Martin Chambers
email: martinpchambers@gmail.com

Reflections on Computers in Education 1984 -2001: The Logo Continuum

Keywords: Computing student, university student, computing education

These reflections describe Martin Chambers time in the mid-1980s as a computing student; the early 1990s at University and from the early 1990s to the early 2000s as a computing educator.

My enjoyment of computer programming began in 1984 as a high school student in Northern Tasmania where I was introduced to Logo on an Apple IIe. I had previously spent some time gaming on consoles such as the Hanimex and Atari 2600 and later on personal computers such as the Vic 20 and the Commodore 64 but I had never used a computer to actually write programs. Logo, complete with its sixteen colours and pixelated turtle, intrigued me and the wonderment of 'creating cool images' with simple computer instructions filled my young, impressionable mind.

With this new found passion, I convinced my father that computing was an area of great importance to me and after much persuasion he purchased a Dick Smith branded 'Cat' computer. This was a clone machine that emulated the Apple IIe via a plug-in cartridge on the side. Apple IIes were virtually impossible to purchase for the home as the price was prohibitive and they weren't being sold in mainstream electrical stores.

Memories come back to me of the salesman (a Greg Evans look-a-like from Perfect Match fame) being so enthusiastic about this Cat computer that 'could do everything'. This machine was going to change the world! I was thoroughly convinced and being an over excited 14 year-old, I pushed the case to my father to purchase one very hard. My father, a bank manager at the time, who relied heavily on his own computational thinking ability instead of that offered by any computer, was less convinced about this deal but never-the-less he cautiously purchased the computer as perhaps he saw there was a flicker of hope it may indeed help in my education. Maybe, on reflection, he did see that one day I may end up working in the computing field and was happy to support me in this way.

The Cat lasted a couple of years, but before long the lack of hardware expansion became extremely limiting and now that I was working part-time I was able to upgrade to another Apple IIe clone. With this brand less new computer you could use third party peripheral cards in the expansion slots, just like the original Apple IIes. I remember vividly the various video enhancement cards, copy cards, network cards and the like that I purchased over time to improve the capability of my clone.

Thinking back, this opened my mind to the importance of having truly expansive systems, a tenant still valid today.

I purchased this new computer from a partially blind, fanatical backyard supplier who had quite a band of followers in my region. Not only did he build and sell clone machines, he imported many and varied expansion cards from the United States of America. I remember one card in particular was used to bypass software protection and enable most software titles available on the market to be backed up. I was on the waiting list for a long time for this card -the demand obviously out stripped the supply! Soon after I purchased the clone, the Apple IIc appeared on the scene and one of my close friends purchased one. Whilst being faster, having a built in disk drive and generally looking a better machine, it did not excite me as much as my expandable Apple IIe clone. We both joined the 'Australian Software Library' based in Renmark, South Australia, where Apple titles could be rented for a short period of time. Newsletters were posted out with a listing of titles included in the library, much like a catalogue of video rentals. You would simply select which items you wanted, return the slip with a cheque and your software would arrive in the mail a week or so later. You used the software for seven days and then returned it when finished. This scheme was a major coop for users (particularly down in Tasmania) because there was now access to a whole range of software not ever heard or seen of before.

1988 -1991: The University Experience

In 1988 and after completing my Higher Schools Certificates' computing subjects, Computer Science and Information Systems, I arrived at the Tasmania State Institute of Technology (the next year it was to merge with the University of Tasmania) looking for an appropriate course, however, there was not a full-time computing course on offer. As a result, I majored in computing and physics within an Applied Science Bachelor degree.

My computing experience at University was mainly based around using MS-DOS driven machines. I remember in the third year of my degree (1990) Windows 3.0 was released and installed on the 286/386 IBM machines in the physics laboratories. The excitement of this moment was memorable as it appeared that finally the clunky computers we were using now somewhat resembled the slick Apple Macintosh computers that were being used in the design areas of the University. Our physics lecturers did remind us, however, to make sure we didn't get carried away with this superficial new interface.

The student computing learning areas in the late 1980s and early 1990s at my University were basically confined to laboratories. In time this started to change, however, and I recall what an astounding moment it was when a number of 'mobile computing stations' appeared in the physics laboratories.

These stations comprised of a large 386 IBM computer, set up with its own printer, keyboard, mouse and large display monitor all mounted on a portable desk with wheels. The mobile stations could wheel back and forth from one laboratory to another, giving us an unrivalled sense of computing freedom. Looking back now it must have been absolute chaos trying to organise ten or so mobile workstations into a physics laboratory where the stereotypical benches and stools took pride of place. At the time though, we thought this new mobile computing solution was an absolute revelation.

With the Applied Science Bachelor degree all but finished, I turned my attention to studying education, as I had now decided to become a high school computing teacher. During my Diploma of Teaching in 1991, I had my first exposure of how using computers could be useful in an educational setting. Theoretical study centered around some of the early constructivist approaches to learning and I now understood why programming in Logo was so exciting for me as a teenager back in 1984.

As well as the theory, there were a number of practical tutorials we attended on teaching with computers. One such class, as I recall, was structured around reviewing educational software and reporting back to the other students the purpose and effectiveness of what was reviewed. This process was quite enjoyable but at the same time, very dysfunctional! Classmates would attempt to load their software into a computer (usually a BBC Micro or Apple Macintosh) in front of 25 odd eager fellow students, but inevitably the software wouldn't load or would crash at some point during the explanation. The presenter, more times than not, simply had to reflect on 'how it worked at home.' Looking back now, this experience was indicative of the pitfalls I would face later on in my teaching career running stand-alone software with groups of teenage students.

All of the educational computing at that point in time relied on the hardware and software to work flawlessly. Of course there was no Internet available at that stage.

1992 -2002: Teaching Computing in Catholic and Government Schools

Graduating from University in 1992, I was ready for the workforce and was granted a secondary teaching position in a K-12 catholic school in Hobart, an institution I would teach for the next ten years. Along the journey I also become Technology Coordinator and Manger of Information Systems. Nervously starting out, I remember the Principal at the time not being concerned with my mathematical or science teaching skills (although I was employed to teach those subjects as well), but more interested if I was 'The computer man who could fix everything'. He chaperoned me down to the main corridor of the school where on the floor lay a pile of BBC Micro, Archimedes and Apple IIe computers as well as metres of old networking cable. I did have a slight nauseous feeling of 'what have I got myself into here!'

As the year progressed, we (including a technician from the Catholic Education Office) managed to set up the computer laboratory which included a network hard drive where students could save files. This drive (which resembled the size of a large shoe box) was unfortunately unreliable and students, in the main, used 3.5 inch disks to save their work.

Loading up programs was conducted in a controlled manner by handing out disks to students, passing them on, loading the software up on the next computer, and then finally being ready to teach twenty minutes later. Class sizes were generally of thirty students and programs consisted of Logo programming, basic office (word processing, database and spreadsheet) programs as well as some other general educational titles which the Archimedes and BBC Micros were renowned for. At this time in Tasmania there was a healthy debate on the most suitable platform for education; the traditional UK based computers (BBC Micro / Archimedes) or the increasingly popular IBM or Macintosh machines.

In this my first year of teaching, computing was very much seen as an elective but much of the content was heading for the mainstream curriculum. The illusion was that all students needed to experience time on a computer to receive a 'modern education'. As a teacher in this learning area my popularity was unsurpassed, and other colleagues in some of the more traditional subjects were experiencing fluctuating student interest. It was a good feeling indeed to be so popular. I had landed the right job at the right time! We were now ready for the next big thing.

My earliest memory of being connected to the Internet was in 1993. By this stage the school had increased the number of computer laboratories and computing teachers, reduced student numbers down to twenty per class and even employed a full time technician to look after our systems. Running parallel to the computing needs of students was the push to fully computerise the administration. The demands on the ICT staff seemed many! By connecting to the Internet via a sufficient 2400 baud modem, our class was able to participate in text based online bulletin board discussions. I remember there was a large community of Bulletin Board System (BBS) users in Austin, Texas who we would chat with now and again, but the time differences made this exercise somewhat problematic. Students, however, seemed less impressed than I was with these sessions and at times I felt they didn't actually believe we were chatting with people on the other side of the world.

My first experience of the power of the Internet as a genuine learning tool came when we performed 'ping and trace route' tests in class. The entire class would be looking at a largish monitor in the computer laboratory and then we connected to a computer on the other side of the world via the ping or trace-route communication tools.

As the Internet traffic jumped from one server to the next in various places, students would record these locations and plot them later on a world map or whiteboard in the classroom. This notion of plotting Internet traffic versus location engaged the students for many lessons. I doubt whether this would have the same impact today.

As experiences like this were happening in our classroom, there were many new developments building in the wider Internet community. In the latter half of 1993 I recall attending a particular ICT based, professional development meeting at our school, which at the time, I thought gave us an insight into the way teaching would be crafted in the future. Others were not so convinced.

A guest speaker from the University of Tasmania was invited to run this session and demonstrated to approximately sixty staff a new software program called 'Mosaic'. As we found out on that day, Mosaic was a 'web browser' which could not only download text information form the Internet, but also download and display images on the same 'web page'. We did not fully appreciate it at the time, but this was our first introduction to Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and the new way of finding, sorting and displaying information.

I sat in complete awe when I viewed an image being rendered from the other side of the world. I couldn't stop thinking about the implications that this would have on my future classes. After all, I had been exposed to the sending of plain text across the world -this new 'web browser' would open up new learning opportunities. The image did take approximately thirty minutes to download and render and was quite low in resolution but that did not deter my enthusiasm at all.

Contrary to my own personal excitement and to my complete amazement, I recall many colleagues were not impressed at all with this demonstration. 'I just don't see the use of it', 'It is just too slow', 'Books are much better' were just some of the comments that resonated on that day. I don't believe the classroom teachers attending that meeting were being negative towards this new teaching tool, it was more they couldn't see a legitimate use for anything like 'the Internet'.

On reflection, it would still be a few years before mainstream Internet usage was accepted as a legitimate teaching tool in the classroom.

In the years 1993 through 1995 there seemed to be a reorganisation of ICT in the curriculum. Should typing or secretarial studies still be taught? Were teachers of those subjects now expected to teach computing? Which faculty did this new subject computing belong to? Did it follow a design, science or mathematics based pedagogy? Steering committees had to be established to manage computers not only from a technical viewpoint but also to answer these burning issues.

With the rapid change of technology at this time, there was an increase in CD-ROM based educational materials, particularly the multimedia encyclopaedias. When not too long ago, shelves were filled with volumes of encyclopaedias, now students could sit at a work station and be provided with endless facts and imagery found on the CD-ROM. Students enjoyed this immensely.

Little did we know the open-source movement and the prolific rise of information available on the Internet would overtake in popularity that of the CD-ROM materials, which in turn overtook the popularity of printed encyclopaedias.

Libraries were definitely moving with the times. New searching and booking systems seemed to appear regularly and the push for web-based integration was paramount. There was nothing better than being a student at the time and able to search the library catalogue internally via a computer and web browser from the other side of the school. Previously, sending a student on a journey to the library to quiz one of the text based OPAC's or even ask the librarian for help, seemed in many cases an exercise fraught with danger.

Back in the computer laboratory, I recall teaching robotics for the first time during the years 1993 -1995. The availability of any ready to go 'Lego' style robots was scarce so instead unassembled robotic kits were purchased and soldered together before becoming operational. Each robot had only one sensor or function. This was fine in a classroom situation as groups of four or five students could examine the 'light sensor robot' and the following week swap it with another group's robot. By the end of a four week block all the students had experienced (to a degree) a range of operations which these robots could perform. The students did enjoy the robotics unit giving them a healthy break away from the computers.

Secretarial studies were still quite popular in the early 1990s, and the challenge of integrating new computing hardware into the course was obvious. Typing laboratories had undergone a transformation whereby the legacy mechanical typewriters were upgraded to electronic typewriters but computers were considered, for some time at least, to be unsuitable for this type of course. Opinions soon changed as more sophisticated integrated software packages were developed and introduced. Eventually all the electronic typewriters were replaced.

With the creation of new laboratories for the technology subjects, printing was becoming more and more of an issue. Each laboratory contained dot-matric style printers, the bigger and louder the better. After a while, however, a revolution took place when the stand-alone 'printing station' and computer were replaced by computers that could share their printer over a network. This was great as students could now print from their own machines without having to save their work on a disk and walk over to the dedicated printing station to print it out. As time progressed shared printing machines were replaced by shared network printing devices, which removed the need for a computer to be involved in the printing production altogether. The advent of laser printers in later years changed the ambiance in the computer laboratories, with the slicker looking, better print quality and quieter machines being very popular. Soon printing quotas and ink management policies had to be introduced to keep costs under control.

Community support for all the new technology was also on the increase. As I recall in the early 1990s numerous educational technology user groups appeared which half rivalled the popularity of Apple User Groups of the late 1980s. Computing in education was becoming a legitimate player in the ICT Industry and suppliers were ready to support community initiatives that were being developed.

As the awareness of computers in education changed in the community so did the role of the computing teacher. By the middle of the 1990s the role was very demanding and I recall one of my extra responsibilities was to create and maintain the school website. For me, new scripting technologies were being developed which built on my prior HTML knowledge and I was able to integrate this dynamism into our school website.

As there were no human resources allocated for the creation of the website student help was crucial. I talked with the senior computing classes (Year 10) about ways we could make the website more interactive and what we could do to offer something back to the community. We didn't want to just display our school's contact information and some nice pictures. We wanted to make it of some use to others. At the time students were now creating word-searches and crosswords with automated software, so we decided to have them available for download. Some of the more able students attempted to create interactive quizzes using online forms and database queries. These were also integrated into the website.

A further idea was to create the 'Australian Schools Directory', since as far as we could tell there was no publically listed database where we could find all the Australian schools contact information. Taking this challenge on, we attempted to collect all the printed directories that we could find (from Catholic, Independent and Government Schools) and enter them into a database which we eventually published online in 1996. This was an extremely arduous task and many students soon understood the tediousness of data entry and the extremely important notion of data validation.

By now, the idea of creating their own personal websites was quite within the realms of many students and 'The Australian Schools Web Challenge (1997 -2000)' provided a perfect opportunity for students to work in a team, learn HTML and showcase their work against others on a national level. Students competed annually in this event. The notion of learning through a challenge continues today through such competitions as the highly successful Grok Learning Python Challenge.

