Digital Revolution: where's the gratitude?

I attended the symposia on the Digital Education Revolution last week in Sydney and Brisbane last week and was surprised by the lack of a sense of gratitude to the federal government for this initiative. Some of the speakers mentioned that it will bring some opportunities, but from the participants there seemed to be a greater focus on problems rather than a sense that this is a significant step forward in the use of ICT in schools. I guess we don't have a great tradition of gratitude to governments, grudgingly accepting benefits as a return of our own tax payments. 

But having been plugging away at the use of ICT in schools for a long time, this looks like a break-through to me. Implementation of grand plans for the use of ICT has always been frustrated simply by lack of student access to computers. It is a fat lot of good having a great vision of how to use ICT when I can only get into the computer room twice a week for a 50 min lesson!

Certainly there are lots of problems still to be dealt with: infrastructure and staff skills to name just two. But isn't it about time we recognise that this is a very significant change for the better in the overall environment for the use of computers in secondary schools at least? The ball is landing firmly in the court of educators to take up the challenge to make the revolution actually occur.

Tags: school development aust digital revolution
Posted at 02:28PM May 31, 2008 by John Travers  |