Like many other parents with primary-school aged children, I was keen to log onto ACARA’s new My School website to check out how well our local school fared, as well as having a general sticky beak around at some of the more ‘notable mentions’ made in the media. Then it struck me—is it more important to me that my son goes to the best school in the country or that our country has the best schools?
As a 12-year veteran of the education sector, I probably don’t need a website to tell me that our kids aren’t getting the same level of education nationwide—not because our teachers aren’t of the right calibre but simply that our nation is … well, wide! In Australia, the digital divide is not only socio-economic, it’s geographic. And as a technologist, I know that solutions do exist to bridge that divide and make our education system truly equitable.
We have vast opportunity to invest in our children’s future through ICT in education: collaboration tools can enable teachers and students to share a ‘virtual’ classroom; the proliferation of affordable video cameras can transform student assessment; and leading-edge research can be quickly embedded into curriculum without waiting for new editions of text-books to be released. But these aren’t solutions that I’ve suggested to teachers—these are all ideas that teachers have suggested to me.
Our responsibility, as the ICT community, is to listen to the challenges and ideas of our educators and children and be prepared to think laterally about affordable and reliable solutions.
Unlike other industries, where efficiency and productivity come in the form of automation, educators seek to deliver their content in a compelling and engaging way—and through as many channels as they have available. In short, this means the computer hasn’t replaced the classroom, the internet will never replace the library and videogame consoles can’t replace the playground. This has the unfortunate side-effect of exponentially increasing running costs for schools, universities and colleges in an environment continually seeking return on investment. So, not only do today’s teachers have to do it differently—they have to do it with less!
The days of us—the IT crowd—trying to convince the education sector that technology is the way of the future are long past. Now, it’s more a paradigm of our teachers waiting for us to come up with an idea they (or their students!) haven’t thought of yet and delivering to them the tools that will make Australia the truly ‘clever country’.