state’s commitment to the EU. At the time of writing this is yet to be decided. Philosophies and purposes of networks If the values and beliefs and purposes behind the establishment of a national/ international network are not explicit then there are likely to be unresolved tensions between developers of the network and the users. 4 Marilyn Leask
- 33. Different approaches across Europe are summed up by the co-ordinator of the European Schoolnet in an interview: What we would like to do (with the European Schoolnet) is to establish an infrastructure for co-operation at a European level. In a way putting tools and instruments in the hands of teachers of schools to (enable them to) do things on their own. . . . there are several approaches in Europe. The philosophy in Sweden and I think all of the Scandinavian countries is very much that a network of this kind, a School network, puts tools at the disposal of teachers . . . It is not a matter of distributing ready-made lessons or modules. That might be a good way to disseminate or facilitate access to teaching materials, but more as elements in what the teachers need to use to build up their own teaching and learning . . . (Co-ordinator EUN project March 1998 interview) The co-ordinator goes on to use the analogy of the network being similar to the ‘trunk of the tree’ . A tree which teachers could go to and enjoy some of its fruits. But you could also go there to decide to put on some leaves, or to put on some fresh branches and I think this analogy is very important. To me the European Schoolnet or the website of the European Schoolnet, the internet platform is the trunk of the tree and some of the essential branches. The second element in this philosophy is to help to fertilise the soil in which the tree is growing. That is to help at a European level member states and schools to use information technology and to use it more efficiently. (Co-ordinator EUN project March 1998 interview) The EUN platform developers are working with 500 innovative schools across Europe in order to find out more about the EUN’s impact on teaching and learning as well as to examine questions relating to the development, design, and management of an on-line educational resource. Details of the development of the EUN are available from the website (http://www.eun.org). The philosophy behind the Virtual Teacher Centre in the UK is yet to be spelt out fully (Poole 1998; Dawes 2000). To my knowledge there is no widely available document which sets out the structure, the process of development and how the input of teachers will be managed. For example, when details of good practice are placed on this site – as recently on the topic of literacy, what is their status? Who has vetted them? Is this the government approved/recommended approach? Is there an issue in that material on government run sites must, by its very nature, have a different status to that on sites which are run by teachers for teachers? History shows that what is espoused as good practice by one government may be derided by the next. My concern about government run professional sites really serving the needs of teachers comes from the recent history of change in education in England (and a Electronic professional networks for teachers 5
- 34. study of history in general). In England, the history of government dictated change in education and regular reverses of policy over the last 20 years has led me to a view about the government’s role in education which is different from that experienced by educators in other countries. In Leask (1998) I discuss some of the policy contradictions which have resulted (particularly affecting less academically able children) and in Leask and Goddard (1992) I document some of the unexpected and damaging effects of this direct government intervention. The added value of working in cross-cultural contexts Lawrence Williams, in Chapter 4, writes about his pupils feeling part of a world community through video conferencing and his hope that this communication between pupils of different cultures may encourage peace. In the case of the European Schoolnet, the rationale for qualifying for Euro- pean Commission funding is that there is some added value to be gained at the European level. Providing enabling structures which support teachers in developing joint curriculum projects across countries clearly satisfies a need which teachers have already and the EUN will do this. What is less certain is the effect on individual pupils and teachers and the curriculum of such developments. Up to date curriculum material which can be used for cross-cultural studies is now available through the internet in a way that previously wasn’t possible and the accessibility of newspapers and radio broadcasts are just two examples which enhance the curriculum in a cross-cultural context. As the co-ordinator of the European Schoolnet initiative pointed out in interview, one of the purposes of the EUN is ‘to help at a European level, member states and schools to use information technology and to use it more efficiently’. And indeed the networking the EUN supports is demonstrated by the partners’ page of the website which allows access to those networks identified by individual governments as representing their education system. There are of course, other networks operating in many countries. The context for professional electronic network development in England At the time of writing, in England, a culture of public exposure of ‘failure’ of schools and teachers exists and is coupled with publication of non-contextualised results from national tests. Not suprisingly, soon after the introduction of this policy, school exclusions were reported as increasing – children who are achieving below the average academically bring a school’s publicly published averages down leading to potential loss of income as parents choose schools with better results. An expensive and extensive inspection procedure exists (reports are publicly available on the internet – you can find them through the NGfL site as mentioned earlier) but the validity of the results is challenged by some academics (the OFSTIN group contactable through Professor Taylor Fitzgibbon at University of Durham). In this climate, one questions whether web-based tools supporting professional debate about professional issues are appropriately located on a national professional 6 Marilyn Leask
- 35. website funded by government. Millwood (2000) identifies a wide range of forms of communication between professionals and his research indicates that trust is an essential part of establishing effective on-line communities. It may be that in other countries, there is such a level of trust and respect between government and the teaching profession that government funding and government control of a national professional site is not considered to be potentially constraining or manipulative. A whole system approach? Putting my reservations about the political control and the question of appropriate activities on the VTC to one side, the Labour government did, I suggest, develop a very coherent approach to whole system change with relation to integrating ICT into teachers’ professional practice. As part of the TeacherNet UK initiative, I undertook an analysis of strategies which would encourage whole system change in ICT (Leask 1998). Figure 1.1 illustrates the different influences on teachers’ professional knowledge: the areas in which current developments in the UK at government level are likely to make an impact have been referenced. On the diagram, the following notes indicate this impact. 1 covered by proposals in the document: National Grid for Learning (DfEE 1997) 2 covered by New Opportunities Funded training of teachers (recognised providers provided training from 1999 onwards) and the national curriculum for ICT in initial teacher training (implemented from 1998) 3 provided by funding for portables4 and personal hardware and software (£20 million allocated 1999–2000) Electronic professional networks for teachers 7 Local bodies e.g. LEAs through • policy development1 • networks2 • INSET2 • advice • internal publications • occasional external publications Influences on the development of professional knowledge of teachers in the school system Figure 1.1 Influences on the development of professional knowledge through which the impact of government policy is felt National bodies e.g. DfEE through • circulars1 • legislation1 • guidance1 • resource provision3 • OFSTED/HMI reports1 Internal school processes through • school planned INSET days1, 2 • internal procedures • occasional internal and external publications • work with higher education institutions2 Professional associations • publications • conferences • inservice training Media through • newspapers • TV documentaries, etc. • Websites
