After many years of pioneering by growing numbers of the more adventurous schools who saw the potential of 1:1 in the 90's, we have now moved to the point of adoption at scale. With the launch of the Rudd Digital Education initiative, and widespread moves overseas to give every child a laptop, our dream that every child would be able to expand their opportunities for learning by having access to their own Notebook computer has (finally) moved from vision to reality.
And with that reality comes even more opportunity; an opportunity for us to take a significant leadership role for those hundreds of schools across the country that are in the early stages of adoption, and also an opportunity for us to now seek to resolve some of the challenges we have been facing because of the lack of scale. All of a sudden we will have every child completing exams on Notebook computers, which will force a serious rethink of our notions of assessment; there will be a restructure of teacher training to better prepare new teachers to teach in technology-rich classrooms, and there will no longer be "any place to hide" ...so yes, we will finally start to see a change in the culture of our schools to reflect to this new digital world.
To ensure the maximum return for our young people, we must be even more conscious of who and what we are accountable for, to ensure we don't lose direction and become distracted by the flood of technology. Most importantly we must strive to be pioneering, to ensure we are seeking the best outcomes for our students as a result of this ubiquitous access to the digital world.
Critical to this process must be the underlying management and support of pioneering technology deployments. For this reason, attention must focus around the infrastructure needed to support and accomplish learning technology goals. We must bridge the gap between the educational practitioner and technical administrator, ensuring that the technology is not only scalable, but also supportive of educational leaders in their accountability for their school's technology investment.
As the longest running, and leading education technology Conference in the world, ELH 08 once again seeks to explore these ideas across an exciting range of leading keynotes, workshops and presentations, and critical conversations for leaders and decision makers in mature technology schools.
