This past week I have been thinking about two sayings that have been part of the culture of learning for some time but which can too easily be forgotten.  The sayings are:

"The medium is the message"
"You are what you read"

Both of these sayings are important the world over, but are particularly valuable when taken in the context of the Hong Kong initiative "Information technology for quality education: 5-year strategy".

The Hong Kong plan is a good and brave initiative because its intention is to provide and facilitate a sound distinction between teaching and learning.  Too often teachers and their employers have made the mistake of thinking that the more teachers teach, the more students will learn.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  A teacher can teach a lot and be surprised how little the student learned.  On the other hand, a teacher can teach a little, and be so surprised at how much is learnt by the student.

Really this should not be surprising.  Students respond to teachers who demonstrate that they love learning.  A love of learning is infectious.  The teacher who models effective learning will have many interested students who will themselves learn to learn.  They obtain a truly renewable resource.  On the other hand, students who are fed lots of data are simply bloated.  They have indigestion and gain a very limited ability to learn.  They do not offer knowledge...they regurgitate what the teacher offered.  And if the teacher is not a learner, what s/he offered is bound to be out of date, and probably unimportant.

The medium is the message.  IT dominates our thinking and our lives whether we like it or not.  But does it control us or we it?  IT provides the opportunity for access to, and manipulation of, a great percentage of the world's data.  If we cannot use IT, we are going to be left behind (in fact we are already behind!) those who can.  But the fact is that the challenge that IT presents is not of finding data...we are in jeopardy of being drowned in it!!  The challenge is to be able to see that some data are better than others, that point of view needs to be evaluated, and that sometimes there is no right answer just confusing alternatives.  IT allows people to cheat better than ever before...it is so easy to copy other people's ideas and pretend they are one's own.  But such people cheat themselves...they are the fools.

You are what you read.  This saying is a play on the saying, "you are what you eat".   A healthy diet leads to a healthy person.  A diet full of ice cream and chocolate on the other hand leads to an unhealthy person.  A diet that never varies leads to a dull person.  A diet full of variety leads to an interesting person.

The student and the teacher who gather information from a small number of regular sources become predictable and boring.  The gathering of data from a wide variety of sources leads to interesting decisions.  The advent of IT permits teachers and students to widen the sources of their thinking if they want; but if these people currently don't seek information from a variety of sources, why would the introduction of IT make a difference to their thinking, to their seeking?

It is not the introduction of the new information source that is primarily important.  It is the desire and motivation on the part of the student to seek a wide range of ideas that is important.  If this issue is not addressed, new technology will be wasted.

Many teachers fear the introduction of IT into schools because they feel inadequate to deal with it.  In fact many of these teachers are unable to use effectively the information sources that are already available in schools.  They are unable to do this because they are not information literate.

Most teachers are experts in a subject but they are often not experts in dealing with information.  Teachers often teach the way they were taught.  They talk a lot and require their students to be able to memorize what they have been taught.  The accuracy of the memorization is the factor that determines how well the student is graded.  Such an approach makes little sense.  It is obvious that what is learnt is someone else's knowledge.  As time goes by the knowledge will be useless, but the student is not equipped to replace the knowledge.  In this common situation, neither the teacher nor the student has the information literacy skills that are needed to master the processes of becoming informed.

In Australia and Canada the teacher librarian is a key player in the schools approach to information literacy. Teacher librarians are usually high calibre teachers who have taken a masters degree in teacher librarianship. They are both a teacher and an information professional.  The TL is a specialist teacher whose subject is learning.  The TL is not both a librarian and a subject teacher!

The TL has responsibility to build a strong information collection and to work with teachers to ensure that student learning is process based.  The key role of the TL is second only to the principal in its importance.  Like the principal, the TL has an across the school view of the curriculum and works with all teachers.  As the TL, the IT co-ordinator and class teachers work together, they are able to change the school culture from teacher focused to learner focused.

The roll out of IT in schools must be more than an end in itself and it must be more than an instrument to an end.  IT can be a tool and replace other tools in the classroom but this is a very limited function.  IT must be a means to rethinking teaching and learning.  Nothing less can justify the size of the Hong Kong expenditure.

While the Hong Kong initiative "Information technology for quality education: 5-year strategy" does refer to information centres, it ignores the pivotal position that the school's information professional (the TL) must play if IT is to radically change the nature of teaching and learning in schools.  Hong Kong has made a commitment to placing a TL into every school but the link between this and the roll down of IT has been overlooked.  Unless this vital link is identified, the best teachers sought out to become TLs, and the position of TL recognized as a pivotal one with GM status, Hong Kong schools will be replete with much IT but teaching and learning will not have fundamentally changed.

Schools can address this issue by forging a partnership between the IT co-ordinator and the teacher librarian to ensure that the school has the opportunity to become an information literate school community.  Separating information by format is a mistake.  It would be much smarter to conceptualize the school library and the wired school as part of one set of information services.  It is not a question of print versus digital.  It is a question of how students can use information o generate ideas.  The overriding consideration at all times should be a sense of partnership for learning.

A principal can view the teacher librarians as a spare teacher who can fill gaps in the teaching timetable OR the principal can identify the teacher librarian as an expert; as one of the leading teachers.  In Hong Kong there is a shortage of qualified teacher librarians.  Of course credentialed and competent TLs do not grow on trees.  The Education Department responded to the need for credentialing by creating the Diploma in Teacher Librarianship offered through the HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPACE).  This program targets 2 year trained teachers although some non-teachers are also enrolled in the diploma.  Two cohorts  (a total of approximately 200) of teachers are being sponsored through this program.

Teachers wishing to upgrade their qualifications in teacher librarianship can do so through the Centre for IT in School and Teacher Education (CITE) at HKU.  Two programs are currently offered and further programs are planned.  Course details can be obtained from http://www.cite.hku.hk or from the writer james@cite.hku.hk
 

James Henri
Deputy Director
Centre for Information Technology in School and Teacher Education
The University of Hong Kong