- 36. As can be seen, there are still a number of gaps in the strategy outlined by government which require LEAs, teacher training institutions, the media and schools to take up the challenge but overall, government support for, encourage- ment of and insistence on change in ICT use has been substantial. As is to be expected of an undertaking focused on changing professional practice, impact will be patchy for a wide variety of reasons. Dawes (1999, 2000) has charted impact over the period 1997–2000 and provides details of impact during that period at the personal level of teachers’ lives. Nevertheless, a reasonably coherent attempt at whole system change has been implemented. The roles of local education authority (LEA) and school intranets An interesting development in the UK stimulated by the government drive to encourage a networked society and starting with the teaching community is the development of LEAs’ and school intranets (see also Chapters 10 and 13). It is possible that, in the UK, at this community level, the control of the medium for professional purposes may pass to local teachers in a way which is not possible with the national Virtual Teacher Centre. There are of course many examples on the web where teachers share resources already but for the new entrant, or for the teacher who has not found their own network, the LEA intranet could well be a key resource e.g. through providing reliable access to downloaded sites of educational worth and to local on-line communities. There are a number of questions to be considered in the design of intranets whether for LEAs or schools: 1 What can the intranet add to what is already available in terms of: data and information, access to curriculum applications and on-line communities? 2 What resource deployment is actually appropriate – recognising that the opportunity for endless creation of web pages and for ‘play’ can get in the way of ensuring that relevance, quality and value for money are high priority? 3 What procedures are needed to ensure quality is delivered, monitored and material on the intranet is relevant to teachers, updated and not replicating work which has already been done elsewhere? 4 What monitoring systems are appropriate to protect adults and children from internet addiction and access to inappropriate material? Will the General Teaching Council be able to provide an independent professional website? The results of the TeacherNet members’ deliberations about the desirable characteristics of an independent professional website, were presented to the GTC in February 2000. Table 1.1 adapted from a briefing paper prepared for this (Leask 2000b) provides a general outline of the possibilities suggested. Much more detailed suggestions were made at the seminar and these are published in Leask (2000c). 8 Marilyn Leask
- 38. The creation of the General Teaching Council provides a one-off opportunity to create a professional independent website in England which can support confidential on-line discussion and debate between professionals as well as the provision of resources and further innovative developments. Finance is potentially available through the subscription. Will we, in England, be able to make the most of this opportunity? Only time will tell. Establishing the financial basis of operation of an independent professional website In the introduction, the desirability of a website which purports to provide a professional service for teachers being based on an independently sustainable footing was raised and two aspects of management of the provision, in particular, need to be considered if this is to be achieved. First, the development and control of content should be seen to be managed for professional not purely political purposes (though sometimes these two coincide). This issue has been discussed earlier. The second aspect is related to funding being available on a self-sustaining basis. If a national website is to have a life beyond that of the political influence of the politicians who created it, then the funding basis needs to be sound. In this section, models of funding and issues related to these are considered. Models of funding The ways in which a website can be funded include: (a) sponsorship (b) advertising (c) subscription There are pros and cons for each example and indeed a mixture of funding types could be used. Sponsorship may be appropriate in the early stages but is a vulnerable form of funding as sponsors can always withdraw their sponsorship. Advertising on what is recognised as a national website for teachers is of interest to advertisers – research on the funding of the TeacherNet UK project demonstrated that. But not all forms of advertisement are acceptable. Nevertheless, for a company which sells to teachers, access to the education market is worth a considerable amount. Subscription has the potential of providing a steady income but if a purpose of national educational websites is to provide a service and resource to all members of the teaching profession then subscription is not an option. 10 Marilyn Leask
- 39. Questions to be considered in establishing an independent professional site a) Is the funding base of a proposed website sound enough to be able to sustain the development and maintenance of the site and outlast changes in government policy? b) Is value for money provided by the service delivered – is the return in learning outcomes or other criteria that are established (e.g. uniformity across the system) worth the investment? c) If public funding is appropriate, what guarantees are there that public funding will continue to be provided? d) If private funding is available what are the implications of using this? e) What forms of partnerships between educators and industrialists are appropriate in this new medium? Conclusions The opportunities offered for professional development of teachers through the medium supported by the internet are without parallel in our history. Like all human endeavours, what is achieved is influenced by the developers’ values and motives which they themselves may not even recognise. I cannot recall a time when people in apparently all the countries around the world focused so much attention on the same sort of educational activity. The pressure is on all of us to use the medium, and the pressure is certainly on governments in Europe to develop national websites for education. This opportunity will come but once. In the same way the museums built by Victorians have become part of our cultural heritage, the structures being developed which are guiding the further development and management of professional places on the web will provide models for future developments. It is worth pausing and considering the implications of structures and approaches being established now before new patterns become too fixed and too much resource is squandered through lack of planning and forethought. Are the UK national professional websites to be politically controlled and content driven or are they to be developed in a way which empowers teachers to use the technology for their professional growth? It is essential that where governments are diverting public funds to develop national websites for teachers the benefits related to teaching and learning are apparent and the lessons of good practice not political ideology disseminated. If such ‘national websites’ are seen to be too politically influenced then they will remain that – potentially political propaganda sites rather than professional sites. Research is being done and will be done to clarify these issues but the ease and rate of change of websites is such that it may be difficult to link findings and development. In conclusion, I have posed questions in the sections above to stimulate debate about the form of independent professional provision on the web that might support the long term and short term needs of teachers for professional Electronic professional networks for teachers 11
- 40. development. Progress in the use of ICT in classrooms is slow and faltering in many cases and not just in the UK (Jakobsdottir 2000; Gibson 2000; Dawes 2000; Cox, Preston and Cox 1999). Effective use of the communicative aspects of the technology may not occur automatically. Any sites wishing to provide indepen- dent professional services of value to teachers will need mechanisms to be responsive to those for whom they are creating the service. Noble intentions whether on the part of government or others are no guarantee that a site of value to the teaching profession will be produced. Notes 1 This chapter is based on research undertaken in a number of funded initiatives and on the deliberations the group of innovative educators taking part in the TeacherNet UK initiative who, over the period 1995–2000, debated such issues and presented ideas to the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE), OFSTED, Teacher Training Agency (TTA) as well as the General Teaching Council for England in February 2000. I write as chair of TeachernetUK (http://www.teachernetuk.org.uk), and as a researcher into the effectiveness of the European Schoolnet in which I have been involved since its beginning (http://www.eun.org), as a founder member of the British Council Montage project (http://www.montageplus.bc.uk) and as a consultant on a number of other projects for both government and private organisations. These are documented in a number of publications such as Leask 2000 a,b,c; Leask and Pachler 1999; Leask and Meadows 2000). The DfEE sponsored Teachernet internet gateway initiative is just starting at the time of writing (http://www.teachernet.gov.uk) with Teachernet UK members advising. 2 National Grid for Learning (NGfL) http://www.ngfl.gov.uk 3 The Virtual Teacher Centre VTC http://www.vtc.org.uk 4 DfEE (1996) Multimedia Portables for Teachers: http://becta.org.uk/mmportables/about.htm Questions 1 Review a range of websites providing professional services to you. What are the values and beliefs underpinning the operation and development of these websites? 2 What purposes do these websites serve for you as a teacher and for those paying for its maintenance and development? 3 How could the web be made more useful to you professionally? Further reading If you wish to gain a fuller picture of the development of UK government thinking of the use of the web for education, then the following texts provide useful background: Cresson E. and Bangemann H. (1996) Learning in the Information Society: Action Plan for a European Education Initiative, communication to the European Parliament, Council, Economic and Social Committee and Committee of the Regions. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1997) ‘Connecting the Learning Society: consultation paper’, London: DfEE. 12 Marilyn Leask
