[LINK] Bring your Own Device

[Tom Worthington]

On 06/05/14 09:46, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> As usual, what I heard of this discussion, focussed on the device rather than the human
> capability of schools/teachers to support the stuff ...

I spent last Friday and Saturday at University of Canberra, with school 
teachers and university academics, working out to teach the new 
technology curriculum in Australian schools. The computer science 
academics had laptops, whereas the teachers had Apple iPads, except for 
one with a Google Chromebook.

Apparently the netbooks acquired through the previous government scheme 
are now all but unusable. The teacher with the Chromebook was saying how 
much easier they were to support at school than Microsoft Windows or 
Apple iPads. They wanted to turn the old Netbooks into Chromebooks 
(which sounds a reasonable idea to me), but have yet to track down the 
code needed to unlock the BIOS to change the OS.

More on the Australian School Technologies Curriculum: 
http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/search/label/Australian%20Curriculum%20Technologies

What worried me more than support of hardware or software, was support 
of the teacher and teaching. As I understand it, a curriculum is 
produced nationally, but no teaching materials are provided for teaching 
it. Each state, and private system, decides how to implement the 
curriculum. In the ACT, each public school then decides what to do and 
each teacher then teaches the material, on their own, to their students. 
This does not seem to be an efficient or effective way to teach 
anything, but especially not for a technology curriculum. Why not have 
online teaching materials and specialist on-line educators, who assist 
teachers in the class-room?

On team teaching: 
http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2014/03/blended-multi-lingual-schools-for-all.html


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Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
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