Linköping University
Dept. of Behavioural Sciences
Gunilla Jedeskog
Escola Secundária Santa Maria Maior – Viana do Castelo
Background
Escola Secundária Santa Maria Mayor is a multidisciplinary upper secondary school located
in the town of Viana do Castelo, in the northern part of Portugal. The Lima River crosses the
town and it is very close to the Atlantic coast. The school has 700 students and 122 teachers.
The students are between 15 and 18 years old and study different subjects: science and
technology, languages and literature, social and human sciences and computer science
Visions
There is a national policy that supports the use of ICT in Portuguese schools. The vision for
the use of ICT in this school is included in the project plan that serves as a kind of policy plan.
There are some reasons emphasised. From a school perspective the purpose to use ICT is a
way of attracting students to choose this upper secondary school. Some years ago there was a
general reduction of applicants for the secondary schools in the district. From a situation
where the school was loosing the competition with another school, they now are winning
partly because of the introduction of ICT. From a principal perspective ICT is regarded both
as an administrative and as a teaching tool. Innovative teachers and students claim that
students would need these ICT-competencies in future studies and in their working life.
Conditions
The school is equipped with 58 multimedia computers, available for the students. 50 of them
are in a local network. Most of the computers, 40, are located in computer rooms. The
teachers have to book the computer room in advance. Other available equipments are a laser
printer, CD-ROM drive, devices for digital image or video processing, colour printer, CDwriter, video-projector, scanner etc. There are in total 700 students, but only 350 of them are
using the computers in the school. A majority of the students have computers at home and it
was estimated that around half of them had Internet access.
The principal thinks that the school is fairly well equipped with computers. But there are
limitations to further developments in the building structure and in the electrical system of the
school. The fact that the central government only finance the computers and servers, when
they support ICT development, makes further developments difficult, because the school’s
resources for maintenance, wiring, software, copyrights, etc. are very limited.
There are soft wares available for mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, earth science,
language/mother tongue and foreign language. Available types of general software are word
processing, desktop publishing, spreadsheet, database, graphics, statistical/mathematical
programs, programming languages, tutorial programs for self learning, educational games,
Internet browser, e-mail browser, encyclopaedia on CD-ROM and presentation software. Email was introduced in 1995 and WWW in 1999. These facilities are used by about a quarter
of the teachers. By the end of grade 12 students have done communicating via e-mail with
teachers within and/or outside the school for learning purposes and they have used external
databases to retrieve and extract information from different sites across the Internet.
The school has its own homepage with general information about the school and with
announcements about events.
There is no official technical support system in the school. However, there is an ICT-teacher,
who has some responsibility to help colleagues with technical and software problems and to
program machines. He has 12 hours a month to serve the computers. He is also responsible
for both informal and formal ICT-training for the teachers who are class directors. They have
to learn electronic registration of student absence.
There still are some major problems related to the use of ICT e.g. not enough copies of
software for instructional purposes and too complicated software for teachers and/or students
to use. The Internet connections are too slow and the network is unreliable. It is difficult to
find information and there are not enough connections for a class to use at the same time.
Other obstacles are lack of technical assistance for operating and maintaining computers and
insufficient help for solving technical problems. Some teachers feel uncomfortable, because
some students are more competent with ICT than they are.
ICT training for teachers takes place at the District Training Centre where teachers will take
courses in order to move higher on the accreditation scale. Only training at the centre will
count as necessary accreditation for the teachers. The accreditation works as an incentive for
younger teachers to take ICT-courses in order to enhance their career. For older teachers at
the top of the career ladder, there is no economic incentive to participate.
The external training courses available are general introductory courses, how to use a
computer, and the history of ICT. There are also introductory and advanced courses for
applications and for Internet use. The training takes place on the teachers’ free time. Regular
course length is 25 - 50 hours. The school also can ask the centre to give training on certain
issues, and ordinary teachers in the school sometimes work extra as teachers in the training
centre.
Transfer of knowledge on ICT in education between teachers also takes place via informal
contacts and via the ICT- teacher. Teachers usually solve problems by using the competence
of their colleagues. But there is no organized structure for the exchange of information in the
school.
The support from the principal to the use of ICT is strong and also the parents are supportive
of the school’s push to use ICT in education.
Activities
ICT is mainly used as an administrative and teaching tool in the school. First and foremost as
a teacher tool. The most innovative ICT related work in the school is the technical vocational
course on computing with a capacity of 30 students, 4 are girls this year. The school’s ICT
history is closely linked to the start of the computer technical course that is a "vocational"
program. The course has been very theoretical up till now, theoretical building of computers,
and programming. The course therefore has the highest drop-out rate in the school, probably
because the course has been designed to recruit to technical higher education. This year the
course has been changed and directed more in a vocational and practical direction. The focus
has been shifted from developing ICT engineers to ICT technicians.