- 41. Leask, M. and Pachler, N. (1997) ‘The background and rationale for the TeacherNet UK initiative – harnessing the potential of the internet for improving teachers’ profes- sional development and pupil learning’, Information Society Open Classroom II Conference Proceedings, Lambrakis Foundation, Greece. Poole, P. (1998) ‘Staff development in ICT: Can a National Grid for Learning work?’ mimeo, Canterbury Christ Church College. Stevenson Report (The independent ICT in Schools Commission) (1997) ‘Information and Communications Technology in UK Schools: An independent inquiry’, 78–80 St John Street, London, EC1M 4HR. References Cox, M., Preston, C. and Cox, K. (1999) ‘What motivates teachers to use ICT?’ paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, September 1999, Brighton. Cresson E. and Bangemann H. (1996) Learning in the Information Society: Action plan for a European Education Initiative, communication to the European Parliament, Council, Economic and Social Committee and Committee of the Regions. Dawes, L. (1999) ‘First Connections: teachers and the National Grid for Learning’, Computers and Education, Vol. 33, pp. 235–53. Dawes, L. (2000) The National Grid for Learning: Outcomes of an Opportunity for Change, PhD thesis, Bedford: De Montfort University. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1997) Connecting the Learning Society: Consultation Paper, London: DfEE. Gibson, I. (2000) ‘At the intersection of technology and pedagogy: considering styles of learning and teaching’, ESRC Seminar Series Paper, January 6, Keele University. Jakobsdottir, S. (2000) ‘Effects of information and communications technology (ICT) on teaching and learning in Iceland’, ESRC Seminar Series Paper, January 6, Keele University. Leask, M. (1998) The development and embedding of new knowledge in a profession, De Montfort University, PhD thesis. Leask, M. and Goddard, D. (1992) The Search for Quality: Planning Improvement and Managing Change, London: Paul Chapman/Sage. Leask, M. (2000a) ‘Ways in which a website could support the GTCE in the realisation of the organisations key roles: views from TeacherNet members’ Briefing paper 2 for the 17 February 2000 seminar, mimeo, Bedford: De Montfort University. Leask, M. (2000b) ‘The GTC website: Purposes, content, services, stages of develop- ment’, Report from the Seminar 17 February 2000, mimeo, Bedford: De Montfort University. Leask, M. (2000c) ‘European Knowledge Centre within the European Schoolnet’, Seminar 2 Report: ‘Classroom practice and educational research: using ICT to build European networks for innovation and change’, mimeo, Bedford: De Montfort University. Leask, M. and Meadows, J. (eds) (2000) Learning to teach with ICT in the Primary School, London: Routledge. Leask, M. and Pachler, N. (1997) ‘The background and rationale for the TeacherNet UK initiative – harnessing the potential of the internet for improving teachers’ profes- sional development and pupil learning’, Information Society Open Classroom II Conference Proceedings, Lambrakis Foundation, Greece. Electronic professional networks for teachers 13
- 42. Millwood, R. (2000) ‘Presentation to the European Knowledge Centre UK’, Seminar 2, 7 March 2000 published in Leask, M. (2000c ibid.) Seminar 2 Report: ‘Classroom practice and educational research: using ICT to build European networks for innova- tion and change’, mimeo, Bedford: De Montfort University. Poole, P. (1998) ‘Staff development in ICT: Can a National Grid for Learning work?’ mimeo, Canterbury Christ Church College. Stevenson Report (The independent ICT in Schools Commission) (1997) Information and Communications Technology in UK Schools: An independent inquiry. 78–80 St John Street, London, EC1M 4HR. Teacher Training Agency (TTA) (1998) Curriculum for ICT training in ITT. London, TTA. Williams, M. and McKeown, L. (1996) ‘Definitions of the Net that Teachers Experience’, Australian Educational Computing, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp.4–9. Yohansson, Y. (1997) ‘Towards a European Schoolnet’, paper presented by the Minister for School and Adult Education, Sweden, to the informal Education Council in Amsterdam, 2 March 1997. 14 Marilyn Leask
- 43. 2 Connecting schools and pupils: To what end? Issues related to the use of ICT in school-based learning1 Norbert Pachler Introduction In this chapter I aim to delineate the impact of ICT on pupils as members of the information society. I will argue that, in order to become successful members of our digital culture, pupils need to be furnished not only with the basic but also the higher-order skills required to part take in the fundamentally different ways in which members of our society are beginning to work, shop, play, form relationships and communicate. Digital culture I deem to be a linguistically mediated discourse community in which the semiotic specificities of computer-mediated com- munication as well as electronic/informatic, visual and critical media literacies are important higher-order skills; an environment which is characterised by a novel interplay of text, sound and pictures requiring, amongst others, new text con- struction, composition and decoding skills as well as new navigational strategies. I consider school-based learning to have an important role to play in the acquisition of and learning about these skills and strategies by providing all young people with access to ICT and thereby counteracting the potential digital divide between information haves and have-nots, despite the fact that the very existence of new technologies in general and the internet in particular calls traditional schooling and traditional approaches to learning into question. The socio-cultural context of learning in the information age Developments during the 1990s in the field of new technologies, in particular interactive multimedia and the internet, brought about an ‘information revolution’ which can be seen to lead to changing cultural practices by reshaping the way we work, study, play, form relationships and communicate (see e.g. Tapscott 1998 or Warschauer 1998). Access to and the ability to manipulate information have become important preconditions for success in economic and political as well as personal terms: ‘the central factor in producing wealth and power is the ability to access, adapt, and make intelligent use of new information technology’ (Warschauer 1998: 2). The world is becoming a much smaller place characterised by globalisation and internationalisation of the economy and society. The changes in cultural practices entailed by these processes, in turn, have considerable
- 44. implications for compulsory and post-compulsory education. New technologies make it possible for us as educators to do new things in new ways and require of us to re-examine the epistemologies of what to teach (see Noss and Pachler 1999). We need to develop in young people, abstraction, system thinking, experimen- tation, collaboration and learner training, allowing them to meet the challenging requirements of the information society and equip them with the ability to be flexible, change and learn new skills for emerging contexts (see also Warschauer 1998: 2–3). I would argue, therefore, that we need to move beyond traditional notions of literacy in our school curriculum towards critical media literacy, visual literacy, electronic/informatic and global cultural literacy; away from the trans- mission of information towards analysis, judgement and interpretation within the framework of a school-based education. Seymour Papert rightly points to the increasing importance of the act of learning as ‘the most important single issue facing society as we move into the next millennium’ and argues that the important question is about not simply changes in curricula but ‘changes in the human relationships most closely related to learning – relationships between generations in families, relationships between teachers and learners and relationships between peers with common interests’ (1996: 18). In other words, Papert questions traditional modes of school-based learning as the most effective paradigms. The concern that traditional notions of schooling are performing inadequately is also in evidence in writing about educational leadership and management. David Hargreaves, for example, argues that, in response to the so-called postmodern fragmentation of society, (the) traditional ‘education system’ must be replaced by polymorphic educational provision – an infinite variety of multiple forms of teaching and learning. Future generations will look back on our current sharp disjunction between life and education and our confusion of education with schooling as a barrier blocking a – perhaps the – road to the learning society. (Hargreaves 1997: 11) J. Lemke (1998), another critic of the status quo, calls the prevailing ‘curricular learning paradigm’ into question, since it ‘assumes that someone else will decide what you need to know and will arrange for you to learn it all in a fixed order and on a fixed schedule’ (p. 293), and argues instead for an ‘interactive learning paradigm’, which assumes that people determine what they need to know based on their participation in activities in which such needs arise, and in consultation with knowledgeable specialists; that they learn in the order that suits them, at a comfortable pace, and just in time to make use of what they learn. . . . It is the paradigm of access to information, rather than imposition of learning. (ibid.: 294) 16 Norbert Pachler
- 45. Indeed, new technologies are increasingly being seen by policy makers as a viable option (see e.g. DfEE 1997a, DfEE 1997b, McKinsey and Company 1997, Stevenson 1997). However, rather than looking to new technologies to replace school-based education in the hope they make education more cost-effective, I would argue that we need to look to educators to prepare young people for the challenges of an adult life which increasingly requires the capability to work effectively with new technologies. Not only should formal, school-based education, in my opinion, continue to play an important social function in society, it should also, for the foreseeable future anyway, continue to ensure access to new technologies for pupils as home computer use remains heavily contingent upon social class and socio-economic factors and the interrelationship of access with attitude appear to be of significance (see e.g. Millard 1997: 2). I would, further- more, argue that it is our moral obligation as educators to prepare young people adequately for their adult lives in today’s and tomorrow’s world, so that they can take part in social and entertainment activities made possible by new technologies not only as passive recipients and consumers but as active and empowered participants (see also Leask and Pachler 1999: xix). New technologies must not be allowed to become a vehicle of containment but must become a vehicle of education (see Hargreaves 1997: 15). ‘Independently’, I fear, young learners would find it very difficult to acquire all the