Along­side the major tech­no­log­i­cal changes, the way we edu­cate our chil­dren and the way teach­ers inter­vene are chang­ing too. The entire ped­a­gog­i­cal rela­tion­ship needs to be accom­pa­nied, if we are to suc­cess­ful­ly hand on knowl­edge and new life-style behav­iours to the younger generations. 

School is chang­ing as the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion pro­gress­es. The dig­i­tal strat­e­gy imple­ment­ed by the Amiens region­al edu­ca­tion author­i­ty cov­ers sev­er­al con­crete pri­or­i­ty thrusts in the pol­i­cy to accom­pa­ny chang­ing ped­a­gog­i­cal prac­tice. “And to this end, we need to go out into the field, observe exper­i­men­ta­tions and pro­vide for high-qual­i­ty dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments. Teach­ers today no longer inter­vene in the same way they did, say 20, 15 or even 10 years ago. We are now light-years away from those days”, says Emmanuelle Jacquier, the aca­d­e­m­ic del­e­gate for dig­i­tized edu­ca­tion at the Amiens region­al edu­ca­tion author­i­ty, who in a sense, write the rules for train­ing “in” and “by” dig­i­tal techniques.

The teacher’s role in being transformed

For any teacher, the ques­tion of rethink­ing the way he/she teach­es rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions in terms of class prepa­ra­tion work, learn­ing method­olo­gies and even new ped­a­gog­i­cal strate­gies. “Since dig­i­tal tools and tech­niques allows you change the school for­mat which will be less and less face-to-face, or top-down, we need to help teach­ers as they mod­i­fy their class­room prac­tice. We do not intend to rev­o­lu­tion­ize uses, but rather to accom­pa­ny the teacher teams from where they were — to progress and grad­u­al­ly but defin­i­tive­ly inte­grate new ped­a­gog­i­cal prac­tice as offered by the dig­i­tal world,” she adds. 

Tools available

Com­put­ers, print­ers, i‑pads, robots, ENTs (see above) and inter­ac­tive white­boards are now avail­able in every school, but it takes some 5 years ion aver­age to real­ly devel­op a real­ly inter­ac­tive uti­liza­tion of the new tools. “Tools must meet needs, and not the oth­er way round”, goes on to explain Emmanuelle Jacquier. “Our need is to educate/train stu­dents, the future cit­i­zens of the land. The tac­tile table Cre@tion used in col­lab­o­ra­tive work devel­oped at UTCV is a very fine project, all the more so because one of the research sci­en­tists involved was able to assess the device. And this, indeed allows us to envis­age evolv­ing prac­tice”. Co-oper­a­tion group work­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion,… these are notions that encom­pass schools and the new learn­ing process­es. “With new ways to learn, teach­ers must now work fur­ther upstream from their class­work preps and, at the same time, must leave more time and ‘space’ to the stu­dents to enjoy mon­i­tored auton­o­my. This pre­sup­pos­es that we pre­pare the over­ar­ch­ing frame­work. And this in turn leads to the ques­tion of how to assess stu­dents’ respons­es. The dig­i­tal world allows for rapid answers too”, con­cludes the Del­e­gate who fore­sees numer­ous advances that accrue through intro­duc­ing dig­i­tal tech­niques in today’s ped­a­gog­i­cal changes.

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EDUCATION, IN AND VIA DIGITAL TECHNIQUES

At the Jacques Mon­od Col­lège sec­ondary school in Com­piègne, the entire teach­ing com­mu­ni­ty is involved in edu­ca­tion in and with dig­i­tal tools and tech­niques. Wit­ness this vision offered by the Deputy Head Thomas Gra­dos, 33 years old “Although we are not a pilot scheme school in the dig­i­tal field, we did catch up very quick­ly. Our efforts began two years ago, when we received some lan­guage and music kits, then we made an assess­ment of our net­work capac­i­ty and since then have ful­ly wired up the school. We set up a COPIL (steer­ing com­mit­tee), with a DANE (an aca­d­e­m­ic del­e­gate for dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion), our two ICT offi­cers, plus “reps” from the ter­ri­to­r­i­al Depart­ment (Oise) and from stu­dents’ and par­ents’ asso­ci­a­tions. Today, we are launch­ing a new dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion­al scheme so that out stu­dents at Jacques Mon­od can fol­low a real course till such times as they move on to the lycée. The stu­dents are giv­en primer cours­es on robot­ics, com­put­er scene and even some soft­ware pro­gram­ming and for this they have full access to the dig­i­tal tech­niques via var­i­ous “apps” (Tac­tiléo, Padlet …) or doc­u­ment shar­ing and sourc­ing new skills and increased knowl­edge bases”. 