The student representatives use computers to search information on the Internet and to make
presentations of work. They do not use specific programs made for specific subjects. A few
times they have used some specific technical programs. In school they use computers 2-3
times per month, mainly in the ICT subject and in project work, very rarely in regular lessons.
The ICT subject is obligatory for all students at 9th grade. Internet related activities done by
students by the end of grade 12 are communicating via e-mail with teachers within and/or
outside school for learning purposes and the use of external databases.
Some resources have been spent on the introduction of an electronic personal card system for
teaching staff, administrative staff and students, pushed for by the principal. The system is an
information system for student and staff used to record payments for food, working hours for
administrative staff, grades and absence for students, timetables for students, etc. This system
was been introduced in spite of much resistance especially from technical/administrative staff.
Perceived advantages and disadvantages of the use of ICT
Some advantages related to students learning when using ICT are stressed by some of the
teachers. A basic problem in learning, students’ misconceptions, is overcome with help of
ICT, because it introduces different visual aids. Videos and photos are therefore very
important. Students are also more motivated since they can learn more with self-instructing
ICT material on their computers at home. ICT also enhance students’ ability to work
autonomous.
Students too think that they learn more by using computers in their schoolwork. They are
motivated by being able to learn through working with pictures and files. Students’
interactivity is higher when they use ICT, and they send answers to assignments by e-mail to
teachers and receive response through the same channel. Chatting with other students is
sometimes used when doing homework. Students think they communicate more with other
students and teachers, when ICT is used, than they would have done without ICT. Not just
learning but also relations with the teachers are influenced, since students using ICT generally
feel closer to their teachers. Another impact of the use of ICT is that teachers using ICT
cooperate more because they must help each other to solve technical and software problems.
Students are usually motivated from working with ICT equipment. However, there are also
demotivating factors. Student representatives claim that they become too enthusiastic about
using ICT so that they forget other assignments. Sometimes they also lose the logical
perspective when they use ICT. Students are also dissatisfied by lack of financial resources
for ICT for example resulting in that web pages produced by students cannot be put on the
Internet, because the school cannot afford to pay for licenses.
ICT-sceptical teachers in the school claim that students often use ICT to roam the net just to
have fun. Students often present material copied from the Internet as their own. Sometimes
ICT is just used as a passive tool and consequently, there is a need for more guidance to find
useful material. They also thought that the students’ need to train oral qualifications were
somewhat played down by extensive use of computers. Teachers further complained that in
the subject Portuguese there were already too few lessons, and therefore there was little time
to use computers. Negative attitudes towards the use of ICT had also been enhanced by
negative experiences, when using a special program in language training. Their conclusion
was that traditional teaching equipment is still more reliable than ICT-equipment.
A disadvantage mentioned both by the principal and teachers is that the use of ICT might lead
to more severe exclusions in both the teacher- and student group. They thought that excellent
students benefit more from using computers in their work than weaker students.
Teachers and students
It is usually the younger teachers and the teachers of different science subjects who have a
positive attitude and have started to use ICT in their work. The majority of the physics
teachers are interested in ICT development, which represents a new kind of interaction with
students and which means development of new learning resources. ICT is used to develop
“learning by discovery” methods, where video sequences of daily life situations are
digitalized to show physical laws at work. The physics teachers stressed that innovations in
teaching are needed, since math and physics are the subjects where the students receive the
lowest grades
Younger teachers, who still do not use ICT, are mostly very motivated to learn how to use it.
Teachers of humanistic subjects do not have the time or feel the need to start using computers.
Some thought they would feel more obliged to use computers, if they were part of the regular
classroom equipment.
A majority thought that the teacher’s role in the classroom has not changed very much
because of ICT. Many teachers still use ICT only for administrative purposes. However, there
are teachers in the school who want to learn more about ICT and realise that they need to be
better motivated to use ICT in their work. A statement was that there were special obstacles
for women in Portugal to start using ICT, because of different roles of gender.
Sustainability
The obligatory use of ICT in this school is limited to the vocational course, to the two lessons
per week ICT course in 9th grade and to some subjects. Financial problems are mentioned as a
major problem. The school does not rely on extra finances except for the extra money given
by the central government, for example to equip the ICT-room recently. The school does not
seem to rely much on experiences from other schools in their work to introduce and develop
ICT as a pedagogical and administrative tool in their work.