How the pollies are damaging your kids’ IT education

>Australian kids are digital natives,but the use of computers in their education is so far behind neighbouring countries, like Singapore, that they may never catch up.
> One of Australia’s leading  educators, Cheryl O’Connor, assesses this situation, very bluntly.
>”It is a scary picture,” CEO of the Australian Council of Educators said  at the launch of a critically important new book, leading a digital school.
> One its two editors, Mal Lee, says “unashamedly” that the situation developed in the Howard years.
> But Lee, and his fellow editor, MikeGaffney also criticise Kevin  Rudd’s pre-election promise of a laptop for  every student, in the final years of high school.
> …school laptop programs – even when’part subsidised’ by parents are immensely expensive, as well as being of questionable educational value, they say.
> The clutch of authors, who contributed, argues ­ frighteningly – that  Australia is still educating its kids for jobs in an industrial society that no longer exists.
> However the authors broadly  welcomed the Rudd government’s commitment to IT education
> They also acknowledge that the march of technology never stops.
> Roger Hayward, a former principal  of Saint Leonard’s College in Melbourne said  he noticed, about four years ago, that many of  that school’s students stopped carrying their  notebook computers to school, and started bringing flash drives instead.
>More recently, I noticed that they had moved on.
>They use their Ipods to transfer their files.
> And they ALL have Ipods, he said.
> Lee and Gaffney, did ask, though, why schools should spend heavily on laptops, when students have their own computer space at home, and can bring their work to school with an inexpensive USB drive.
> Their doubts go to cost-effectiveness.
Better educational and more cost efficient use can be made of technology within the home and the school they say.
> Other authors suggest that  interactive whiteboards might be more appropriate, in some cases, than notebooks.
> The reality, though, is that Labor’s IT education revolution can accommodate all of this.
> The Rudd government has merely promised to spend $1 billion, over four years,  upgrading information technology in Australia’s schools.
> If a particular school believes that interactive whiteboards are better than ndividual laptops, they are free to make that choice.
> The political reality, though, is  that Rudd will never be allowed to forget his  pre-election promise, that every Australian > student, in years 9-12, will have access to his or her own computer.
> Just as, Bob Hawke, is constantly reminded of his 1987 promise that “by 1990,no Australian child will be living in poverty.
> Hawke, himself, has since admitted  that this was just a silly shorthand way of speaking.
> Rudd might rue his laptop promise one day, too.
> But basic questions must be asked.
> Does information technology, for example, really have a place in the classroom?
> Does it really contribute to a child’s education?
> David O9Brien, principal of the  Ingle Farm primary school in South Australia has no doubt about that.
> He says that, used properly, information technology can “encourage  creativity, experimentation and collaboration.
> He learnt that by studying how good video games work.
> Ingle Farm is in an area of  significant poverty with relatively high  levels of Aboriginal and non-English speaking students.
> Yet, against all the odds, it has become a very effective digital school.
> Creativity, experimentation and the ability to work collaboratively are highly  valued qualities, in the 21st Century job market.
> With 12 authors, this book is not ascohesive as it might have been, with a single,  well-qualified writer, working to a tight plan.
> It is occasionally repetitive.
> And, in parts, it reads like a repair manual.
> But if you are putting a digital  school together, these will be its most valuable passages.
> For the ordinary, worried parent,though, there is a very powerful lesson in this book.
> That is that kids, who have all the  latest gadgets at home, as most do, can easily  become bored at school, if they have to fight to use scarce  out-dated equipment there.
>As educational IT pioneer, Peter Murray points out students behave begun to notice the massive discrepancy between what they can do at home and >what they can do on site at school.
>They are demanding ICT environments where teaching and learning take precedence.
Murray says school leaders are also becoming aware of this digital divide.
>And they are asking their IT staff to open up access to the school’s computer equipment, without relaxing their vigilance, in keeping internet nasties out of the school sytems.
>Lee and Gaffney are evangelists of the IT era in education.
> “The shift to a digital operational mode  offers schools immense opportunities to provide  students with a quality education for the twenty first century, they say.
>By Ëœgoing digital,,  schooling takes on different forms to what we have known to this point in the history of education.”
> Their view demands close study.
> And this book provides that opportunity.
>leading a digital school published by the Australian Council of Educational Research Ltd.