WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
Over the next 5 days I’m going to look at the issue of the use of ICT in changing education and school culture, and its power to change fundamentally what we do with learners. I’ll be focusing this through the classic 5 W’s lens - i.e. who, why, when, what, where. I’ll start today with the why of ICT in education. 
So what does ICT offer us that traditional teaching methods do not? Well, before going any further, I must take issue with the blanket term ‘ICT’. I noticed in my recent reading that everyone other than Anglo-American commentators discuss ‘ICTs’, placing the emphasis on their plurality and difference. Lumping diverse communications technologies together without making some reference to their difference is somewhat like referring to washing machines and vacuum cleaners as ‘household appliances’; yes, they can be grouped under the heading ‘labour-saving devices’, but this doesn’t tell us what they actually do and the impact they have on the everyday life of the individual. Likewise, using ICTs for administrative tasks is fundamentally different to using them to, for example, organize ones learning on a wiki.
There are some very strong statements about the potential of ICTs to change education as we know it. Desforges,
If our society is to adjust and avoid turmil, alienation and the threat of disintegration, then the impact and potential of IT must be at everyone’s fingertips.
The current formal education system, at least in the UK, is a system which began with a compromise with the Education Act in 1870 and has been modified on an ad-hoc basis ever since. Arguments from tradition, therefore, are not on strong ground. There is a sense, however, that education serves a purpose in the transmission of cultural values and norms. This can be seen in the increasingly social and political aspect of the school curriculum, with Citizenship becoming compulsory and the use of education in general as a ‘political football’. 
But why, if the education system has worked reasonably well up to now, do we need some kind of overhaul or revolution of the whole system in the light of a new tool? That depends on your view of ICTs, which many see less as a tool and more as a way of promoting personalised learning and as leading to opportunities to formulate new learning aims and objectives:
There is a real sense in which increasing familiarity with the use of ICT can foster the development of new activities. Over time, this can lead to insightful new uses for software, which in turn, leads teachers to develop new learning objectives. Rewards of this kind are won through a maturity of experience and reflection on using ICT in teaching.
L. Newton, ‘Management and the use of ICT in subject teaching’ (in Selwood, Find & O’Mahony (eds.), Management of Education in the Information Age: the role of ICT; 2003), p.18
So advocates of ICTs are in the frustrating position of not being able to communicate adequately the benefits of the new technologies due to a Kuhnian
Frustratingly, therefore, the advocate of ICTs in education cannot tell the traditional teacher exactly what can be achieved through their use. The latter is, as a consequence, likely to focus on the threat and perceived negative features that accompany the use of ICTs. As Cuban
teachers will alter classroom behaviour selectively to the degree that certain technologies help them solve problems they define as important and avoid eroding their classroom authority. They will either resist or be indifferent to changes that they see as irrelevant to their practice, that increase their burdens, without adding benefits to their students’ learning or that weaken the control of the classroom.
Teaching is a conservative profession. Whilst time-travellers from the past would hardly recognise other professions, the teaching profession would be very familiar. Not that this is a reason to change it, but may indicate an unwillingness to adapt to new methods, ideas and a changing culture. Questioning what is the best way to educate a child may open a whole can of worms which society is not prepared or equipped to answer:
new technologies seldom support old working practices with additional effeciency of flexibility. Instead they tend to undermind existing practices and to demand new ones. In this disruption, subtleties of existing social behaviors and the affordances upon which they rely become apparent.
Gaver (1996) - quoted in C. Crook, ‘Learning as Cultural Practice’ (in M.R. Lea & K. Nicoll (eds.), Distributed Learning: social and cultural approaches to practice; London, 2002), p.156
Talking of a ‘revolution’ in education makes people sceptical - “I don’t see it happening”, they say. Well, whether through self-actualization or otherwise, it would seem that it’s inevitable. As a 2001 government report
Powerful tensions exist between traditional curricula - based on well-defined content and rules for students to learn and be able to reproduce - and the open, skills-based, student-centred approaches supported by ICT. Dominant curricular and organisational patters in school were not designed for the Internet age, and often inhibit its effective use. ICT offers some gain for traditional curriculum delivery, but its full educational potential cannot be realised without radical changes in school structures and methodologies. As ICT gains acceptance in schools, it may become the driver and the facilitator of the necessary curriculum change.
So it would seem apt to finish this post with the words of the great Bob Dylan:
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
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