requisite skills and become aware of all the – often hidden and embedded – moral and ethical issues around ICT use, some of which I shall discuss in the remainder of this chapter. However, Seymour Papert’s argument (1996: 25) that computers should be used differently in school-based settings in order to maximise their potential, warrants serious consideration: (the) cyberostriches who make school policy are determined to use computers but can only imagine using them in the framework of the school system as they know it: children following a predetermined curriculum mapped out year by year and lesson by lesson. This is quite perverse: new technology being used to strengthen a poor method of education that was invented only because there were no computers when school was designed. Nevertheless, school-based education remains vital in ensuring that future generations of young people are well prepared for adult life in a world strongly influenced by new technologies, not least because of the potential and value of the pedagogic mediation of teachers in the learning process (see e.g. Mortimore 1999). My experience as a teacher and educator strongly suggests that the role of the teacher, despite pressures to change towards that of a facilitator and creator of didactically prepared web-based learning material, remains absolutely central in rendering the experiences and work of pupils with and at the computer coherent (see e.g. Crook 1994, Noss and Pachler 1999 or Pachler 1999b). I believe effective learning takes place through social interaction and interpersonal support (see Pachler 1999b) and I would argue that in the context of learning with and about new technologies the social environment of the classroom and schools can be Issues of ICT in school-based learning 17
- 46. helpful. Equally, the role of teachers in identifying appropriate learning outcomes, choosing appropriate software and activities and structuring and sequencing the learning process is imperative in the acquisition of and learning about the higher- order skills necessary to understand fully the social, cultural, political, ethical and moral issues which are often only implicit in new technologies and their use. Don Tapscott (see 1998: 143) suggests a new learning paradigm, from broadcast to interactive learning (see Figure 2.1) which illustrates well the complexity of learning in the information society. Whilst clearly demonstrating the shift from learning based on transmission and information transfer to a more learner-centred approach built around interactive multimedia material, in my estimation the complexity of Tapscott’s model under- lines the importance of school-based education as one important mode of learning and of teachers as important facilitators in the learning process, albeit with a focus on individualisation and learner training, i.e. teaching pupils how to learn. New technologies and new cultural practices Dieter Wolff (1998: 8) rightly asserts that new technologies are media created by humans to store information and to interact with others. As such they play an important role in the cultural practices of society. Traditionally, two definitions of culture are distinguished, one coming from the humanities, the other from the social sciences. In a discussion of culture, teaching in the context of modern foreign languages education at advanced level, I argue: 18 Norbert Pachler Figure 2.1 The shift from broadcast to interactive learning © Don Tapscott 1998 (permission obtained)
- 47. that (the) one ‘focuses on the way a social group represents itself and others through its material productions, be they works of art, literature, social institutions, or artefacts of everyday life, and the mechanisms for their reproduction and preservation through history’. (Kramsch 1996: 2) The other refers to ‘the attitudes and beliefs, ways of thinking, behaving and remembering shared by members of that community’. (Kramsch 1996: 2). Traditionally the notion of ‘material culture’ has prevailed which manifested itself in . . . teaching in the study of written sources, particularly literary texts, or that of ‘time-honoured institutions’ (Kramsch 1996: 2) such as the political or education systems of (a) country etc. (Pachler 1999a: 77) Whichever definition of culture one might adopt, and the two definitions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, it soon becomes clear that, given their characteristics – which I shall delineate briefly below – new technologies have a considerable impact on groups of people, how they present themselves and communicate and share ideas, thoughts, memories, attitudes, beliefs etc. with each other. Internet-based culture, according to Tapscott (see 1998: 80–1), is characterised by everyone being a producer of and participant in culture; the personal nature of so much internet content can be explained by it often being written within an intimate environment for an anonymous audience where the producer and the user have a relationship with the information rather than with each other. Some characteristics of new technologies and their implications for teaching and learning The main characteristics of new technologies can be said to be: • interactivity and communicative potential, • non-linearity and provisionality of information, • distributed nature, as well as • multimodality. Interactivity is seen by many commentators as a defining feature of new technologies in that users are no longer passive recipients – as with television, for example, where a few people have control over content and where content is broadcast – but active participants and creators of content which they can publish to a vast audience. Web-based resources, for instance, are not held in one central location, but are distributed across the world. Time spent on the Net is not passive time, it’s active time. It’s reading time. It’s investigation time. It’s skill development and problem-solving time. It’s time analyzing, evaluating. It’s composing your thoughts time. It’s writing time. (Cynics might interject here that time spent on the Net currently is often also still waiting time, NP.) (Tapscott 1998: 8) Issues of ICT in school-based learning 19
- 48. Tapscott (1998: 7) argues that by controlling rather than passively observing the new media, child development may accelerate. This, according to him, includes the evolution of motor skills, language skills and social skills, as well as the development of cognition, intelligence, reasoning, personality and the development of autonomy. The danger, for Tapscott, lies in the digital divide between ‘the information haves and have-nots – those who can communicate with the world and those who can’t’ (Tapscott 1998: 11) and in the fact that children without access to the new media will be developmentally disadvantaged (see Tapscott 1998: 7). Should this assertion be borne out by research, and it should be stressed here that Tapscott’s views are not universally shared – e.g. in her book Failure to Connect, Jane Healy, for example, posits that very young children who use computers may be impaired in their ability to learn (see also Haughton 1999 and Johnston 1999), it would furnish a very powerful argument in favour of an entitlement to computer literacy and computer use through formal schooling. This despite the fact that, as I discussed earlier, in the new digital age school-based education is by no means the only place for learning. One might argue, however, that Tapscott’s discussion of the virtues of new technologies lacks a certain critical edge and acknowledges potential problems and shortcomings insufficiently; such as the lack of direct human interaction and face-to-face communication, which might lead to an ineptitude in non-virtual, i.e. ‘real-life’ social contexts; or health implications, such as repetitive strain injury caused by excessive typing or eyestrain caused by viewing a flickering screen. Furthermore, Tapscott appears to take the positive outcomes of the use of new technologies for granted. It might, therefore, be advisable to relativise some of the claims he makes. In this way, time spent on the internet can become active time, can become reading time, can become investigation time etc.; once again, the role of the teacher in facilitating these outcomes takes centre stage. New technologies allow users to create and distribute their own work and become active participants in the culture creation process. In order to make full use of this potential and to understand all the implications users need to be taught the respective basic and higher-order skills such as electronic/informatic, visual and critical media literacies. The interactive potential of new technologies does, of course, lend itself not only to the skills, knowledge and understanding of educational contexts. Indeed, young people tend to encounter and exploit this potential in the context of play and entertainment rather than education. There exists, particularly in this context, the real danger of young people being exploited by software producers and distributors in whose commercial interest it is to ‘control’ users by getting them to buy all of their products if possible. Given a sound educational rationale, the use of new technologies for purposes such as simulations, hypothesis testing, modelling and role-plays as well as social interaction through on-line chats and discussion groups can yield considerable learning gains and allows ‘kids to try on the world for size’ (Tapscott 1998: 8), provided the activities are appropriate. Careful reflection by users, parents and teachers on the educational value of software is, therefore imperative (see p. 23). 20 Norbert Pachler
- 49. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
