The Classroom Analogue and Digital

I genuinely can’t think of any job that has been changed by technology more than teaching. Partly, of course, because society has been changed by technology and any societal changes invariably hit hardest and earliest in education.

I first walked into a classroom in 1991, so let me take you back to what it was like. Well, for a start, there was no technology except for the purpose built but already out of date computer room. Students sat at desks with pens, pencils and lined paper pads, in the sixth form, or notebooks given to them by the school in the lower years. The teacher stood at the front with a cardboard box full of chalk and blackboards behind them. There were two in most classrooms, the ones on the wall that were filled and then rubbed off and the more portable version which included four boards on a rotating drum. I used to move between the two, partly to leave the main elements of the lesson on the big blackboard and partly because I was of the opinion it is always harder to hit a moving target 🤣🤣. In all seriousness it is always beneficial to direct student attention to more than one place as staring at one board quickly becomes very boring. It was at that point I developed my teaching style of constant movement, which I was to keep for the rest of my classroom career.

The first real change in the look of the classroom came in the arrival of the whiteboard and pens, although they didn’t really change teaching in any meaningful way. They simply replaced blackboards, but, in my opinion, did so ineffectively. They were smaller, they did not offer the flexibility of the rotating blackboards and the pen marks became notoriously difficult to rub off after a while. It was a very clear example of ‘progress’ actually taking things backwards. At that point, however, the front of the classroom was still the only focal point and that gave the teacher more control. One bit of ‘technology’ that did make a difference was the overhead projector or OHP. It had actually been around for ages, but when you had one in your classroom it could really help, especially in my area of Economics and Business Studies. I say it could help, but that was only when you got it the right way up and the right way round, on the whiteboard rather than the wall and magnified properly! Let’s just say I wasn’t a natural so I often gave up and went back to the drawing board as it were!

In the early 2000s computers were slowly making their way into the classroom and I found myself in the early adoption phase. My M Ed TESOL at the University of Wollongong in 2004 included a module on technology in the classroom and I made my own lesson using an Apple Mac which I then saved on a floppy disc! Believe me when I say it was groundbreaking at the time. It did, however, teach me a lesson that I never forgot, namely that technology should only be used if it makes things better. The amount of time I poured into developing the lesson on computer was astonishing. I could very easily have done the same lesson on a whiteboard in a tenth of the time, probably less. When I taught it to a class I also realised that it made no discernible difference to understanding or retention. It may or may not be the reason why I have avoided Apple products ever since!

When I got back to the UK after the degree I was back in classrooms where the only technology was a cassette recorder to go with the book I was teaching. It was a couple of years teaching young adults EFL that I think I saw the sweet spot of technology where we actually had DVDs that could be projected onto the whiteboard. This satisfied the students because it allowed them to look at something else and it satisfied me as a teacher because there was a demonstrable increase in engagement for very little extra effort on my part. Our relationship was still front and centre of the learning process but we had technology that complemented rather than conflicted with the learning experience.

That was the starting point of the real technological revolution in the classroom. By the early 2010s things had progressed quickly to using the Internet in the classroom. I used it to teach students to search effectively, to introduce them to recent TV documentaries and to give them access to the library in a whole new way. The students couldn’t get AI to write their essays, but they knew far better than I did where to find ‘extra help’ and I realised that for the first time they were ahead of me in some aspects of the technology. When it first happened I was teaching medical students so I wasn’t too worried, because the process of getting into medical school was so difficult that there were no worthwhile short cuts as any that you had used would trip you up in the extremely searching interview process.

Now, I want to fast forward to the pandemic and the years that have changed teaching, teachers and students irrevocably. When I first started teaching online I didn’t like anything about it, because I couldn’t connect with the students in the way I was used to and even if they had their cameras on they were often very poor quality or they were not focused on the students themselves, something that was particularly common at exam time! However, I started teaching according to the technology available, changing lessons to be more engaging, allowing students to use chat if they didn’t want to speak out loud and making use of votes or yes and no questions. Within a few weeks I was a total convert and I became a very enthusiastic proponent of the new technology. Last summer I went back to online only teaching and it was an absolute joy. OK I did have a brilliant class, but I also slipped straight back into the rhythm I enjoyed so much during the pandemic, but one thing had changed out of all recognition.

AI is an area of teaching that has caused more controversy inside and outside of the profession than any other in my teaching life. It can, and has, lead to widespread cheating and the invalidation of certain forms of assessment. Teachers largely detest it, while students can run rings round the educational system if they so choose. However, it is simply another form of technology and we can use it to make our lessons and their learning better. You need to be proactive as a teacher, learning everything you can about the various AI tools, working out how to avoid most of the obvious pitfalls and how to harness it. I was very lucky in my final couple of years to have two colleagues, John and Clara, who blazed the trail for me to follow, a trail they had to fight to get most of the staff to even engage with. This stereotype of ‘AI bad, all previous technology good’ leads to classrooms with no effective student guidance. As I put it, we can either be King Canute ordering the water to retreat or we can be Isambard Kingdom Brunel and build a defence to reduce its effect. (By the way, Canute may have been misunderstood by history. From what I have read, he ordered the tide to go back to show that there was a limit to a King’s power not because he thought he could do it.) There are amazing tools like Chat PDF that you can use to pinpoint the most useful elements of a journal article, but you as a teacher can show students how that only works if they read the article itself, because otherwise they won’t have a clear understanding of the content. Chat GPT is an AI system that produces poor arguments, poor structure and even uses made up sources. Once you make it clear to the students that you have noticed that you then give them the tools to use it properly.

My decision to leave full time teaching came about in part due to technology. We now teach almost entirely using online resources and we have encouraged students to have full access to these resources. The result is a classroom where everyone has a screen and you have the choice between trying to stop students from using the Internet on their devices or you make it worth their while to pay attention. You can walk backwards and forwards keeping an eye on every screen, but that is just a game of Whack a Mole because the students just flick back to the lesson screen when you get to them and back to the other screen when you walk away. Some teachers were fans of teaching from the back of the classroom, but that only works in lessons where you use the board very infrequently. Once you move to the front, you are back to Whack a Mole. The way I got the engaged students to pay attention was to put the basic information on to a PowerPoint and then using a whiteboard to add extra information, without which they would not be able to complete their tasks effectively. In my last two years I noticed even ideas like that lose their impact as students felt increasingly as though they could blag their way to university which, unfortunately, they could.

In my new teaching job of being a volunteer reading helper, which I will start very soon, I will be coming full circle and rediscovering my analogue past. No screen, just printed books, no phone, just a watch on my wrist to tell the time and no distraction, just me and one pupil learning the joy of reading. Funny how things happen isn’t it?