I presented a seminar a couple of weeks ago on new technologies with a specific focus on using blogs to develop creative writing. As I put the presentation together I realised that I had to go right back to the beginning and talk about why we teach writing at all. Speaking to some English teachers beforehand and at the seminar resulted in responses like “Because we have to - it’s in the exam”, “It develops language skills”, “They might be the next best selling author.” None of these really appears to justify the time spent in schools on creative writing. Someone said, “Because the kids enjoy it, ” and I thought this was a better reason but hardly convincing.

Over the last decade or so, education has become obsessed with assessment, obsessed with measurable achievement, obsessed with delivering a highly structured curriculum. Teachers with this mindset are often enthusiasts for ICT because it can help them deliver curricular targets more efficiently.

What’s excting about the new technologies (and much of the ‘old’ technologies) is that they offer ways of doing new things, not just better ways of doing old things. But many of these things are not easy to assess and don’t fit neatly into the existing curricular structure.

When I started teaching in the 70s there was much that was wrong in education. I don’t want to get into a discussion about the relative merits of education through the decades, but one thing that seemed better (certainly in secondary schools and especially in schools in disadvantaged areas) was that we were concerned about the whole child, not just academic achievement. Now I know that nowadays we have armies of support staff whose concern is nominally the ‘whole child’ but often the reality is that only academic success is valued.

I’m getting sidetracked here, so to get back on task - creative writing is good for kids for many reasons but especially because it can boost self esteem. Producing self confident children who go on to be self confident adults with a belief in their own worth, whatever their acadmic success, is one of the greatest things a teacher can do.

What many of the new technologies do is build children’s self esteem by letting them take responsibilty for what they’re doing and for it to be valued by a wide audience. Children can have a sense of controlling their own learning, can contribute to collaborative work and can have their individual skills valued.

Let’s hope that the rhetoric of A Curriculum for Excellence can be turned into action and that technology can be used to enhance the lives of our youngsters not to grade them.