By the end of the 1900s the transformation from schools with stand-alone computers and printers, connected to unreliable networks and poor Internet connections to schools with fully networked computers and printers, support provided by dedicated technicians and relatively fast internet speeds had been completed. As I moved into my next computing teaching position at a government high school (years 7-10) in Hobart, this transformation was quite evident and attention now was starting to focus on providing students with a useful learning interface and the ability to access their work remotely.

It was at this time, I had my first experience at using a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and the school Intranet provided students with the ability to manage their learning assets easily. Laptops and more mobile solutions were becoming popular and affordable as was specialised printers and scanners. In the computing curriculum around 2001, there was still a need to teach business type applications and the sophistication of some of these, such as Office XP, were making an impact on the general curriculum as well. Soon the notion of 'every subject teaches computing' was becoming popular and some of the more traditional computing topics such as programming seemed to diminish in focus.

2002 -2013: Internet Safety and Teaching Computing at Independent Schools

In 2002, I moved out of the classroom and worked on the Australian Governments first national Internet Safety program. From there, I returned to teaching in 2007 at an Independent k-12 in Tasmania, where I am presently still employed. My journey has seen the popularity of computers in education rise and fall and rise again. A learning area where there is always a new challenge or new technologies to become excited about. Where students can find a passion and engage in higher order thinking. I have enjoyed every minute of this journey.

Ironically, with the pending release of the Digital Technologies Australian Curriculum in 2014 and due to their ability to stimulate computational thinking in students, programming languages such as Logo are regaining popularity once againa language that started my thirty year computing in education journey back in 1984. The Logo Continuum!

Biography

Martin Chambers is currently a senior computing educator in Tasmania, Australia. He has had a passion with computing for thirty years and been involved in teaching and educational initiatives for twenty years by teaching in Catholic, Government and Independent Schools. He has also worked on the peak government Internet Safety program in Australia for a number of years. Martin has been a former Branch Executive Member of the Australian Computer Society in Tasmania and is a current committee member of the Tasmanian Society for IT in Education (TASITE).


Keywords: Netherlands, using computers, coding

In the mid-nineteen eighties of last century computers in the Netherlands were broadly introduced in secondary education, and a few years later also in elementary schools. As described in Lepeltak (2006) [1] there has been for the past 25 years a development from learning to use ICT towards using ICT to learn. Learning to use is in terms of being able to operate the machine and its basic applications. Using to learn was focused on using ICT in learning processes for various subject areas. Since 2010 the focus has been slowly moving to the creative, explorative use of ICT. This goes along with the current concept of coding. In the Netherlands coding has not a formal status in education only in the optional subject of information science ('informatica') in upper secondary school. When coding, nowadays mainly practiced by young people outside school, will become a permanent activity is hard to say. There is a strong lobby by the Dutch Royal Academy of Science (KNAW) and industry. Coding in relation to robotics has a lot of potential. It is active, exploring pedagogy and its relations with technology, biology, science. Coding provides schools with a lot of opportunities within the curriculum.

A Short History of Educational Computing

A survey in the Netherlands in 2005 [2] showed that in secondary education (from 12-18 years), 47% of the Dutch teachers use ICT in their lessons. What we see is a very slow growth in the use of computers in the learning process within the schools. In 2002 66% of the interviewed teachers expected that they would use ICT within three years. From a 2013 survey we learned that in fact 50% of the teachers actually used digital content in their lessons [START_REF]Vier in balans monitor[END_REF]. It seems almost as if the use of ICT is slowing down in secondary education in the Netherlands. It is not the availability of hardware or the access to the internet which is holding them back. Is it the software? Or has it to do with the training and the professional development of teachers? Nevertheless about 64% of the Dutch teachers feel selfconfident enough to use computers in their classroom [START_REF]Vier in balans monitor[END_REF]. In 2012 the use of ICT in schools shows an increase.

In primary and secondary education about 78% of the primary school teachers' use on a daily or weekly basis learning supported software, very often combined with a traditional method/schoolbook. In the graph below we see the percentage of teachers in the various school types that use ICT content in their lessons.

The lowest line represents the use of ICT by teachers in primary education (4-12 years), the middle one represent secondary education (12-18 years) and the above line represents vocational education (14-18 years). After a downfall in 2011 the use of ICT shows an increase. The use of internet is not taken account of in this graph. 80% of the teachers use internet on a daily basis.

Schools for secondary education started in 1984 with a new experimental subject area called 'civil information science' (burgerinformatica) a project for students from 12 -16 years. The National Institute for Curriculum Development coordinated the project. The curriculum combined computer awareness and computer literacy. Its main purpose was: "The development of knowledge and skills that makes it possible for students to react adequately in situations where the use of data-processing systems is possible or necessary. Students should also be able to make critical evaluations of the social implications and impact of the use of such systems." [START_REF] Raamwerk | Burgerinformatica. Stichting voor leerplanontwikkeling[END_REF] On the basis of rather generic goals four areas for learning were identified.

1. Use of applications 2. The social implications 3. Problem analysis and programming 4. Building principles ('architecture') of hard-and software After a large school reform in the Netherlands in 1993 Informatiekunde (the new name for an introduction in computing and informatics) became a school subject with a curriculum of 80 hours. However it was practiced for only 20 and 40 hours on the school timetable. The Dutch school inspectors also claim in a report [6] that this is not enough to make this a serious subject within the curriculum. The National institute for Curriculum Development developed the core objectives for this subject area with the long term objective of integrating these 'learning to use skills' in the regular subject areas (maths, language and sciences).

A strong lobby for the Apple approach started, without success. In 1990 Bill Gates signed in the Amsterdam Hilton a Windows contract with the Dutch government to supply elementary schools with a special MS-DOS computer named the Comeniuscomputer, after the famous 17 th century Tsjechian philosopher and pedagogue Jan Amos Comenius. It was installed with the new Windows interface.

In 1985 the MS-DOS personal computer (PC) was introduced in secondary education in the Netherlands. With its command driven interface the PC was not an easy tool to handle.

In 1984 Apple introduced the first PC with a graphic interface for the consumer and small business market. It formed the basis of modern personal computing. "The Mac's elegant system software was its great accomplishment. It displayed a combination of aesthetic beauty and practical engineering that is extremely rare" [START_REF] Ceruzzi | A history of modern computing[END_REF] wrote Paul Ceruzzi in his history of modern computing.

The choice was made on the basis of a report from the Centre for Education and Information at Twente University. Although the cost aspect played a role as well, the main argument for not choosing the Apple Macintosh line was the fact that only one company manufactured them. [START_REF] Schoenmaker | Apparatuur en besturingssystemen voor het basisonderwijs[END_REF] Ironically we see in 2013 a strong but controversial movement about building elementary school education around the use of an iPad. The first so called Steve Jobs school opened in august 2013 with a lot of (inter)national publicity. Apart from this we notice a lobby for the introduction of coding and programming in elementary schools.

Hard and Software in the 21 st Century

The schools in the Netherlands, like most northern European schools, are nowadays well equipped with hard and software. In 2012 the ratio pupil: device (desktop, tablet, laptop) in Dutch elementary schools is 1:5. In secondary education it is 1:4.9 and in vocational schools 1:5.7 [START_REF]Vier in balans monitor[END_REF]. In recent years educational publishers in the Netherlands produced almost no schoolbooks without any software. The part of printed content is diminishing. For the past five years several large and well known publishing houses merged and were sometimes taken over by hedge funds.