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3 QUESTIONS FOR… BÉATRICE CORMIER, RECTOR OF THER AMIENS REGIONAL EDUCATION AUTHORITY, CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITIES. 

How do you see schools evolving in the digital revolution?

In a sim­i­lar man­ner as all oth­er Soci­ety sec­tors today, schools are being pro­found­ly affect­ed by ongo­ing dig­i­tal changes, lead­ing us to rethink all the clas­sic, tra­di­tion­al bases of four orga­ni­za­tion and our ped­a­gogy; course con­tents, resource and ser­vices. This evo­lu­tion in method­olo­gies also comes with a mod­i­fied ‘work­ing space’ for teach­ers: class­rooms are being adapt­ed to new approach­es, with more par­al­lel mod­u­lar­i­ty. Dig­i­tal work areas are being mul­ti­plied, there­by rein­forc­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the con­nec­tion between school and the stu­den­t’s fam­i­ly. There appears to be one leit­mo­tiv that sums ups per­fect­ly the ongo­ing move­ment — to enhance and encour­age all inter­ac­tion’s that por­tend suc­cess for all students. 

Teacher training in digital techniques seems a huge task: what is your vision for the Amiens Education Authority? 

Teacher train­ing here reveals sev­er­al pri­or­i­ty thrusts: com­ing to grips with the new equip­ment, dif­fu­sion and cir­cu­la­tion of the new resources and devel­op­ment of new ped­a­gog­i­cal uti­liza­tions. This lat­er thrust is the most com­plex to imple­ment, inas­much as it often implies far-reach­ing changes in the way teach­ers teach. Con­se­quent­ly, what we pro­pose are teacher train­ing mod­ules that are base on new school con­fig­u­ra­tions and allow the teach­ers to exper­i­ment var­i­ous added-val­ues in terms of stu­dent moti­va­tion and the way they adopt the new tech­nolo­gies and knowl­edge sources com­ing ‘on line’. Train­ing is no longer time-lim­it­ed and takes the form of a long-range accom­pa­ni­ment, thus enabling response adapt­ed to each teacher’s sit­u­a­tion and needs. These train­ing mod­ules use then new equip­ment in a col­lab­o­ra­tive man­ner and even in vir­tu­al class con­fig­u­ra­tions, with of course a set of face-to-face ses­sions. The objec­tive assigned to train­ing mod­ules is to see the teach­ing staff become the key actors of their own adap­ta­tion. In par­al­lel, we mul­ti­ply exchanges among peer groups to enrich the largest num­ber of par­tic­i­pants pos­si­ble via return and shar­ing of experience. 

How are we to bring the better of two worlds together, combining paper & pencil and the digital, for children who know are already “digital natives”? 

This is the real chal­lenge of the ongo­ing evo­lu­tion we are see­ing in ped­a­gog­i­cal, class­room, prac­tice: to seek the best in each method, from the most tra­di­tion­al to the most mod­ern and to vary exper­i­men­ta­tions to improve over­all learn­ing per­for­mance lev­els. Cog­ni­tion sci­ences help us in this field: stu­dents learn all the bel­ter as and when they adopt new knowl­edge, manip­u­late it and become actors them­selves in their learn­ing process. This way, schools rep­re­sent mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial ground for paper-pen­cil and dig­i­tal worlds to meet, Chil­dren are com­fort­ed in their posi­tion as ‘learn­ers’ and we see our­selves as con­tribut­ing to high­er lev­els of self-confidence.