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Digital education revolution is not sustainable

By Tom Worthington - posted Monday, 6 October 2008


Julia Gillard, Minister for Education, addressed the Australian Computers In Education Conference, October 1 2008. She talked about the Government's $1.2 billion Digital Education Revolution strategy being about more than computers for students. She said this was a matter of equity and national economic survival. The minister also mentioned "sustainability", but in an economic sense, not environmentally or educationally.

The Minister outlined four priorities:

  1. universal access to high quality computers;
  2. computers must be networked;
  3. compelling educational content; and
  4. teacher training.
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However, the Australian Government appears to have left other ICT equipment and support out of the budget. Teachers have pointed out that interactive whiteboards are more educationally useful and should be a higher priority than computers for students. Also the facilities needed for supporting computers need to be considered.

The Australian Government is placing undue emphasis on computers for students. The $1.1 billion of the $1.2 billion budget is for the National Secondary School Computer Fund, to provide Year 9 to 12 students with computers. This only leaves 8 per cent of the funds for networking, content and training.

Of the remaining funds, $100 million will be spent on high-speed fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband connections for schools. As the Deputy PM points out this can be used for virtual classrooms, e-books, visual and audio streaming and high definition video conferencing. However, that will require additional equipment in the school not budgeted for by the federal government. Also schools in remote areas will not receive this level of network service, as the Australian Broadband Guarantee only provides for 512Kbps download and 128Kbps upload in rural and remote areas.

With almost all the Digital Education Revolution budget spent on computers for students and broadband, there is only 5 per cent left for the most important part of the project, which is curriculum tools ($32.6 million), teacher training ($11.25 million) and support ($10 million).

The example of the Learning Object Repository Network in the Vocational Education and Training sector is a good model for schools to follow in developing and sharing content. However, that system is hampered by the lack of open access to the materials. The Minister should require the use of a Creative Commons type licence on materials developed with the government funding to ensure the content can be widely used, without the need for schools to worry about paying licence fees.

A nationally consistent approach to storing and managing online curriculum content with a Learning Activity Management project and integrated online learning environment is a good idea.

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These should not be developed in isolation from the initiatives in the vocational and higher education sectors. The same issues are faced by teachers in schools, TAFEs, companies, government agencies and universities. Much the same solutions are being explored from primary schools to universities, with the vocational sector the most advanced in their use of ICT. However, at present the sectors are developing the same techniques independently, duplicating effort and wasting resources.

A major failing of the Digital Education Revolution is that it does not address climate change thus increasing cost and pollution. At ACEC'08 on Tuesday, Mark Winter from Computers Off Australia, outlined how power saving measures could make saving to schools power bills and reduce carbon emissions. The same day Professor Garnaut recommended a reduction of 25 per cent in emissions by 2020. In my report for the Environment Department I pointed out that ICT could contribute 1 per cent of this saving.

One area where energy efficiency could have an early impact is computers for schools. The Australian Government is funding new computers and thus can require that only energy efficient computers be purchased using those funds. Apart from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this will reduce the cost of electricity to run the computers. In addition, schools provide a good way to educate the general community, through the children teaching their parents about sustainability.

Instead of doing this, the Australian Government is spending $1.1 billion increasing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, when the plan could easily incorporate energy reduction measures. This is disturbingly similar to the plot of this week's ABC TV comedy The Hollowmen: "A Waste of Energy".

The Australian Government Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) asked me to help with a project to increase the energy efficiency of personal computers and monitors in Australia.

Input from the ICT industry and other interested parties was invited. Companies including Apple, IBM and Intel responded with details of their international energy saving initiatives. From these I proposed a strategy for the Australian ICT industry, in conjunction with government, to improve the energy efficiency of PCs and Monitors in Australia.

The target I proposed for Australian ICT was a 50 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. This would contribute a 1 per cent overall reduction in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. A 50 per cent reduction sounds like a lot, but is based on what can be done today using existing technology.

The computer industry makes rapid advances, with chips doubling in processing power about every 18 months. In the past this has been used to make much faster, slightly cheaper computers each year. But is now being used to make slightly faster, much cheaper, energy efficient computers.

The advances in processing capacity have reached the point where they are more than is needed for the typical home or school computer. Manufacturers are now offering smaller, cheaper, more energy efficient computers. But computer companies understandably promote their higher priced performance models, rather than their low energy budget models. So incentives and education are needed to encourage the community to buy better, rather than bigger, computers.

The strategy proposed for Australia is adoption of programs used in other countries for energy efficiency. It is proposed the voluntary use of the US EPA Energy Star program by the Australian ICT industry and web based industry and consumer education programs on energy efficiency.

To give this some force, the Australian federal and state governments can adopt a policy to purchase Energy Star products and using the web based information in their tender evaluations. While the program would be voluntary, those companies which did not offer Energy Star rated products and did not provide details of them on the web would be effectively excluded from all government tenders and government funded projects.

A few weeks ago I visited Hawker Primary School in Canberra and looked at their award winning sustainability efforts and e-learning. The students and teachers want to have sustainable computer education facilities and know what to do, but are stopped from doing this by the policies of the ACT Education Department. The students at the school teach sustainability to other schools.

The Deputy PM should drop by for a lesson from the students on what the Federal Government can do for sustainable computers in schools.

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About the Author

Dr Tom Worthington is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian National University, an author and independent IT consultant. He is also a member of the On Line Opinion's Editorial Advisory Board.

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