What is left is a small number of well-known educational publishing companies in the Netherlands. In 2013 these firms developed together with other players (e.g. school material distributors), a single login portal named basispoort (http://info.basispoort.nl/) which gives access to their digital content.

Because of the monopoly of the educational publishers, school managers complain that they are obliged to buy a school license. This combined with a lot of technical problems during the start in September 2013 made things worse.

Since 2005 schoolbooks in secondary education are free. Schools get a special budget for every student. This makes it very interesting for schools to develop their own content. There is a strong open source and open content movement in the Netherlands. They promote the use of free content on the basis of a wiki-concept called Wikiwijs (say 'Wikewise'). But the complete free exchange of content seemed too idealistic. Nowadays schools can subscribe to meta-tagged content and arrange their own curriculum content.

The budget for free schoolbooks is part of the lump sum (€7500) that secondary schools receive for every student. This enables school administrators to develop their own policy for using, buying or developing learning material. According to the national council for secondary schools (VO-raad) this will make it easier for schools to change from analogue, printed content towards digital content and lesson material. It could make it also easier to make more personalized learning possible. For free schoolbooks the secondary schools receive €321.50 a pupil. For most schools this is not sufficient. Parents have to pay an extra contribution for digital material or licenses that give access to educational databases of publishing companies or Wikiwijs.

In the Netherlands there is not a national curriculum as for example in England. But pupils (also very young ones) are more and more tested. In primary education there are several tests obliged. The primary school ends with a national school test at the age of 12. At the end of secondary education there is a final national examination. Although there is no national curriculum for primary education and general secondary education, certain objectives are formulated. The situation in vocational education is more complex. Although there is not a national curriculum it doesn't mean that schools develop their own curricula. The authors of schoolbooks develop on the basis of curriculum examples most of the curricula. The majority of the schoolbooks are more or less traditional in their pedagogy. This implies that they are course driven. They have an instructional character. ICT comes with it as an asset. Educational publishers are willing to develop more innovative material which differs from the so called book plus production (traditional course with some software). They claim that the majority (70%) of the market asks for 'traditional' material in 2005. Recent surveys show that the majority of the teachers still use traditional schoolbooks although they all have strong digital component. [START_REF]See ICT in the Netherlands. Fact and figures 2003-2004[END_REF]

Informatics, Computing, Critical Skills and Coding

Despite the fact that every school in the Netherlands has a free broadband connection with the internet, the existence of a national educational network (kennisnet) and an average pupil-computer ratio of 9:1 in elementary and secondary education, [11] educational use in secondary education is below expectation. We consider learning to be more effective if it is perceived to be meaningful and embedded in authentic situations. [START_REF] Bereiter | Education and mind in the knowledge age[END_REF] It is in what we now call the social constructivist approach of Lev Vygotsky where we find a great emphasis on the importance of interaction between people (children, teachers, parents) in cognitive development. Situated learning -anchoring instruction in real life problems that have to be solved and creating rich environments that stimulate learners to interact about real life problems is becoming more and more mainstream in the use of ICT for learning. [START_REF] Maddux | Educational Computing. Learning with Tomorrow's Technologies[END_REF] By situated learning we mean the physical and social context within which learning takes place. This remains an integral part of that which is being learned [START_REF] Wood | How children think and learn. The social contexts of cognitive development[END_REF]. This is hardly the case in the traditional technology-driven courses where one is supposed to learn to work with software applications in an isolated way. Children learn to use word processers by learning to express themselves by writing, learning to use spreadsheets by e.g. during statistic research in their environment and by learning to use creative tools and mind maps by exploring their creativity.

What we learn from the Dutch situation is that it is difficult to change patterns that have been followed for years. In countries where ICT has been recently introduced we could learn from new approaches by action research methods and the exchange of free open source material. Education should primarily be a matter of students, pupils, teachers and parents. The involvement of large soft-and hardware companies is not automatically a benefit for the development of school systems with ICT. Teachers in secondary schools are subject oriented i.e. they are teaching maths, language, physics, history etc. It is for this reason that success lies only in the development of concrete plans and projects for the use of ICT that is integrated in their subject areas and in all their teaching. This is why in physics teaching in the Netherlands, where there is a longstanding tradition in the use of science labs, ICT is well integrated in the curriculum. From the beginning in the 1980s tools like IP-Coach and coachlab, were introduced to support the modern teaching of physics. But a new generation of tools is developed e.g. VinciLab an advanced educational data logger for measuring and simulation, available since autumn 2013 [15].

The arrival of a new generation of young teachers is giving a boost to the use of ICT and the development of the so called 21 st century skills. They use social media and they organize successful informal meetings like Edcamps.

New Technologies in the Classrooms: the Digital Whiteboard

The first digital whiteboards (DWB) were introduced in Dutch schools in 2002. In 2006 one could find a digital whiteboard in 10% of the elementary schools. [START_REF] Brummelhuis | Digitale schoolborden in het PO. Onderzoek naar implementatie, gebruik en meerwaarde van digiborden in het primair onderwijs[END_REF].

Most of the time the DWB was used for instruction and presentation by teachers. But we see nowadays a growing amount of use by pupils. The introduction of DWB was criticized. Many educational innovators feared that the DWB would support the traditional instructional approach in the classroom. The Institute for Education and Communication of the NHL-University for Applied Science in Leeuwarden organized in 2006 a seminar about the educational use of digital whiteboards in elementary schools. The emphasis during the seminar was on the use of the digital whiteboards by pupils. Dughall McCormick, a British educational expert, showed examples of the creative use of digital whiteboards by pupils at this seminar.

At this moment about 40% of the classrooms in The Netherlands are equipped with digital whiteboards. In the US this is around 15%, Germany 5% and France 2%. Only the UK is far ahead with a penetration of about 70%.

The presence of a DWB doesn't mean that it is used differently from the traditional blackboard in using it only as a beamer showing/exploring the internet. In a report from a Dutch television youth panel in 2013 58% of the pupils say that their teachers don't use their DWB appropriately [17].

Worldwide or even national statistics on whiteboard penetration in classrooms are difficult to gather, but one survey of about 1,400 full-time teachers in the United States found that 59% of respondents said whiteboards were available in their schools, with 36% saying they had access in their own classrooms. Penetration in the United Kingdom is as we saw far higher, with the government having directed funding for whiteboard purchases at virtually every public school and in most classrooms during the past decade. A recent OECD report shows comparable figures about the penetration. [START_REF] Hennessy | Learning from international experiences with interactive whiteboards: The role of professional development in integrating the technology[END_REF] Remarkable are the differences within the EU. The total number of classrooms (teaching spaces) in each country is given in parentheses.

Source: Futuresource Consulting (2012) cited in the OECD report.

The OECD in their report concluded as follows. They use the term Interactive Digital White Board (IWB) instead of DWB: 1. First, IWBs as such have no transformative power on pedagogy. Teachers' diverse beliefs about pedagogy and student learning, their preferred uses of conventional boards, their goals and their prior experiences, shape the way in which they use all educational tools, including the IWB. New approaches can be developed if supported by adequate investments in professional development, but not imposed. 2. Second, professional learning about IWBs and their effective use takes time.

Pedagogical change only comes with significant investment in professional development and is generally only observed after at least one year of full-time use by teachers. 3. Third, because their impact on pupils is mediated by their use by teachers, there are no robust, clear-cut positive effects on pupil learning associated with IWBs as such: the context and the nature of use of IWBs are all-important. Nevertheless, effects on learner achievement attributed to IWBs are generally more positive than for all other forms of technology.