- 50. stations, the women and children were packed into electric-trams while the men and boys were compelled to go off on foot to Galata with a couple of blankets and only the barest necessities for their terrible journey packed in a small bag. Of course they were not all poor people by any means. This dire fate might befall anyone any day or any hour, from the caretaker and the tradesman to members of the best families. I know cases where men of high education, belonging to aristocratic families—engineers, doctors, lawyers—were banished from Pera in this disgusting way under cover of darkness to spend the night on the platforms of the Haidar-Pasha station, and then be packed off in the morning on the Anatolian Railway—of course they paid for their tickets and all travelling expenses!—to the Interior, where they died of spotted typhus, or, in rare cases after their recovery from this terrible malady, were permitted, after endless pleading, to return broken in body and soul to their homes as "harmless." Among these bands herded about from pillar to post like cattle there were hundreds and thousands of gentle, refined women of good family and of perfect European culture and manners. For the most part it was the sad fate of those deported to be sent off on an endless journey by foot, to the far-off Arabian frontier, where they were treated with the most terrible brutality. There, in the midst of a population wholly foreign and but little sympathetic to their race, left to their fate on a barren mountain-side, without money, without shelter, without medical assistance, without the means of earning a livelihood, they perished in want and misery. The women and children were always separated from the men. That was the characteristic of all the deportations. It was an attempt to strike at the very core of their national being and annihilate them by the tearing asunder of all family ties. That was how a very large part of the Armenian people disappeared. They were the "persons transported elsewhere," as the elegant title of the "Provisional Han" ran, which gave full stewardship over their well-stocked farms to the "Committee" with its zeal for "internal
- 51. colonisation" with purely Turkish elements. In this way the great goal was reached—the forcible nationalisation of a land of mixed races. While Anatolia was gradually emptied of all the forces that had hitherto made for progress, while the deserted towns and villages and flourishing fields of those who had been banished fell into the hands of the lowest "Mohadjr"—hordes of the most dissipated Mohammedan emigrants—that stream of unhappy beings trickled on ever more slowly to its distant goal, leaving the dead bodies of women and children, old men and boys, as milestones to mark the way. The few that did reach the "settlement" alive—that is, the fever-ridden, hunger-stricken concentration camps—continually molested by raiding Bedouins and Kurds, gradually sickened and died a slower and even more terrible death. Sometimes even this was not speedy enough for the Government, and a case occurred in Autumn 1916—absolutely verified by statements made by German employees on the Baghdad Railway— where some thousands of Armenians, brought as workers to this stretch of railway, simply vanished one day without leaving a trace. Apparently they were simply shipped off into the desert without more ado and there massacred. This terrible catalogue of crime on the part of the Government of Talaat is, however, in spite of all censorship and obstruction, being dealt with officially in all quarters of the globe—by the American Embassy at Constantinople and in neutral and Entente countries— and at the conclusion of peace it will be brought as an accusation against the criminal brotherhood of Young Turks by a merciless court of all the civilised nations of the world. I have spoken to Armenians who have said to me, "In former times the old Sultan Abdul-Hamid used to have us massacred by thousands. We were delivered over by well-organised pogroms to the Kurds at stated times, and certainly we suffered cruelly enough. Then the Young Turks, as Adana 1909 shows, started on a bloodshed of thousands. But after what we have just gone through
- 52. we long with all our hearts for the days of the old massacres. Now it is no longer a case of a certain number of massacred; now our whole people is being slowly but surely exterminated by the national hatred of an apparently civilised, apparently modern, and therefore infinitely more dangerous Government. "Now they get hold of our women and children and send them long journeys on foot to concentration camps in barren districts where they die. The pitiful remains of our population in the villages and towns of the Interior, where the local authorities have carried out the commands of the central Government most zealously, are forcibly converted to Islam, and our young girls are confined in Turkish harems and places of low repute. "The race is to vanish to the very last man, and why? Because the Turks have recognised their intellectual bankruptcy, their economic incompetence, and their social inferiority to the progressive Armenian element, to which Abdul-Hamid, in spite of occasional massacres, knew well enough how to adapt himself, and which he even utilised in all its power in high offices of state. Because now that they themselves are being decimated by a weary and unsuccessful war of terrible bloodshed that was lost before it was begun, they hope in this way to retain the sympathy of their peoples and preserve the superiority of their element in the State. "These are not sporadic outbursts of wrath, as they were in the case of Hamid, but a definitely thought-out political measure against our people, and for this very reason they can hope for no mercy. Germany, as we have seen, tolerates the annihilation of our people through weakness and lack of conscience, and if the war lasts much longer the Armenian people will have ceased to exist. That is why we long for the old régime of Abdul-Hamid, terrible as it was for us." Has there ever been a greater tragedy in the history of a people— and of a people that have never held any illusions as to political independence, wedged in as they are between two Great Powers, and who had no real irredentistic feelings towards Russia, and, up to the moment when the Young Turks betrayed them shamefully and
- 53. broke the ties of comradeship that had bound them together as revolutionaries against the old despotic system of Abdul-Hamid, were as thoroughly loyal citizens of the Ottoman Empire as any of the other peoples of this land, excepting perhaps the Turks themselves. I hope that these few words may have given sufficient indication of the spirit and outcome of this system of extermination. I should like to mention just one more episode which affected me personally more than anything I experienced in Turkey. One day in the summer of 1916 my wife went out alone about midday to buy something in the "Grand Rue de Péra." We lived a few steps from Galata-Seraï and had plenty of opportunity from our balcony of seeing the bands of Armenian deportees arriving at the police-station under the escort of gendarmes. Familiarity with such sights finally dulled our sympathies, and we began to think of them not as episodes affecting human individuals, but rather as political events. On this particular day, however, my wife came back to the house trembling all over. She had not been able to go on her errand. As she passed the "karakol," she had heard through the open hall door the agonising groans of a tortured being, a dull wailing like the sound of an animal being tormented to death. "An Armenian," she was informed by the people standing at the door. The crowd was then dispersed by a policeman. "If such scenes occur in broad daylight in the busiest part of the European town of Pera, I should like to know what is done to Armenians in the uncivilised Interior," my wife asked me. "If the Turks act like wild beasts here in the capital, so that a woman going through the main streets gets a shock like that to her nerves, then I can't live in this frightful country." And then she burst into a fit of sobbing and let loose all her pent-up passion against what she and I had had to witness for more than a year every time we set a foot out of doors.
- 54. "You are brutes, you Germans, miserable brutes, that you tolerate this from the Turks when you still have the country absolutely in your hands. You are cowardly brutes, and I will never set foot in your horrible country again. God, how I hate Germany!" It was then, when my own wife, trembling and sobbing, in grief, rage, and disgust at such cowardliness, flung this denunciation of my country in my teeth that I finally and absolutely broke with Germany. Unfortunately I had known only too long that it had to come. I thought of the conversations I had had about the Armenian question with members of the German Embassy in Constantinople and, of a very different kind, with Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador. I had never felt fully convinced by the protestations of the German Embassy that they had done their utmost to put a check on the murderous attacks on harmless Armenians far from the theatre of war, who from their whole surroundings and their social class could not be in a position to take an active part in politics, and on the cold-blooded neglect and starvation of women and children apparently deported for no other reason than to die. The attitude of the German Government towards the Armenian question had impressed me as a mixture of cowardice and lack of conscience on the one hand and the most short-sighted stupidity on the other. The American Ambassador, who took the most generous interest in the Armenians, and has done so much for the cause of humanity in Turkey, was naturally much too reserved on this most burning question to give a German journalist like myself his true opinion about the attitude of his German colleagues. But from the many conversations and discussions I had with him, I gathered nothing that would turn me from the opinion I had already formed of the German Embassy, and I had given him several hints of what that opinion was. The attitude of Germany was, in the first place, as I have said, one of boundless cowardice. For we had the Turkish Government firmly
