What this means

Technology is the Trojan horse of pedagogical change. Tomes

The amount and quality of technology now available in many schools continue to grow, although resources and support are obviously a limiting factor. New technologies include multimedia, blogs, Wikis, social bookmarking and networking and e-diaries.

Young people use information and communication technology (ICT) as a means of individual and collective expression, experience, inquiry, understanding and interpretation. Students are also acquiring new learning preferences and strengths and weaknesses (new technology is double-edged) such as:

• Expecting to be able to find what they want online whenever they want it
• Pursuing non-linear, hyper-linked, sometimes discontinuous paths to explore ideas and information
• Favouring jumping around or taking a serendipitous route to achieve something rather than a more linear, methodical approach to problem solving
• Preferring problems and learning that blend the abstract and the concrete/specific, the theoretical and the ‘real world’
• Seeking, sieving and synthesizing multiple sources of knowledge and information rather than locating and absorbing information from a single source.

Two major challenges follow. The first is to understand more about how students are changing (and also are becoming change agents) through their use of ICT - how they think, learn, find, play, make judgments, interact with others and become engaged in the life of their families, schools, communities and societies.

The second is, given that young people are inundated by enormous amounts of data that they must access, manage, integrate, and evaluate, how educators can best support students to separate deeper learning and knowledge from superficial fact-gathering.

Besides resources and developing strategies to optimise the use of ICT, as developed by some schools, a school’s technology plan can reflect the ideas of a whole school community and thus unite teachers, parents and students. A plan may include:

• Our school’s vision and goals for ICT
• How we are building the links between learning, content and ICT
• ICT in the context of family and community partnerships
• Infrastructure, support and PD
• Action plan by year
• Roles and responsibilities
• Budget and funding strategies
• Evaluation and review.

case study

To be developed.

ACTION CHECKLIST

To be developed.