New Trends: Social Media and Coding

In spring 2013 the second conference on social media in education took place in the just opened Eye-film Institute at the Amsterdam harbor front. The use of social media as an educational tool is rather new and its use is not very widespread. Social media in the schools is a big issue in terms of safety, privacy and protection. Serious incidents concerning cyber bullying, harassment, threats and grooming also took place in the Netherlands.

The use of smart phones by pupils is widespread. 60% of the children from 8 to 12 years have a mobile phone [19]. In schools, teachers and various organizations are trying to make their pupils and their parents more aware of the potential dangers that exist when one is using social media such as Facebook, Skype, Twitter etc. A growing number of schools is now using a protocol for the use of mobile phones of their pupils. Schools forbid the use of mobiles during school time or on the school premises.

About the educational use of social media within Dutch schools not much research is yet available. One could say that the use of social media is widespread within the group teachers that are early adopters of technology. More than 200 active educational bloggers ('edubloggers') are active in The Netherland. They form a community of teachers, researchers, parents, journalists, developers, publishers etc. This community is one of the leading informal groups in ICT innovation and education in the Netherlands.

A very interesting eScience [START_REF]eScience combines big data analysis and modelling with the use of supercomputers for research in various disciplines[END_REF] project at Radboud University (Nijmegen) and the Netherlands eScience Centre (Amsterdam) in Twitter is TwiNL. It provides a large database with all the daily tweets in the Netherlands, with anonymous time and location information. The database is freely accessible. Physicist as well linguist, sociologist, epidemiologists already use this D-base for research. [21] 6.

Revival of Coding?

European business and industry are promoting coding in education, since ICT-experts are shortcoming now and in the near future. For The Netherlands the shortage for the forthcoming years is estimated between the 6.000 and 40.000 professionals. Depending on how the economy develops. [START_REF]The prognostic figures differ but lie between the 6000 end 40.000[END_REF] In the Netherlands there is traditionally a large emphasis on digital literacy. It was the Dutch Royal Academy of Science (KNAW) which wrote a report for the Dutch government about ICT, programming and digital literacy. Digital literacy refers to the ability to make prudent use of digital information and communication, and to evaluate the consequences of that use critically. In the 21 st century digital literacy belongs to the basic skills of every educated person in the KNAW states. It is necessary for navigating through the information society. Like language and mathematics skills, digital literacy requires instruction and education over a longer period of time. It should therefore be covered in our education system.

The KNAW reports that the relevant school subjects are below standard and do not prepare pupils for the information society. It is urgent for the government to revise current teaching of digital information and communication in secondary schools. If not the Netherlands will be behind similar countries. Our leading position as a knowledge and innovation economy will be at risk. At general secondary (havo) and pre-university (vwo) levels the subjects information science and informatics had in 2013 a marginal status. Their quality is insufficient and their content is outdated. Urgent action is needed, the KNAW claims.

In developing its views the Netherlands is neither in the vanguard nor in the rear guard. The challenge is to move beyond discussion and take action, as similar countries are doing. The Academy recommends that the relevant part of secondary education is redesigned from the ground up. We must give digital literacy our ongoing attention, first offering pupils a sound common basis and then allowing for an individual and in-depth study.

The Academy made five recommendations to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science:

1. Introduce a new compulsory subject Information & Communication in the lower years of havo and vwo. This should be a broad and compact introductory subject, covering the essential facets of digital literacy. 2. Completely overhaul the optional subject Informatics in the upper years of havo and vwo. By a flexible and modular design, the subject should remain up to date and appeal to pupils regardless of their focus area. 3. Encourage interaction between these subjects and other school subjects. 4. Make it a priority to raise a new generation of teachers with new skills and attitudes. Instruct the schools for higher professional education (hbo) and the universities to collaborate in this regard. 5. Promote instruction in digital literacy, in coordination with the initiatives taken by the Minister of Education, Culture and Science. This will help in achieving the aims of your ICT policy (Digitale Agenda.nl). The Academy's report focuses on havo and vwo, the sectors of secondary education with which it is most concerned. It is beyond question, however, that digital literacy is equally important in pre-vocational (vmbo) and primary education. Each of these needs a separate set of recommendations, to be formulated by organizations that are involved. Because of the involved political and legislative discussions the adoption of these recommendations the implementation will take at least several years.

In the meantime, in 2013 international initiatives are under way. So we see that The Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS), a non-profit organization seeking to improve and promote a high standard among informatics professionals in recognition of the impact that Informatics has on employment, business and society. CEPIS represents 35 Member Societies in 32 countries across greater Europe. The decline of computing/coding in education seems a western problem. US students already significantly lag their global counterparts where maths and science skills are concerned. But computer science is in even worse shape: Of 12 technical subjects examined in a recent study by the National Centre for Education Statistics, computer science was the only one that declined in student popularity from 1990 to 2009 [23].

CEPIS started in 2013 a lobby with the EU-commission to stimulate coding in elementary and secondary schools in Europe. Meanwhile in England we see since 2012 a strong pressure from the government. Lessons about ICT should be replaced by lessons about coding. This is a policy that seems to be controversial because of the increasing influence of industry on the national curriculum.

New Trends and Initiatives

In the Netherlands all kind of non-formal initiatives are manifest. In 2013 the World Robocup Junior was organized in the city of Eindhoven. This very successful competition got a lot of (international) media coverage. More than a 1000 youngsters from 8-18 originating from more than 30 counties were in competition for about a week in Eindhoven.

In the Netherlands one also notices various local initiatives. For example workshops are provided in elementary schools in making your own app or game. Because of the lack of knowledge and experience at elementary schools these workshops are organized at an ad hoc level.

In the Netherlands about 14% of the teachers in elementary schools are men. Other European countries show a similar development. [START_REF]Feminisering van het primair onderwijs (the feminization of elementary education) CAOP-report[END_REF] Male instructors resign after a few years of teaching [START_REF] Wim Van De Grift | Vakkundig meesterschap en meesterlijk vakmanschap[END_REF]. 25% of men leave the teaching profession in elementary school after four years.

Because of the criticism of the quality of teacher training in 2010 some universities established so called renewed training institutions called the Academic Pabos. They maintain specific admission standards and a more academic curriculum inspired by the way teachers are trained in Finland.

Since 2011 the policy of the Dutch Ministry of Education is focused on promoting technology in the elementary schools. The participation of women in beta-studies is significantly less than that of men. The ambition is that in 2020 science and technology will be part of the elementary school curriculum -a challenge for the existing teacher training centres.

Several initiatives are often from women who worked in the IT-industry and are now giving workshops in elementary schools.

There is a group called Codekinderen (Codekids) that gives pupils in groups 3 to 8 of primary school the chance to discover their digital talents. In workshops the children are introduced to the media they use every day.

There is also an international network of 27 countries of clubs that focus on coding called CoderDoyo. In the Netherlands there are three clubs (Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague) in which children e.g. develop games. These activities take place outside the school.

Strong open source programming languages like Scratch, developed by MIT-media lab, are available for free.

The new Mindstorms EV3 robotic platform makes it possible for children to build very powerful robots. Scratch can be used as a programming language for the first and second generation of Mindstorm Robotics platforms but not for the EV3 in due time, because of its different architecture.