- 55. enough in hand, from the military as well as the financial and political point of view, to insist upon the observance of the simplest principles of humanity if we wanted to. Enver, and still more Talaat, who as Minister of the Interior and really Dictator of Turkey was principally responsible for the Armenian persecutions, had no other choice than to follow Germany's lead unconditionally, and they would have accepted without any hesitation, if perhaps with a little grumbling, any definite ruling of Germany's even on this Armenian question that lay so near their hearts. From hundreds of examples it has been proved that the Germany Embassy never showed any undue delicacy for even perfectly legitimate Turkish interests and feelings in matters affecting German interests, and that they always got their own way where it was a question, for example, of Germans being oppressed, or superseded by Turks in the Government and ruling bodies. And yet I had to stand and look on when our Embassy was not even capable of granting her due and proper rights to a perfectly innocent German lady married to an Armenian who had been deported with many other Armenians. She appealed for redress to the German Embassy, but her only reward was to wait day after day in the vestibule of the Embassy for her case to be heard. Turks themselves have found cynical enjoyment in this measureless cowardice of ours and compared it with the attitude of the Russian Government, who, if they had found themselves in a similar position to Germany, would have been prepared, in spite of the Capitulations being abolished, to make a political case, if necessary, out of the protection due to one poor Russian Jew. Turks have, very politely but none the less definitely, made it quite clear to me that at bottom they felt nothing but contempt for our policy of letting things slide. Our attitude was characterised, secondly, by lack of conscience. To look on while life and property, the well-being and culture of thousands, are sacrificed, and to content oneself with weak formal protests when one is in a position to take most energetic command of the situation, is nothing but the most criminal lack of conscience,
- 56. and I cannot get rid of the suspicion that, in spite of the fine official phrases one was so often treated to in the German Embassy on the subject of the "Armenian problem," our diplomats were very little concerned with the preservation of this people. What leads me to bring this terrible charge against them? The fact that I never saw anything in all this pother on the part of our diplomats when the venerable old Armenian Patriarch appeared at the Embassy with his suite after some particularly frightful sufferings of the Armenian population, and begged with tears in his eyes for help from the Embassy, however late—and I assisted more than once at such scenes in the Embassy and listened to the conversations of the officials—I never saw anything but concern about German prestige and offended vanity. As far as I saw, there was never any concern for the fate of the Armenian people. The fact that time and again I heard from the mouths of Germans of all grades, from the highest to the lowest, so far as they did not have to keep strictly to the official German versions, expressions of hatred against the Armenians which were based on the most short-sighted judgment, had no relation to the facts of the case, and were merely thoughtless echoes of the official Turkish statements. And cases have actually been proved to have occurred, from the testimony of German doctors and Red Cross nurses returned from the Interior, of German officers light-heartedly taking the initiative in exterminating and scattering the Armenians when the less-zealous local authorities who still retained some remnants of human feeling, scrupled to obey the instructions of "Nur-el-Osmanieh" (the headquarters of the Committee at Stamboul). The case is well known and has been absolutely verified of the scandalous conduct of two German officers passing through a village in far Asia Minor, where the Armenians had taken refuge in their houses and barricaded them to prevent being herded off like cattle. The order had been given that guns were to be turned on them, but not a single Turk had the courage to carry out this order and fire on women and children. Without any authority whatsoever, the two
- 57. German officers then turned to and gave an exhibition of their shooting capacities! Such shameful acts are of course isolated cases, but they are on a par with the opinions expressed about the Armenian people by dozens of educated Germans of high position—not to speak of military men at all. A case of this kind where German soldiers were guilty of an attack on Armenians in the interior of Anatolia, was the subject of frequent official discussion at the German Embassy, and was finally brought to the notice of the authorities in Germany by Graf Wolff-Metternich, a really high-principled and humane man. The material result of this was that through the unheard-of cowardice of our Government, this man—who in spite of his age and in contrast to the weak-minded Freiherr von Wangenheim, and criminally optimistic had made many an attempt to get a firmer grip of the Turkish Government—was simply hounded out of office by the Turks and weakly sacrificed without a struggle by Berlin. What, finally, is one to think of the spirit of our German officials in regard to the Armenian question, when one hears such well-verified tales as were told me shortly before I left Constantinople by an eminent Hungarian banker (whose name I will not reveal)? He related, for example, that "a German officer, with the title of Baron, and closely connected with the military attaché," went one day to the bazaar in Stamboul and chose a valuable carpet from an Armenian, which he had put down to his account and sent to his house in Pera. Then when it came to paying for it, he promptly set the price twenty pounds lower than had been stipulated, and indicated to the Armenian dealer that in view of the good understanding between himself (the officer) and the Turkish President of police, he would do well not to trouble him further in the matter! I only cite this case because I am unfortunately compelled to believe in its absolute authenticity. Shortsighted stupidity, finally, is how I characterised the inactive toleration on the part of our Imperial representatives of this policy of
- 58. extermination of the Armenian race. Our Government could not have been blind to the breaking flood of Turkish jingoism, and no one with any glimmer of foresight could have doubted for a moment since the summer of 1915 that Turkey would only go with us so long as she needed our military and financial aid, and that we should have no place, not even a purely commercial one, in a fully turkified Turkey. In spite of the lamentations one heard often enough from the mouths of officials over this well-recognised and unpalatable fact, we tolerated the extermination of a race of over one and a half million of people of progressive culture, with the European point of view, intellectually adaptable, absolutely free from jingoism and fanaticism, and eminently cosmopolitan in feeling; we permitted the disappearance of the only conceivable counterbalance to the hopelessly nationalistic, anti-foreign Young Turkish element, and through our cowardice and lack of conscience have made deadly enemies of the few that will rise from the ruins of a race that used to be in thorough sympathy with Germany. An intelligent German Government would, in face of the increasingly evident Young Turkish spirit, have used every means in their power to retain the sympathies of the Armenians, and indeed to win them in greater numbers. The Armenians waited for us, trembled with impatience for us, to give a definite ruling. Their disappointment, their hatred of us is unbounded now—and rightly so—and if a German ever again wants to take up business in the East he will have to reckon with this afflicted people so long as one of them exists. To answer the Armenian question in the way I have done here, one does not necessarily need to have the slightest liking or the least sympathy for them as a race. (I have, however, intimated that they deserve at least that much from their high intellectual and social abilities.) One only requires to have a feeling for humanity to abhor the way in which hundreds of thousands of these unfortunate people were disposed of; one only requires to understand the commercial and social needs of a vast country like Turkey, so undeveloped and
- 59. yet so capable of development, to place the highest value on the preservation of this restless, active, and eminently useful element; one only requires to open one's eyes and look at the facts dispassionately to deny utterly and absolutely what the Turks have tried to make the world believe about the Armenians, in order that they might go on with their work of extermination in peace and quiet; one only requires to have a slight feeling of one's dignity as a German to refuse to condone the pitiful cowardice of our Government over the Armenian question. The mixture of cowardice, lack of conscience, and lack of foresight of which our Government has been guilty in Armenian affairs is quite enough to undermine completely the political loyalty of any thinking man who has any regard for humanity and civilisation. Every German cannot be expected to bear as light-heartedly as the diplomats of Pera the shame of having history point to the fact that the annihilation, with every refinement of cruelty, of a people of high social development, numbering over one and a half million, was contemporaneous with Germany's greatest power in Turkey. In long confidential reports to my paper I made perfectly clear to them the whole position with regard to the Armenian persecutions and the brutal jingoistic spirit of the Young Turks apparent in them. The Foreign Office, too, took notice of these reports. But I saw no trace of the fruits of this knowledge in the attitude of my paper. The determination never to re-enter the editorial offices of that paper came to me on that dramatic occasion when my wife hurled her denunciation of Germany in my teeth. I at least owe a personal debt of gratitude to the poor murdered and tortured Armenians, for it is to them I owe my moral and political enfranchisement. FOOTNOTES: [1] This and other works on the subject came to my notice for the first time a few days before going to press. Before that (in Turkey, Austria, and Germany) they were quite unprocurable.
