An Australian survey of teachers’ use of ICT and follow-up actions

By

Greg Black

CEO

Education.au limited

Australian Context

• ‘Digital Education Revolution’ policies

• $A43bn investment in broadband

• National curriculum initiative

• Skills Australia programme

• Targets for increased participation

• Greater accountability for outcomes

Reasons for going on-line

85% of teachers use ICT’s regularly in their daily work for:• Research, basic administration, communications• Project work, lesson preparation and to get ideas• To encourage students to use Internet for research• Professional development• Assignments

Teachers self assessment of their capability

Levels of expertise:• 36% proficient

- confident in use to support learning• 24% emergent

- using ICT to support teaching• 7% foundation

- developing my skills• 7% not applicable• 27% transforming practice

- new ways to engage students within and beyond

classroom

What barriers do you experience in using online technologies for teaching and learning?

Other barriers

• ‘Not enough time’ - an almost universal statement

• Lacking confidence

• No incentives

• Lack of institutional leadership and support.

http://z.about.com/d/learningdisabilities/1/0/x/0/-/-/frustrated_teacher.jpg

Implications

Priorities should be:

• More support for educators

• Better infrastructure- computers, broadband and on-demand technical support

• Invest in teaching techniques and strategies and share these

• Unblock sites

Follow up research and policy proposalsResearch papers completed

by education.au in 2008/09:

• Workforce capability

• Collaborative Teaching and Learning

• Pre-service and beginning teachers & ICT

• E-learning infrastructure strategy

• Site blocking of Web 2.0

• E-portfolios

• Enabling emerging technologies

• 21st century learning spaces

• Embedding digital and media literacies in the curriculum

Workforce capability• Parlous state of pre-service teacher education

• Most professional learning has had limited impact

• Currently no incentives apart from student engagement

• Professional learning transformation based on:

• openness to critical reflection,

• authentic classroom based demonstration and

• motivation based on student outcomes

• successes with collaborative learning teams.

back

Enabling Web 2.0

• E-learning infrastructure supported by identity management and open standards

• Policies and practices at the institutional level that mitigate risk

• Engagement of parents

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21st century learning spaces

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21st Century National Software Infrastructure: Priorities

• Identity and Access control integrating organisation-centric and person-centric

• Collaborative Interoperability

• National Data Interchange (SIF)• Resources and the National Curriculum• ePortfolio Interoperability• Cloud Services Interoperability

Proposals and New Projects• A web 2.0 mentoring and support network for school leaders

• Virtual schools for pre-service and beginning teachers

• A social networking tool for teachers and students- me.edu.au as the basis for a devolved person-centric e-learning infrastructure

• On-line mentored programmes to re-engage the disenfranchised (like notschool.net)

• Pilot projects and an on-line clearing house to test new tools and services (cloud computing; interoperability; mobile technologies; virtual worlds; open systems)

• An on-line help desk for schools on ICT and learning & teaching