In general one can say that we see several initiatives most of them that take place outside the school and school hours. In the elementary school the focus is on technology and science and not as much on ICT and coding.

In secondary education we see that the position of informatics is rather difficult because of the following reasons:

1. Shortage of qualified teachers 2. Low status. It's a subject that can be offered on a voluntary basis but is not mandatory 3. It is not part of the central examinations 4. There is no overview of the number of pupils and schools that offer information science In the UK the government made coding a mandatory subject of the curriculum. The plans are controversial. The criticism in the educational social media like the Mirandenet is that these days industry (Microsoft and Cisco) seem to determine part of the computing curriculum.

In October 2013 a new BBC Director General announced an ambitious nationwide technology initiative to encourage the public to take up computer programming. The education secretary Michael Gove's ambition is to revolutionize learning in England's schools. One will see five-year-olds studying fractions and writing computer programs in their first year of school, according to final versions of the new national curriculum. [26] From age seven, the new curriculum says, children should be taught computer-aided design, and from 11 they will learn 3D and mathematical modelling, as well as using computer-aided manufacturing tools and including programmable components in design. UK government wants to implement the new curriculum in September 2014. It is not clear if there are enough qualified teachers

The Dutch government hardly supports coding unless it is part of science and technology in the elementary school or as part of information science (an optional subject). It's a course that a lot of secondary schools don't offer. The Dutch school system does not have a national curriculum, as mentioned earlier. There are only core objectives stated. By testing and central examinations the school inspection is monitoring schools for their results. The challenge for 2014 and further will be 1) to introduce coding in schools and 2) to get coding on the political agenda. Serious experiments with coding in elementary and secondary education should be explored.

From Learning to Use Towards Learning to Code: Twenty-Five Years of Computing in Dutch Schools


Angela Lecomber
email: angela@seedifferently.com.au

Pioneering the Internet in the Nineties -an Innovative Project Involving UK and Australian schools

Keywords: Science teaching, laboratory, Sunderland, Internet

The author discusses the challenges and shifts of pedagogy in incorporating an innovative Project to link UK and Australian schools between 1996 and 1998. Despite the UK government's National Grid for Learning policy in 1997, only four schools (out of the total of 125 schools) in Sunderland, UK had a computer connected to the Internet. Schools still functioned as classrooms of the Industrial age.

Background

In the nineties, I was a Secondary School Science teacher in a Girls Catholic School in Sunderland, in the North-East of England. This was a career change for me having previously been a COBOL programmer and systems analyst in a London Bank. Consequently I had a personal interest in the use of computers. My experience was typical for teachers in the early nineties in Sunderland. There was no such thing as an ICT teacher nor was there a subject called ICT. Subjects were taught strictly within the discipline with little if any cross-over with other subjects. For example, year 7 students covered Water and Energy in Science but the overlap into the separate subject of Geography was frowned upon.

There was one computer per science laboratory and this was used by the Head of Science to write reports and for the laboratory technician to record orders on supplies. It was only very occasionally used for students. If at all, it was used for the very brightest who had finished all the assigned work to access a CD-ROM disc which had some material on the subject being studied. In essence, the CD-ROM was a glorified Encyclopaedia with photos. Invariably a crowd would gather around the computer. There was no local area network (LAN) and computers were not connected to the Internet.

Little Incentive to Explore the Use of the Computer in the Classroom

Disappointingly, there was little incentive to alter curriculum planning and delivery to explore the use of computers to assist with delivering subjects. Although teachers were allowed the freedom of how material was delivered (exercises, homework and class activities that would suit the interest and aptitude of pupils), we had to cover the curriculum. There was nothing in the biology and chemistry curriculums that had any reference to the use of computers (or technology). It was puzzling to me that there was software (such as data logging tools, assorted CD-ROMs and floppy disks) in the laboratory cupboard, most still unopened in their packaging.

When I attempted to explore this, I was often reminded by the Head of Biology that it was a waste of time to bother with the computer or experiment with software. The Head of Science was a little ambivalent and did not mind if I dabbled with the software. My superiors considered computers to take time away from the valuable task of teaching. In any event, I would get no support from the laboratory technician.

Assignments were handwritten and desk-top publishing with word processing programs was not available to students to use.

2.

Sunderland -Backwater or Typical of Cities in the UK?

According to the Science Advisor who oversaw science throughout Sunderland from nursery to high school at the time, "the development of computer usage was behind that I had known in Leeds, probably because Leeds University, the Leeds Local Education Authority and the Yorkshire Region had been at the forefront of many developments in the UK."(Valerie Wood-Robinson, Jan 2014).

Personal Reflections of a Science Advisor

Valerie Wood-Robinson was Sunderland's Science Advisor from late 1993 to early 1997. She oversaw my teaching in Science and had previously been involved in seminal initiatives to use computers in education in the UK. Although 'seminal', many of the seeds fell on stony ground and others took a very long time to germinate, as the following observations indicate In the early 1980s, Valerie was asked to join a working group of teachers at Leeds University to devise or adapt school experiments to make use of a data logging tool called VELA (Versatile Laboratory Aid). VELA was a stand-alone data logger or could be connected to a BBC Microcomputer or other suitable computer to allow the downloading of data for analysis. She was on the group as a biology specialist to design sensing and data capture uses in biological experiments. In 1986 VELA was dispatched to four thousand teachers across the UK. However, there was a suspicion that the uptake by teachers was low. This was confirmed later when as Sunderland science advisor, and subsequently as an Inspector in other parts of England, she found VELAs in cupboards still in their packaging, never used.

In 1984, Valerie was invited, as Head of Science of one of the biggest schools in Leeds, to be the Leeds representative on a Regional Project involving eight Local Authorities in Yorkshire and supported by the large-scale national Microelectronics Project (MEP). Each representative was given a kit of about twenty different pieces of software for their school and after being shown how to use this was expected to cascade professional development (known as INSET sessions) to staff out of school hours.

This Project started well until it was scuppered by a Teachers' Unions "work-torule" which forbade its members doing any in-service training or curriculum development at lunch times or after school. Responding to this directive, the teachers in schools in the Project refused to cooperate with the training and reporting. It is not known to what extent other Projects within the national MEP initiative suffered the same fate. Valerie has recently contacted the co-ordinator of the Project who recalled that it was also hampered by difficult relations between the MEP "people in London" and the organisers in Yorkshire. The coordinator wrote a report to MEP but it was never published. Consequently, in most of the Regional Project schools, the software was stored away in cupboards un-used.

Her first recollection of training in using computers in teaching were sessions provided, in the early eighties, by the ASE (Association for Science Education) in conjunction with Leeds Education Authority Teachers' Centre. Teachers attended in their own time after school or at weekends, so only enthusiasts would be there. Training was also provided by LEAs (Local Education Authorities) in school time but usually only the Head of Science would be allowed to attend, and only if the Head teacher thought the topic was worthwhile and many did not. Courses were also run by some Universities. Again, a limited number of teachers would attend, and schools often thought it was just for Physics teachers.

Valerie relates being on a Project supported by a UK government national initiative TVEI (Technical and Vocational Education Initiative announced in 1982) focussed on the use of technology, with an emphasis on computers across the curriculum. There were cultural barriers as many secondary school teachers were entrenched in their subject allegiances and were reluctant to concede any territory to cross curricular interventions. Despite the intentions of TVEI to implement technology across the curriculum, this was derailed by heads of departments who viewed those with funding as empire builders.

