(A paper presented at a Nordic TESS conference in Iceland in September 1993)

In-service education in our region

I’m going to tell you about a development project that we carried out last winter in using computer communication in in-service education for teachers in this region. In this short report I will mainly look at the organizing of the project rather than the content that is I will be looking at the computer communication itself.
One of our roles at the Local Educational Authorities Office is to give teachers in the region in-service courses. This is done partly by short courses and seminars. For the last few years we have been moving away from one-shot courses to follow-up courses which according to researches are more likely to be effective. The educational department of the LEA-office organizes and is in charge of these in-service education and the staff from the office usually gives the courses although we sometimes get teachers or people elsewhere within the educational sector.

Norðurland eystra

The region is quite big in area and with 28 schools, a little more than 400 teachers and about 4400 pupils. The furthest distance between the most east- and westbound schools is about 400 km so it is almost 5 hours drive in good driving conditions which is not often the case during the winter here in North-East Iceland. It has been our policy, that when someone of the staff gives the courses and we don’t have to pay extra for it, we try to do the same course in two or even three different places. This is done so the teachers don’t have to travel a long way.
Because of how big our region is and also because of how bad the winter-weather in Iceland can be it is often difficult to run these courses on schedule. Therefore we see Ismennt as a great help in the in-service education here.

The plan

Last winter we started a development project in using computer communication in in-service education. Two of the offices staff myself and Anna Lilja Sigurðardóttir were in charge of a staff development course for the class teachers. As we began to plan it we got the idea to use computer communication alongside with the usual form of these courses. We spoke the director of the Icelandic Educational Network about this and asked for co-operation. He at once was willing to work with us and promised that one of his staff would visit every participating school on the project and give the teachers a short course in using the network.
We then organized the project so that early in November we would give course in three different places in the region. After that we would use the network for communication and in the middle of April we would give another course.

The process

The first of the three seminars was held in Grunnskólinn á Raufarhöfn. There came 9 teachers from 3 schools. The second seminar was held in Borgarhólsskóli in Húsavík where 17 teachers from 2 schools came. The third and last was held in Lundarskóli in Akureyri where there came 33 teachers from 9 schools. That gives us 59 teachers from 14 schools in total. The same program was run on all these seminars and they all lasted for 3 hours. At the end of each one of them we told the teachers about our intention to use computer communication. Most of the teachers were excited and looked at this as a good opportunity to start using the Internet if they hadn’t done so already. Few days after the last course was over we sent personal letter to all the participating teachers with all the names and photos from all the seminars so that they could see the people that had been on the other two. Also in a letter we asked them to send us a not of whether or not they wanted to take part in the computer communication. It turned out that 52 of the 59 that entered the seminars wanted to take part. I think that is god considering that we did not advertise this as we advertised the seminar. The plan was to start the computer communication just before Christmas but due to many reasons we couldn’t start until the middle of February. We began very slowly and sent the teachers a short E-mail message containing information on how to use the system. We formed a post list of the participating teachers so everyone only had to send one E-Mail to all the group. After that we asked them to send an E-mail to the group containing a short introduction of their professional life. Soon after that we moved on to the real discussion that is the role of the class teacher. We the leaders sent our questions and some points to discuss and they sent their response back to the group. The teachers did also send E-Mail to each other and could of course discuss privately. These discussion on the network went on until the meeting in April.
I would like to tell you, just for fun, that I am studying at Strathclyde University in Glasgow and I needed to go there in March. Because the University is connected to Internet I was able to continue communication without any difficulties from there.
Soon after we started we set up some information on gopher which is data search and retrieval program. These information were a list of the participants and some information about the project in general. In the middle of April all the participants met for a short seminar here in Hrafnagilsskóli near Akureyri. On this course we got teacher from Hafnarfjörður to lecture and this was also a meeting for the group to sum up and evaluate the use of the Internet.

Evaluation

In a hole I think this course has been a success. Firstly the teachers learned to use this new way of communicating so it is becoming a part of their professional life. There are some minor things that we will change as we continue this winter.
In a way the whole group was experimenting a new way of communicating a way which is different from the one we are used to. One of what people find difficult in computer communication is the lack of body language. It’s not the same to be talking to people face to face and to send the text by E-Mail. Not to be able to see or hear the ones you are “talking” to can make one feel insecure. To make a question in a discussion group or to do it in writing by E-Mail is also very different. People get insecure not to get instant response. This amongst other things is something one has to get used to in this kind of communication.
But the main question is: What did the schools gain from this project?
We did not do any formal evaluation on that but we heard from the teachers on the last meeting, we got response from them by E-mail and also we have all the discussion in writing that went on on Ismennt. From that anyone can see that there were lively discussions about the role for the class teacher between the participating teachers. Also the teachers have told us that this had effect on other teachers in the school and the discussion was not isolated with the participating teachers.
In this few words I have told you about a project we started last winter in using computer communication in in-service education in our region. We have taken the first steps into a new way of using this technology. This has been a good experience and we have learnt a lot from it. We are looking very much forward to moving on this winter and have already planned continuing of the projects that we started last year and also are we going to start a new one which will fully be based on computer communication.
By using the Internet we have got a new way of communicating and educating. We can not see what the future will bring us but it is no doubt in my mind that computer communication will play a bigger and bigger role in education, especially in rural countries like Iceland.