Digital Education stream, session 3 at Realising our broadband future summit (Ideas and thoughts, not full blogging) Recapping: We have already had two sessions on digital education which have focused on the blue-sky possibilities for education because of the coming NBN, and then the reality check – what might get in the way. My general conclusion about these sessions was that there were no big ideas, really, because a lot of what the NBN brings is not NEW, but just scalable and increased reach, enabling everyone to get it. The reality check also indicated that the problem might be the overemphasis on technology, whereas policy and structure and systems are the issue. So what will be the next steps? Access and equality are very important issues for education in the imagined future of high-speed connectivity. Education is deeply about social advantage, building opportunity for all. One of the important opportunity factors: teachers are not given the opportunities in the classroom to utilise technologies well. Technologies used outside the classroom (flickr, messenger, etc) work, they work for her, and they are centred on her. Technologies like this used in the classroom are not available, not easily available, or have different kinds … Click to read more →

(Comments and ideas from session at Broadband Summit) The MCEECDYA Program of reporting, National Assessment Program: Information and Communication Technology Literacy, provides evidence about the literacy of students. The 2008 report, not yet available publicly, shows that students in Years 6 and 10 of Australian schooling are not involved in a lot of “creating, analysing, and transforming” of information via online tools (what I would term cognitive uses of the web) and are primarily interested in using the net for chatting and searching for information. It will be interesting to compare this report (which is clearly in the social media period – 2008) with the previous report, from 2005. Discussion of research infrastructure: main question – what is the interface with NBN given that the emerging Australian research network is already a lot faster and so on than the NBN? I am wondering if this is relevant to NBN – in the same way thet BHP Billiton builds its specialised network, so too would the Australian research community. It perhaps suggests that we need to be thinking about ‘networks’ not just the NBN. An excellent presentation of problems in school: Six key points Old models + new tech not solution … Click to read more →

(This session doesn’t report on speakers directly but provides comments, summaries and ideas) Realising Our Broadband Future digital education stream Very large bandwidth to big school, computers for everyone, digital resources are the focus (Moo, CIO, NT) Watching a terrible Microsoft glossy promo video: does this company not realise how bad these things look? Sure, it’s a ‘vision’ not reality, but what it assumes is a class infrastructure – 100% middleclass. Plus the sort of ‘perfection’ they imagine for devices and software is, to be honest, just a wee bit farfetdched given M’Soft’s record on such things. Oh wait, maybe this is a glimpse into the 23rd century. Part of the problem here is that technologists assume (as always) that the technology solves the problems. That the technology is what’s missing to make education better. Equally, there is a kind of rationalist determinism here, too, hidden in the technological determinism: computer science sees the problems as ones of knowledge and information and data, that there is always a rational answer to a human need which will appear, in the modern mode, if only it can be addressed. Equally, some of the Microsoft hyperbole fails to account for the way teachers … Click to read more →