She relates how in writing newsletters on behalf of the St William's Foundation Technology Education Project, she had only the simplest computer facilities provided to her even though the Project was funded from the TVEI. She used a minimal word processing programme and literally cut-and-pasted (scissors and glue), then photocopied. She appealed to teacher readers to ask if any who had desk-top publishing facilities would guest-edit issues of the newsletter, but none were forthcoming.

The cultural hurdles encountered by these Projects in which Valerie was involved elsewhere provide a context for the Sunderland Project described in the case study in this chapter.

1991 and ICT

In 1991, the first World Wide Web page was created in the world and in that same year Margaret Thatcher had just stepped down as Prime Minister. Sunderland had the highest unemployment rate in the United Kingdom.

I was eager to exploit the potential for the Internet in revolutionising the way subjects were taught and to provide interest in finding new ways to use Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the classroom. ICT refers to technological tools such as CD-ROM technology, interactive video technology and the Internet.

1996 -UK Government Urged to Make 'an Act of Faith'

In 1996, the Stevenson Report 'ICT in UK Schools' produced by the independent ICT in School Commission for the UK Government justified why funding of ICT for education was necessary. The report stated that the claims made about the value of ICT for student learning outcomes were laudable and although these were not entirely proven, "… it is important that Government makes this act of faith and that we use technology rather than study it over the next decade" [START_REF] Stevenson | Information and Communication Technology in UK Schools[END_REF]. The report suggested a framework for both primary and secondary schools: The Role of Government, Teacher Training, Software, External Networks, Hardware and Funding.

The report pointed to the commitment that the Australian Government was making by the year 2001: targeting a ratio of one computer for every 7.5 students and ICT used for all eight key learning areas at all year levels from pre-school to year 12 and for students of special needs.

Sunderland -Teleport of the World

Also in 1996, the local Sunderland council launched its City's Telematics Strategy.

The strategy was to develop the City of Sunderland as a Teleport, the only one outside of London in the United Kingdom. A teleport is a port of electronic information that would link the community together: business, education providers, health authorities among sectors of the community.

With the potential for funding from the Sunderland Telematics Strategy, I responded with a compelling Business case. I proposed an innovative Project to pioneer the use of the Internet in schools with a view to engendering environmental citizenship. I had based this on suggestions made by [START_REF] Vockell | The Computer in the Social Studies Curriculum[END_REF] that the computer was a technological tool that was able to support the education of schoolchildren to become citizens who are able to participate in social, civic and political processes and in some meaningful way further the values and beliefs that characterise active and involved citizens in a democratic society.

The Business case was approved with 36,000 Pounds provided from the Telematics Strategy and Local Agenda 21 Environmental Action Plan. Furthermore the University of Sunderland offered me the opportunity to undertake a PhD study on the use of Internet in Schools with a focus on environmental citizenship.

There were ninety-seven state primary and seventeen state secondary schools in Sunderland but only four of them had a computer connected to the Internet. Consequently these four schools were selected to be part of the pilot. These were Hillview Junior, Springwell Dene, St Robert of Newminster Catholic and Washington School. A fifth school, Southmoor was selected based on their commitment to get computer connectivity by the end of 1997. The University of Sunderland offered me the support of a part time technician to work with five schools consisting of 40 teachers.

It was disappointing that my own school (St Anthony's Catholic Girls school) were reluctant to be involved. There was no commitment to get connected to the Internet. There did not want to change tried and tested formulas for achieving academic results which at the time were the best in Sunderland. Perhaps and more likely the reason was the lack of confidence that the teachers had in their skills with ICT. Nevertheless I was compelled to resign from teaching to manage this innovative Project.

In 1997, Sunderland was heralded the 'Teleport of the World'. Tony Blair became Prime Minister that year and spearheaded the UK Government's Consultation Paper 'Connecting the Learning Society'. This paper explained the Government's proposals for securing the benefits of advanced network technologies for education and lifelong learning.

By the publication of this Consultation Paper, there were 32,000 state and independent schools with over 450,000 teachers and over 9 million pupils in the United Kingdom. Of these 6,000 had connected to the Internet and some 4,000 had installed local area networks of varying extents. The Times Newspaper reported that UK schools had the biggest 'take-up' rate in Europe on the Internet (17 Nov 1997).

Pilots were being pioneered and assessed throughout the country and my Project known as 'ICT for Environmental Citizenship' was one of them.

The Project

The promotional literature for the Project described the objective as: 'To use computers in schools to communicate with each other, across the country and the rest of the world, to learn more about the environment and the ways in which they can work with one another to preserve it.' I was keen to find partner schools in another part of the English speaking world. This would promote novelty for the schoolchildren and promote cross-country partnerships in exploring the new Internet capability. The Association of Science Education provided funding to link schools in Australia with the existing group of five selected schools. Australia was a focus because it was English speaking and had similarities in the Year 7 and 8 Environmental Curriculum. Australia's distance from the UK would be of interest in exploring collaborative learning across the globe.

I piloted a twinned collaborative curriculum between Hillview Junior School, Sunderland, UK and Greensborough Primary School, Melbourne, Australia. Both schools had a committed Head Teacher, a network of ten computers with a ratio of one computer to three schoolchildren available at one site or classroom and at least one Internet address specific to the Project. They both had a supportive co-ordinating teacher, technical support, a commitment to the Project throughout the year and an interdisciplinary approach to the Project.

In fact Greensborough Primary was more equipped than Hillview Junior with sixteen networked computers in their computer labs, largely through raising their own funding and getting parents to install the necessary wiring.

7.

The Journey

Internet -a Galaxy of Trashcans

The Project targeted Year 7 and Year 8 students and had a ten stage plan. The first three stages of the Project involved engaging the head teachers and environmental subject specialists of the schools to ensure that they were fully on board and that they were interested in exploring a new way of incorporating the Internet into the environmental curriculum. At the time, there was a great deal of scepticism of the authenticity of material on websites and validity for education since anyone could create material. One head-teacher described the Internet as 'a galaxy of trashcans'. This was the very narrow view of its capability other than the capacity for electronic mail. One of my challenges was to find sites that were authentic, accurate and attractive for teachers and students to use. Environmental subject specialists were not entirely convinced of the Internet's value and would have preferred the same allocated time to taking their pupils to look at the local pond-life, for example. Other teachers who were supportive were interested in the ICT technology but not interested in using it for environmental curriculum. They were the school's first appointed ICT teachers who invariably had a technical bias.

The website for the Project (http://cei/sunderland.ac.uk/schools) was developed largely using 'HotDog' one of very few HTML editors on the market at the time. It was easy to use and the teachers and students learned to use this too.

This central website would provide ideas for teachers about what they could do with the Internet within the curriculum and provide sample ways in which schoolchildren could use it. I had to also provide them with accredited websites and to network with others. The website was to be a co-ordinating platform and 'window' to an observer of the Project. The idea was to get each participant teacher to create a web page reflecting their work around a particular part of the curriculum.

Overcoming Blandness and Waiting Periods

The cost of using on-line services (not the fixed subscription fee) had not been established. High speed transmission was not available which affected waiting periods for a webpage to download. ISDN2 lines were used. However if a total page size of a home page was up to 30k, then it would take 30 seconds to download.

