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Effective use of technology in education requires genuine innovation

By Fiona Stewart and Dale Spender - posted Friday, 15 March 2002


The argument seems all too easy: plough more money into public education and the quality will improve. Students will have more access to infrastructure – books, computers, new gymnasiums. More teachers will be employed.

While Australian schools certainly merit more public funding, the current debate about dollars has a significant downside. And it is this. By talking only about what is wrong with the system, we fail to set out what is possible and desirable. We may even ignore what it is that we need if Australia is to be a player in the 21st century.

Quality education isn’t always correlated with the quantity of money available. Scarcity – even adversity – can sometimes give rise to ingenuity and an innovative and more valuable education.

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This is not to suggest that our schools should be starved of funds on the grounds that it might be good for them (though some politicians clearly find this a tempting line of argument). But it is to claim that some of the best endowed and most privileged institutions, can become so set in their ways, so rigidly conformist to old standards, that they may fail to provide their students with the dynamic and empowering - and modern - education that is a basic in these changing times.

On the international scene, Australian schools do not enjoy world class status (as many politicians and educational professionals continue to proclaim). But we do have some extraordinary good schools in the public sector which are leading the way in providing their students with the skills they will need in today’s ever changing technological society.

Yet schools like these are not well known. Nor are they schools that have the benefit of endowments or blue ribbon real estate. Rather, they are schools that have adopted creative thinking and innovation as their yard sticks for success.

Take Woodcrest College in Springfield as an example. Less than three years old, this P-12 government school is on the outskirts of Ipswich near Brisbane and is part of the new Delfin housing estate. All homes on the Delfin estate come complete with a PC and Internet access. Homeowners in Springfield are wired.

This means that for most families in the school's catchment area, the Internet is just a normal part of daily life. For children growing up on this housing estate, doing things digitally - and this may mean anything from games to e-learning to email, chat and web browsing - is just how the world works.

The same is true for the school itself, where the integration of technology into all aspects of learning has resulted in radical changes in the way learning is undertaken, and in how the school is run.

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For example at Woodcrest there is no regimented timetable. This means that learning is continuous. The shift from print to screen enables students to experience learning as a normal part of life. It is not something that you do only for set times in set classes and on set days.

This means that students themselves can become sophisticated knowledge makers. Students at Woodcrest seem to be among the first in the world to understand that it is not enough to learn what is already known.

In fact, these students have been made aware that to survive in the new knowledge economy, they must know how to make knowledge products. For in order to sell your knowledge – your Intellectual Property - you need to come up with new ideas, solutions and know-how.

And these students are learning first hand that this is how the new knowledge economy works.

So technology at Woodcrest is about more than using email to communicate with teachers after hours, or about reading class notes on the school's Intranet website.

It is integral to all learning activity. Each piece of learning undertaken by Woodcrest students is individual in focus, digital in format and creates new knowledge - new insights - in a highly innovative and practical way. Take the project of the following eight year old student as an example.

When asked "what are you doing" by one of the authors, this student explained "I'm making a model of a house", as she turned her iMac to display a revolving 3D animation of the sort of house you would need in an earthquake area.

This isn't someone who is simply learning about earthquakes; this is a knowledge maker who is putting together a number of resources to solve the problem of housing in an earthquake zone. She is coming up with something new - something that wasn't known when the lesson began. (Something that is innovative and has to be evaluated in its own terms and not against the correct answer).

The school's integrated curriculum is integral to this change of focus. Because there are no individual subjects, learning has become project-based, (Earth and Beyond, Past Present and Future being among some of the themes covered). This focus is how old subject areas are integrated and the state-mandated curriculum is addressed

Teachers at Woodcrest have also moved from being instructors at the front of a class, to collaborating with students to achieve stated learning goals, through problem solving, and the creation of new understandings and products.

It should not be surprising then that Woodcrest students, regardless of age, have 'digital portfolios'. Where else would their Intellectual Property be kept?

As part of the Brisbane suburban sprawl, Woodcrest is proof that innovation and inspiration can be independent of wealth.

After all, at the end of the day, it will be the graduates from Woodcrest who have the skills and the smarts to prosper in a digital society where the basis is clever thinking and the smart application of Intellectual Property. All skills which the Australian Council of Education Deans have identified should be key aims of current and future education policies.

What is interesting to note is that Woodcrest is not alone. Rather, it is one of hundreds of schools around the world that are changing how they go about their business of learning.

Take the Charter School movement in the US as a further example. Covering both public and private schools, some of the most creative solutions to learning have been devised in these schools. Whether they are run as small independent operations or managed by some of the biggest education companies listed on the NASDAQ.

In all their permutations, schools like Minnesota New Country School are leading by example. As with Woodcrest College, the Minnesota School is located in an area of social and economic disadvantage. As a "computer-infused" school - all learning is undertaken online in rooms housing pods of networked computers - Minnesota, too, focuses upon digital project work. Operating in 10 week project blocks with students choosing their own topics of exploration and research, students at Minnesota - like their Woodcrest peers - are self-directed learners.

Schools like Woodcrest and Minnesota represent the future of education. More importantly, it is only through innovations such as these schools have undertaken, that students will leave school with skills more suited to the new knowledge economy rather than the old industrial one. Yet it has been the thoughtful and strategic approach of the staff, rather than the extent of the funding, which has provided the quality education which every Australian student deserves.

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About the Authors

Dr Fiona Stewart is Director of Realworld Research and Communications and is a consultant to corporations, universities, TAFE and schools in educational futures and e-learning. Fiona Stewart is co-author (with Philip Nitschke) of Killing Me Softly: Voluntary Euthanasia and the Road to the Peaceful Pill.

Dale spender is a researcher and writer on education and the new technologies.

Other articles by these Authors

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