What impact has the increased use of IT in the classroom had on the importance of images for schools?
As technology has become more sophisticated and computer-processing power has increased, the potential for mixing different kinds of media within a single application has become a reality. Within the classroom teachers can now use all kinds of content, video, text, audio, still images, animation etc., to deliver learning tasks. Although the use of video content is on the increase within schools still images still represent a more realistic option for most teachers when delivering visual content; a fact that has been confirmed by research carried out by the SILVER project; a government funded research project investigating new and innovative ways of delivering visual content in the classroom - www.silvereducation.org. Still images have the potential to evoke from the viewer, a form of contemplation that moving images cannot and so one could argue that still images are best suited to visualised learning. For example, a student might be presented with an image of a suffragette marching for women's rights. The student annotates his/her thoughts before categorising the image as showing, for example, aggressive behaviour or non-aggressive behaviour etc. The still image is perfectly suited to this form of learning in which the student is involved in a process of contemplative critical thinking through interpretation.
The ever-increasing use of IWB's (Interactive Whiteboard's) should, in time, greatly enhance learning and image exploration through the use of visualisation software in the classroom. However, current research indicates that approximately 90% of whiteboards are being used as projectors and not as intended, as an interactive medium through which to deliver more interesting and engaging learning experiences. Bridgeman Education, through collaboration with such partners as the technology provider Lexara (part of the SILVER consortium), aims to increase the exploitation of images through software tools.
What are the problems presented from using images from the internet?
There are 2 key issues to consider in relation to Internet images, namely Quality and Copyright. The issue of quality not only relates to the actual quality (resolution) of the image but also to the quality of the metadata (information about the image). There is no definitive data on the number of teachers using Internet sourced images within the classroom; however, we do know that many teachers are illegally downloading images from Google to use in their lessons. From our involvement on the SILVER project we have found that teachers are keen to find quality images with useful metadata. Free images from the web are of little use if they are of low resolution and without accompanying metadata. Many teachers that we have spoken with are concerned that they, and their students, are infringing copyright whilst using images from the web. This issue is becoming more and more critical for shcools as copyright laws become stricter and penalties increase. Of course it goes without saying that school and university students should learn about plagiarism and crediting, citing sources in accordance with academic standards and practice. Sadly, the plethora of poor material available on the internet does not encourage best practice.
Do you think that the education sector is largely aware of these problems and how does the education sectors requirements regarding images differ from other sectors?
Again, through our SILVER research we have found that some teachers are more concerned about copyright issues than others. However, all of the teachers we have consulted with say that they would be a lot happier if they knew that the images they were using were validated, free of copyright and of high quality. For example, many teachers want images that they can print and most free images on the web have a resolution lower than the minimum resolution required for print (300 dpi). The Education sector's requirements are often less stringent than in those areas where the Bridgeman Art Library supplies images, for example, fine Art prints, which are of the highest quality, especially if the print is physically large. That said, as teachers are now beginning to use more advanced technologies they are keen to obtain the maximum value from the images they use within different learning scenarios and so they are increasingly looking to use high-resolution images. For example, if a teacher wants to zoom in on a particular aspect of an image in order to highlight an important detail he/she has no choice but to work with a high quality image, typically in the form of a ‘.tif' file.
How does your service fit into this and what percentage of schools currently use it?
The Bridgeman Education service (www.bridgemaneducation.com) offers the legal right to use the image as primary benefit. The images are copyright cleared for educational use and we have formed an agreement with DACS whereby we have paid for the rights to have a large range of modern art, represented by their artists, displayed and available for download on our site. We also have a large range of modern art images from the artists represented by the Bridgeman Art Library. Moreover, the images come with extremely good metadata and, due to additional information hidden behind the image caption, our search mechanism returns a richer set of results than one might expect from a typical search engine, such as Google. Currently the service is mostly used by universities, however, we have a growing interest from the school sector where it is proving a valuable source of information for many different key stage levels, and indeed for the new college diplomas. The richness of the metadata compliments the current push for schools to use resources which are suited to cross-curricular activities. For instance, one of our images of the suffragettes could be used for at least 6 different areas of study from media and design studies through to history and women's studies. As such we are getting increased interest from bodies that offer technology for schools but who are crying out for quality content to offer alongside the hardware and software services.
What do you see as the long-term solution to the use of images by the education sector?
Having attended the BETT conference in London recently it was very clear that schools require stable web-based applications that support all kinds of media, from sound to still images, from moving images to animation. Beyond having a stable teaching platform teachers also need content. Where does this content come from? Increasingly teachers are encouraging students to generate their own content. Technology, in the form of mobile phones, iPods, audio recording devices etc, are now making this a realistic option for teachers. And yet, despite the trend for user generated content there is still a huge demand for formal content. Teachers of all subjects find it easier to demonstrate a lesson if they have images to help them. This is especially the case for teachers of Art, History, Geography, Graphic Design, media studies and so on.
The education sector needs flexibility, the option to work with granular (disaggregated) data (eg. to pull up an image of Henry VIII or Churchill) and images packaged within thematic resources that aid lesson plan delivery, such as the suffragettes module, which was developed for citizenship KS3 students by the SILVER team and which is available to use from the SILVER website - www.silvereducation.org. In the current epoch we see an ever-increasing reliance on the image as a means of information gathering. Never before has there been such an opportunity to promote a form of visualised learning that engages the student in a process of critical thinking. These are exciting times out of which will emerge sophisticated, but easy to use, software that has, at its core, the concerns of all the actors in the education community; teacher, student, and parent.
Answers provided by:
Brian Kavanagh (SILVER Project Manager)
Pandora Mather-Lees (Managing Director Bridgeman Education)