- 60. CHAPTER IV The tide of war—Enver's offensive for the "liberation of the Caucasus"—The Dardanelles Campaign; the fate of Constantinople twice hangs in the balance—Nervous tension in international Pera—Bulgaria's attitude—Turkish rancour against her former enemy—German illusions of a separate peace with Russia—King Ferdinand's time-serving —Lack of munitions in the Dardanelles—A mysterious death: a political murder?—The evacuation of Gallipoli—The Turkish version of victory—Constantinople unreleased—Kut- el-Amara—Propaganda for the "Holy War"—A prisoner of repute—Loyalty of Anglo-Indian officers—Turkish communiqués and their worth—The fall of Erzerum—Official lies—The treatment of prisoners—Political speculation with prisoners of war—Treatment of enemy subjects—Stagnation and lassitude in the summer of 1916—The Greeks in Turkey —Dread of Greek massacres—Rumania's entry—Terrible disappointment—The three phases of the war for Turkey. It will be necessary to devote a few lines to a review of the principal features of the war, so far as it affected the life of the Turkish capital, in order to have a military and political background for what I saw among the Turks during my twenty months' stay in their country. To that I will add a short description of the economic situation. When I arrived in Constantinople, Turkey had already completed her first winter campaign in the Caucasus, and had repelled the attack of the Entente fleet on the Dardanelles, culminating in the events of March 18th, 1915. But Enver Pasha had completely misjudged the relation between the means at his disposal and the task before him when, out of pure vanity and a mad desire for expansion, he undertook a personally conducted offensive for "the liberation of the
- 61. Caucasus." The terrible defeats inflicted on the Turkish army on this occasion were kept from the knowledge of the people by a rigorous censorship and the falsification of the communiqués. This was particularly the case in the enormous Turkish losses sustained at Sarykamish. Enver had put this great Caucasus offensive in hand out of pure wanton folly, thinking by so doing to win laurels for himself and to have something tangible to show those Turkish ultra-Nationalists who always had an eye on Turkestan and Turan and thought that now was the time to carry out their programme of a "Greater Turkey." It was this mad undertaking, bound as it was to come to grief, that first showed Enver Pasha in his true colours. I shall have something to say about his character in another connection, which will show how gravely he has been over-estimated in Europe. From the beginning of March 1915 to the beginning of January 1916 the situation was practically entirely commanded by the battles in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. It has now been accepted as a recognised fact even in the countries belonging to the Entente that the sacrifice of a few more ships on March 18th would have decided the fate of the Dardanelles. To their great astonishment the gallant defenders of the coast forts found that the attack had suddenly ceased. Dozens of the German naval gunners who were manning the batteries of Chanakkalé on that memorable day told me later that they had quite made up their minds the fleet would ultimately win, and that they themselves could not have held out much longer. Such an outcome was expected hourly in Constantinople, and I was told by influential people that all the archives, stores of money, etc., had already been removed to Konia. It is a remarkable fact that for a second time, in the first days of September, the fate of Constantinople was again hanging in the balance—a fact which is no longer a secret in England and France. The British had extended their line northwards from Ariburnu to Anaforta, and a heroic dash by the Anzacs had captured the summit of the Koja-Jemen-Dagh, and so given them direct command of the
- 62. whole peninsula of Gallipoli and the insufficiently protected Dardanelles forts behind them. It is still a mystery to the people of Constantinople why the British troops did not follow up this victory. The fact is that this time again the money and archives were hurried off from Constantinople to Asia, and a German officer in Constantinople gave me the entertaining information that he had really seriously thought of hiring a window in the Grand' Rue de Péra, so that he and his family might watch the triumphal entry of the Entente troops! It would be easier to enjoy the joke of this if it were not overshadowed by such fearful tragedy. I have already indicated the dilemma in which I was placed on my first and second visits to the Gallipoli front. I was torn by conflicting doubts as to whom my sympathies ought ultimately to turn to—to the heroic Turkish defender, who was indeed fighting for the existence of his country, although in an unsuccessful and unjust cause, for German militarism and the exaggerated jingoism of the Young Turks, or to those who were officially my enemies but whom, knowing as I did who was responsible for the great crime of the war, I could not regard as such. In those September days I had already had some experience of Turkish politics and their defiance of the laws of humanity, and my sympathies were all for those thousands of fine colonial troops— such men as one seldom sees—sacrificing their lives in one last colossal attack, which if it had been prolonged even for another hour might have sealed the fate of the Straits and would have meant the first decisive step towards the overthrow of our forces; for the capture of Constantinople would have been the beginning of the end. I am not ashamed to confess that, German as I am, that was the only feeling I had when I heard of the British victory and the subsequent British defeat at Anaforta. The Battle of Anaforta was the last desperate attempt to break the resistance in the Dardanelles. While the men of Stamboul and Anatolia—the nucleus of the Ottoman Empire—were defending the City of the Caliph at the gate
- 63. of the Dardanelles, with reinforcements from Arab regiments when they were utterly exhausted in the autumn, the other half of the metropolis, the cosmopolitan Galata-Pera, was trembling for the safety of the attacking Entente troops, and lived through the long months in a state of continual tension, longing always for the moment of release. There was a great deal of nervous calculation about the probable attitude of Bulgaria among both the Turks and the thousands of thoroughly illoyal citizens of the Ottoman Empire composing the population of the capital. From lack of information and also as a result of Bulgaria's long delay in declaring her attitude, an undue optimism ruled right up to the last moment among those who desired the overthrow of the Turks. The Bulgarian question was closely bound up with the question of the munitions supply. The Turkish resistance on Gallipoli threatened to collapse through lack of munitions, and general interest centred— with very varied desires with regard to the outcome—on the rare ammunition trains that were brought through Rumania only after an enormous expenditure of Turkish powers of persuasion and the application of any amount of "palm-oil." I was present at Sedd-ul-Bahr at the beginning of July, when, owing to lack of ammunition, the German-Turkish artillery could only reply with one shot to every ten British ones, while the insufficiently equipped factories of Top-hané and Zeitun-burnu, under the control of General Pieper, Director of Munitions, were turning out as many shells as was possible with the inferior material at their disposal, and the Turkish fortresses in the Interior had to send their supply of often very antiquated ammunition to the Dardanelles. The whole dramatic import of the situation, which might any day give rise to epoch-making events, was only too evident in Constantinople. It is not to be wondered at that everyone looked forward with feverish impatience to Bulgaria's entry either on one side or the other. But, in spite of all this, the Turks could scarcely bear the sight of the first Bulgarian soldiers who appeared in autumn 1915 in full uniform
- 64. in the streets of "Carihrad." The necessary surrender of the land along the Maritza right to the gates of the holy city of "Edirne" (Adrianople) was but little to the liking of the Turkish patriots, and even the successful issue of the Dardanelles campaign, only made possible by Bulgaria's joining the Central Powers, was not sufficient to win the real sympathies of the Turks for their new allies. It was not until much later that the position was altered as a result of the combined fighting in Dobrudja. Practically right up to the end of 1916, the real, short-sighted, jingoistic Turk looked askance at his new ally and viewed with irritation and distrust the desecration of his sacred "Edirne," the symbol of his national renaissance, while the ambition of all politicians was to bring Bulgaria one day to a surrender of the lost territory and more. Even in 1916 I found Young Turks, belonging to the Committee, who still regarded the Bulgarians as their erstwhile cunning foe and as a set of unscrupulous, unsympathetic opportunists who might again become a menace to them. They even admitted that the Serbs were "infinitely nicer enemies in the Balkan war," and appealed to them very much more than the Bulgarians. The late Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, of whose tragic death I shall speak later, was always a declared opponent of the cession of the Maritza territory. The possibility of Bulgaria's voluntarily surrendering this territory and possibly much more through extending her own possessions westward if Greece joined the Entente, had a great deal to do with Turkey's attitude during the whole of 1916, and goes far to explain why she dallied so long over the idea of alienating Greece, and used all sorts of chicanery against the Ottoman and Hellenic Greeks in Turkey. Another and much more important factor was, as we shall see, fundamental race-hatred and avarice. As the question as to which side Bulgaria was to join was of decisive moment for Turkish politics, I may perhaps be permitted to add a few details from personal information. I had an interesting sidelight on the German attempts to win over Bulgaria from a well-informed source in Sofia. Everyone was much puzzled over the apparent
- 65. clumsiness of the German Ambassador in Sofia, Dr. Michahelles, in his diplomatic mission to gain help from Bulgaria. King Ferdinand, of course, made great difficulties, and at a very early stage of the proceedings he turned to the Prime Minister, Radoslavoff, and said: "Away with your German Jews! Why don't you take the good French gold?" (referring, of course, to the offered French loan). The king was cunning enough in his own way, but he was a poor politician and utterly vacillating, for he had no sort of ideals to live up to and was prompted by a spirit of unworthy opportunism, and it needed Radoslavoff's threat of instant resignation to bring him to a definite decision. The transference shortly afterwards of the German Ambassador to a northern post strengthened the impression in confidential circles in Sofia that he had been lacking in diplomacy. The truth was that he had received most contradictory instructions from Berlin, which did not allow him to do his utmost to win Bulgaria for the German cause. The Imperial Chancellor seems even then—it was after the great German summer offensive against Russia—to have given serious consideration to the possibility of a separate peace with Russia, and was quite convinced that Russia would never lay down arms without having humiliated Bulgaria, should the latter prove a traitor to the Slavic cause and turn against Serbia. In diplomatic circles in Berlin this knowledge and the decision—so naïve in view of all their boasted Weltpolitik—to pursue the quite illusory dream of a separate peace with Russia, seemed to outweigh, at any rate for some time, anxiety with regard to the state of affairs in Gallipoli and the complete lack of munitions shortly to be expected, and lamed their initiative in their dealings with Bulgaria. It is probably not generally known that here again the military party assumed the lead in politics, and took the Bulgarian matter in hand themselves. In the space of no time at all, Bulgaria's entry on the German side was an accomplished fact. It was Colonel von Leipzig, the German military attaché at the Constantinople Embassy, that clinched the matter at the critical moment by a journey to Sofia, and the whole thing was arranged in less than a fortnight. But that
- 66. journey cost him his life. On the way back to the Turkish capital Herr von Leipzig—one of the nicest and most gentlemanly men that ever wore a field-grey uniform—visited the Dardanelles front, and on the little Thracian railway-station of Uzunköprü he met his death mysteriously. He was found shot through the head in the bare little waiting-room of this miserable wayside station. It so happened that on my way to the Dardanelles on that day at the end of June 1915, I passed through this little station, and was the sole European witness of this tragic event, which increased still further the excitement already hanging over Constantinople in these weeks of lack of ammunition and terrible onslaughts against Gallipoli, and which had already risen to fever-heat over the nervous rumours that were going the rounds as to Bulgaria's attitude. The occurrence, of course, was used by political intriguers for their own ends. I wrote a warm and truly heartfelt appreciation of this excellent man and good friend, which was published in my paper at the time, and it was not till long afterwards, weeks, indeed, after my return, that I had any idea that the sudden death of Herr von Leipzig on his return from a mission of the highest political importance was looked upon by the German anti-English party as the work of English spies in the service of Mr. Fitzmaurice, who was formerly at the English Embassy in Constantinople. I was an eye-witness of the occurrence, or rather, I was beside the Colonel a minute after I heard the shot, and saw the hole in his revolver-holster where the bullet had gone through. I heard the frank evidence of all the Turks present, from the policeman who had arrived first on the scene to the staff doctor who came later, and I immediately telegraphed to my paper from the scene of the accident, giving them my impression of the affair. On my return to Constantinople I was invited to give evidence under oath before the German Consulate General, and there one may find the written evidence of what I had to say: a pure and absolute accident.