The challenge to be overcome was the perception that children had of websites. In 1996, the World Wide Web pages did not have the sophistication and interactivity as they do today. Web pages were uninteresting and bland. They were not designed to be read or used by children. The pages were unappealing and were not designed for children with an accessible, lively and informal format to encourage them to send emails and to discuss their work. Web pages did not offer the differentiation for the different audiences and interests as they do today. The design of websites was at its infancy and good design principles were not used to make presentation of material appealing to young people.

Technologically Barren

By January 1997, the schools in the Project had a dedicated computer room with access to the Internet. However it was disruptive if children were allowed out of the classroom to use the computer room. This could have been solved with extra telephone lines made available and connected to classrooms with extensions. However, schools were 'technologically barren' with any extra telephone lines going into the head teacher's or senior member of staff's office.

Most teachers in the five schools had to share electronic mail. There was no individual electronic mail. In two schools, there was only one address for the whole school. Problems existed on the Project because only one email address was used by all teachers and pupils. Hence in these cases, the co-ordinator of the Project would divert incoming messages to virtual files belonging to each of the participating teachers and their classrooms.

Teachers on the Project had to be taught the necessity of emptying their mailbox regularly, organising access to the electronic mail messages as soon as they came in. The importance of replying to messages within two days was a useful recommendation raised by the ICT teacher of one of the schools. Otherwise the momentum and the interest in the exchange is lost and subsequently the value in the collaborative partnership. For example, webpages were created about a particular environmental interest like reduction in the use of energy. Then this was shared by sending electronic mail in a purposeful way. Receiving feedback through electronic mail was valuable as it encouraged students to recall their work in a way different from the usual context. However if electronic mail took more than two days to get a response, then often interest waned in the collaboration.

Politics of the Computer Room

A curious problem was that of the 'blocker'. This was the teacher with ICT skills who would deliberately make access to the computer room difficult for other teachers e.g. keys were not available, passwords not made known, changes to software not explained. There was an underlying political agenda in a number of schools where those who were seen to be in charge of the new technology were not prepared to share knowledge readily and openly with their non-ICT literate colleagues. Typical complaints from non-ICT teachers would be "Cannot understand why the IT department have locked up the computer room. I am very keen on using computers and want pupils to have easy access. It is very frustrating as computers are rarely available to teachers, let alone pupils".

Pedagogy

With the fourth stage of the Project, I was challenged into fitting the use of the Internet into existing schemes of work used by the teachers. Even when the Internet was used in the pilot schools, the use of the Internet was 'tacked on' at the end of a unit of work rather than linking it within the schemes of work and what the teachers were already doing. The way in which the computer was used with schoolchildren was simply the mastery of basic skills of using the Internet. Pedagogy was still teacher-centred and not student-centred.

Regrettably, there was little shift in pedagogy in those early days with the introduction of the Internet into the classroom. The computer was seen as a supplement to teacher-controlled activities rather than intrinsically part of it. Even though I had produced new material in order to refine and expand instructional strategies knowing that students would be on their own with the computer, technology had not yet influenced teaching styles.

There was the need to shift perceptions: from being 'fount of knowledge' to being a facilitator of student learning.

Taking the Terror out of ICT

The fifth stage of the Project was to 'take the terror out of ICT' i.e. the challenge of developing the expertise and confidence of teachers in the use of the Internet.

With regard to the production of webpages, down-to-earth, user-friendly advice was provided including template webpages to assist and show how teachers could produce these offline. Classes were provided and support was available.

Teachers were shown how to bookmark sites before a lesson so as to direct pupils to a site quickly and allow them to navigate their way to the necessary pages. In addition, teachers were instructed on the mechanisms to avoid unsuitable websites. They were concerned about what personal information they could allow pupils to divulge over the Internet without putting themselves or others in 'danger'. Concerns about reports of children being abducted over the Internet had pre-occupied them. They sought guidelines and standards from the local education authority as to the standards of use of the World Wide Web and the Internet as a learning medium for schoolchildren.

Another consideration was that of online resources that were largely inaccessible to schoolchildren because of their reading ability. Teachers where guided to create simpler versions of the online resources and store these offline for access by their pupils as these were simpler to read.

Individual classes were encouraged to produce webpages and teachers were provided with ecological packages on disk and CD-ROM as springboards for new ideas and approaches. Teachers were also encouraged to develop their own material.

Findings

Although forty teachers undertook the personal training on the use of the Internet, few actually succeeded in accommodating the Project in their schemes of work. Most devoted only three lessons to the Project citing reasons such as lack of time and need to cover more pressing curriculum commitments. According to Valerie-Wood Robinson (2014), as an adviser she met resistance to using computers in schools on the justification that there was so much curriculum material and administrative procedures to cover, that there was no time for this innovation.

In fact, many teachers were reluctant to accept the changes required, mainly due to fear of the unknown, and the fact that they (teachers) were less competent with computers than their pupils who were beginning to develop computer skills by playing games on home computers. This latter problem was not prevalent in Primary schools, and, although terrified of the new technology, most primary teachers were willing to give it a try in a whole school enterprise.

Towards the end of the Project in September 1998, some teachers were moving towards a more individualised model where the teacher assumed the role of facilitator and students made their own enquiries and engaged in collaborative activities. These teachers were invariably the experienced teachers in their field e.g. head of departments in geography, science and ICT. Perhaps heads of departments have more time to devote to innovative Projects. Perhaps they have nothing to prove in terms of their knowledge and more open to a shift in pedagogical approach: from 'founts of knowledge' to facilitators of learning. Whatever the reason, it was significant that those who were very familiar with the knowledge content of their specialisms were noticeably embracing ICT.

It was difficult enough to get teachers to use ICT, let alone for non-ICT subjects like environmental citizenship. The Project required a shift in teaching methods and styles to a student-centred approach. There was a lack of support for how to do this. Furthermore, teachers up until 1998, were not formally taught pedagogy (Times Education Supplement, 12th June 1998).

This Project made the following recommendations for both primary and secondary schools:

 Professional development of teachers in the use of ICT and student-centred pedagogy 

The need for regular support of teachers in the use of ICT in the classroom  More work with Heads of Departments to ascertain where ICT fits into schemes of work 

The need to convince and support Head teachers and Heads of ICT to involve ICT in non-ICT subjects like environmental education.

Conclusion

Despite the rhetoric and objective of the UK Government in preparing schools for the twenty first century, in practice, they were still functioning as classrooms of the Industrial age. There were technological limitations and the lack of affordability in terms of connectivity to the Internet. However, probably the key factor in its lack of adoption in schools was the fear of using computers due to the lack of skills. Issues of shared ownership of computers and its place in the curriculum may have been underlying factors. In any event, there would need to be a shift in pedagogical approach from teachers as 'founts of knowledge' to 'teachers as facilitators of learning'. Nevertheless, computing in schools took off not because of educational initiatives but because teachers, as well as pupils, developed their skills in home computing.

It was indeed a time of great promise for citizenship and hope for young people who felt that something different was happening in education to make the world a better place.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the rich contribution of Valerie Wood-Robinson, Science Advisor (Inspector) for the City of Sunderland during the period 1993 to 1997.

The author also wishes to thank the opportunities afforded by those who supported this cutting-edge Internet Project. In particular the University of Sunderland (Dr Tony Alabaster), Sunderland Telematics Strategy, Local Agenda 21, the Association for Science Education and the teachers involved in the pilot schools both in the UK and Australia.