Technology & Innovation - Issue 12

Beyond the FROZEN SCREEN Time for an upgrade? We look at how a new report details the real impact of outdated school tech... T echnology now sits at the heart of teaching and learning, with teachers relying on computers for everything frommarking attendance and tracking progress, to creating engaging lesson plans. Yet many schools are caught in a technological bind. Budgets are tight, governing bodies have competing priorities and IT equipment that should have been replaced years ago is still being used, limping along from term to term. The results are painfully familiar to anyone who’s ever stood in front of a class looking at a frozen screen while 30 students gradually lose interest. And with the Windows 10 end of service deadline having now passed, the urgency of addressing these issues has only increased. The current state of tech inUKschools ASUS’s new ‘Beyond the Frozen Screen’ report examines the current state of technology in UK secondary schools, based on research carried out by pollsters Perspectus Global involving 913 secondary school teachers. It looks at the challenges associated with outdated hardware and explores what teachers want from educational technology. The research reveals that many UK secondary schools are working with relatively old computing equipment. While half of school computers, laptops and tablets are between 1 and 5 years old, a worrying 41% are 6 to 10 years old. Even more concerning, 9% of devices are over 10 years old, with 2%being more than 15 years old. This ageing technology has real implications for teaching. Teachers report that on average, 28% of planned lessons are difficult to deliver because of limitations in their hardware. 55% say that their current IT hardware is limiting their students’ learning. This technological gap extends beyond just the hardware itself. A concerning 58% of teachers report that their school computers are running old apps and software, creating compatibility issues with newer teaching resources and potential security risks for sensitive school data. Windows remains the dominant operating system in schools, with 70% of teachers saying they use Windows exclusively or predominantly (20% exclusively, 50% predominantly). ChromeOS is used exclusively or predominantly by 30% of teachers (6% exclusively and 24%predominantly). There seemed to be mixed awareness regarding the Windows 10 end of service deadline. While 59% of teachers were aware of it, 41%didn’t know that upgrades and support for the operating systemwould cease after that date. This represented a significant knowledge gap that may have left many schools vulnerable to security issues and compatibility problems. The impact of outdated technology Old technology creates numerous problems for teachers. 55% report that their school computers regularly take more than five minutes to start up, while the same percentage say their computers crash or freeze at least once per week. In other words, teachers are spending valuable classroom time waiting for slow computers to function. They report losing an average of 37 minutes of teaching time each week to dealing with technical issues. That might not sound like much, but it adds up to over 23 hours across the academic year, amounting to almost four full teaching days per teacher lost to technology problems. The start of lessons is a critical time for setting expectations and engaging students. With some computers taking as long as five or more minutes to boot up, teachers face a choice between beginning their lessons without any digital resources, or watching as students become distracted during the wait. Neither “65%of teachers believe their students are being let downbypoor IT” 32 teachwire.net