- 67. I must not omit to mention here that the German authorities themselves in Constantinople were so thoroughly convinced that the idea of murder was out of the question, that Colonel von Leipzig's widow, who, believing this version of the story, hurried to Turkey, to make her own investigations, had the greatest difficulty in being officially received by the Embassy and Consulate. I had a long interview with her in the "Pera Palace," where she complained bitterly of her treatment in this respect. I have tarried a little over this tragic episode as it shows all the political ramifications that ran together in the Turkish capital and the dramatic excitement that prevailed. The day came, however, when the Entente troops first evacuated Anaforta-Ariburnu, and then, after a long and protracted struggle, Sedd-ul-Bahr, and so the entire Gallipoli Peninsula. The Dardanelles campaign was at an end. The impossibility of ever breaking down that solid Turkish resistance, the sufferings of the soldiers practically starved to death in the trenches during the cold winter storms, the difficulties of obtaining supplies of provisions, drinking water, ammunition, etc., with a frozen sea and harbourless coast, anxiety about the superior heavy artillery that the enemy kept bringing up after the overthrow of Serbia—everything combined to strengthen the Entente in their decision to put an end to the campaign in Gallipoli. The Turkish soldiers had now free access to the sea, for all the British Dreadnoughts and cruisers had disappeared; the warlike activity which had raged for months on the narrow Gallipoli Peninsula suddenly ceased; Austrian heavy and medium howitzers undertook the coast defence, and a garrison of a few thousand Turkish soldiers stayed behind in the Narrows for precaution's sake, while the whole huge Gallipoli army in an endless train was marched off to the Taurus to meet the Russian advance threatening in Armenia. But Constantinople remained "unrelieved." And from that moment a dull resignation, a dreary waiting for one scarcely knew what,
- 68. disappointment, and pessimism took the place of the nervous tension that had been so apparent in those who had been longing for the fall of the Turkish capital. But the Turks rejoiced. It is scarcely to be wondered at that they tried to construe the failure of the Gallipoli affair as a wonderful and dazzling victory for Islam over the combined forces of the Great Powers. It is only in line of course with Turkish official untruthfulness that, in shameless perversion of facts, they talked glibly of the irresistible bayonet attacks of their "ghazi" (heroes) and of thousands of Englishmen taken prisoner or chased back into the sea, whereas it was a well-known fact even in Pera that the retreat had been carried out in a most masterly way with practically no loss of life, and that the Turks themselves had been caught napping this time; but to lie is human, and the Turks owed it to their prestige to have an unmistakable and great military victory to form the basis of that "Holy War" that was so long in getting under weigh; and when all is said and done, their truly heroic defence really was a victory. The absurd thing about all these lies was the way they were foisted on a public who already knew the true state of affairs and had nothing whatever to do with the "Holy War." The Turks made even more of the second piece of good fortune that fell to their lot—the fall of Kut-el-Amara. General Townshend became their cherished prisoner, and was provided with a villa on the island of Halki in the Sea of Marmora, with a staff of Turkish naval officers to act as interpreters. In the neighbouring and more fashionable Prinkipo he was received by practically everyone with open arms, and once even a concert was arranged in his honour, which was attended by the élite of Turkish and Levantine Society—the Turks because of their vanity and pride in their important prisoner of war, the Levantines because of their political sympathy with General Townshend, who, although there against his will, seemed to bring them a breath of that world they had lost all contact with for nearly two years and for which they longed with the most ardent and passionate desire.
- 69. On the occasion of the Bairam Festival—the highest Musulman festival—in 1916, the Turkish Government made a point of sending a group of about seventy Anglo-Indian Mohammedan officers, who had been taken prisoner at the fall of Kut and were now interned in Eski-Shehir, to the "Caliph City of Stamboul," where they were entertained for ten days in different Turkish hotels and shown everything that would seem to be of value for "Holy War" propaganda purposes. I had the opportunity of conversing with some of these Indian officers in the garden of the "Petit Champs," where their appearance one evening made a most tremendous sensation. I had of course to be very discreet, for we were surrounded by spies, but I came away firmly convinced that, in spite of their good treatment, which was of course not without its purpose, and most unceasing and determined efforts to influence them, the Turkish propaganda so far as these Indian officers was concerned had entirely failed and that their loyalty to England remained absolutely unshaken. Will anyone blame me, if, angry and disgusted as I was at all these Turkish intrigues—it was shortly after that dramatic scene of the tortured Armenian which called forth that denunciation of Germany from my wife—I said to a group of these Indians—just this and nothing more!—that they should not believe all that the Turks told them, and that the result of the war would be very different from what the Turks thought? One of the officers thanked me with glowing eyes on behalf of his comrades and himself, and told me what a comfort my assurance was to them. They had nothing to complain of, he said, save being cut off from all news except official Turkish reports. The very most that even the wildest fancy could find in events like Gallipoli and Kut-el-Amara was brought forward for the benefit of the "Holy War," but, despite everything, the propaganda was, as we have seen, a hopeless failure. Reverses such as the fall of Erzerum, Trebizond, and Ersindjan, on the contrary, which took place between the two above-mentioned victories, have never to this day been even so much as hinted at in the official war communiqués for the
- 70. Ottoman public. For the communiqués for home and foreign consumption were always radically different. It was not until very much later, when the Turkish counter-offensive against Bitlis seemed to be bearing fruit, that a few mild indications of these defeats were made in Parliament, with a careful suppression of all names, and the newspapers were empowered to make some mention of a "purely temporary retreat of no strategic importance" which had then taken place. The usual stereotyped report of 3,000 or 5,000 dead that was officially given out after every battle throughout the whole course of operations in the Irak scarcely came off in this case, however, and, to tell the truth, Erzerum and these countless English dead reported in the Irak did more than anything else to undermine completely the people's already sadly shaken confidence in the official war communiqués. If there was a real victory to be celebrated, the most stringent police orders were issued that flags were to be flown everywhere—on every building. Surely it is only in a land like Turkey that one could see the curious sight I witnessed after the fall of Bucharest—the victorious flags of the Central Powers, surmounted by the Turkish crescent, flying even from the balconies of Rumanian subjects, because there had been a definite police warning issued that, in the case of non-compliance with the order, the houses would be immediately ransacked and the families inhabiting them sent off to the interior of Anatolia. Under the circumstances, refusal to carry out police orders was impossible. That was the Turkish idea of the respect due to individual liberty. This gives me an opportunity to say something of the treatment of prisoners. I may say in one word that it is, on the whole, good. Justice compels me to admit that the Turk, when he does take prisoners, treats them kindly and chivalrously; but he takes few prisoners, for he knows only too well how to wield his bayonet in those murderous charges he makes. Indeed, apart from the few hundred that fell into their hands in the Dardanelles or on the Russo-
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