Reflections in this journal are made mainly from the point of a visiting observer of IT (Information Technology) or ICT (Information & Communication Technology) in some Kimberley Aboriginal Schools K – Year 10.
They are based on experience as well as theory in vogue at Universities in the early 2000's

Setting the Scene:

Mature IT blends into the woodwork, becomes part of the furniture… becomes ubiquitous…

Teachers who see themselves as… ‘ keepers of knowledge and discovery’ probably won’t be comfortable with IT in their classrooms.  Such teachers are also maybe not happy with the Curriculum Framework… peer learning…”   S.Kessell (Course Materials)

Summary:  Teaching theory has shifted from:

Dirk mentions some aspects of present learning that may need to be re-thought:

Reflection:

The Master – Apprentice image of education sees Educator and Student involved with the same materials and with the same goal.  The Apprentice works in the real world, not a pretend world.  The work is a co-operative one with the Master as guide.

Another practical image to support the theory of this article is of the student building their learning by selecting from appropriate building blocks or resources.  Underlying the article is the idea that ICT can be a suitable source of a wide range of these building blocks, as well as presenting them in a way that makes it easier for the student to select the most appropriate.  

Summary:  Constructivism assumes that learning is constructed by the learner ie the learner is not a passive receiver of information.  The learner builds up new understandings based on what they already know – their previous knowledge influencing what they will gain from the new experience. 

·       Learning is active rather than passive.
·       The learners’ understanding changes to accommodate the new experience.
·       Students are given opportunities to test their changing understandings in the learning area.
·       Group interaction helps the learner go through this process of developing understandings. 
·       Time is required for the reflection on the new experience. 
·       Learning is student-centred rather than teacher-centred.

Teachers & Professional Development:  Is teacher orator or facilitator..?  To assist developing student-centred learning, teacher PD should involve student-centred activities rather than lectures.

Reflection:

Do supporters of Constructivist theory claim it is a suitable methodology for education at all levels from Kindergarten on, or for all racial and socio-economic groupings?  Or, are other approaches to education more appropriate depending on the age and cultural background of the learner.  ICT is involved (with different emphases) over the whole of education from Kindergarten to University, and may mesh best with different approaches at different levels. 

Education Learning Theory to some degree mirrors society.  There have been huge changes in society over the last 50 years as well as in educational learning theory. There has been also constant change in the students who are the subject of education.  The challenge for teachers in remote Aboriginal schools is that the students live in a society that is mainly oral in its communication, using the written word only to communicate with government or private outside agencies.  Their society values are different from those of the wider Australian society, yet they all have to be able to deal with that wider society and live in it if they wish. 

Others have studied the learning patterns of remote Aboriginal children who:

• Learn by seeing or hearing (imitation),
  
• are not competitive,
• tend to look to the teacher or assisting adult “for the answer”
• do not have the family pressures to succeed or the career motivations that other Australian students have.

Summary:  “Metaphors offer powerful ways to change our thinking”.   Jamie applies the metaphor of gardening to the process of introducing ICT to schools. 

Important aspects of this article:

1. Organic:  The basic elements are the human and organizational elements, not the cables and equipment.
2. Readiness:  Cultivating the soil; need for professional development of teachers and of practical learning units.
3. Planting:  Plants, not the structure, make the garden.  What and where – program and curriculum must come down to ICT detail.
4. Pruning & Weeding:  Re-assessment at regular intervals to determine successful and unsuccessful strategies. Re-assess the unsuccessful or cast them aside.

Reflection:  Where ICT is not well-established in the pattern of learning, the teacher sees equipment – which you use or don’t use.  It plays its part just by being there – “my classroom has a computer and some of the children use it before school.  Our school has spent a lot on computers”.  Jamie challenges this by his use of the living metaphor.  If the garden is not cared for it dies – if ICT is not nurtured the same result.  The teacher who focuses on equipment gets no life, no scope for learning via the classroom computer. 

By the same token, ICT is not king.  The plants in the garden that contribute to its life can be pruned or replaced.  That is the other angle:  just because it’s an ICT issue doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate or has to have first priority.  Equally unuseful are the uncritical enthusiasm for and acceptance of all ICT plans, strategies, issues etc or the direct opposite strategy of sidestepping of any ICT inclusion in curriculum.

Summary: 

Summed up in the photo that illustrates the article – a chook against the wire of a fence ie caged or constrained.  The article aims at fostering the free range student, an infotective (questioning, insightful, sifting, synthesising). McKenzie contrasts the Smoke-Stack school and the Information Age School, the former emphasising digesting, memorising and regurgitation of facts, the latter solving the puzzle of the data to produce a picture.

• Asking the right question.  The Internet as edutainment only deals with questions on a superficial level, “trivial pursuit”.  Rather than ask “Write down some things about your city”, phrase the question “Why should your family move from your city?”  The second question should give rise to a considered opinion rather than a collection of cut and paste.
• Scaffolding helps make up for the free form of material on the internet.
• Engaged Learning – Teacher is rarely “the sage on the stage”, more the “guide on the side”, there is no front of class. The mood is one of facilitating, supporting, encouraging, with fewer lectures.  An engaged learner works collaboratively, explores, is strategic and accepts responsibility for their learning.  An engaged teacher is supportive of the individual yet in charge of the learning process in terms of setting expectations, goals and keeping the learning on task and productive.
• Internet competencies – “We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning.”  Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation 1981.   Screening and compacting information (previously the longer an assignment the better – now (as well as then) quality is the real issue (sifting, sorting, selecting, analyse and organize are the skills).  Insight leads to creation of new ideas.  Assumptions, evidence and logic.
• A free range student is an infodective who uses all the sources of information available both online and offline (library, people…).

Reflection: 
The article is more about education than ICT directly.  However, ICT (the networked classroom) will flourish in the classroom where engaged learning occurs – where teacher is not the “sage on the stage” but the “guide on the side” as well.  The issue of ICT in schools is therefore bigger than ICT as another aid to teaching (like the overhead projector, the VCR and the white board). 

Teachers would soon tire of using the internet as a source of facts or for child-minding.  In the remote schools I visit students have only recently become readers – with most at best reluctant readers.