1517-creating-holistic-technology-enhanced-learning-experiences

FOREWORD BY LAW
The FutureSchools@Singapore program was launched in 2007 as an initiative
integral to mp2.
The principal and a core team of senior teachers started planning for the new
school in 2007, with support from the MOE in the form of extra funding resources
as well as the provision of a small group of curriculum specialists and educational
technologists. Hence with legitimacy for innovation at both state and school levels,
and requisite resources and expertise to forge ahead with innovations, the school
seems to be (and may actually be) in the best possible setting for launching ICTsupported
innovations. Readers may thus be surprised to read that even at the
initiation stage, the pioneering team in the school had to “struggle with the paradox
of ‘being different without being too different’” (Mizzy & Fang, this volume). The
challenges are of an ecological nature (Law, Yuen, & Fox, 2011). Schools are
complex systems and all parts of the system are interconnected. Classrooms are
nested within schools, which are in turn nested in the wider community locally,
nationally and internationally (Davis, 2008). Innovations are by definition
deviations from the norm. So the process of innovation implementation needs to
overcome constraints posed by the existing environment, which has been
established to serve the status quo. These constraints may be physical,
technological, conceptual or institutional governance in nature.
The future is inextricably connected with the present, and innovations are
inextricably connected with everyday mundane practices. Introducing innovations
into classrooms and schools is like introducing a foreign species into an indigenous
ecology. A foreign species, depending on whether it is a plant or an animal, will
compete for space/habitat and energy (sunlight, water, nutrients or food) with
existing species. In most cases, foreign species will not survive in alien
environmental conditions. Alternatively, surviving foreign species often become
invasive species, causing the demise and extinction of less competitive indigenous
species that share similar niches as well as those indigenous species that depend on
the endangered species for their well-being.
The case studies of holistic ICT-enhanced learning experiences reported in this
volume take up formal curriculum time in designated school subjects.
Implementation of these innovations requires a distribution of school resources that
is different from the mainstream, “normal” classroom, and requires the teachers
and students to take on different roles in the teaching and learning process. It also
requires a new expertise profile of school staff, and in the case of an existing
school, it may even mean the replacement of one staff category by another (e.g.
offset printing and photocopying staff to be replaced by computer technicians).
So, if the goal is to sustain and scale the innovations, some species have to be
replaced and become extinct. Fortunately, unlike biological species, people
involved at different levels in the education system do not need to become extinct,
but can grow into different roles through learning – if the appropriate conditions
for learning are there. In our cross-national analyses of case studies of ICTsupported
pedagogical innovations, it was found that providing architectures for
learning through different professional networks is a crucial factor for innovations
to become sustainable (Law et al., 2011). Practitioner research is clearly one such
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