[LINK] Broadband for a Broad Land

[Tom Worthington]

stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> Tom writes,
>... I started writing a submission for the NBN Inquiry: 
>> <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/12/broadband-for-broad-land.html>.
>
> Tom, i fully agree that Internet training for teachers and school staff
> will *always* be helpful. Especially training BY practising school staff
> FOR practising school staff ...  Vic and NSW schools already do have fairly speedy broadband ...

I can't comment on your area of teaching young children, as I only teach
adults, mostly at the postgraduate level. The significance of the NBN
for education, as I see it, is not to provide access for schools, but
access to education online at home. This could be used to break down the 
idea that you have to go to a particular place "school" for education.

At the very least, online education could be used for education of
teachers. But I would also see it being used extensively, at least for
older students.

The mode used by TAFE, commercial adult education providers and to some 
extent by university, could also be used with younger students: this is 
where the students attend an educational facility under the supervision 
of staff, but do not have teachers talking at them as a class for most 
of the day.

Older students would only need to attend "school" in person a couple of 
days a week for classes requiring equipment and group interaction. 
Attendance for most students the rest of the time would be optional, but 
schools could still provide supervision of the student's small group and 
individual work outside these times. Such school buildings would look 
like the Lilley Centre at Brisbane Grammar School: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/05/research-lead-learning-space-design.html>.
More on classroom design: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/search/label/classroom%20design>.

At the risk of creating some debate, something which stuck me when I was 
looking at a book on the architecture of school " and learning: lessons 
in architecture 3" (Herman Hertzberger, 2008) was that Montessori method 
of education, when stripped of its philosophical superstructure, is very 
similar to current approaches to e-learning pedagogy. So the effect of 
use of elearning may be to turn all schools into  Montessori schools: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/01/book-on-designing-classrooms.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra