leading a

leading a digital school

digital
This important book informs educational leaders about current
school
developments in the use of digital technologies and presents a
number of case studies demonstrating the value and complexity of
these technologies. It encourages leaders to engage in the process

Edited by Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney

of successful change in their own school community by providing
guidelines and advice drawn from emerging research.
Leading a Digital School is a rich source of information about joining
the new ‘education revolution’. It shows clearly and concisely how
schools can integrate digital technologies creatively and wisely in
order to enliven teaching and support student learning.

Mal Lee is an educational consultant specialising in the development

of digital technology in schools. He is a former director of schools and
secondary school principal and has written extensively on the effective
use of ICT in teaching practice.
Professor Michael Gaffney is Chair of Educational Leadership at the
Australian Catholic University. Mike has wide experience as a teacher, an
education system senior executive, and as a researcher, consultant and
policy adviser to Australian governments in areas of education policy,
curriculum and teaching practices appropriate to 21st century schooling.

ISBN 978-0-86431-896-1

PRINCIPLES AND
9 780864 318961
PRACTICE
Edited by Mal Lee and
Michael Gaffney
 ACER Press

Lead_a_Dig_Sch_FINAL.indd i 17/6/08 10:27:32 AM

 First published 2008
by ACER Press, an imprint of
Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd
19 Prospect Hill Road, Camberwell
Victoria, 3124, Australia

www.acerpress.com.au
sales@acer.edu.au

Text © Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney 2008

Design and typography © ACER Press 2008

This book is copyright. All rights reserved. Except under the conditions
described in the Copyright Act 1968 of Australia and subsequent
amendments, and any exceptions permitted under the current
statutory licence scheme administered by Copyright Agency Limited
(www.copyright.com.au), no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, broadcast or communicated in
any form or by any means, optical, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Edited by Ronél Redman

Cover design by mightyworld
Cover photograph © Andrew Thurtell 2008
Text design based on design by mightyworld
Typeset by Kerry Cooke, eggplant communications
Printed in Australia by Hyde Park Press

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Lee, M. R. (Malcolm Robert)
Title: Leading a digital school / Mal Lee ; Michael Gaffney.
ISBN: 9780864318961 (pbk.)
Notes: Includes index.
Bibliography.
Subjects: Education—Australia—Data processing.
Computer-assisted instruction—Australia
Computers—Study and teaching—Australia.
Internet in education—Australia.
Educational technology—Australia.
Information technology—Study and teaching—Australia.
Schools—Australia
Other Authors/Contributors:
Gaffney, Michael (Michael Francis)
Australian Council for Educational Research
Dewey Number: 371.3340994

While very effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright owners of material
used in this book, there may be some omissions. Any such omissions brought to the
publisher’s attention will be corrected in the next printing of the book.

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 CONTENTS

Figures and tables vii

Preface ix
The contributors xiv

1 Leading schools in a digital era 1

Leading a digital school 3
‘The school is flat’ 4
Teachers using new technologies 7
Principals as responsible leaders in technology 9
The purpose and possibilities of digital schooling 12

2 Successful learning and school design for

the knowledge age 14
Reviewing the global context—challenges for schools 15
Planning schooling for the knowledge age 21
Conclusion 29

3 Planning in a digital school 30

Focus on people not machines: planning elements for a
digital school 30
Planning pragmatically in changing times 33
From planning to implementation 35
Conclusion 36

4 Engagement with digital technology:

new challenges for school and system leaders 38
Shaping and selecting digital technologies 40
Managing enthusiasm: from early adoption to sustained
widespread use 41
Achieving digital integration 42
Balancing internal and external control 43
Managing risk 44

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 CONTENTS

Securing school information assets 45

Managing information 45
Overseeing the technology and education direction 46
Networking with the home technology 47
Financing the technology 48
Conclusion 49

5 Fostering digitally based teaching and learning:

strategic considerations 51
New technologies, new expectations of teachers in a
digital world 52
e-Learning applications: new tools for teaching and learning 56
New learning through digital technologies: connectivism 57
Strategic planning: roadmaps, signposts and intents 58
Strategic principles for the ICT journey 64
Making IT happen 67

6 Creating a nexus between homes and schools 68

The digital divide between homes and schools 69
The digital divide among homes 72
Student learning outside the classroom 73
Developing a home–school nexus 76
Conclusion 79

7 Leading a digital school:

a case study—St Leonard’s College 80
The context 80
What works for us, and what have we abandoned? 83
The future 91

8 The ‘Good Video Game Guide’ to successful

integration of digital technology: a case study
of Ingle Farm Primary School with interactive
whiteboards 93
School context and approach to change 94
‘Good video games’ as guides for teaching and learning with
digital technology 95

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 C ONT E NT S

Outcomes from our journey with IWBs 102

Reflections and conclusions 103

9 Staffing the digital school: in search of

ground rules 105
Teaching practice in an industrial age 106
A post-industrial age 107
Teaching in the knowledge age 108
Themes and ground rules for staffing of twenty-first century
schools 110
Conclusion 117

10 ICT infrastructure: the core components 118

The changing nature and expectations of ICT
infrastructure 118
Core components of ICT infrastructure 120
Conclusion 123

11 ICT support 125

‘24/7/365’ demands 125
Technical support—internal or outsourced? 126
Attracting and retaining quality IT staff 127
ICT technical staff certification and re-skilling 128
TCO—total cost of ownership 129
Budget allocation 129
Documentation, disaster recovery and business
continuity planning 130
‘Technical versus academic’ support 130
Conclusion 131

12 Managing and servicing the information needs

of a digital school 132
Challenges 133
Rising to meet the challenges 134
Bringing it together—designing quality virtual learning
environments 142
Conclusion 144

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 CONTENTS

13 Developing and sustaining the digital education

ecosystem: the value and possibilities of online
environments for student learning 146
The emerging electronic learning environment 147
Technology as tools for teaching and learning 152
What to look for in a learning platform 157
Successful ICT in schools 163
Guidelines for school and education system leaders 165
What’s next? 166

14 Preparing your teachers and yourself for

a digital school 168
No ‘silver bullets’ 169
Your role as a ‘role model’ 173
Successful change through professional learning 175
Conclusion 176

15 Principles and guidelines for creating

a digital school 178
Operate holistically 178
Digital integration 183
Digital administration and communications systems 191
Budget 192
Evaluation and reflection 194

Appendix
Precursors to planning: templates for discussion groups 196

Bibliography 203
Index 219

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 FIGURES
A N D TA B L E S

Figures
Figure 10.1 Core network elements 122
Figure 12.1 The integration of personal, communal and
organisational knowledge 143
Figure 13.1 Elements of a school digital ecosystem 151
Figure 13.2 Relationships between ‘open versus closed’ teaching
practice and ‘predetermined versus experience-based’
content, and the use of digital tools 153

Tables
Table 1.1 Characteristics of the paper-based and digitally based
paradigms of schooling 13
Table 2.1 Comparing Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y
against different influences 17
Table 2.2 Characteristics of learning across societal eras 19
Table 2.3 Changes in schools and teaching across societal eras 20
Table 2.4 Differences between traditional learning and learning
with digital technologies 20
Table 2.5 Preferred future characteristics of schooling 23
Table 2.6 Sample Digital School Crosby Grid 25
Table 2.7 Features of a partial Crosby Grid 27
Table 5.1 Stages of teacher development 55
Table 5.2 Signposts for a roadmap for ICT futures 61
Table 5.3 ICT strategies associated with Maslow’s Hierarchy
of Needs 63
Table 6.1 Forms of technology in the home 70
Table 12.1 Simple metadata record 136
Table 13.1 Examples of software in school ‘digital ecosystems’ 150
Table 13.2 Comparing ‘offline’ and ‘online’ examples across
teaching practice—content quadrants 154

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 FI GU RES A ND TAB LE S

Table 13.3 Examples of digital tools associated with teaching

practice—content quadrants 156
Table 13.4 Feature listing and user opinions on learning
platform tools 162
Table 14.1 Comparing digital natives and digital immigrants 171

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 P R E FAC E

Schools are facing profound challenges. For more than one hundred
years, they have been shaped by the thinking of the industrial era of the
late nineteenth century, and by and large have been highly effective in
serving the needs of that period. However, teachers, principals, system
officers and education policy makers now find themselves in increasingly
volatile and uncertain social, cultural, and economic times where questions
about the quality and relevance of schooling are being raised and
demanding answers.
What is taught, how it is taught, who teaches it—and to whom—
are contestable issues at this time when the political and education
policy spotlights are on matters of national curriculum and international
comparisons, teacher quality and standards. Similarly what is learnt, how
it is assessed and how it is reported – and to whom—are questions of
significant importance to students and parents, and especially to schools,
education systems and governments faced with the task of educating young
people as learners, as persons with intellectual, physical, social, emotional,
moral and spiritual talents and capabilities, as community members, and as
contributors to society (ACTDET, 2007).
At the same time, as a society we are witnessing far-reaching global
technological developments. Thomas Friedman (2006) in his book, The
World is Flat: The globalised world in the twenty-first century describes
these changes in terms of the convergence of three related phenonema:
the emergence of the World Wide Web and related digital technologies;
the development of a critical mass of people using these technologies and
doing business differently; and the broadening of the global marketplace
especially through the inclusion of China and India. In fact, Friedman
argues that these developments are only the beginning, and predicts that:

As the world starts to move from a primarily vertical – command and control
– system for creating value to a more horizontal – connect and collaborate –
value creation model, and as we blow away more walls, ceilings and floors …

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 P REFA CE

societies are going to find themselves facing a lot of very profound changes
all at once. … To put it simply, following the great triple convergence that
started right around the year 2000 we are going to experience what I call
‘the great sorting out’.

(Friedman, 2006, p. 234)

Against this background of societal and technological change, we

believe that the publication of this book, Leading a Digital School, including
chapters by leading educators engaged in policy, research, consultancy and
day-to-day practices in schools and education systems, is timely. Our aim
is to provide a practical overview of how emerging digital technologies can
be used to engage and support students in their learning— in ways that
take into account the changing nature of learning and teaching, and the
place of school education in a world which is becoming ‘flatter and flatter’
(Friedman, 2006).
In Chapter 1, we outline the essential features of schooling in a digital
era, highlighting recent government initiatives in the UK and Australia
and cite examples of effective planning and leadership, and teacher use of
new technology from ‘pathfinder schools’. In Chapter 2, Successful learning
and school design for the knowledge age, Michael Hough overviews the
characteristics of post-industrial society and compares the characteristics
of today’s students with those of previous generations. This provides the
background for his model of ‘digital schools’ as learning organisations with
distinctive approaches to teaching, learning, school design and planning.
The importance of addressing planning issues associated with digital
technology is examined in more detail by Allan Shaw in Chapter 3 Planning
in a Digital School. Digital schools, in contrast to the traditional segmented
school organisation are highly integrated and networked entities. This calls
for holistic models of planning which recognise, for example, that seemingly
small decisions in one area can have profound impacts on other operations.
The message from Allan’s experience as a foundation principal in leading
the establishment of a new school is that the days of ‘bolt on’ plans, and in
particular discrete ICT or technology plans, are over.
In Chapter 4, we emphasise the view that school and system leaders
need an up-to-date ‘macro understanding’ of the digital technology
available to their schools. Moreover as the senior educational architect
within their school, we argue that principals need to take more direct
responsibility for that technology and its use.
Accompanying this challenge is the complex process of transforming
teaching and learning to take advantage of the increasingly sophisticated

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 P R E FA C E

technologies available to students in the networked, digital world exper-

ienced in their homes, their daily lives and their classrooms. In Chapter 5
Glenn Finger highlights the strategic considerations required to achieve ‘total
teacher usage’ of digital technologies. Glenn uses the metaphors of the journey,
roadmaps and signposts to highlight the learning and the evolving nature of
planning associated with implementing digital technologies. He concludes
with the set of principles to offer guidance to educators on the journey.
The connection between students’ experiences of digital technologies
within and outside school is the theme of Chapter 6, Creating a nexus
between homes and schools. We explore the challenges associated with this
nexus and examine options for addressing the digital divide between homes
and schools.
To provide an insight into the kinds of issues and challenges facing
principals leading digital schools, we invited two principals, Roger Hayward
and David O’Brien, to write about the paths taken by their respective
schools (see Chapters 7 and 8). We deliberately chose two very different
situations, at different ends of the socio-economic scale. Roger’s school,
St Leonard’s College, is an independent K-12 school, close to the CBD in
Melbourne, Australia. David’s school, Ingle Farm Primary is a government
primary school located in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, Australia. The
school’s student population is characterised by significant poverty and a
large Aboriginal and English as a Second Language cohort, inclusive of
250 mostly non-English speaking refugees. Despite these differences the
commonality of the issues is apparent.
Of primary importance among these issues is the appointment and
development of teaching staff. Schools in the digital era require specific
teacher attributes and a different staffing mix to what most schools have
known. In Chapter 9, Greg Whitby explores the concept of teachers as
authentic knowledge workers and offers some ground rules for those
charged with the responsibility for selecting and developing staff.
Underpinning the work of these teaching (as well as administrative)
staff is an appropriate and reliable ICT infrastructure and access to
technical support. Without that infrastructure and support schools simply
cannot operate in the digital era. School principals and education authority
executives require a working knowledge of what is involved in setting up
and maintaining suitable forms of ICT infrastructure and technical support.
Peter Murray draws from his school and industry background in Chapters
10 and 11 to provide that insight.
Closely allied to the provision of effective ICT infrastructure and
support are information services which are able to manage the escalating

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 P REFA CE

information that is generated, assembled, stored and disseminated by

school communities and education authorities. Schools and systems over
recent decades have developed separate curriculum library, computing and
networking groups which at times have tended to compete for control of
the digital technology. We believe that these ‘sub groups’ are important but
ought to be working as one.
Karen Bonanno explores this point and the ways of managing and
servicing the information needs of schools in Chapter 12. She contends
that the handling of information and digital materials will occupy an
increasingly significant role in schools, and that therefore, each school
will need an organisational arrangement and the expertise to fulfil that
role. She makes the point (somewhat ironically) that at a time when some
schools are doing away with school libraries, the importance of schools
having quality information professionals has never been greater.
As digital technologies develop further, it is likely that a major portion
of the school’s digital information will be accommodated in a managed
learning environment (MLE), virtual learning environment (VLE), course
management system (CMS), or what BECTA in the UK has labelled a
‘learning platform’. These variously labelled entities have the potential
to play a vital part in the teaching and learning undertaken in schools.
However as Daniel Ingvarson and Michael Gaffney indicate in Chapter 13,
they can also become expensive ‘white elephants’ unwittingly providing
an education alien to the school or system vision. On the other hand, Dan
and Mike argue that emerging Web 2.0 technologies and related online
social networking opportunities have immense possibilities for supporting
quality teaching and enhancing student engagement.
Effecting these desired types of developments in teaching using digital
tools requires more than traditional forms of professional development
Ongoing, timely and well-informed professional learning is needed for
teachers to flourish. In Chapter 14 John Hodgkinson explains that one of
the vital professional development elements that all staff need is time—
time to get to know the emerging technology, time to collaborate, and time
to pause and consider how best to move in the unchartered waters.
Leading a school as it begins to take advantage of the potential of
digital technologies, and provide students with an education appropriate
for the twenty-first century can be immensely exciting and professionally
gratifying. In the concluding Chapter 15, we present a set of principles
and guidelines for leading schools into the digital era. But be warned—
this is not a job for the faint-hearted! It obliges educational leaders to
simultaneously address a host of changing variables, to learn on the move,

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 P R E FA C E

and to develop and maintain an appreciation of the available digital

technology, while at the same time fulfilling all their regular administrative
roles and responsibilities. Someone once described this type of leadership
and organisation of change as like changing a tyre while the car is moving,
or building an aircraft in flight!
Throughout the book, the key messages for school and education
system leaders are that:
• informed and wise use of digital technology is an indispensable element
of quality schooling in the early twenty-first century
• digital technologies are tools in the hands of professional dedicated
teachers and it is teachers (not the technology) who can make a positive
difference to student learning; and
• teachers need to be supported by principals, system officers and policy
makers to explore the potential of digital technologies and develop
their capabilities in using those technologies appropriately.
While the challenges are profound, it is clear that if schools are to educate
the young for the contemporary world, educational leaders at school, system
and government levels have no option other than to develop an informed
understanding of the capacity of digital technologies to support quality
teaching and learning, and to use those technologies wisely for the students
and school communities which they serve. We hope that Leading a Digital
School is an important contribution to meeting those challenges.

Mal Lee
Michael Gaffney (Editors)

References
Australian Capital Territory Department of Education and Training. (2007).
Every chance to learn. Canberra: ACTDET.
Friedman, Thomas. (2006). The world is flat: The globalised world in the
twenty-first Century (2nd edition). New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

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 THE CONTRIBUTORS

[In chapter order]

Mal Lee
Mal Lee is an educational consultant specialising in the development of
digital schools. He is a former director of schools, secondary college principal,
technology company director and a member of the Mayer Committee. As a
Fellow of the Australian Council for Educational Administration (FACEA),
Mal has been closely associated with the use of digital technology in
schooling, particularly by the school leadership for the last decade.
A historian by training, Mal has written extensively, particularly for
The Practising Administrator, Australian Educational Leaders and Access,
Educational Technology Guide on school planning for the Information Age,
digital schooling and the effective use of ICT in schooling.

Michael Gaffney
Professor Michael Gaffney is Chair of Educational Leadership at
Australian Catholic University. He was formerly Head of Education Services
in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn Catholic Education System.
Mike has had a range of senior executive and policy advisory roles with
education authorities and governments, including with the National Catholic
Education Commission; Commonwealth, State and Territory education
departments; and MCEETYA. He has been recognised for his contribution
to Australian school education through being awarded Fellowships
with the Australian College of Educators, and the Australian Council for
Education Leaders. His associated academic experiences include Director
of the Educational Leadership and Professional Program, and Convener of
Postgraduate Education Research at the University of Canberra. Mike has a
deep interest in school and education system transformation and the exercise
of leadership at all levels to bring about meaningful, sustainable and high
quality learning opportunities for students.

Michael Hough
Dr Michael Hough is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong,
working in both the Graduate School of Business and the Australian Centre

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 T H E C ONTR IB U T OR S

for Educational Leadership. He has recently presented on Moral Values and

Business Success to conferences in Hong Kong and Australia, written and
presented on engaging Gen X and Gen Y, and presented several conference
keynote addresses on the issues of leading a digital school. He is a past
National President of ACEA and has been awarded the ACEL Gold Medal
and appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.

Allan Shaw
Allan Shaw is Chief Executive Association of Heads of Independent
Schools of Australia (AHISA), a role that provides pastoral support for
members, representing their interests in national forums, and assists with
the provision of professional learning. For the last three years, he has been
involved in establishing a low-fee, suburban independent school using
best practice ICT policy and practice.

Glenn Finger
Dr Glenn Finger is Deputy Dean (Learning and Teaching), Faculty of
Education at Griffith University. Prior to his appointment at Griffith
University in 1999, Dr Finger served with Education Queensland for more
than 24 years as a physical education specialist, primary school teacher,
deputy principal and acting principal in a wide variety of educational settings.
He has particular expertise in ICT and Technology Education initiatives,
research and evaluation, and has extensively researched, published, and
provided consultancies in the area of ICT curriculum integration and the
Technology Key Learning Area.

Roger Hayward
Roger Hayward was schooled in Edinburgh, Scotland. He began his
professional life as a research scientist but soon looked for the richness and
satisfaction of a career in education. He has taught at schools in England,
Zambia and Australia, and at a teachers’ college in Zambia. He used a
programmable calculator in teaching physics in 1976 and has been using
computers in the classroom since 1983. He claims to be a sceptical early
adopter of electronic technologies. He has been Principal of St Leonard’s
College in Melbourne since 2000.

David O’Brien
David O’Brien is currently Principal of Ingle Farm Primary School in
Adelaide. For the past 15 years he has worked as a school leader in a range
of educational settings across South Australia. A significant part of this

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 TH E CONTRI BU T O R S

leadership experience has been in disadvantaged communities. David is

an experienced facilitator of professional learning aimed at school leaders
presenting at a range of local and national conferences.

Greg Whitby
Greg Whitby is the Executive Director of Schools for the Parramatta
Catholic Education Office and has extensive experience in K–12 schooling
and senior system leadership. He leads a multidisciplinary team enabling
the provision of quality learning and teaching in 77 primary and secondary
schools. An understanding of how students learn in today’s world is driving
the development of innovative and sustainable learning frameworks aimed
at improving the learning outcomes for all students.

Peter Murray
Peter Murray has been associated with the shaping of whole-school
technology programs since his beginning days with the Western Australian
Education Department. In 1996, Peter took on an IT mentor role at Christ
Church Grammar School in Perth, working with teachers and students to
shift their focus on the advantages of ICT in education. In 1999, Peter took
on the role of Director of Studies at the school, managing the day-to-day
operation of the school’s academic program and driving curriculum change
within the school. In 2003, Peter was appointed to a newly formed position
as Director of Information and Communication Services. He now works as
an educational technology adviser.

Karen Bonanno
Karen Bonanno is the managing director of KB Enterprises (Aust) Pty Ltd.
Her company provides administration and management support to non-
profit professional associations. She has been a secondary teacher, teacher
librarian, head of department, regional adviser, and education officer in
the public education sector. Karen is currently contracted as the Executive
Officer for the Australian School Library Association and the Executive
Secretary for the International Association of School Librarianship. She has
published articles and book chapters and presented at local, national and
international conferences. In 2001, she was awarded the ASLA Citation in
recognition of her contribution to teacher librarianship in Australia.

Daniel Ingvarson
Daniel Ingvarson grew up in a family where education was the central theme,
as every member of his immediate family was a teacher. Daniel built the first

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 T H E C ONTR IB U T OR S

Education Internet Service Provider (1993) in Australia, he designed and built

the first school-specific Internet gateway (1995), and built the first Internet
portal that linked logins to Internet activity in one central infrastructure (1998)
called SINA. This changed the way the Internet was managed, and at one
time his software was used by over 50 per cent of Australian students. Daniel
built a VLE and learning content system called myclasses (2001), which won
the National Australian Internet Industry Association software innovation
award. Daniel’s software was arguably one of the most used e-learning
platforms in the world, being used by over 2.7 million users in five countries.
In the United Kingdom it is part of the BECTA Learning platform. After
successfully selling his business (2005), he now assists education systems to
understand the balance of policy, technology and teaching while navigating
the complexities of dealing with vendors.

John Hodgkinson
John Hodgkinson was a secondary school principal in Queensland for 18
years from 1988 to 2005. In this role, he was heavily involved in projects
to embed ICT into teaching and learning. He was Secretary/Treasurer for
the Australian Secondary Principals Association (ASPA) from 1995 to 2006
and developed and managed the ASPA Online website from 1997 to 2006.
He was an ASPA delegate to the International Confederation of Principals
(ICP) from 2002 to 2006.During that time he built and managed the ASPA
website—now one of the largest of its type in the world. He now manages
websites for a number of national and international principals’ associations
(including ASPA, APPA, AGPPA, and the International Confederation of
Principals).
This involvement has provided John with a rare appreciation of the
current level of understanding of school principals and their needs.

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 CHAPTER 1
LEADING SCHOOLS IN
A D I G I TA L E R A

Mal L ee & Michael Gaf fney

In March 2005, the British Government launched its e-Strategy with the
publication of its aptly titled Harnessing Technology and the provision of
very significant amounts of money to support the implementation of that
strategy. That initiative consolidated moves that had been made by successive
British governments since the 1990s, and provided a major impetus to the
nationwide use of digital technology in all areas of youth education.
Harnessing Technology set four major goals:

• To transform teaching and learning and help to improve outcomes for

children and young people, through shared ideas, more exciting les-
sons and online help for professionals.
• To engage hard-to-reach learners by providing special needs support,
more motivating ways of learning, and more choice about how and
where to learn.
• To build an open and accessible system with more information and
services online for parents and carers, children, young people, adult
learners and employers, and more cross-organisation collaboration to
improve personalised support and choice.
• To achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness through online
research, access to shared ideas and lesson plans, improved systems
and processes in children’s services, shared procurement and easier
administration.
(DfES, 2005)

Lead_a_Dig_Sch_FINAL.indd 1 17/6/08 10:27:37 AM

 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

The UK adopted a comprehensive—and notably proactive—approach

in its quest to harness the educative power of ever-emerging digital
technology, simultaneously addressing the many variables that experience
had shown needed attention. The government provided direction and
support from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer through to local education
authorities. Most importantly, it allocated the vital funding for such diverse
variables as the ICT infrastructure, Becta, a national coordinating body,
teacher training, leadership development, support networks, teacher
purchase of digital teaching resources, and practical, ongoing research
and evaluation. Significantly, the government took responsibility for the
instructional technology used in its schools, opted to install interactive
whiteboards in every British classroom and stimulated the growth of a
British interactive, multimedia teaching software industry.
Moreover, the Harnessing Technology initiative complemented many
other UK education initiatives, not least of which was refurbishment of the
nation’s schools.
Similar comprehensive, national moves to both harness digital
technology and provide a more appropriate education for the digital world
were made in nations as diverse as New Zealand, Mexico and Singapore.
In February 2008, the newly appointed Australian Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, wrote to all secondary
school principals inviting their participation in the recently elected Rudd
Labor Government’s $1-billion Digital Education Revolution. The media
release stated that:

The Digital Education Revolution will dramatically change classroom education

by ensuring that all students in years 9 to 12 have access to information and
communication technology.

The remainder of the announcement went on to explain the ration-

ale behind Australian government policy in terms of two foundational
principles: first, every Australian child deserves a world-class education;
and, second, to be able to compete globally, Australia needs a world-
class education system. While the details of the new policy continue to
develop, it is clear that the government recognises the value of invest-
ing in digital technologies, especially in the provision of computer
hardware and broadband connections to schools (see http://www.digital
educationrevolution.gov.au).
This policy initiative highlights some significant shifts in thinking about
the nature of schooling. Among these is the sense that traditional modes

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 L E A D ING S C H OOL S IN A D IG ITA L E R A

of teaching and models of schooling are becoming obsolete in the face of

the rapid, social, economic and technological changes facing individuals,
communities and societies. Within this context, the emergence of terms
such as ‘the digital education revolution’ and ‘digital schooling’ can present
an image that these contemporary demands and pressures for change can
be accommodated by investing in technology and ‘going digital’. But it is
not as simple as that.

L EAD ING A D IGITAL S CH OOL

The purpose of this book is two-fold. First, we and our contributing authors
seek to inform educational leaders in schools and school systems about
current developments in the use of digital technologies in schools. We
present a range of case studies illustrating the value as well as the complexity
of school development involving technology. Second, we aim to encourage
educational leaders to engage in the processes of successful change with
digital technologies for their school communities and education systems
by providing guidelines and advice drawn from the case studies and from
emerging research and professional literature. Our message is that leading
a digital school involves far more than investing in hardware and software
and implementing a ‘technological solution’.
Rather, the change we envisage is about ways to integrate digital
technologies creatively and wisely to enliven teaching and support student
learning. We have chosen to use the term ‘digital technology’ in preference
to ‘information and communications terminology’ or ‘ICT’ because the
latter term (like those of ‘audio-visual education’, ‘media education’,
‘computer education’ and ‘IT’ that preceded it) is becoming dated, and
does not cover the range of technology now available for use in teaching,
administration and communication in schools and education systems.
The effective use of digital technologies in teaching, administration and
communication is a multifaceted challenge. It requires:
• recognition and respect for the place of the student and how they learn,
and how we assess and report their learning achievements
• development of quality teaching practices and the digital resources to
support those practices
• redesign of school structures and processes in ways that will transform
our industrial age schools from that ‘curious mix of the factory, the
asylum and the prison’ (as Cambridge Professor of Education David

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

Hargreaves puts it) to forms that truly reflect the significant demands
and engaging possibilities of schooling in the early twenty-first century;
and, finally
• understanding of the nature and potential of emerging digital
technologies to the point where they can be sensibly incorporated in
discussions and decisions about the vision and plans for schools and
education systems.
The challenges of improving student engagement and achievement,
developing teaching quality and redesigning schooling are challenges of
educational leadership. Developing an understanding of the value and the
means by which digital technologies can assist practitioners and policy
makers in meeting those challenges is what leading a digital school is about.

‘ T H E S C HO OL IS FL AT’

In early 2000, a group of pathfinding schools in different parts of the world

became digital. They began to use a fundamentally different mode of
schooling to what had been done before. Schools like St Paul’s College in
Surrey, England, Hillside Primary School, in New Jersey, USA, and, indeed,
low socioeconomic schools like Priestic Primary School in the Midlands of
the UK, Richardson Primary School in Canberra, Australia and Ingle Farm
Primary (featured in Chapter 7) achieved total teacher use of digital technology
in everyday teaching, and developed and integrated digital administration,
communication and learning systems to support their teachers’ work and
students’ learning. Put simply, these schools moved into a digital operational
mode. They entered a world where many of the old assumptions and ways of
schooling were no longer applicable. (Lee & Winzenried, 2006)
Schools as we have known them have been heavily paper-based, and
shaped by the thinking of the industrial age. At present we are witnessing
a shift from this traditional operational paradigm to one that is digital. And
while the way forward is just being charted, we believe that this shift holds
immense promise.
The possibilities open to educators within the digital mode are
considerable and exciting. Schools, like industry and society as a whole,
have the opportunity to take advantage of the profound economic, societal
and technological changes identified by Thomas Friedman (2006) in his
bestselling book, The World Is Flat: The globalised world in the twenty-first
century. He refers to these changes by using the term ‘triple convergence’,

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which he defines as the coming together of three related global develop-

ments that began around 2000:
1 A web-enabled platform for multiple forms of collaboration—the
Internet, email and digital convergence.
2 A critical mass of people engaged in new ways of doing business
involving a change from a ‘command and control vertical chain of
command’ to ‘horizontal collaboration and management’ for creating
value.
3 The addition of China, India, Latin America, Central Asia, Russia and
Eastern Europe to the global marketplace.
Friedman believes that this ‘triple convergence’—of new players, on a
new playing field, developing new processes and habits for collaboration—
demands different mindsets. He illustrates the point by contrasting
traditional ‘vertical thinking’, which starts by asking ‘Who controls what
system?’, with ‘horizontal thinking’, which starts with ‘What is the effect
or outcome you want to create?’ He contends that:

Triple convergence ... is the most important force shaping global economics
and politics in the early twenty-first century. Giving so many people access to
all these tools of collaboration, along with the ability through search engines
and the Web to access billions of pages of raw information, ensures that
the next generation of innovations will come from all over Planet Flat. The
scale of the global community that is soon going to be able to participate
in all sorts of discovery and innovation is something the world has simply
never seen before.

(Friedman, 2006, p. 212)

Friedman goes on to advise that:

Societies are going to find themselves facing a lot of very profound changes
all at once. But those changes won’t just affect how business gets done.
They will affect how individuals, communities and companies organise
themselves, where companies stop and start, how individuals balance their
different identities as consumers, employees, shareholders and citizen,
how people define themselves politically, and what role government plays
in managing all this flux. This won’t happen overnight, but over time many
roles, habits, political identities, and management practices that we have
grown used to in the round world are going to be profoundly adjusted for
the age of flatness.

(Friedman, 2006, p. 234)

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

These predictions have significant import for education and for

schooling, in particular. Industrial models of schooling were very efficient
for the mass production economy, which needed groups of mass production
workers educated to the level required while—as Friedman explains—
‘money was poured into the elite who could innovate’. He argues that this
was fine while there were ‘a lot of bread and butter mass-production jobs,
paying decent wages waiting on the other side of the high school gates’.
Unfortunately, as he observes:

The world has flattened out, those mass production jobs are increasingly
being automated or outsourced. There are fewer and fewer decent jobs
for those without a lot of knowledge ... So a poorly funded and staffed high
school is a pathway to a dead end.

(Friedman, 2006, p. 347)

This confluence of the variables described by Friedman has provided

the platform and the necessity for schools to take advantage of digital
technology.

Lessons from ‘pat hfi nder s chools ’

There is much that can be learned from the pathfinder schools to guide the
way through the largely uncharted territory of digital technologies in schools.
We can also learn from those school and education authorities that lost
their way in the wilderness; that is, those schools that have failed to reach
the desired destination or have used technology in ways that have been
counterproductive to the performance and wellbeing of their community.
Consider, for example, those schools where:
• teachers are deluged by inappropriate, distracting or trivial email
• there is little or no staff development
• administration systems add to, rather than reduce, the workload
• networks are unreliable
• valuable technology is underused.
This list demonstrates that by identifying the pathologies affecting the
development and implementation of change in schools, we can sometimes
discover the cure. The case studies and policy examples in this book come
from a diversity of situations: primary, secondary and K–12 schools—
government, religious, and independent, small and large, low and high
socioeconomic, and from different parts of the world. They highlight some
healthy accounts of school change as well as underline the illnesses that

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can arise; and, of course, they offer suggestions to maintain wellbeing as

well as some prescriptions for cure.

TE AC H E R S US IN G N E W TEC HNOLOG IES

History shows that getting all teachers to use any type of electronic
instructional technology in their everyday teaching needs to be approached
thoughtfully. The most common instructional technologies used by teachers
to supplement their voice are the pen, paper and the teaching board—be
it black, green or white (Lee & Winzenried, 2008). It is sobering to reflect
that after almost a century of experience with various forms of electronic
instructional technology—all of which were projected to ‘revolutionise’
teaching—in the main, teachers are still using technologies of the 1800s or
earlier. The challenge of getting all the teachers in the school to go digital
in their teaching is thus not to be taken lightly.
Ways identified by Lee and Winzenried (2008) to encourage the use of
new instructional technologies by teachers are to:
• select technology appropriate for everyday teaching
• supply the requisite content and software
• provide ongoing training, development and support to teachers
• ensure the arrangements are in place to enable use of the technology,
including the requisite budgetary allocations
• have school executive and education authority officers who provide
leadership, direction and support
• use ‘whole school’ development and implementation strategies.
An illustration of how these actions can be combined to effect successful
change is described in the following vignette about the introduction of
Interactive White Boards (IWBs).

AC HIEVING ‘DIG ITA L TA KE- O F F ’ T H RO UGH

I NTERA CT IVE WHIT EB O A RD S
A primary school in a growing suburb on the outskirts of a major
Australian capital city decided to install interactive whiteboards in all
teaching rooms. Within several months all teachers were using the
technology. In fact, so rapid was the surge in teacher acceptance that
the term ‘digital take-off’ was coined.

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

Linked to this ‘take-off’ were teachers’ rapidly rising expectations of

what they could do with the new digital resources. Interactive multimedia
teaching materials prepared six months earlier, and with much pride,
became passé as new possibilities emerged. When all teachers’
expectations rose (not just those of the few early adopters’), and when
the students’ expectations also rose, the momentum for development
across the whole school community grew.
The teachers soon came to expect much more of the technology
and began questioning not only the teaching possibilities, but also the
school operations designed to support the teaching. For example,
when 100 per cent of teachers were using the network, they expected
it to be operational for 100 per cent of teaching time. They expected
swift Internet access from their classroom and, most importantly,
immediate support when the technology went amiss. They suddenly
wanted to be able to communicate electronically with the parents, to
store their interactive teaching materials, and to use the emerging Web
2.0 opportunities.
The executive staff at the school appreciated the implications of
‘going digital’ and gradually came to understand, particularly when they
talked to colleagues in similar situations, that they were now working
within a very new paradigm, with few of the operational parameters
determined. Moreover, they realised that they were being obliged by
their community to develop the school in the new paradigm, while having
to work within the traditional established structures and processes of
their local education system.

The story highlights the value of technology that is suited to the needs
and practices of teachers, and the merit in ensuring that adequate resources
and priority are given for its use. It also shows that once teaching materials
became predominantly digital, this can act as a catalyst for whole-school
development. Teachers’ expectations of what can be done with technology
grow at a pace and can begin to impact on the school operations and
system policy. As a consequence, this places responsibility on school
executive and other key members of staff to show leadership—not only in
the face of internal demands from their school community, but also in their
interactions with, and accountabilities to, education system authorities and
other external agencies.

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The attributes that make a good school and school system transcend
the use of digital technologies. The McKinsey Report (Barber & Mourshed,
2007, p. 19) examining factors underpinning the world’s best performing
school systems noted that ‘the quality of a school system rests on the quality
of its teachers’. We agree. In fact, contrary to the proposition that digital
technologies lessen the importance of teacher quality, we believe that the
more sophisticated digital technologies become, the more ‘professional
potential’ these tools can release in teachers.

P R INC I PALS AS R E SPO N SIBLE LEADERS IN

TE C H N OL O GY

Along with quality teachers, the effective development of digital schools

requires principals with the capability to lead. Without that commitment
and knowledge the school has little chance of becoming a digital school.
There are simply too many decisions to be made, variables to be addressed
and hurdles to overcome to do so without the full support of the principal.
This means that principals, as the key educational leaders in schools,
need to not only understand the technology, but also take and maintain
responsibility for that technology and its use. Don’t worry—we are not
talking about principals having the technical expertise to configure ICT
systems or trouble-shoot breakdowns. However, we do believe that the
leader of a digital school should have significant operator knowledge
and hands-on experience with the technologies in order to appreciate
the basic requirements and implications associated with the school’s use
of digital technologies, especially those related to staffing. Gone are the
days when school principals could delegate major technology decisions to
IT specialists. The costs and implications are now too high to be ‘under-
informed’. Indeed, one can hypothesise that as the sophistication of the
technology rises, so too will the leadership expertise that is needed to make
the best use of it.
In this context, recent research by Moyle (2006) and Lee and Winzenried
(2008) is of concern, revealing that relatively few existing and prospective
Australian school principals have acquired the understanding required
to lead a digital school. This underscores the importance of ongoing
professional learning—not only for teachers, but also for principals and
other members of the school executive; and this needs to be factored into
school development planning.

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

P l anning i s i m por t ant

An international think-tank, organised under the auspices of the Macarthur
Foundation in Illinois, USA, recently concluded that:

Schools need to become network institutions, establishing themselves as

the centre of diverse, overlapping networks of learning, which reach out
to the fullest possible range of institutions, sources of information, social
groups and physical facilities. To solve this problem schools need to become
nodes on a network instead of isolated factories.

(Illinois Institute of Design, p. 25)

These schools are connected to the point where a seemingly small

decision in one area (for example, granting or withholding information
access to a single staff member, or student) can have profound impact on
others and on school operations. Further, because they are so closely linked
to the outside world, the opportunities, risks and demands of external
events and issues need to be carefully considered for their impact on the
design and delivery of education programs and student achievement.
As a consequence these schools, as highly integrated and networked
entities, require new, flexible and holistic models of planning. Moreover,
while planning in digital technologies is important, it cannot stand alone
or develop separately from the plans and vision for the organisation as a
whole. Gone are the days of ‘bolt on’ technology plans. The power and
potential benefits of digital technology, as well as its substantial resource
demands, mean that it must be considered in relation to the other elements
of school and system planning.
There are two further issues related to planning with digital technology.
These are the sway that the major technology corporations have had over
the choice of the technology for school use over the last century (Lee &
Winzenried, 2008), and the related propensity of schools and education
systems to waste immense amounts of money on technology that has had
little or no positive impact on teaching, learning or the administration of
schools. Dealing with these issues is a continuing leadership challenge
that requires school principals, education system executives and policy
makers to exercise responsible stewardship in the choice of technology and
its integration with the educational, administrative and communication
dimensions of their organisations. Such stewardship entails decisions such
as whether to buy or lease, or whether to host ‘in-house’ or externally, as
well as taking steps to ensure that the technology chosen:

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• supports the desired vision for student learning

• integrates with other digital systems within the school or system
• provides easy and reliable storage, retrieval and analysis of
information
• is regularly monitored and evaluated for its effectiveness and value for
money including through methodologies that calculate the ‘total cost
of ownership’ of that technology.
Existing evidence from Lee and Winzenried (2008) of the tendency of
schools to use digital technologies to better perform the tasks of the past
was reflected in the propositions of John Naisbitt over 20 years ago in his
groundbreaking work, Megatrends. Naisbitt (1984, p. 19) explained that
‘new information technologies will at first be applied to old industrial tasks,
then, gradually, give birth to new activities, processes and products’.
Naisbitt’s propositions were also supported by the research conducted
by the Illinois Institute of Design (ID), which observed that:

[Schools] are following the pattern of what other organisations do when

faced with disruptive technology. Time and again, the standard pattern
is for organisations to initially ignore disruptive technology, claiming it is
not relevant to their core needs. Then they adopt it, using it at first as a
faster and better way of doing an existing function. Schools are now in the
middle of this first stage of adoption, in which they are using digital media to
transform the creation and delivery of information and skills.

(ID, 2007, p. 51)

However, they go on to conclude that:

Ultimately schools will not be improved if they only transform the medium
of delivering content while ignoring the changes in how organisations work
and what society needs.

(ID, 2007, p. 51)

On this basis it is to be expected most schools are only beginning to

explore the teaching and learning options of the digital technologies that
have become increasingly available since 2000—in Friedman’s (2006) terms,
since the beginning of the period of the ‘triple convergence’.
As the technology and its use becomes more sophisticated, so too
will the magnitude of the dangers and the risk to be borne by the school
and system leadership. A series of potential planning pitfalls with digital
technologies is presented overleaf.

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

P OTE N T IA L PLA NN IN G PIT FA LLS W I T H D I GI TA L

TE C HNOLOGIES
• Being ‘conned’ by adept technology salespeople and acquiring
inappropriate technology
• Not considering the total school needs and the total cost of
ownership of the technology
• Wasting considerable money by not paying due regard to
implementation, training and embedding the technology
• Bankrupting the school by choosing technology that does not deliver
• Using a staffing model that impedes the desired development
• Failing to set appropriate operational parameters for the digital mode
• Sliding into unrealistic working conditions that crush the staff

T H E P U R PO S E AN D POSSIBILIT IES OF DIG ITAL

SCHOOLING

Leading a digital school involves taking a school from the traditional paper-
based to a digitally based operational paradigm. Along the way leaders will
undoubtedly be obliged to work with a model that blends the paper-based
with the digital, the old and the new. The contrasting characteristics of
these paradigms are presented in Table 1.1.
But the point of such leadership is not to simply replace ‘paper
and pens’ with ‘screens and keyboards’. Rather it is to make a positive
difference to the learning of young people through taking advantage of the
opportunities that digital technologies offer for:
• enhancing student interest, engagement and learning achievement
• enlivening teaching practice and improving the quality and status of
the teaching profession
• supporting efficient organisation and knowledge management in
schools and education authorities, and
• providing timely communication between parents, schools, education
authorities, governments, community agencies, business and industry.
Learning to use digital technologies in these ways will better position
educators to anticipate and respond to needs and demands of students and
others, to demonstrate effectiveness and accountability, and to continue to
attract, if not increase, investment in education.

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Table 1.1 Characteristics of the paper-based and digitally based paradigms of schooling

PAPER-BASED SCHOOLING DIGITALLY BASED SCHOOLING

• Industrial age organisational • Information age organisational
structures model
• Schools operating as discrete, • Networked, incorporating the total
largely stand-alone entities school community and its homes
• A segmented organisational • Integrated synergistic operations
structure, with a widespread
division of labour
• Discrete and constant • Suite of changing, increasingly
instructional technologies in sophisticated, converging and
paper, the pen and the networked digital instructional
teaching board technologies
• Individual lesson preparation • Increasing collaborative lesson
development
• Reliance on mass media • Interactive multimedia
• Staffing hierarchical, with fixed • Changing flexible team-oriented
roles staff roles
• Well-defined and long-lasting jobs • Uncertainty, untapped potential,
rising expectations and frequent job
• Slow segmented paper-based changes
internal communication and • Instant communication and
information management management of digital information
across the organisation
• Long established operational • Few established operational
parameters parameters

Leading schools and education systems to provide students with

learning opportunities appropriate for the twenty-first century through
taking advantage of digital technologies can be immensely exciting and
professionally gratifying. Such leaders need to simultaneously address a
host of variables. They need to learn on the job, and develop and maintain
a macro appreciation of the digital tools, while at the same time fulfilling
their ‘normal’ leadership roles and responsibilities.
If schools are to educate the young for this contemporary ‘flat’ world,
they have to develop digitally. The purpose of this book is to assist schools
in doing just that.

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 CHAPTER 2
SUCCESSFUL LEARNING
AND SCHOOL DESIGN FOR
THE KNOWLEDGE AGE

Mi ch ael H ough

There is no doubt that developed economies are in the forefront of coping

with the impact of global change. It is now possible to recognise patterns
and trends in the knowledge-based ‘service’ economy—which is emerging
to overlay (and largely replace) what is often called the ‘manufacturing’ econ-
omy that has provided the basis for much of our managerial and accounting
practices and conventional wisdoms over the past 200 years or so.
The following major trends are beginning to emerge as features of the
knowledge-based service economy:
• The world economy is globalising at the same time as the demand for
individualised and localised service is expanding.
• New knowledge-based technologies now lead societal change, in
that they develop and provide options before we have even discussed
whether they are socially desirable and acceptable.
• New knowledge-based technologies are changing the ways in which
we define ourselves, our family units, our work and work units, and
challenging our economic and social order assumptions. The ‘way
schools are’ is one of those assumptions.
In this chapter, I will begin by ‘setting the scene’ and reviewing the
global context, and the challenges this global context provides schools. This
review is necessary for two reasons. First, schools are usually accepted as
preparing young people for adult life and sorting and optimising student
readiness for good jobs, but many schools are still structured and operated

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to prepare students for a previous economy—that of the manufacturing

era. Second, a review of the context will illustrate the amount of turbulence
experienced by western economies over the last few decades, and support
the argument that younger generations have grown up in a period of
constant and significant change.

R E V IE W IN G TH E GL O BAL CONT EXT —

C H AL L E N GE S FO R SCH OO LS

A range of economic, social, environmental and cultural factors are shap-

ing contemporary life and impacting on organisations across the globe—
including schools. The following list is illustrative of the context faced by all
countries, their leaders and their peoples:
• widening of the gaps between rich and poor between countries, societal
groups and individuals
• increasing global capital flows with the growth of e-commerce (for
example, noting that Microsoft is now the twelfth largest economy in
the world).
• emerging global virtual organisations, which cross national boundaries
and employ staff worldwide
• growth of ‘planetism thinking’ evidenced by global environmental
concerns about climate change and access to clean water.
The impacts of these pressures are being felt in various ways. One is the
reduced influence of the nation state. Another is the profound influence
that technology is exerting on human behaviour, relationships and personal
identity.
Given this context, one of the challenges facing schools is to remain
relevant to the lives of students, and central to the requirements of a post-
industrial economy in which knowledge and knowledge systems have
begun to emerge as the new form of competitive advantage.
A defining characteristic of this post-industrial, knowledge-based
society is that it will be constituted by individuals, groups and organis-
ations, connected by digital facilities such as the Internet and e-mail to
‘electronic communities’. Those with the opportunity and capability to
communicate through digital technologies such as the Web, Internet,
mobile phones and PDAs will be members of these communities. Those
without will be excluded.
Unfortunately many schools have been slow to appreciate the signific-
ance of these electronic communities. On the other hand, their students are

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becoming very used to the idea of rapid change in their societal realities.
Adding further challenge to this situation is the emerging evidence that
our younger generations are providing quite different skills and capabilities
as they enter both learning and work. The challenges for schools of this
dichotomy are significant.
At the same time as this global context is evolving, traditional western
economy schools and education systems are experiencing:
• an ‘out of balance’ demographic with many older teachers about to
retire, and a missing middle group caused by a decade of teacher
surplus and low levels of regular recruitment by employment systems
• a narrowly focused ICT teacher skill base, with the older group of
teachers wary or cautious users of technology
• greater parental interest and involvement in monitoring and influenc-
ing the progress of the smaller number of children each family now has
and sends to school.
Consequently, a successful futures-oriented school is one that is rele-
vant to and valued by a new style economy, because it is able to contribute
to both students and to the economy. In simple terms, an effective ‘digital
school’ helps students to make a living in a global economy, while at the
same time it helps them to make a life as a member of the various local,
regional and global communities to which they already, or desire to, belong.

Fea tures of younger gener at i on s

Our younger generations are strikingly different in terms of their awareness
of digital technologies, and many of their attributes and characteristics
are premised on ‘24/7’ access to electronic capabilities. To highlight these
differences, some key generational characteristics are proposed in Table 2.1.
These are based on the comparisons suggested by Sheahan (2005, p. 4)
between Baby Boomers (over 40 years of age), Generation X (approximately
26–40 years), and Generation Y (approximately 8–25 years).
These young people are different in their attitudes and capacities
as workers, consumers and parents. As a consequence, Mackay (2005)
provides the following advice to schools.
• Recognise ‘tribal herd’ needs. Children rely on the school for a sense of
community. Therefore, stress the value of groups and group work. Also
provide social contexts for parents, such as parent groups, parent choirs
and sports teams.
• Recognise students’ value needs. Schools are finding increasing need
to give moral instruction, going beyond the curriculum for explicit value

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Table 2.1 Comparing Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y against different
influences

INFLUENCE BABY BOOMERS GENERATION X GENERATION Y

Role models Men of character Men and women of What is character?
character
Television I Love Lucy Happy Days Jerry Springer
Musical icons Elvis Madonna Eminem
Music mediums LPs and EPs Cassettes and CDs Digital iPods and
MP3s
Computer games Pong Pacman Counter Strike
Money Earn it It is not everything Give it to me
Loyalty to employer Work my way to Shortcut to the top Give me Saturday
the top off or I will quit
Respecting your Automatic Is polite Whatever!
elders
Sex After marriage On the back seat Online
Change Resist it Accept it Want it
Technology Ignorant of it Comfortable Feel it in their gut
Justice Always prevails Up to the courts If you can afford it

training. Therefore, study philosophers as well as religious leaders, and

illustrate issues and examples of choice and consequences. Schools will
also have to accept some responsibility for educating parents—in part
by providing them with a community.
• Recognise the need for flexibility. In answer to students’ concerns, such
as ‘What else can I do?’, ‘Can I try everything?’ and ‘I don’t want to
be committed too soon’, schools can respond by broadening fields of
study, delaying vocational choices as long as possible, and refocusing
on a liberal education.
• Find ways of blending science and humanities. Try to retain students
doing both for as long as possible, and aim to produce scientists with
strong understanding of the humanities and vice versa.
• Reduce perceived boredom. Students are outraged and angry at
what they perceive they have to go through at secondary school.
They see school as designed to be boring. To them, school is about
relationships that are only permitted outside the classroom. Therefore,

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

use the principles of flexibility, meeting tribal needs, creating a sense

of community, and giving general broad education, in order to make it
more interesting.
(Source: Mackay, 2005)

Further evidence (Hough, 2006) suggests that properly handled and

encouraged, the move to digital schooling would be welcomed by members
of our younger generations.

Work and j ob chal l enges i n a ne w e c o n o my

The ‘old’ model of schooling was developed for and suited to a manufactur-
ing society. Schooling was seen as a preliminary stage of preparation for
work, while actual adult work was about carrying out ‘work routines’ rather
than engaging new learning.
In contrast, schooling for a new economy should be focused on the
learning needs of all students to participate and contribute to the full range
of opportunities that a knowledge-based service economy presents and
requires. Flexible, cooperative learners who are confident and capable users
of digital technologies are intellectual assets for communities, organisations
and societies in these new service and information environments. Within this
context, old distinctions between learning and work disappear: learning is
regarded as a form of work, work is premised on continuous learning and,
as a consequence, ‘school’ might be properly regarded as the first version of
what young people experience as a ‘learning organisation’ (Senge, 2007).

Suc c essf ul l ear ni ng i n a k now l e d g e - b a s e d s o c ie t y

The general requirements for people to survive and thrive—individually
and collectively—in this post-industrial era have been described by Ellyard
(2004) in terms of the following set of human learning characteristics:
• Being flexible
• Being adaptive
• Developing to a high degree the set of knowledge, skills and under-
standing relevant to the current context
• Anticipating and coping with change
• Being skilled in information technologies, and
• Being willing to continue learning across a lifetime.
In looking forward and considering the implications for the design of
schooling to promote these characteristics, we first need to appreciate that
the format of existing schools is a relatively recent societal invention—
essentially to meet the needs of a manufacturing era. We should also draw

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some inspiration from the fact that throughout history new societal eras
have required different forms of learning and ‘schooling’, as illustrated in
Table 2.2.

Table 2.2 Characteristics of learning across societal eras

ERA CHARACTERISTICS OF LEARNING

Nomadic By observation and practice, occurring in one-to-one or small-
group learning situations, and focused on skills of survival (i.e.
the physical challenges and training of survival experiences while
moving around).
Agricultural By observation, apprenticeships and small-group learning in more
stable community structures, focused on the needs of survival in
local and static locations, with some emergence of higher-order
social learning (e.g. painting, clothing). Very few schools, with
access restricted to the elite and to religious and military orders.
Manufacturing Adapted to the needs of a society in fixed locations over artificial
times, directed at the technology of production and a growing
range of higher-order understandings, formalised around
codified knowledge. Available to most people through specialist
organisations (schools and colleges) based on specialist teacher–
class interaction.
Post Industrial Personalised and cooperative with high levels of customer
demand and expectations to meet the needs of a society faced
with rapid change; increasingly managed by learners themselves
(e.g. by interaction with digital technologies).

Not only have these societal-learning relationships changed, there are

corresponding changes to the role and needs of schools, and teaching, as
shown in Table 2.3 (page 20).
Differences between learning using digital technologies and traditional
learning are presented in Table 2.4 (page 20).
Along with these differences there are associated contrasts in the
form and use of learning resources. For example, in traditional learning
modes where textbooks are used, the processes of author selection
of content, review, editing, proofing, legal scrutiny, and publishing in
expected formats to a quality standard involve considerable expense and
refinement of content. On the other hand, resources available through
digital technologies may be less costly but not reviewed or edited, and
may be produced anonymously in idiosyncratic formats with little or

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

Table 2.3 Changes in schools and teaching across societal eras

ERA SCHOOLS TEACHING

Nomadic Did not exist, as they were not One-to-one, naturalistic-based
needed by that form of society. teaching, usually within a family
group.
Agricultural Few existed, and only for an Master–pupil small-group
elite. A growing system of or one-to-one teaching,
apprenticeships as ways of restructured to narrow ranges
passing on sophisticated skills. of need (e.g. Army/Church).
Manufacturing Emergence of formal Teaching as organised
schooling, designed to prepare labour, the emergence of
larger numbers for social roles, the pupil–teacher class size
with features of production concept, with some recognition
lines and standardised output. of teaching as a specialist
Full levels of schooling available profession.
only to an elite few.
Post-industrial Emergence of new education Focus on learning as well as
providers and questions teaching, with associated
about relevance of formal challenges for teachers to
schooling—‘everyone needs retain a central, professional
learning, but we may not need role in a community where
traditional schools’. Full levels ‘everyone learns’ and
of schooling now available to technology can offer direct
most. learning access.

Table 2.4 Differences between traditional learning and learning with digital technologies

TRADITIONAL LEARNING LEARNING WITH

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
Content selected and controlled by Content available to students from
teachers (e.g. textbooks) various sources (e.g. Google, Wikipedia)
Teachers are powerful and students Students share power with teachers
are relatively powerless and teacher- who exercise less direct control of
directed learning activities
Passive learning aids (e.g. blackboards Active learning aids (e.g. interactive
and textbooks) whiteboards and web-based software)

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no legal scrutiny. Related to this, traditional text-based knowledge is

classified using agreed systems, logically organised and retrievable,
whereas digitally based systems, though possessing enormous retrieval
capability, have less-developed systems of classification.
A second area of contrast associated with the use of digital technologies
is the impact on teacher time for personalising the learning of their students.
In traditional modes, more time tends to be spent on delivering content and
directing student learning, whereas with the use of digital technologies the
content may be pre-prepared and give the teacher and the student more time
for remedial, extension and higher-order ‘value-added’ learning activities.
Third, the use of digital technologies can extend the ways in which
student learning is demonstrated and assessed. By catering to a wider array
of student learning styles, digital technologies have the potential to engage
students in different ways. Word-processing and multimedia applications
introduce a greater range of possibilities for students to demonstrate their
learning achievements than the pen and paper, voice presentation and
related performance modes of traditional learning environments.
Successful learning in a knowledge-based society requires openness to
the possibilities of digital technologies for enhancing student engagement
and learning, improving teaching practices, and redesigning schools for the
knowledge-based society of the early twenty-first century. I trust that these
analyses have enabled you to reflect on the role and future shape of schools
and learning.
In reflecting on the overview that has been presented on the changing
nature of learning, teaching and schooling across various societal eras, the
message is best summarised by Senge (2007) in these terms: ‘We may not
recognise a twenty-first century school if we are conditioned to believe
what a school should be!’

PLANNING SCHOOLING FOR THE KNOWLEDGE AGE

The final section of this chapter presents some ideas on the shape of
schooling and learning for the knowledge age, and offers some suggestions
for bringing about the desired changes.
As a starting point to understanding the strategic futures thinking
required for planning schooling for the knowledge age, a useful construct
is that of preferred and probable futures. The distinction between these
concepts was codified into the futurist literature by Ellyard (1998), and
essentially consists of the following advice:

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

• A preferred future is the future that we aim to create or influence to

some degree. This implies developing deliberate actions that are aimed
at improving the likelihood of positive things occurring, and reducing
the likelihood of negative things occurring.
• A probable future is the future that we can expect to encounter but which
is created substantially by others. Among other things, it incorporates
the concepts of ‘helplessness’ and ‘reacting to events’.
A listing of preferred future characteristics of schooling is presented in
Table 2.5.
In creating a preferred future, you will need to state what you really mean
when using terms like ‘school as a learning organisation’ or ‘knowledge
age school’. One practical approach is based on a technique developed
by a quality management theorist, Philip Crosby (1980). A ‘Crosby Grid’
provides a way of describing the future in concrete terms that can be easily
understood, as well as the stages in the journey in achieving that future. Its
development involves generating a matrix of two complementary logics:
• the Y axis listing the key improvement drivers for change, and
• the X axis containing a graded series of statements ranging from ‘don’t
know about or have this feature’ through to ‘fully have/fully developed
for this feature’.
A well-developed Crosby Grid represents the wisdom of the leaders
and staff of the organisation evidenced by their judgment in filling in the
details in the grid. Once the details are entered, the completed grid can be
used to monitor progress of the change process. The details of the grid can
be upgraded and altered as targets are reached or circumstances change.
In designing a Crosby Grid, it is important to select the few key ‘change
drivers’ that you plan to use to change the organisation (the original Crosby
Grid selected only five), and then describe the stages of the process that
needs to be undertaken to achieve the preferred future.
For our purposes, the Crosby Grid approach can be used to describe
the key features of a fully developed ‘digital school’, by treating the final
stage of the grid (Certainty) as a statement of the preferred future for a
functioning digital school. A sample of a Digital School Crosby Grid is
presented in Table 2.6 (page 25).
You are invited to develop your own Crosby Grid logic to create a more
specific school development grid from the statements of a preferred future
provided in the sample (Table 2.6), so that the steps of your ‘change journey’
can be forecast and tracked. An outline framework from which you could
begin to approach these tasks is given in Table 2.7 (page 27).

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Table 2.5 Preferred future characteristics of schooling

NOW PREFERRED FUTURE

(TRADITIONAL SCHOOLS) (SCHOOLS AS LEARNING
ORGANISATIONS)
Education occurs at scheduled times Education is 24/7 and partly occurs
in deliberate, physical locations called in deliberate physical locations called
schools, colleges, universities. schools, colleges, universities.
Funding is premised on input factors Funding is premised on outcome factors
based on the class unit, with class sizes based on the student unit. Class sizes
in the range 20–30. range widely depending on the learning
outcome envisaged.
Schools are stand-alone learning Schools are networked learning
agencies. agencies.
Minimal data sharing between schools, Much data sharing between schools,
parents, business and community. parents, business and community.
Teaching is an isolated activity Teaching is a cooperative activity
conducted by professional teachers in involving professional teachers, teacher
classrooms. aides, and others.
Curricula and learning methods Curricula and learning methods
(including assessment) directed towards (including assessment) directed
individual behaviour and achievement, towards cooperative behaviour and
but achieved through group teaching both individual and group outcomes.
methods and assessing accumulations Achieved through digitally based,
of past knowledge and understanding. individual accessed learning systems
that also enable group learning.
Learning is preparation for work and Learning is work, and work depends on
done prior to employment. Individual both individual and team-based learning.
learning is major focus.
Teachers drive learning as ‘content Teachers assist learning as ‘knowledge
deliverers’ and ‘child minders’. navigators’, ‘tutors’ and ‘mentors’.
Teacher time and activities driven by Some ‘duty of care’ responsibilities
‘duty of care’ type monitoring and (e.g. roll marking), undertaken by
checking. Physical presence of teacher technologies.
used as proof of activities discharging Digitally based record systems
duty of care. increasingly used as proof of activities
discharging duty of care.
(continued)

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

Table 2.5 Preferred future characteristics of schooling (continued)

NOW PREFERRED FUTURE

(TRADITIONAL SCHOOLS) (SCHOOLS AS LEARNING
ORGANISATIONS)
Teacher as a skilled tradesperson/ Teacher as knowledge professional and
artisan and deliverer of educational student as active learner.
content. Student as passive learner.
Teacher is hierarchically more senior Cooperative learning teams where
and powerful than a student. teacher expertise in coaching/
assisting/directing is basis of power.
Students accepted as knowledgeable
and powerful in learning.
Libraries and librarians as separate Libraries and librarians as integral part
places and providers of resources. of the learning community. Librarians
seen as skilled ‘Web pilots’ assisting with
accessing information with integrity.
Physical architecture and appearance Virtual electronic architecture of schools
of schools are main concerns of is of equal concern with physical
improvement and upgrade. infrastructure.
Physical procedures and controls Digital procedures and controls (e.g.
are well developed, while electronic computer access and usage) are
procedures and controls (e.g. computer central part of routine procedures, with
access and usage) are seen as library as a key advice and procedures
peripheral source.
School as a sorting, testing and School as a learning organisation
labelling organisation that acts as that simulates and introduces work
preparation and gatekeeper to a in the knowledge society through
manufacturing society job. the behaviour of the whole school
community.
Parents are relatively uninvolved, entrust Parents expect to be involved through
their children to school care, and continuous communication, are
expect the school to make decisions concerned about the progress and
about their children’s learning, while the care experienced by their (much fewer)
home environment deals with personal numbers of children. Expect that school
disciplines and values. will discipline the child and instill values
rather than the home, but complain if
they disagree with what is done.

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 Table 2.6 Sample Digital School Crosby Grid

MEASUREMENT STAGE I: STAGE II: STAGE III: STAGE IV: STAGE V: CERTAINTY

Lead_a_Dig_Sch_FINAL.indd 25
CATEGORIES UNCERTAINTY AWAKENING ENLIGHTENMENT WISDOM (‘WE HAVE ACHIEVED
(‘WE DON’T HAVE IT’) IT’)
Leadership and No comprehension Recognise that digital While going through digital Participate. Understand Consider digital learning
management of digital learning learning management learning program, learn absolutes of digitally and digital systems an
understanding and as a leadership and may be of value but not more about ICT-based based learning and essential part of school
attitude management tool. Tend willing to provide money capabilities; becoming learning organisations. system.
to ‘blame technology’ or time to make it all supportive and helpful. Recognise their personal
(e.g. mobile phones) for happen. role in continuing ICT
problems. emphasis.
ICT-based ICT base is hidden in A stronger ICT-based Chief Information Officer CIO is a senior executive CIO is a key decision
organisation status separate activities and learning officer is appointed, reports to member of the school. maker at school and
departments. ICT-based appointed but main executive of school, all ICT learning has status on school board or
learning largely absent. emphasis is still on ICT-based activities are and is reported on and district. Prevention is
Emphasis on teacher- teacher delivery of incorporated, and CIO has preventive action taken. the thought leader.
based selection and content. ICT is still part role in management of CIO involved with student
delivery of content. of individual efforts school. learning and launches
or subsections of the special ICT improvement
school. assignments.

(continued)

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 Table 2.6 Sample Digital School Crosby Grid (continued)

26
MEASUREMENT STAGE I: STAGE II: STAGE III: STAGE IV: STAGE V: CERTAINTY
CATEGORIES UNCERTAINTY AWAKENING ENLIGHTENMENT WISDOM (‘WE HAVE ACHIEVED

Lead_a_Dig_Sch_FINAL.indd 26
(‘WE DON’T HAVE IT’) IT’)
Problem handling Problems are fought Teams are set up to Corrective action Problems are Except in the most
as they occur; no attack major problems. communications identified early in their unusual cases,
resolution; inadequate Long-range solutions established. Problems are development. All functions problems are prevented.
LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

definition; lots of yelling are not solicited. faced openly and resolved are open to suggestion
and accusations. in an orderly way. and improvement.
ICT-based No organised activities. Trying obvious Implementation of Continuing the ICT-based ICT-based learning
improvement No understanding of motivational short-range an ICT-based change change program. Make improvement is a
actions such activities. efforts. program with thorough certain it is accepted. normal and continued
understanding and activity.
establishment of each step.
Summation of ‘We don’t know why ‘Is it absolutely ‘Through management ‘Defect prevention ‘We know why we do
school’s digital we have problems with necessary to always commitment to in digital systems is not have problems with
usage posture digital based systems.’ have problems with ICT- improvement of our digital a routine part of our digitally based systems.’
based digital systems?’ learning and admin systems operation.’
we are identifying and
resolving our problems.’

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 Table 2.7 Features of a partial Crosby Grid

MEASUREMENT STAGE I: STAGE II: STAGE III: STAGE IV: STAGE V: CERTAINTY

Lead_a_Dig_Sch_FINAL.indd 27
CATEGORIES UNCERTAINTY AWAKENING ENLIGHTENMENT WISDOM (‘WE HAVE ACHIEVED
(‘WE DON’T HAVE IT’) IT’)
School leadership No comprehension of Recognise that ICT- While going through Participate. Understand Consider ICT-based
understanding and ICT-based education as based schools and ICT-based learning principles and benefits learning an essential
attitude a leadership tool. Tend learning may be of improvement program, of ICT-based learning. part of school system.
to blame others for ‘ICT- value, but not willing learn more about benefits Recognise their personal
based problems’. to provide resources of ICT-based education; role in continuing
or time to make it all becoming supportive and emphasis.
happen. helpful.
Societal attitudes Society sees public Society values digital
schools as a cost schools highly and
and invests in them resources them well.
reluctantly.
Parental attitudes Parents are uninvolved Parents see the school
and disinterested in the as an essential partner
school. for their child’s success.
Teacher attitudes Teachers as ‘content Teachers as ‘knowledge
deliverers’ with navigators’ and mentors
classroom control role. to students.
(continued)

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 Table 2.7 Features of a partial Crosby Grid (continued)

28
MEASUREMENT STAGE I: STAGE II: STAGE III: STAGE IV: STAGE V: CERTAINTY
CATEGORIES UNCERTAINTY AWAKENING ENLIGHTENMENT WISDOM (‘WE HAVE ACHIEVED

Lead_a_Dig_Sch_FINAL.indd 28
(‘WE DON’T HAVE IT’) IT’)
Student attitudes Students see school Students access a
as divorced from their fully integrated digital
world and boring. system to underpin their
LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

school learning.
Learning Traditional teacher- Introduction of ICT Learning has explored
characteristics and textbook-based means that existing and used the change
learning. learning is done potential of technologies
more efficiently and to the full.
effectively.
Architecture Architecture supports Physical and virtual
‘factory model’ of architecture supports
schooling with fixed digital learning.
class sizes and
standard curriculum.

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 S U CCE SSFU L LE AR N I N G AN D SC HO O L D E S IG N F OR TH E KNOW L E D G E A G E

C O NC LUS IO N

Successful learning and school design for the knowledge age is a multifaceted
challenge. It requires a contemporary understanding of the nature and
potential of digital technology, and a broad appreciation of the context of
schooling and how the major features of teaching, learning and school
organisation have been shaped by societal trends from earlier times.
This chapter has highlighted possibilities, explained the context and
provided some advice on planning tools, such as the Crosby Grid, to assist
educational leaders to describe and create the preferred future for their
schools and education systems as we move further into the knowledge age.
As educators, ‘we live in interesting times’, to paraphrase a Confucian
curse. The advent of digital technologies, global trends, changing family
and societal structures, the demands and opportunities from business and
governments, and the vitality and talents of our students will certainly
ensure that those engaged with school education over the coming years
continue to do so.

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 CHAPTER 3
PLANNING IN A
D I G I TA L S C H O O L

Al l an Sh aw

Planning for a ‘digital school’ is essentially about achieving high-quality

outcomes through the creative and appropriate use of digital technologies.
Plans for the digital aspect—that is, the technical infrastructure—are an
important part, but just a part, of overall school and system planning that
must have high-quality student learning outcomes as the top priority.
The intent of this chapter is to provide guidelines to assist you in
the planning process. The key planning elements for a digital school are
presented. Some significant dimensions of situational analysis as a process of
‘getting to know your present and future environments’ are then discussed.
These form the basis for considering the planning process in more detail,
particularly ways of combining short- and long-term planning to achieve
results. Finally some suggestions are made to assist school and education
system leaders with the challenge of translating plans into practice.

F O C U S ON PE O PLE N OT M A C HINES: PLANNING

EL EM E N TS FO R A DIGITAL SC HOOL

Planning is a people process. The temptation when thinking about digital

environments is to believe that planning is primarily about the technology.
However, the keys to successful planning for a digital school have more to do
with taking account of leadership styles, school culture, politics, relationships

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and emotions, than they do with engaging in research and analysis, or

deciding on the allocation of resources. After all, the focus of a digital school
is people, not machines. The experience of those who work and learn in a
digital school should be a humanising one, driven by conducive values and
school culture towards achieving better learning outcomes for students.
All plans should be designed to have a positive impact on teachers’
classroom practices and students’ achievements. Further, as a people
process, planning must engage the school community, especially staff.
The teacher in the classroom is the single most powerful influence within
a school on student learning (Barber & Mourshed, 2007). As such, plans
need to be developed in consultation with teachers, with expert assistance
provided when needed. Implementation has to be well led by the principal
and staff, with the outcomes carefully analysed and reflected upon by those
in the school community on which they have an effect.

E L E MEN T S O F T HE PLA NN I NG PRO CES S

1 Vision and goals, values and beliefs: Where are you going? What will it
be like when you get there? Why make the journey? How will you travel?
2 People: Who is travelling with you on the planning journey? Who else
should be invited along? What do these people bring to the process?
3 Facts and analysis: What is the environment in which your school
operates—locally, regionally, nationally and globally? What is the
actual and ideal learning and teaching environment in your school?
What resources have you got? What results are gained from them?
What does your school need (rather than want) to ‘live its vision’ and
achieve its goals?
4 Policy, practice and procedure: Are current school policies,
programs and practices efficiently and effectively supporting
teaching and learning? Will they support the desired change?
Notes:
• The term ‘you’ can apply to you as an educational leader, to your
school community, or to your system, whichever is more useful.
• These elements and questions have been expanded into a series
of templates that can be adapted and used to support you in your
planning journey. (Full information on the templates can be found in
Appendix 1. They are also available in digital format on the AHISA
website at http://www.ahisa.com.au.)

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

Planning in a people-rich environment like a school is complex.

Although structure and sequence are important, planning is not a linear
process. It is a holistic one that should encompass the four elements,
described below. Associated with each element is a set of questions to be
considered by educational policymakers. These questions can help you, as
an educational leader, identify the implicit values and beliefs that influence
planning, and describe the environments, understandings and skill sets that
form the context for planning. The questions are by no means exhaustive
or prescriptive.
Successful planning involves each of these elements. To make your
planning efforts worthwhile, you should have a vision of the future—or at
least a vision for the process of getting there. Second, you need to know
the needs, talents and aspirations of the people affected by the plans,
and engage them in the process. Third, you need to collect and analyse
relevant data about your school or system, its environment, its day-to-
day operation and outcomes, and use this information to challenge your
beliefs and ideology, not just confirm them. Finally you need to consider
how existing policies, programs and practices will align or conflict with the
planning process, and be prepared to adjust one or the other in light of that
consideration.

Si tuational anal ys i s : W hat i s ha p p e n in g h e re ?

What’s c om i ng ov er t he hi l l ?
Planning implies that you are aiming to be somewhere other than where
you are now. For schools, envisioning a way forward can be difficult as the
staff, students and parents as members of the school community have their
own experience of school and, most likely, some entrenched beliefs about
what school should or should not be.
Planning is complicated by technological and generational change and
global effects that lie beyond the influence of schools. For these reasons, to
plan effectively, you need to carefully examine your beliefs and consider not
only your current situation but also your possible, probable and preferred
future operating environments.

The global scene

When looking to the future from a global perspective, you might think about
the impact of increasing numbers of mathematics, science and technology
graduates in China and India on the career prospects of your students, on
your nation’s economic development and on what you can do, in your local

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situation, to minimise the negative and accentuate the positive effects of

these trends for your school community.

The student scene

As a second scenario, you may wish to consider the students who will
form your school’s intake in (say) 2012, and the world into which they will
graduate. For example, students who will form the secondary school intake
of 2012 are currently around eight years of age. These children are in Year
3 and (perhaps with exceptions due to levels of affluence) are immersed
in mobile phones, the Internet and iPods. What are the characteristics and
needs of these students of ‘Generation Z’? And for children for whom
the Internet is not the norm, how do their characteristics differ, if at all?
School leaders and staff of secondary schools need to be talking to the
teachers of these students now.
Similarly, the babies of 2008 will join primary schools around 2013 and
graduate from school in 2026. As a primary school principal or teacher, you
should be researching and discussing the balance of basic skills, attitudes
and values these young children need in order to flourish in the adult world
of 2026.
Your considerations will continue to be influenced by rapid technological
developments. For example, remember back to 2002—iPods were just
gathering momentum and MySpace, Bebo and Facebook were unknown
in most schools and homes. But regardless of the individual piece of new
technology, the issues you confront as educators are inherently human
issues.

The staf f scene

As a third scenario: what about your own school staff, who are increasingly
drawn from Generation X and Generation Y? If you are not one of them,
how well do you understand their motivations, their values and beliefs
about work? If you are one of them, how do you work through the retire-
ments of the baby boomers, and induct their younger replacements into
your school culture?

P L AN N IN G PR AGM ATICALLY IN C HANG ING T IMES

Plans for short-term projects need to be specific and detailed, whereas

plans for a longer period can follow a more strategic approach where the

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

policies, programs, processes, performance indicators, and sometimes even

the purposes of the plan, tend to evolve as circumstances change.
Planning with digital technologies requires both short- and long-term
thinking and action. Short-term planning, such as that involved with the
installation of hardware to support local area networks or the trialling of
new software applications, requires clear and agreed project management
guidelines. At the same time, articulating and deciding on the ways in which
these types of projects connect with one another and, most importantly,
with the overall direction for the school community or system, requires a
longer and broader planning perspective from policymakers.
Venezky and Davis (2002) reinforce this view with their contention that
planning in digital technologies is not simply a technical issue. In fact, they
argue that:

The highest returns on ICT in education appear to come when ICT is seen
as part of a strategy for solving an important problem rather than as an end
in itself. (p. 46)

Linking the various short-term projects in digital technology that a

school or system might have in place to a longer-term strategic plan is
not a simple task. You should not presume that each particular piece of the
‘project management jigsaw puzzle’ will automatically fit together to form
a coherent and appealing strategic organisational picture. In fact, to avoid a
jumbled mess, you need to have a plan for how all the various project plans
can come together.
One means of completing the ‘planning jigsaw’ successfully is to
develop a scope document for each short-term project. This is a useful
device for describing what will be included and what will not be included
in each project. A well-defined project scope not only gives those involved
directly and indirectly in the project an opportunity to understand how the
proposed initiative fits with other projects and the overall strategy, but also
helps to prevent ‘specification creep’—that tendency of people to ask for
a project to do more and more (without necessarily having to pay for it, of
course!)
The sort of planning that combines short- and long-term goals
and activities is necessarily pragmatic. Long-term thinking needs to be
combined with short-term action—otherwise the thinking remains just
somebody’s dream, and the action makes no sense. When thinking and
action are combined effectively, something practical and strategic happens.
It gets the job done!

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 P L A NNING IN A D IG ITA L S C H OOL

F R O M P L AN N IN G TO IM PLEMENTAT ION

As we all know, the best-laid plans can go awry. An understanding of key

groups of people in your school is essential if you are to translate planning
into implementation. Two of the most significant groups are teachers and
parents.

Suppor t your t eacher s

Teaching is a strongly habitual profession and development can subside,
with regression back towards the traditional norms, unless teachers see the
point of changing their practices and are given appropriate challenges and
support.
Some change processes are more effective than others. Vernez, Karam,
Mariano and DeMartini (2006) found that teachers who regarded their
training as inadequate, reported a lukewarm commitment to adopting
their school’s reform model. However, in schools where the level of teacher
support increased, so too did teachers’ adoption of new practices.

Com m uni cat e w i t h parent s

You need to engage parents in the planning process to increase the
likelihood of successful implementation. You need to get to know them,
and assist them in understanding the educational needs and experiences
of their children.
Many current parents are Generation X. These parents are better
educated than previous generations. They have their children later and
have fewer of them, and tend to be more ‘time poor’ than ‘resource poor’.
The first of the children of Generation Y are starting school now. These
parents have grown up with media that have become increasingly interactive
and portable, starting with videos, personal computers, computer games,
and moving on to the Internet, mobile phones and so on. The dramatic
changes in information content and distribution through their lives to this
point mean that Generation Y parents are not as willing to be passive in
accepting information or knowledge as the previous generations. They take
their childrearing seriously and leave few stones unturned in wanting the
absolute best for their children. They have high expectations of schools,
with an emphasis on the individualisation of learning for their children.
In fact, Generation Y parents expect to co-create, co-filter or collaborate
in knowledge production, rather than accept a ‘top-down’ distribution of

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

knowledge. The didactic model of the ‘expert’ informing the ‘learner’ has
less credence with them—so principals and system authorities who are
fond of making pronouncements from on high, beware!
One way to encourage parents’ support is to develop a parent
engagement strategy with long-, medium- and short-term goals and
activities that are linked to demonstrate consistency in approach and
build parent, staff and student confidence over time. Regular review and
‘refreshment’ cycles should be built into the strategy to account for student
and parent turnover and other changing circumstances.
Other aspects of the strategy to encourage parent engagement might
include:
• using a variety of information presentation processes to reach parents,
such as workshops, forums, newsletters, Web publications such as
wikis and blogs
• developing a parenting resources library and referral services covering
areas such as: child development (especially cognitive and social
development), communication, discipline, confidence building and
relationship building
• focusing on the provision of other services as needs arise, such as grief
and loss, rites of passage, sole-parenting and step-parenting.
Engaging parents through good communication and well-targeted
support and educational services builds community support, improves
planning, encourages implementation and increases the likelihood of
successful outcomes for students. A future created with parents is more
self-sustaining than one developed by the school alone.

C O N C L U S IO N

The planning of a digital school is complex, involving multiple stakeholders

and various factors. The creation of a digital school is always a work in
progress.
This complex and changing context means that educational planners
at school or system levels are well advised to focus on ‘the people’ at least
as much as ‘the technology’. Second, any planning related to the technical
aspects of the school or system operation must be integrated with the
overall vision, structure and processes of the organisation as a whole.
Third, those charged with leading the planning process need to know the
environment in which their school or system is situated locally and globally

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in terms of its present and future opportunities and challenges. Fourth, to

make the most of the opportunities and effectively confront the challenges,
educational planners have to work pragmatically, balancing short- and long-
term perspectives and actions as necessary to get the job done.
Finally, as planning is essentially a people process, those engaged with
planning for a digital school should take careful note of those who are
most important in bringing those plans to fruition—their teachers and the
parents or guardians of their students.

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 CHAPTER 4
ENGAGEMENT WITH
D I G I TA L T E C H N O L O G Y:
NEW CHALLENGES FOR
SCHOOL AND SYSTEM
LEADERS

Mal Lee and M ichael Gaf fney

School principals and education system officers face new challenges in

leading schools into the digital age.These are educational and administrative
in nature and concern the need to learn about the potential benefits and
costs of new technologies, to build their capability, to take strategic action
to maximise the benefits and minimise the costs, and to play an active role
in decision making about the planning, implementation and outcomes
resulting from investment in digital technology in their school communities
and systems.
As the senior educational architects, principals and education authority
leaders need not only to understand the building materials they will be
working with but, importantly, maintain responsibility for that technology
and its use.
To meet these challenges, principals not only need to have a general
understanding of the digital technology infrastructure in their school, but
also provide effective oversight of how that technology is being used in
classrooms to support teaching and learning; in school administration to
manage information; and with parents, the school community, the system,

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other schools, governments and outside agencies to communicate and

demonstrate accountability to these key stakeholders.
Digital technology is increasingly being used in teaching, administration
and for communication between the school and the outside world. Moreover,
that technology is rapidly evolving, becoming more sophisticated and in
need of more frequent renovation than the ‘bricks and mortar’ physical
infrastructure of the traditional school. Most school leaders are only too
aware that this growing sophistication and need for renovation is usually
accompanied by increasing costs and expectations from students, teachers
and parents. One sobering aspect of this trend is that as technology evolves,
it is likely to take an even larger slice of school and system budgets—
unless, of course, the size of the overall school funding cake is increased
proportionally or the current funding cake is re-divided.
In practical terms, this means that educational leaders at school
and system levels will increasingly be required to make prudent and yet
‘predictably novel’ decisions about investment in digital technology. One
of the most difficult aspects of making decisions about technology is that
one is usually faced with new circumstances, options, costs and protocols
for which past planning and administrative experience is of limited value.
By comparison, developing plans, gaining funding approval, tendering and
oversighting the construction of, for instance, a new school classroom block
are relatively straightforward exercises. With investment in digital technology
there are fewer signposts and established customs, practices and formulas
compared with those administered by state and national capital funding
authorities for school building projects. Further, investment decisions about
digital technology are likely to become even more complicated by the greater
potential benefits as well as escalating level of risk associated with the
increasing sophistication and use of that technology.
By highlighting that principals and system officers are responsible
for the budgeting, selection, deployment, use and evaluation of digital
technology, we are not suggesting that they have daily ‘hands-on’ tasks.
Rather, their role is to monitor how that technology is being used to support
teaching, manage information, and communicate in ways which align with
their school and system vision and mission, organisational arrangements,
teaching practices and community characteristics, and which ultimately
serve to enhance the learning outcomes of students. Principals and
education system officers who are not capable or willing to accept these
new leadership challenges are likely to abdicate their responsibility to ICT
experts and wear the consequences.

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On the other hand, for those who are willing to lead their schools and
systems into the digital age, the question is: How might principals and
education system decision makers develop their capability to meet the
challenges associated with the development, use and investment in digital
technology?
Following are some proposed themes and suggested actions that
educational leaders in schools and systems might consider. In Chapter
15, we suggest some ways of enhancing one’s own understanding of the
digital materials with which you could be working.

SHAPING AND SELECTING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Over the last century, and particularly over more recent times, the ‘selection’
of the technology used in schools has been strongly influenced de facto by
the major technology corporations.
While schools and education authorities have chosen the brands and
models, the ‘choice’ of the technology has invariably been out of their hands
(Lee & Winzenried, 2008). From the point of their design and introduction,
forms of new technology (including film, radio, television, VCRs, electronic
calculators, computer-aided instruction, personal computers, audiocassette
recorders and interactive multimedia CD-ROMs) were designed primarily
for the wider consumer or office market. Schools were only ever a secondary
market, with the consequence that school and education authorities were
usually swept along by the hype generated by the marketing arms of those
technology corporations.
The prime motive of all technology corporations is—and always has
been—making profit. If the technology providers can convince schools
and education authorities, as secondary markets, to add to their company
profits, so much the better. In retrospect, it should not be a surprise that
most of the electronic instructional technology of the last century that was
not designed for class use has been so little used by teachers.
In recent years, some education authorities and schools have begun to
exert more influence over the selection of the digital technology, and have
used their market strength to shape the type of technology they want. Becta,
the government body formed by the British Government to oversee the
development of digital schooling in the British Isles, has, for example, since
the early 2000s very much taken ‘control’ of the technology used by schools
and has had a profound impact on the nature of the interactive whiteboard

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technology used not only in the UK but globally, the development of

interactive, multimedia teaching materials, the development of learning
platforms and online student reporting.
All digital technology moves through a life cycle (Lee & Winzenried,
2008). In the initial stage there will be immense hype, usually exaggerated
claims about the effectiveness of the technology, invariably glitches and
most assuredly inflated pricing. In time, the price will fall and the initial
shortcomings will be overcome. All technology has a finite life, but some
forms will last longer than others. In this respect, it is wise (as Roger
Hayward warns in Chapter 7) to avoid being at the ‘bleeding edge’ in your
purchasing or leasing of new technologies.
It is not easy to exercise influence when the technology is developing
at such a pace and major breakthroughs seem to appear from nowhere.
Principals and education system officers need to develop their capability to
understand technology, ask the hard questions, and shape how technology
could be used to enhance their school and education system and outcomes
for students.

Exercise 4.1
Require—for a trial period—that all hardware and software decisions be pre-
ceded with a brief rationale for the principal/system executive, explaining how
the item(s) fit within the school/system total schema of technology acquisitions.

M AN AGIN G E N TH USIASM : FROM EARLY

AD O P TION TO S USTAIN E D WIDESPREAD USE

When selecting digital technology to support teaching and learning, the

aim should be for that technology to be used by all teachers, and become as
accepted as the pen, paper and the traditional teaching board. As part of the
selection process, it is important to encourage trialling and development of
new technologies, and carefully monitor the effects of those technologies on
teaching practice, student outcomes and school costs. Innovative teachers
are usually the ones to put their hands up and ‘give it a go’.
One of the interesting challenges is managing the enthusiasm of ‘early
adopters’ and their quest to acquire and use every new piece of technology,
whether it is the latest communication device, educational software, or social

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networking facility. While one should not wish to quash the enthusiasm
of the early adopters or prevent their exploration of new educational
opportunities, these individuals should be encouraged to ask and report on
the hard questions about the educational appropriateness of the technology
for students, in schools, at this time.
The use of new technologies by early adopters does not automatically
translate to acceptance by other teachers, most of whom do not share
their innate love of technology. Nevertheless, early adopters can play an
important ‘research’ role for schools and education authorities when their
enthusiasm and engagement with new technologies are incorporated
within a carefully designed research and development framework, based
around the broader needs of schools, teachers and students.

Exercise 4.2
Play the devil’s advocate with each request for acquiring an emerging techno-
logy. Have ‘early adopters’ submit an explanation of how and why it should be
used by all (or at least a significant proportion of) teachers or students.

A C H IE V IN G DIGITAL IN TE GR AT ION

One of the characteristics of a digital school is the ‘seamless’ integration

of the school’s digital information and communication systems, and the
facility to provide online access, through one Web portal, to appropriate
services for everyone within the school’s networked community.
Such integration and facility require deliberate action by principals at
the school level, and by education authority executives at system level. As a
first step, this might include undertaking an audit of how data is collected
and stored, how major software applications are used, and how information
is accessed. When carried out effectively, the results can inform strategic
decisions about:
• the purchase and use of core applications, and the training required for
those applications
• school (or system) website design, presence and access
• content and records management, including data warehousing.
Achieving the technical integration is relatively straightforward
compared with the more important challenge of aligning any changes in
technical capacity and processes with the needs, interests, capabilities, and

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work flow patterns of staff. In this respect, careful attention needs to be

given to how roles may be redesigned or the organisation restructured to
achieve the desired alignment.
It is important to remember that people are more important than
technology, and every effort should be made to inform and engage staff in
achieving ‘digital integration’ across a school or school system. For these
changes to be successful, people need to work together in the hope of
better outcomes for students—rather than defend competing empires in
the fear of losing control or organisational prestige.

Exercise 4.3
Consider understanding the digital integration exercise 15.3 in Chapter 15
(page 184).

BALANCING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONTROL

How does one decide which services will be controlled by the school, or
system, and which will be delegated to outside bodies?
In a networked world, most digital information and communication
systems used by schools and systems could be hosted and controlled by
external bodies. For example, the school’s website, email system, student
information, publications and teaching resources could all be hosted by an
external agency—located across the street or across the globe. Where this
occurs, there need to be clear contractual arrangements and obligations
agreed between the relevant education authority and the external agency
to control the use of information.
The question of whether to hand over control is a vexed one for
educators. The answer depends on a host of practical as well as policy issues.
At a practical level, bandwidth, the cost and expertise to host professional
databases, and the cost of developing and sustaining in-house services
need to be considered.
On the policy side, technology corporations and government agencies
are prone to promising more than they can deliver. These companies and
agencies come and go. Can schools trust them with its data?
In most cases schools are tending to opt for an amalgam of in-house
and external service providers. Whichever course is taken, the principal
remains responsible for taking these decisions—not a network manager.

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Exercise 4.4
What technical and non-technical services does your school/system currently
outsource? Why were these arrangements put in place? Are they providing overall
benefits to your organisation? Which services do you think could be outsourced
and which might be brought in-house?

MAN AG ING R ISK

While there are opportunities to be realised in moving into the ‘less-

charted’ waters of the digital mode, there are also potential dangers—even
disasters—waiting to occur. One is the failure to manage risk.
Not only can (and undoubtedly, will) principals be held responsible
for poor choice and loss of teaching time, they also stand to lose their job
for wasting money or as a result of legal action for inappropriate use of
the technology. Already the authors have seen principals entering into
‘questionable’ long-term ICT solutions that have seen the school unable to
maintain its repayments. The new intellectual property (IP) laws—unless
watched very closely and with appropriate parameters established—could see
school principals taken to court in future years, even after they have retired.
Schools (and especially principals!) are putting themselves at severe
risk of legal action when they do not have appropriate network redundancy
and disaster plans, data backup, exigencies to cover the loss of key staff
expertise and appropriate student Internet usage.
Perhaps one of the more surprising risks that all can fall for is the
reliance on a key individual, be it for staff support, network design, the
digital integration or any other key operation. Unfortunately, like failing to
save key documents, the tendency is to learn only from bitter experience
the importance of working towards sustainable solutions and minimising
the risk.

Exercise 4.5
Ask your network manager to explain how your school (or system) intranet and
website are secured, how staff and student internet usage is monitored, and how
databases are backed up.

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S EC U R I N G S CH OO L IN FORMAT ION ASSET S

As schools move further into the digital age, they will build up extensive
and valuable information assets that need to be protected, managed and
archived.
Among the most valuable of the holdings are digital teaching resources
developed by staff. These resources can add to the richness and efficiency
of the teaching in the school (and possibly even to its revenue stream). But
these will remain only ‘potential’ resources unless school leaders exercise
their responsibility, and put systems in place to collect, categorise, store and
regularly review and cull them. The unfortunate alternative is that these
resources will either be wiped by well-intentioned network managers, or
taken by the teachers when they leave the school.

Exercise 4.6
Ask your teaching staff to identify what digital resources they have developed
and are currently sharing or wish to share with colleagues. Engage them
in a review, or development, of your school or system policy on
intellectual property.

M AN AGIN G IN FOR M ATION

The digital technology can provide school and system leaders with timely
valuable information on the workings and outcomes being achieved by the
school and the system. This information relates to many of the following
areas:
• student census and achievement data
• curriculum and timetable including class size and teaching load
• human resource management including payroll information, staff
qualifications and professional development
• program budget planning and control statements
• capital expenditure
• maintenance of the physical plant
• school funding, fees and contributions; and
• use of the library and ICT infrastructure.
Those leading and working in schools require ready access to informa-
tion relevant to their areas of responsibility. In some instances the

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information will be mainly for tactical use; for instance, when it is necessary
to quickly ascertain when a request was submitted, who has actioned it and
when, and what is the current situation. Calls from parents or arranging
relief teachers are examples that come to mind.
On other occasions the information needs to be more strategic
and presented in the form of a report—perhaps drawing from different
databases and areas of the organisation. Examples include information to
assist policy and program evaluation and development, annual budgets or
major investment decisions.
In either circumstance, schools need the information and knowledge
management systems in place to obtain a ready insight into the short-
and long-term effectiveness and efficiency of their operation. Principals
and education system executives should insist on the selection and use of
systems that provide that capability.

Exercise 4.7
Ask your executive staff—educational and administrative—to provide a report to
you on the operations of their area of responsibility for the last month, using the
information systems available.

O VE R S EE IN G TH E TE CH N OL OG Y AND
ED U C ATIO N DIR E CTION

Principals and system leaders have the responsibility to ensure that the
technology chosen is consonant with the educational goals of the school
and the education system.
They have the opportunity to take ‘a helicopter view of the educational
and digital landscape’ in which their schools and systems are situated. They
are in a privileged position to view the totality and identify how what is
being contemplated, or being done, might enhance school outcomes and
student learning. The importance of that perspective will become more
important as the range of community expectations and accountabilities
and digital offerings increases.
One related area that warrants attention is the nature of some of the
emerging learning platforms. Without due consideration, schools may find
themselves opting for platforms that promote low-level content-driven

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learning rather than the creative, higher-order thinking. School leaders

need to continue to carefully evaluate the underlying rationale of any
educational software.
The other area to watch is the technology and accompanying protocols
designed for office use. Principals should be willing to question and vary
some of those practices. One example would be to ask:
Why it is educationally appropriate to get early childhood students to
change their network password each week?
or:
Might it be more educationally beneficial to get students to use their own
name and to teach them the value of respecting each other’s property?
Our experience reveals that too many school leaders have been inclined
to go with the flow and not pose the educational questions.

Exercise 4.8
Work with your teachers and technical support staff to develop a checklist of
characteristics that proposed educational software and organisational protocols
should exhibit for implementation in your school.

N E TW OR K IN G W ITH TH E H OME T EC HNOLOG Y

While the young continue to embrace the everyday use of digital technology
and use it to further their learning, the awareness and use of that learning
by educators in school and classroom settings are limited.
The amount of digital ‘instructional technology’ within most homes
will always exceed that in most classrooms (Lee & Winzenried, 2008). In a
networked world where schools are no longer stand-alone entities but rather
part of the larger learning community, it is important for school leaders to
take account of the level of technology in students’ homes or hands when
making decisions regarding the school’s acquisition of technology and the
design of its instructional program.
Schools obviously cannot control the technology that parents make
available to their sons and daughters, but they can work with parents and
provide advice about management and choice of hardware and software
to support their children’s education. Our view is that most parents would
welcome guidance.

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

Better educational and more cost-efficient use can be made of tech-

nology within the home and in the school. Current thinking and expenditure
appears predicated on trying to duplicate the resources of the home in the
school. For example, why should schools, education systems or governments
outlay considerable recurrent funding on laptops for students when they
can access their personal, online learning space at school and at home, and
mediate between the two by the use of an inexpensive USB drive?

Exercise 4.9
Audit the hardware and educational software available in the homes of your
students. Engage students, parents and school board members in discussion
about how these resources can be used to provide more efficient use of teaching
and learning time, and investment of digital technology in the home and at school.

F IN AN C ING TH E TE CH N OL O GY

There are at least two givens for educators seeking to develop the capability
for funding investments in digital technology. The first is there is never
enough money. The second is that ‘going with the flow’ will no longer
suffice.
The best way for school and system leaders to work with this context is
to take strategic investment decisions that maximise the benefits that digital
technology holds for the students in their care. This means that they need
to set clear operational parameters, review the use of existing technology,
question the return on investment, and (as best they can in changing and
uncertain times) channel the scarce resources towards the use of technology
that will lead their schools and systems into the digital age.
Some tips for approaching these tasks are to:
• look at the total cost of ownership of the technology, and not just the
upfront cost (see Chapter 11)
• consider, as a priority, those models that provide the appropriate digital
technology in all teaching rooms
• take account of the technology in students’ homes, look for efficiencies
and work to address equity issues.
By way of comparison on the international scene, the USA is continuing
its quest for ‘ubiquitous computing’ with the desire to have a 1:1 computer–

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student ratio. On the other hand, the UK and Mexico are questioning the
educational wisdom of this approach, particularly given the continuing
low level of teacher use of personal computers in teaching. Instead, these
countries have opted for a model that makes extensive use of interactive
whiteboards (IWBs) and digital peripherals. It is also less costly in terms of
hardware leasing and licensing arrangements.
Moving schools from a traditional industrially based structure to a
digital platform costs money. As schools make greater use of digital
technology, they will be obliged to spend a greater proportion of their
budget on hardware, software and connectivity associated with that
technology. The current proportion of the total education budget in most
nations is between 2 and 3 per cent (Anderson & Becker, 1999, p. 6).
That improvement can come from a special infusion of monies by
governments, such as seen in the UK in the 2000s, or by diverting some of
the existing budget, such as has been evidenced in Singapore. The obvious,
albeit contentious source, from which to divert some monies is the staffing
allocation. While not wanting to get into a debate about staffing, suffice it
say that with the ever-smarter instructional technology it is probably timely
to rethink the size of classes (as per the McKinsey study of 2007), or the
nature of teaching at the post-compulsory years, to make do with a few
less staff and to divert those funds to instructional technology for K–12
schooling.

Exercise 4.10
Audit the total cost of ownership of the digital technology infrastructure in your
school or system. Engage your community in discussion about the demonstrated
outcomes and the cost benefit resulting from the investment.

C O NC LUS IO N

In leading schools into the digital age, principals and education system
officers need to understand the digital technology they will be working
with, and maintain oversight of that technology as developments occur.
In his bestselling book, The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman (2006)
uses the concept of ‘triple convergence’ to explain the rapidly changing and
powerful forces shaping global economics and politics (see also Chapter 1).

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He explains triple convergence as the coming together of new players from

various parts of the world, particularly China and India, on a new playing
field largely constructed from recent developments in digital technology,
developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration as they grow
more and more accustomed to using that technology.
Friedman goes on to predict that:

Giving so many people access to all these tools of collaboration, along with
the ability through search engines and the Web to access billions of pages
of raw information, ensures that the next generation of innovations will come
from all over Planet Flat. The scale of the global community that is soon
going to be able to participate in all sorts of discovery and innovation is
something the world has simply never seen before. (p. 212)

These predictions have tremendous implications for education and

the work of educational leaders. The message from them is to engage
broadly and deeply with digital technology. The future of your systems and
schools—and, more importantly, the life chances of your students—depend
on it.

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 CHAPTER 5
F O S T E R I N G D I G I T A L LY
BASED TEACHING AND
L E A R N I N G : S T R AT E G I C
C O N S I D E R AT I O N S

Gl en n Fi nger

How can teaching and learning be enriched by the digital technologies

becoming available to students in their homes, their classrooms and their
everyday lives?
This is a strategic challenge for teachers and education policy makers,
and one for which the stakes are high—in terms of the outcomes for
students, the expectations and the professional status of teachers, and the
levels of investment in technology by schools, systems and governments.
In this chapter, three key strategic considerations are discussed. These
are: the changing expectations of teachers associated with the introduction
of new technologies; the ways to enable more effective usage of digital
technologies (DT); and the new understandings of the relationship
between emerging technologies and theories of learning described under
the general label of ‘connectivism’ (Siemens 2004). This concept suggests
that technology is, in fact, altering the way people think and learn. From a
connectivist perspective, learning to ‘know how’ and ‘know what’ is being
supplemented by learning to ‘know where’.
Achieving ‘digital take-off’, whereby these strategic considerations are
taken into account and the opportunities provided by the digital mode are

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effectively harnessed to enrich teaching and learning, requires different

thinking about the nature of learning, effective teaching practices, and the
structure and operation of schools. In short, it requires understanding and
vision—not only of the potential of the technology and outcomes that one
wants to achieve with it, but also of the process or journey to be undertaken
to achieve those outcomes.
This metaphor of ‘the journey’, replete with roadmaps, signposts,
strategic intents and principles, is a powerful descriptor of the contemporary
context faced by school leaders, system officers and education policy
makers. Where are we now? Where do we want to go? And, how will we
get there? These aspects of this journey are examined in some detail in the
latter sections of this chapter.

NE W TE CH N O LO GIE S , N E W EXPEC TAT IONS OF

T E AC H E R S IN A D IGITAL W ORLD

In its Harnessing Technology review assessing the progress and impact of

technology in school education, the British Government digital education
authority Becta (2007, p. 71), concluded, ‘there is a continuing need to find
effective ways to realise the full benefits of technology for the education
system’.
This challenge is not new and it reflects a familiar pattern with the
introduction of new technologies in school settings. Some years ago, issues
associated with the uptake of new technology were highlighted in the
book, Oversold and Underused by Larry Cuban (2001). Despite significant
increases in the provision of computers and Internet access for students
and teachers in American schools, Cuban reported that:

Two decades after the introduction of personal computers ...., with more and
more schools being wired, and billions of dollars being spent, less than two
of every ten teachers are serious users of computers in their classrooms
(several times a week). Three to four are occasional users (about once a
month). The rest—four to five teachers of every ten teachers—never use
the machines for instruction.

(Cuban, 2000, p. xx)

His criticism went further in lamenting the limited impact that

technology had had (at least to that point) in supporting new forms of
teaching practice, in stating:

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When the type of use is examined, these powerful technologies end up

being used most often for word processing and low-end applications in
classrooms that maintain rather than alter existing teaching practices.

(Cuban, 2000, p. xx)

On the other hand, we have witnessed some remarkable changes out-

side the classroom over the last few years. These have to do with the ways
people are accessing information, communicating in networks, publishing,
and creating and sharing knowledge using digital technologies. For instance,
according to Wikipedia, MySpace is attracting new registrations at a rate of
230 000 per day, and ‘as of December 18, 2007, there are over 300 million
accounts’ (Wikipedia, 2008a). In a similar vein, Wikipedia reported that
more than 2.7 billion Google searches are performed each month. As well
as providing access to more than 25 billion websites and 1.3 billion images
in 2006, and growing daily, Google provides an extensive array of tools and
services (see Wikipedia, 2008b). To check these claims, I recommend that you
visit YouTube and search for ‘Shift happens’.
These statistics indicate that we are witnessing some profound changes
in the ways people are using digital technologies. In light of the proliferation
of Web 2.0 technologies, including wikis and blogs (see Wikipedia, 2008c)
and the emergence of Web 3.0 technologies (see Wikipedia, 2008d), it has
been predicted that there will be as much change in the next three decades
of the twenty-first century as there has been in the last three centuries
(NSBA, 2002).
These new technologies have been accompanied by new expectations
for teachers. For example, in the Australian state of Queensland, the Smart
Classrooms Professional Development Framework (Queensland Department
of Education, Training and the Arts, 2006) is requiring teachers to develop
evidence so that they can obtain their ICT Certificate. Teachers can then
progress to achieve the ICT Pedagogical Licence, and finally to the ICT
Pedagogical Licence, Advanced level. According to the Department of
Education, Training and the Arts (DETA), the Smart Classrooms Professional
Development Framework is designed to provide:
• clear expectations for schools and teachers about how ICT can be used
effectively to support and extend student learning
• assistance for teachers to assess their practices in using ICT
• pathways for teachers to build their professional knowledge, practice,
values and relationships in making ICT integral to learning. (DETA,
2006)

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Another example of the growing profile being given to incorporating

ICT is that the student teachers with whom I work are being asked to
demonstrate the alignment of their developing knowledge, skills and
attributes with the Queensland College of Teachers (QCT) Professional
Standards for Teachers (2006). The search for ICT in those standards reveals
that ICT is mentioned 28 times, including in statements and expectations
such as:

Of paramount importance is the need for education to equip students with

the skills required to learn, transfer learning, use ICT, contribute to teams,
manage change and be self-aware.

(QCT, 2006, p. 3)

Teachers design and deliver learning experiences, for individuals and

groups, that employ a range of developmentally appropriate and flexible
teaching, learning and assessment strategies and resources in information
and communication technology (ICT) enriched environments.

(QCT, 2006, p. 6)

Along with shifts in expectations by those responsible for teacher

registration, professional learning and pre-service teacher education in
Australia, we are also seeing more explicit reference to the value and place
of ICT in statements by international and national education authorities and
agencies over recent times. Education policy makers and practitioners are
being called upon to adopt a ‘futures perspective’ that involves the use of
new and emerging technologies in envisioning and enacting those futures.
For example, the 1998 UNESCO World Education Report, Teachers
and Teaching in a Changing World, in describing some radical implications
of the new information and communication technologies for conventional
teaching and learning, predicts ‘the transformation of the teaching-learning
process and the way teachers and learners gain access to knowledge and
information’ (UNESCO, 2002, p. 10).
The New Zealand Ministry for Education (2003, p. 7) adopts a similar
tone in explaining that creating a learning culture for a knowledge society
can imply:
• changes to traditional relationships among teachers, learners and
communities
• increasing demands for flexibility in meeting learners’ aspirations, and
• new approaches to school organisation and management.

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The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) reinforces

this view in stating that:

All students should have the opportunity to attend dynamic, high-quality

schools designed to meet the challenges of the Digital Age. The implications
for pedagogy, teacher and student roles, curriculum, assessment, infra-
structure, and the community are significant.

(NCREL, 2003, p. 11)

Inherent in these statements is the notion of transformation of schooling

to meet the demands of the so-called ‘knowledge age’. These demands are
placing new expectations on teachers, particularly around the use of ICT in
their teaching practice.
How teachers go about incorporating ICT can be imagined as a
process of moving through certain developmental stages. One way of
conceptualising these stages has been proposed by Trinidad, Newhouse
and Clarkson (2006). The stages are sequenced in terms of inaction,
investigation, application, and then by movement through a ‘critical use
border’ to integration and transformation, as shown in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Stages of teacher development

STAGE DESCRIPTION
Inaction There is a general lack of action and/or interest.
Investigation The teacher has developed an interest in using ICT with students
and is beginning to act on this interest.
Application The teacher is regularly using ICT with students and knows how
to do so competently and confidently.
Critical use border
Integration The use of ICT becomes critical to the support of the learning
environment and the opportunity for students to achieve learning
outcomes through the learning experiences provided.
Transformation The teacher is able to take on leadership roles (formal and
informal) in the use of ICT and be knowledgeably reflective on its
integration by themselves and others.

(Source: Trinidad, Newhouse & Clarkson 2006)

The OECD (2005), in its report, Are students ready for a technology-rich
world? What PISA studies tell us, indicated that:

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ICT is an important part of the policy agendas of OECD countries, with

profound implications for education … because ICT can facilitate new forms
of learning. (p. 3)

The OECD also reported that:

On average in OECD countries, students with available computers to use at

home performed substantially better in terms of Mathematics proficiency
using PISA’s six level proficiency scale for Mathematics. (pp. 54–55)

One example of a current strategy related to these calls from international

agencies and governments is the enhancing Missouri’s Instructional
Networked Teaching Strategies (eMINTS) initiative being implemented in
Missouri, USA. The strategy is founded on the desire to ensure that significant
investments in technology translate into improved student performance.
eMINTS classrooms are equipped with teachers’ laptops, interactive
whiteboards, data projectors, teacher workstation computers, digital cameras,
scanners and printers. It aims to promote higher academic performance and
better understanding of the world by students through encouraging teachers
and students to collaborate in the use of multimedia tools (eMINTS, 2007).
Evidence from studies of the eMINTS initiative indicate that third-
and fourth-grade eMINTS students are achieving statistically significant
higher scores on statewide tests for Missouri than students not enrolled
in eMINTS. Further, these studies are showing that eMINTS is working
to ‘close the gap’ in student achievement. The differences in test scores
of students in certain subgroups (special education, low income, Title 1)
participating in eMINTS are reduced by up to half of the difference usually
attributable to their subgroup classification (eMINTS, 2007).

E- L EAR N IN G APPL ICATION S : NEW T OOLS FOR

T E AC H IN G AN D LE AR N IN G

Some ways in which digital technologies can be used to support teaching

and learning are summarised below:
• Communication—email, web conferencing, Internet telephony,
desktop conferencing, WebCT and Blackboard
• Course marketing and administration—online course promotion,
dynamic web registration, and real-time financial transactions
• Collaboration and networking—involvement in discussion forums,
virtual classrooms, groupware, websites for any time and any place

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collaboration, with course designs and flexible learning options to take

advantage of networks (for example, students with teachers, with peers
and with other online communities)
• Student publishing and promotion—digital online publishing
through ePortfolios as stories of personal learning and life experience,
documents sent as email attachments, use and personalisation of
websites, use of browsers, multimedia and hypermedia resource
development, use of ICT for employment applications, self- and
organisational marketing
• Research—finding information through web-based search engines,
CD-ROM and DVD information resources, using ICT tools to access,
retrieve, store and display resources (including text, audio and video)
from research libraries, online databases and electronic journals
• Virtual and managed learning environments—involving web-based
learning management systems (LMS), video conferencing, webcasting,
interactive assessments, student performance tracking, specialised
software for tutorials, and customised reporting systems.
(adapted from Roffe, 2004)

One of the potential benefits associated with the use of e-learning

applications is the personalisation of learning for the student. This can
involve enhanced ‘one-to-one’ as well as ‘one-to-many’ forms of commun-
ication, in either synchronous or asynchronous mode. These applications
can allow greater opportunity for students to interact with teachers,
with peers and with others in circumstances that are conducive for their
learning. When these forms of ICT are linked to student background
details and interests, and then with learning resources and course designs,
the possibilities are seriously enlivening for the students—and also for
their teachers!

N E W L EAR N IN G TH R O UGH DIG ITAL

TE C H N OL O GIE S : CON N E CT IVISM

Established theories of learning such as behaviorism, cognitivism, instructi-

vism, constructivism and social constructivism have each been explored in
terms of their implications for the use of ICT. For example, from a constructivist
perspective, Jonassen (1999) argues that ICT can be used to facilitate
meaningful learning experiences that are active, constructive, collaborative,
intentional, complex, contextual, conversational, and reflective.

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More recently however, Siemens (2004) has argued that the use of
the WWW, the Internet, databases, spreadsheets and visual presentation
software tools, and the associated proliferation and easier access to
information and communication through a networked, digital world is
altering the ways that people think and learn. He argues that the ‘know
how’ and ‘know what’ dimensions, characteristic of most approaches to
learning, is being supplemented by the ‘know where’ dimension; that is,
the understanding of where to find the knowledge needed. He proposes
the concept of connectivism to explain this phenomenon (see http://www.
elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm).
Some key principles of connectivism are:
1 Learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions.
2 Learning is a process of connecting information sources.
3 Capacity to ‘know more’ is more critical than what is currently known.
4 Nurturing and maintaining connections are needed to facilitate
continual learning.
5 Ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core
skill.
6 Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all
connectivist learning activities.
The theory of connectivism proposed by Siemens has implications for
curriculum, for pedagogy, and for assessment. To explain how connectivism
may be applied to various teaching and learning settings, he has established
wikis, blogs and discussion forums at http://www.connectivism.ca/.
So far we have covered the emerging policy context, the rising
expectations on teachers and the stages they go through in using ICT, some
possibilities associated with various e-learning applications, and some
recent insights of learning theory related to the use of ICT. I would now
like to share some ideas on planning for the development of digitally based
teaching and learning in your school or system. I use the metaphor of the
‘ICT journey’, and propose a few ‘roadmaps’ and ‘signposts’, along with
some strategic intents and principles to give you guidance along the way.

S TR ATE GIC PL AN N IN G: R O A DMAPS, SIG NPOST S

A N D IN TE N TS

Predicting the future of ICT based upon current trends is a tricky business.
We know from history that there have been some well-documented and

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spectacularly incorrect predictions about new technologies. For example, in

The Experts Speak: The definitive compendium of authoritative misinformation
(Cerf & Navasky, 1984), the editor in charge of business books for Prentice
Hall in 1957 stated: ‘I have traveled the length and breadth of this country
and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing
is a fad that won’t last out the year.’
Predictions based upon existing trends are always limited by what has
already been experienced. What if the technologies as we have known
them are radically superseded? In such circumstances, trends have little
predictive value.
An alternative way of considering the future is through the
conversations and language that people use to talk about it. For example,
in Educational Futures: Dominant and contesting visions, Milojević (2005)
analyses the ways in which notions of the future circulate in the media
and policy, research and academic literature as contemporary discourses.
Through historical analysis of educational policy and change within OECD
nations, Milojević notes that the ICT discourse is one of five contemporary
discourses, with others being the globalisation, feminist, indigenous and
spiritual discourses. Citing the dominance of the ICT discourse, Milojević
calls for a shift in thinking from considering responses to technological
change to the possibilities of creating desirable futures. As a consequence,
we should not only see ourselves operating within an ICT discourse that
requires us to predict the future and respond in ways largely determined
by technology, but to envision where we want to go, and then develop the
strategies to get there (Inayatullah, 1995).
Taking up the challenge to create a desired future requires planning for
change rather than merely responding to demands and expectations. The
concept of a policy ‘roadmap’, takes into account the levels of uncertainty
associated with predicting the future. Rather than a ‘blueprint’ designed
around firm assumptions and logical rational sequences, the ‘roadmap’
provides a more flexible and useful means for anticipating and planning
for futures that cannot be totally foreseen.
Current policy roadmaps in education are being informed by trends.
For example, recent trends evidenced in American, Australian and New
Zealand schools have been identified by the Milken Exchange on Techno-
logy Education as follows:

States are establishing technology standards for students. If the standards

are to have an impact, reliable assessments must be developed and
implemented.

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Schools are beginning to use learning technology, but most use it to

automate learning rather than to bring students unique learning opportunities
never before possible.
Significant funds are being invested in schools, especially those with
disadvantaged youth, yet a digital divide based on demographics exists
between schools.
Schools and classrooms are rapidly getting wired, but in many cases
the connections are not yet robust or high-speed; and
The student-to-computer ratio in schools is decreasing, but with that
improvement come the challenges of obsolescence and maintenance.
(Source: METE, 2005, pp. 3–5)

On the basis of these trends, a series of action plans were proposed

by METE, (2005, p. 27) for achieving the preferred future and the vision
of ‘transforming education in the context of a knowledge-based, global
age’. These plans built upon the ‘Seven Dimensions for Gauging Progress
in Learning Technology’ proposed by Lemke and Coughlin (1998) for
transforming school systems to become ‘high-performance enterprises
that bring world-class educational opportunities for students in this digital
age’ (METE, 2005, p. 27). The seven dimensions are:
1 Learners
2 Learning environments
3 Professional competency
4 System capacity
5 Community connections
6 Technology capacity, and
7 Accountability.
These dimensions are seen as the key components of the ‘roadmap’
to assist students to live, learn and work successfully in a digital
communication age. According to METE (2005, p. 27), life in the digital
age will require that students have high academic standards, technological
fluency, communication skills, interpersonal skills, information literacy,
independence in learning and critical thinking abilities.
Another example of a policy roadmap is presented in the Becta (2005)
review Evidence on the Progress of ICT in Education. This review reported on
the progress of the British Government’s (DfES, 2004) ‘Five Year Strategy
for Children and Learners’, in terms of infrastructure developments,
educational content, institutional development and learning and teaching.
Four key areas of impact were addressed: the learner, the educational
workforce, educational institutions, and the education system as a whole.

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Similarly in New Zealand, the Digital Horizons: Learning through ICT

initiative developed by the New Zealand Ministry of Education (2003) uses
a framework for action built around the following areas: learners, teachers,
leaders, Maori, families, communities, businesses and other stakeholders,
curriculum and learning resources, and infrastructure.
These policy initiatives have much in common. While each initiative
can be understood as a distinctive ‘roadmap’ for its particular jurisdiction,
there are some common elements, or signposts, which identify a focus
for action and provide direction for shaping the future. These elements/
signposts are people, content and services, infrastructure, and policy and
regulatory framework; and are presented in Table 5.2.

Table 5.2 Signposts for a roadmap for ICT futures

SIGNPOSTS SUPPORTING SOURCES

People People (MCEETYA 2000); Learners (NZ Ministry of Education
2003; Milken Exchange on Technology Education 2005); Teachers
(NZ Ministry of Education 2003); Professional competency (Milken
Exchange on Technology Education 2005); Leaders, Maori,
families, communities, businesses and other (NZ Ministry of
Education 2003); Community connections (Milken Exchange on
Technology Education 2005); Learning and teaching (Becta 2005);
Institutional development (Becta 2005)
Content and Content and services (MCEETYA 2000); Curriculum and learning
services resources (NZ Ministry of Education 2003); Educational content
(Becta 2005)
Infrastructure Infrastructure (MCEETYA 2000; NZ Ministry of Education 2003;
Becta 2005); Learning environments, System capacity, Technology
capacity (Milken Exchange on Technology Education 2005)
Policy and Supporting policies, Enabling regulation (MCEETYA 2000);
regulatory Accountability (Milken Exchange on Technology Education 2005)
framework

(Source: Finger et al. 2007, p. 298)

The signposts and the associated policy resources can be used to assist
schools and school systems to develop the roadmaps for their ICT futures.
A further aspect of planning in ICT for schools and systems concerns
questions of purpose and intent. As you plan, embark and continue on
the ICT journey, it is important to understand and appreciate what you

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intend to achieve. With this in mind, the four strategic intents are proposed:
understand new context, create new learning environments, identify
teachers’ roles and importance, and meet people’s needs related to use of
technology. These are explained below.

S TR ATEG IC IN T ENT: U N DER S TA ND T H E NEW

C ONTEXT
Consider the contexts in which students and teachers are immersed and
the pervasiveness of media and related digital technologies.
Considerations of digital natives and digital immigrants (Prensky,
2001; Barlow, in Tunbridge, 1995) are helpful in understanding the
‘growing gap between children’s experience of computers in their two
environments of home and school’ (Mumtaz, 2000, p. 347). On the
other hand, while access and use of ICT have improved in schools,
teachers may resist ICT-related change that disturbs their traditional
ways of operating (Hodas, 1993; Downes & Fatouros, 1995; Cuban,
1986). New educational thinking about the different contexts that
constitute students’ and teachers’ worlds is desperately needed.

S TR ATEG IC IN T ENT: CREAT E NEW LEA RNI NG

E NV I R O NM ENT S
Use new and emerging ICT to create effective learning environments.
These environments should be flexible, enable a diverse range
of pedagogies, be characterised by authentic interdisciplinary or
transdisciplinary curriculum approaches, and use world-class digital
learning resources. These new environments should support students
to shape and respond to the ‘What if?’ questions in ways that can bring
their answers to reality and their learning to new levels of commitment
and to dealing with increasing complexity.

S TR ATEG IC IN T ENT: IDENT IF Y T H E RO LES A ND

I MP ORTA NCE O F T EA CHERS
Transform teaching and learning through people, not technology.
The effective use of ICT in learning requires a change from a
traditional didactic, knowledge provider role of the teacher to teacher as
learner and mediator of ICT-assisted learning (Masters & Yelland, 1998;

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Samaras, 1996). Klein et al. (2000) provide definitions and examples of

mediation in referring to focusing (intentionality and reciprocity), affecting
(exciting), expanding (transcendence), encouraging (mediated feeling of
competence), and regulating (mediated regulation of behaviour).

S TR AT EG IC IN T ENT: MEET PEO PLE’ S NEED S

R E L AT ED T O U SE O F T ECH NO LO GY
Recognise the new roles of students and teachers, and the need for new
organisational structures and relationships.
Moving from the traditional classroom of ‘kids in rows’ to more
collegial classrooms, where teaching and learning increasingly occurs
in an online hypertextual, multimedia world, presents new challenges,
difficulties, tensions and needs, which must be addressed.

(adapted from Finger, 2002; Finger et al., 2007)

Table 5.3 ICT strategies associated with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

NEEDS ICT STRATEGIES

Self- Use new technologies creatively
actualisation Explore new technologies
Be innovative and enterprising
Empower students and teachers
Esteem Celebrate the acquisition of new knowledge, new skills and using
new software
Publish and display student work
Participate in website and multimedia design challenges and
competitions
Employ computer mentors, student tutors, class experts
Capitalise upon student and teacher knowledge and skills
Belonging Collaborate on Internet projects
Engage in team multimedia planning, design and production
Network with peers, teachers, students and the local and wider
community
Safety Support students and teachers with technophobia and cyberphobia
and in issues of appropriate use of ICT

(Source: Finger 2002, p. 138)

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An approach for identifying and addressing students’ and teachers’

needs associated with the use of technology has been developed by Norwood
(2006) using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Various ICT-related strategies are
matched against the various levels of need, as presented in Table 5.3.
Along with the strategies to meet these levels of need, as shown in
Table 5.3, are a range of administrative and policy supports that are
essentially practical in nature and include appropriate infrastructure, access
and technical support as well as sufficient time allowances for training and
professional development.

S TR ATE GIC PR IN CIPL E S FO R T HE ICT JOURNEY

The policy roadmaps, signposts and intents that have been presented to this
point are designed to guide the strategic planning process. Underpinning
these elements is a series of five key principles that can serve to ground the
‘ICT journey’ undertaken by schools and systems.

P rinc iple 1: R ecogni s e t he i m po r t a n c e o f p e o p le

Educational activity must be seen as a human endeavour. Successful
transformation of teaching and learning will always be enabled and judged
by people. However, it is the technology that is too often foregrounded
rather than the learning.
A technology-centred approach misses the point. Instead, we need to
promote people dreaming, imagining, creating, testing, critiquing, debating
and telling their personal stories of learning, of challenges met and
overcome, and of developing appropriate, innovative design solutions.

P rinc iple 2: D ev el op an educat io n a l r a t io n a le f o r

ICT use
ICT strategies need a good educational rationale. The limitation of techno-
centric approaches is a lack of an appropriate guiding educational rationale.
An educational rationale is based on an informed awareness of learning
theories and effective teaching practices, and how these can be effectively
integrated and supported by digital technologies to improve outcomes for
students.
Basing plans on a good educational rationale means asking questions
such as ‘What are we trying to achieve?’ and ‘Why?’, and then using the

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answers to inform technology purchases and infrastructure planning,

rather than the technology determining the educational activity. Relevant
literature on the use of ICT to inform the educational rationale includes
the use of the computer as tutor, tool and tutee (Taylor, 1980, p. 5), Type I
and Type II applications (Maddux et al., 2001, pp. 99–120), and productivity
tools and mindtools (Jonassen, 1999, p. 4).

P ri nc iple 3: Adopt a t echno- ch o ic e p e r s p e c t ive f o r I CT

The techno-choice perspective (Sachs, Russell & Chataway, 1990, p. 53)
acknowledges Principles 1 and 2 recognising the importance of people,
and of using an educational rationale to guide decision making with
ICT. Adopting a techno-choice perspective differs from the technological
determinist perspective that views technology as linear and deterministic.
It also differs from the social determinist perspective that assumes that
technology is dependent on society.
A techno-choice perspective encourages educators to ‘evaluate the
appropriateness and effectiveness of available technologies, deciding when
and how to use them with their students’ (MCEETYA, 2005, p. 4). This is
consistent with Roblyer’s (2006) call for teachers, rather than others, to
determine the relative advantage of using ICT. A techno-choice perspective,
supported by the development of an educational rationale provides a solid
platform for informing decisions about infrastructure, hardware, software,
and other ICT purchases.

P ri nc iple 4: D ev el op an I C T p la n a s p a r t o f a n o ve r a ll
sc hool o r s ys t em dev el opm en t s t r a t e g y
Strategic planning in ICT needs to be linked to the overall school or system
development strategy. The following essential conditions are suggested by
UNESCO (2002) for achieving the desired alignment:
• The creation of a shared systemic vision for ICT and education that will
afford an understanding of, commitment to and sense of advocacy for
the implementation of technology at all levels within and across the
system.
• Policy that supports and does not hinder the implementation of ICT in
education.
• Adequate access to digital technologies, the Internet and WWW needs
to be available to teachers and students wherever and whenever they
choose to learn.

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• Technical assistance to use and maintain the technology resources at a

high standard is required.
• Teachers and students need access to high-quality, meaningful and
culturally responsive digital content.
• Teachers need the knowledge and skills to use modern digital
technologies and resources to facilitate student-centred approaches to
learning for all students.
In summary, an effective plan should incorporate those essential
conditions and be based upon the recognition of the importance of people
(Principle 1), guided by a defensible educational rationale (Principle 2), and
the determination of the relative advantage of ICT guided by a techno-
choice perspective (Principle 3).

P rinc iple 5: I C T i ni t i at i v es s hou ld in f o r m a n d

be i nformed by res earch
ICT initiatives should both inform and be informed by research, and
planning in ICT needs to build in a research component.
MCEETYA (2003, p.4) suggests that research can contribute to edu-
cation by building on national and global education research priorities,
anticipating emerging trends and priorities and creating new possibilities
for learning. To illustrate this, the AARE 2005 Conference Symposium
‘Measuring the integration of ICT in the classroom’ brought together some
contemporary Australian approaches being developed to measure the
integration of ICT use (Finger, Jamieson-Proctor & Watson, 2006; Fitzallen
& Brown, 2006; Lloyd, 2006; Trinidad, Newhouse & Clarkson, 2006). At
the symposium, the methodology used to evaluate the Queensland
Government’s ICT Curriculum Integration Performance Measurement
Instrument was presented. This instrument is available for download and
use at http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/strategy/sp_census_
learning.html.
The Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts
(2006) explains that the tool enables teachers and schools to gauge the
extent, depth and quality of their ICT curriculum integration strategies. By
using the tool, schools can:
• identify the current and preferred level of ICT curriculum integration in
each of their classrooms
• identify each individual class’s access to ICT, and
• generate discussion and think strategically about the best ways to use
and integrate ICT into the classroom.

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 FO ST E R I N G D I GI TAL LY B A S E D T E A C H ING A ND L E A R NING

M AK IN G IT H APPE N

This chapter has presented some strategic considerations for fostering

digitally based teaching and learning through proposing the use of
roadmaps, signposts, strategic intents and principles. These considerations
can assist educational leaders in addressing the increasing expectations of
teachers and students working in a digital, networked world.
This is important work as we proceed into the twenty-first century and
I wish you well as you map and continue on your ICT journeys. The ulti-
mate challenge and test of the effectiveness of the journey lies in the extent
to which we can create inspirational and transformational opportunities
of learning for students.

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 CHAPTER 6
C R E AT I N G A N E X U S
BETWEEN HOMES
AND SCHOOLS

Mal Lee and M ichael Gaf fney

Digital technology in students’ homes plays a significant part in their

learning. Internet access, DVD and MP3 players, multi-function mobile
phones and various forms of Web 2.0 social networking tools are providing
powerful home-based platforms for young people to launch into all types
of learning and exploration—for better or for worse. As the connectivity,
applications and gadgets in the home become more prevalent and
sophisticated, the need for schools and education system authorities to
recognise the place of home technology in the education of our school-age
children will become more and more important.
The power of emerging technologies presents new challenges and
opportunities for schools, parents and students to create stronger links
with one another, to communicate, to collaborate, and to build vibrant and
effective networked learning communities. Constructing an enlivening
nexus between the school and the home involving the tools of digital
technology is a key element of leading schools into the digital age.
In this chapter we will discuss the growing digital divide between
schools and homes and give some historical perspective to assist in
considerations of how this divide may be addressed. Second, we will outline
what some governments are doing to address the related issue of the digital
divide between ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’ homes. We then

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explore recent findings about student learning outside school using digital
technologies. Finally we will suggest some strategies for how schools can
go about developing a new nexus with the homes of their students.

TH E D IGITAL DIV IDE BE TWEEN HOMES AND

S C H O OL S

We are witnessing a widening gap between the digital learning opportun-

ities available to students in their homes and in their leisure time compared
with those in most classrooms. This was reported by the Illinois Institute of
Design (2007) in their recent study, which showed that:

Kids lead high-tech lives outside school and decidedly low-tech lives inside
school. This new ‘divide’ is making the activities inside school appear to
have less real world relevance to kids. (p. 24)

From the advent of television, the level and use of instructional

technology available to the young in the average home began to exceed
that in the average classroom. The launch of the World Wide Web in 1994,
the hype surrounding the creation of the ‘information super highway’, the
release of free web browsers and the popularisation of email had dramatic
effects on the take-up of digital technology in homes in most developed
countries , particularly those with school-age children. From the mid 1990s,
parents were increasingly of the view that the ownership of a personal
computer and web access would enhance their children’s education and
life chances. This was well before most educators had seriously considered
the desirability of these new technologies. In Australia in 1995, 59 per cent
of families had a personal computer. (ACMA, 2007, p. 27)
At the same time, the main applications software for the computers
(including for word processing, presentations, electronic communication or
spreadsheets) became easier and more reliable for use in the home.
While schools were struggling to acquire computers in the 1990s, they
were becoming commonplace in the homes of the young (Lee & Winzenried,
2008). Some years back, former American Vice-President Al Gore observed
that ‘when it comes to telecommunications services, schools are the most
impoverished institutions in society’ (http://artcontext.com/calendar/1997/
superhig.html). By 1996, the average power of the personal computer in
the home exceeded those in businesses for the first time according to the
IDC, the global market intelligence firm.

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Along with developments in personal computing came enhancements

in telecommunications. By the late 1990s, homes were beginning to
secure faster Internet access and benefit from a rapidly developing mobile
phone industry. At this time, most youth in the developed nations had in
their homes not only ready access to all of the instructional technology
that had been projected to ‘revolutionise teaching’—be it radio, video or
television, but they also had access to the latest digital information and
communications technology.
This led American futures author Don Tapscott (1998) to label the
generation of young people at that time as the ‘Net Generation’, as young
people who found it natural to use all manner of technology and expected
their schools to use the same kind of technology in their everyday teaching.
The Real Time study into the use of information and communication
technology in Australia conducted by Meredyth et al. in 1999 reported on
their survey of the forms of technology found in Australian homes. The
results are presented in Table 6.1. This was a national study commissioned
by the Federal Department of Education that involved all Australian states
and territories.

Table 6.1 Forms of technology in the home

Television 98%
Radio 97%
CD or cassette player 96%
Calculator 94%
Computer 82%
Video player 78%
Printer 75%
Mobile phone 53%
Modem 41%
Video camera 21%
SEGA or Nintendo game 21%
Fax 20%
Scanner 11%

Since the survey the range of technology in the home has continued
to expand, become more sophisticated, allow greater integration of the
digital technologies and has generally fallen in price. For example, by 2007,

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according to a recent study by the Australian Communications and Media

Authority (ACMA), over 90 per cent of Australian students had a computer
at home with Internet access. In other results from their study, ACMA
(2007, p. 7) found that, in comparing 2007 to 1995:
• computers had become ‘standard issue’ in family households, with 98
per cent ownership in 2007, compared with 59 per cent in 1995
• access to the Internet at home had evolved from a rarity in 1995 (7 per
cent) to being commonplace in 2007 (91 per cent)
• games consoles are also commonplace in 2007.
With regard to other indicators of ‘digital technology provision’ in the
home, ACMA (2007, p. 49) reported that in 2007, the average Australian
family household had the following:
• three mobile phones
• three televisions
• two computers
• two DVD players
• two portable MP3/MP4 players
• one VCR
• two games consoles.
This means that an increasing majority of Australian school students
have the use of a flat screen TV, a CD and DVD recorder, a sound system,
digital camera, MP3 or MP4 digital player, USB drive, multifunction phone
(with digital camera, of course), digital games machine and a plethora of
application software. The ACMA study (2007) found that students were
using that technology much of their free time—for example, listening to
their iPod, texting their friends, using the chat facility, creating their own
podcasts, inhabiting Second Life or preparing multimedia presentations
for YouTube.
Of particular note was the finding that ‘over 40 per cent of children
and young people have some of their own material on the Internet and a
third has a social networking site. From the age of 14 onwards, 70 per cent
or more of teenagers engaged in some form of web authorship’. (ACMA,
2007, p. 9). For the first time in human history, the young of the world
are able to publish their work to a global audience. The implications for
teaching and learning are immense.
A recent related study conducted in Australia by AAPT (2007) found
that eight out of 10 Australians owned a mobile phone. Significantly, 75 per
cent had some type of Internet connection. Within the 16–34 age group, 80
per cent were found to keep their mobile or cell phone on 24 hours a day,
and on average spend 2.4 hours each day on the Internet.

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In contrast, the most commonly used instructional technologies in

schools in 2007 were the pen, paper and the teaching board, be it black,
green or white. Where the young in the home are learning with the latest
digital technology, in the classroom they are in the main being taught with
the tools of the nineteenth century or earlier (Lee & Winzenried, 2008).
The point is that the digital divide between home and school is begin-
ning to affect student engagement in learning at school. Too many students
are bored, or quietly disengaged. Too few are being given opportunities to
develop and realise their talents. That is why schools must change.

T H E D IG I TAL DIV IDE AM ON G HOMES

Despite growing access to digital technology in the developed world, there

remains a small but significant number of the young people who either
do not have ready Internet access at home or only have low-level dial-up
access that precludes their use of the broadband-based offerings.
How great and significant is the divide is a moot point, with the trend
line in most developed countries suggesting the pronounced divisions of
the 1990s lessening as the technology becomes ever cheaper; however,
in a number of developed nations there are significant cultural groupings
where that trend is not apparent.
The aforementioned Australian study by ACMA (2007), for example,
concludes:

Home Internet access seems to be partly a function of means—94% of

households with incomes more than $35,000 are online, compared with
75% of those on less than $35,000. (p. 5)
An analysis of household income suggests that electronic media and
communications devices are important to all families, even when their
income is low. (p. 6)

The point remains there is likely to be families where the young will not
be ‘competing’ on a level playing field and thus it will always be important
to provide some support.
As a means of redressing disadvantage, the British Government
allocated 60 million pounds in the 2007–08 financial year for the ‘Computers
for Pupils’ and ‘Home Access Project’ programs. These programs recognise
the educative power of learning in the home and seek to ensure all school-
age children have a computer and Internet access in their homes. The

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‘Computers for Pupils’ program is designed to help the most disadvantaged

secondary school students improve their education and life skills by putting
a computer into their home. It aims to:

• give these pupils the same opportunities as their peers

• provide the conditions that can contribute towards raising educational
achievement, narrowing the attainment gap and supporting progress
towards these pupils’ targets
• support the personalising of learning by providing access to ICT
whenever or wherever is most appropriate for learning
• encourage the development of ICT skills appropriate to the 21st
century for the pupils and their families.

(UK Treasury Briefing Paper, July 2007

http://www.nfer.ac.uk/research-areas/pims-data/outlines/evaluation-of-the-cfp.cfm)

The approach taken by the British Government builds upon their

education policy paper, Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning
and children’s services released in 2005. It recognises the link between
educational disadvantage and access to digital technology. The government
is arguing that:

Putting computers into the home can motivate pupils to learn, help develop
key ICT and life skills and give them the same opportunities and experiences
as their peers.

(UK Treasury Briefing Paper, July 2007)

S T U D EN T L E AR N IN G OUTSIDE T HE C LASSROOM

Di f f erent w ays of l ear ni ng

The Australian study by the team led by Meredyth (1999) indicates that
most students learn the bulk of their ICT usage skills in the home and
not in the classroom. Comparable studies by Laferrierre (1997), Martinez
and Mead (1988) and Kersteen and Linn (1998) found the same elsewhere
across the developed world.
Today most students not only have better technology and online access,
but also spend more hours using that technology in their homes. Research
on student use of computers in schools in the mid and late 1990s (Lee &
Winzenried, 2008) and Meredyth (1999) found that students were lucky

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 LEA DI NG A DIGI TAL SC HO O L

to use them for an hour a week, while teenage students at home were
spending several hours each day on their computers.
In their Australian Real Time study, Meredyth et al. (1999) found that:

Students tend to acquire their advanced information technology skills at

home rather than at school. Eighty-five per cent of students use computers
outside schools ... There is a significant link between students’ information
technology skills, confidence and enjoyment, their use of computers outside
school, the level of resources in their home and their personal ownership
of resources ... Students who do not use a computer outside school had
relatively poor attainment of information technology skills. (p. xxviii)

In American studies conducted around the same time, Don Tapscott, in

his book Growing Up Digital (1998), observed that for the first time in human
history the young had an understanding of technology that surpassed that
of most of their teachers. Tapscott went on to explain that students were
also acquiring and enhancing their knowledge and skills in a very different
manner to the way in which they were being taught in the schools.
The term ‘chaotic learning’ has been used to describe the learning styles
favoured by the young in their homes (Lee, 2000). Such learning styles are
proposed to include preference for experiential or constructivist learning,
emphasis on play, collegial support, multi-tasking and networking—often
online. The young, like most working online, preferred to learn by ‘jumping
on and off task’, checking out new situations, and returning to the original
task. In other words, as Lee (2000, p. 61) suggests, the young chart their
own courses. Each sets his or her own goals. No teacher determines what
they learn. The concept of ‘chaotic learning’ has been elaborated upon
in the writings of Marc Prensky (2006), and by Oblinger and Oblinger’s
2006 online publication, Educating the ‘Net Generation’ (see http://www.
educause.edu/IsItAgeorIT%3AFirstStepsTowardUnderstandingtheNetGe
neration/6058).

Impac t of Web 2. 0 t echnol ogi es

The recent study by the American-based National School Boards Association
(NSBA, 2007) on American teenage use of the Internet reported that 96
per cent of students with online access use social networking technologies,
such as chatting, texting, blogging, and visiting online communities such
as Facebook, MySpace and Webkinz—and that one of the most common
topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. The
most common education-related topics were found to be ‘college or college

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planning, learning outside of school, and careers, with around fifty per cent
of online students saying they talk specifically about schoolwork’.
In commenting on the report, Executive Director of the National
School Boards Association, Anne L. Bryant, said: ‘There is no doubt that
these online teen hangouts are having a huge influence on how kids
today are creatively thinking and behaving.’ She added: ‘The challenge for
school boards and educators is ... to keep pace with how students are using
these tools in positive ways and consider how they might incorporate this
technology into the school setting.’
Examples from the NSBA study where creative activities and learning
are being supported by social networking internet sites included writing,
art, and contributing to collaborative online projects. Significantly students
indicated that they were engaging in these creative forms of collaboration
and production regardless of whether the activities were related to their
schoolwork.
Further, the NSBA (2007) study reported:

Students are spending almost as much time using social networking

services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens who
use social networking sites, that amounts to about 9 hours a week online,
compared to 10 hours a week watching television.

The findings from this American NSBA study support contentions

about the need for schools to appreciate the kind of learning happening
outside the classroom and in the home.
With the advent of social networking technologies, it is becoming
more feasible than ever before for educational leaders at school and
system levels to recognise the networked, chaotic learning of the young, to
rethink the education offerings delivered through the school, to overcome
the home–school dichotomy, and to consider new models of networked
learning communities. Such communities would incorporate not only the
school and the home, but also would extend beyond these traditional social
institutions and into the real and virtual, local and global community that is
the learning world of young people.
The findings of Illinois Institute of Design study (2007) powerfully
captures this sense of networked learning when they indicate that:

In their lives outside the school, kids increasingly interact in a digital

meritocracy that allows them the opportunity to push themselves to solve
large complex problems or explore personal passions for subjects beyond
the mandated curriculum of schools. (p. 26)

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Recognising the need to build a better home–school nexus is about

keeping schools, as our key socialising and educational institutions, relevant
to the everyday lives of students, and as a consequence increase students’
engagement and learning development. The study by Illinois Institute of
Design (2007) concluded:

The learning experiences of the kids outside school are increasingly

more relevant to modern life than what is learned inside school ... Kids
are increasingly motivated and engaged by what they learn in out-of-school
programs and in their virtual online lives, and mechanisms for capturing and
enabling them must be found. (p. 24)

In essence, these challenges for leaders of digital schools are really

challenges about curriculum relevance and student engagement. An inter-
esting next step will be to work out how students’ learning in the home
and in ‘their networked community’ using digital technologies, can be best
integrated and aligned with the policies and procedures of the ‘high stakes’
student assessment and credentialling bodies—and the expectation of those
who use those assessments and credentials to sort and select students.

D E V E L O P IN G A H O M E –S CH OOL NEXUS

Having presented an overview of the digital divide affecting student access

to digital technology, and types of learning that students are experiencing
through the use of those technologies, it is clear that there are some
significant needs and possibilities. The current digital divide between home
and school cannot be allowed to continue. The question is: How does your
school build the desired nexus between the school and the home?
The authors should hasten to add that at the start of 2008 there was
remarkably little written on this issue. While many schools are ‘dabbling’
in the area, a concerted analysis of the scene, and the best way forward, has
still to be undertaken.
Notwithstanding this, some suggestions for your consideration follow.

Adopt an appropr i at e w hol e- s ch o o l s t r a t e g y

It may well be timely to adopt a formal whole-school or, indeed, education
authority strategy for developing networked school communities that
seeks to marry and, where appropriate, shape and recognise developments
in the home.

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Experience would suggest many schools are ‘dabbling’ with various

home–school links, but often the efforts are sporadic and lack the
involvement of all the key players. Recent consultancy experience reveals
schools where some teachers are actively taking advantage of the techno-
logy and learning in the home, while other teachers are rejecting such
moves on the grounds of equity.

Resea rch t he hom e s cene

Schools need to gain an appreciation of the situation in the students’
homes, the level and nature of the digital technology, how it is used by the
students, the nature of the learning process they use, the skills, attributes
and values they have developed. The aforementioned 2007 studies suggest
the vast majority of families in the developed world are well placed to
operate within a networked learning community and believe such a move
would enhance the education of their children.

Ta l k with parent s
You might ascertain the parents’ aspirations in acquiring the digital
technologies. Parents’ desire to support children’s learning through
purchasing new technologies is widely recognised. For example, by the mid
1990s—as indicated by the IDC market research—most parents perceived
acquiring a computer for their children would improve their life chances.
These findings were reinforced by research undertaken in the use of
interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in a low socioeconomic school (Lee &
Boyle, 2004). We found most parents had acquired a computer and Internet
access for the children to complement teaching with the IWBs. Of note
was that not one of the parents was a tertiary graduate and that they made
the decision of their own volition. While this is just one instance, it does
provide some insight into the thinking of parents that needs to be further
explored.
Those views are still evident today, with the 2007 Australian ACMA
study finding 96 per cent of parents believed Internet use was beneficial.

The most commonly cited benefit of internet use is the learning and the
educational benefits … (ACMA, 2007, p.28)

Always remember, appropriate and realistic advice from principals is

important for parents. They are often as bemused by the ever-changing
scene as teachers!

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Ask the st udent s

Your strategy might involve talking with and listening to your students,
including those who do not have Internet access at home. While students
might be confident and proficient in using the various digital technologies,
they will have various strengths and deficiencies in their developing
knowledge, skills and values. Teachers need to know their students. They
need to be aware of students’ capabilities and attributes, as well as their
hopes and aspirations, to identify how the school can build on the learning
and the technology used in the home.
Students can also be invaluable sources of advice about changes in
various technologies and which are in favour with the different age cohorts.
It is also a good idea to research the scene with them several times a year,
and always with a cross-section of age cohorts.

Coll abora t e w i t h t he t eacher s

Teachers are the most knowledgeable and play the most important role in
students’ learning.
A recent school consultation by the authors brought these consider-
ations into sharp relief. One of the music staff confiscated a Year 11 girl’s
mobile phone. The teacher then decided to see what the student was doing
with her phone. It transpired the girl—a top student—was sending her friends
a pretty raunchy video she had made of herself rapping. The video did not
leave much to the imagination. The principal was asked what she was going
to do about it. Some might say that this is not a school concern. However,
it raised important questions about the role and responsibility that teachers
(and parents) have in educating the young in a digital context, and why it is
important for digital schools to build a constructive home–school nexus.
On a related note, to appreciate the complexity and possibilities of
linking home and school learning more effectively, teachers require a good
working knowledge of the emerging technologies and applications. This
means that school leaders need to also collaborate with teachers on the
design, delivery and support of timely and relevant professional learning.

Open up the i nfr as t r uct ure

While most homes have at least dial-up Internet access, there are still a size-
able number of school and education authority networks that restrict the
nature of use of even the keen teachers and school leaders. Many prevent,
for example, the use of most of the Web 2.0 and social networking services.

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For there to be effective, ever-developing networked learning com-

munities, schools and/or their education authority are going to have to find
the way to expedite the desired widespread use of the school networks. It is
appreciated that there can be network security challenges, but there are also
solutions that the astute network managers can use if obliged to do so. Some
network managers occasionally need to be reminded their role is to facilitate
the business of the organisation, namely the education of the young.

Chec k o ut w hat i s happeni ng in b u s in e s s a n d in d u s t r y

In shaping your approach to developing the home–school nexus, you need
to be aware that work practices in business and industry are being impacted
at least as significantly as the learning in the home by changing digital
technology. In his recent work, Wikinomics (http://www.wikinomics.com/),
Tapscott (2007) explores how industry is making use of Web 2.0 tools, such
as wikis and blogs and the related online mass collaboration opportunities
these present.
The impact of Web 2.0 tools on school and educational system
operations—for example, in areas such as program evaluation and policy
development—is still in the early stages but can be expected to grow
quickly over coming years. The implications of Web 2.0 technology deserve
close consideration by those wishing to develop the home–school nexus
within these contexts.

C O NC LUS IO N

The development of a new nexus between the home and the school, using
the tools available through digital technology, would represent an historic
shift in the nature of schooling.
Most of the digital technology desired by the schools already exists and
is being used every day in the home. What is more, student learning in the
home can provide schools with valuable insights into how best to educate
the young. Therefore, it seems timely that school leaders and educational
policy makers give more consideration to developing and using the home–
school nexus. Such work can inform teachers and parents about student
background knowledge and learning styles, assist school and system policy
makers to make prudent decisions about investment in digital technology,
and, as a consequence, serve to improve student engagement in school and
their learning achievements.

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 CHAPTER 7
L E A D I N G A D I G I TA L
SCHOOL: A CASE STUDY—
ST LEONARD’S COLLEGE

R o ger Hay ward

I do not think of myself as leading a digital school; I think of myself as leading

a very good school that is getting better. It is a school firmly embedded in
the digital age. It uses a great deal of digital technology. Nevertheless, our
view of ourselves is first and foremost as a very good school.
When I question how well we are doing, the ‘performance indicators’
relate to student outcomes and community acceptance. I use similar per-
formance indicators when I question how well we should be doing. I regularly
ask myself what we should be doing in preparing students for the future.
This chapter looks back on the last eight years of ICT development at St
Leonard’s College to draw conclusions on structures and people that have
made a difference. The College is well resourced and has had a notebook
computer program since 1997. It has made real progress by focusing on its
educational aims and by having excellent educators leading the planning,
supported by excellent IT specialists. The College has deliberately avoided
being at the ‘bleeding edge’. Instead it has positioned itself to learn from
others, while remaining strongly focused on quality outcomes.

T H E C O N TE XT

St Leonard’s College is a school with 1750 students on two campuses. It is

coeducational from Early Childhood to Year 12, with a near perfect gender

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balance throughout. We follow the International Baccalaureate Primary

Years Program (PYP) up to the end of Year 6. We have our home-grown
Middle Years programs—a little different on each campus—followed by a
choice of International Baccalaureate Diploma or Victorian Certificate of
Education (VCE) at Years 11 and 12. The College has strong enrolments and
very long waiting lists at all levels. The demographics are most encouraging
for the future. There is strong retention from year to year. The academic
results, evidenced by the Year 12 indicators, are consistently the best in the
bayside region of the city of Melbourne, and have been throughout this
century. The results of our Year 12 exit surveys each year are very affirming.
In the last two years, the reported dissatisfaction with access to IT dropped
from 2 to 1 per cent.
Parent satisfaction, reported anecdotally, is high. We are a ‘very local’
school—most students travel less than 10 kilometres to either campus. Six
years ago, one Sunday morning, I was partway through a major weekend
home maintenance project when I needed an electric jig saw. I arrived at the
nearest hardware chain-store just as it opened, spent 20 minutes comparing
models (I am no expert on power tools) and selected a basic model to take
to the checkout. The middle-aged man at the till looked at me and said,
‘Roger, that is not the one you need, let me swap it for another.’ He came
back a few seconds later with another jig saw, with more features but a
lower price. It had just gone on special. I was still nonplussed, and he went
on: ‘You don’t know me but I have two daughters at your school. I love the
school; you are all doing great work. This is my third job, I need it to pay
the fees.’ There was no embarrassment or bravado about the statement. We
spoke for a couple of minutes and then I left and went back to my project.
The jig saw did its job well, and I cannot get the conversation out of my
head. It is there as a constant reminder of the responsibility of the College
to deliver the best quality of education it can … while not wasting one cent
of the funds earned by our parents’ third (or second, or first) job.
Old Collegians have very positive attitudes to the school. Reunions
are well attended. Some years ago, the major Melbourne newspaper, The
Age, surveyed university students some years out of school with questions
about how well school prepared them for university. St Leonard’s College
was rated very highly.
Students, parents, prospective parents, Old Collegians, public
examination results, retention rates—the range of performance indicators
suggests we are a very good school, doing what people expect us to do and
doing it well. But I do not want to get hung up on performance indicators.
Are we doing well? Apparently we do. Are we doing what people want us to

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do? Apparently we do. Are we doing what we should be doing? I think so.
The expectations of government, of employers, of education departments,
of universities are all fairly consistent into the future: they want people who
are able to work in teams, communicate well, be lifelong learners, be risk
takers (at least be open to change), be creative and so on.
How does this relate to being a digital school? We live in an age that
can be described as digital, so a good school must be a digital school in
some way. However, a school is not a good school because it is digital. It
is a good school if it is doing the right things and doing them well. How
well are we doing ICT? I am an optimist. I am by nature an early adopter of
technologies. I have a strong sense of responsibility to our students that we
should educate them to thrive as ethical citizens in an unimagined future.
I have a strong sense of duty towards parents who are working hard to pay
our very high tuition fees.
In the last 24 years I have worked in three well-resourced academic
schools, each of which has measured its success very broadly. But our
efforts to use ICT well are, in my opinion, disappointing. At the very
least, they are failing my expectations. I am not alone in this. Under the
headline, ‘A computer revolution? Or £3 billion spent on gloss?’ in the
Times Educational Supplement dated 20 January 2007, it is asserted that ‘…
education researchers have not been able to prove a direct link between
the introduction of ICT and an improvement in standards’. I am usually
disappointed when I visit education technology conferences (typically the
NECC conference in Atlanta in June 2007) because behind the hype and
the universes of possibility, there is not much action on the ground. I have
been using computers in education settings for 25 years in three countries.
Throughout that time, we have put our hardware and software to use in
schools. I cannot shake off a feeling akin to driving around in an Aston
Martin in first gear with the handbrake on and the windscreen partially
obscured. We are clearly not using the full potential of what we have.
I know that my school is doing some IT very well. We have excellent
academic results, our students win prizes in art, music composition, media
and visual communication and design, for which they exercised excellent
computer skills. I know that they enjoy their years at university confident
that they have been well prepared. But our dux of the International
Baccalaureate Diploma a couple of years ago joined a public debate in the
letters pages of The Age with the opinion that our notebook computer
program was a waste of time. (Actually it was his view that any school’s note-
book computer program was a waste of time!) The most consistent complaint

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we get from parents is that student-owned notebooks are a waste of money,

a nuisance to carry to and from school, a distraction and a temptation.
But it is worse than that. I am by training a physical scientist. I know very
little economics, but an economist once told me that the cost of anything is
the sum total of the opportunities you forgo to have it. For convenience, the
cost is usually expressed in dollars and cents. Unless you can resource all
options, then every choice is about what to forgo. The dollars and cents are
just a way of bringing the opportunities into balance. For a family, the dollars
and cents might be the measure of the choice between a family holiday in
Bali or a plasma-screen TV. In school, if I cut our information technology
bill by $1 million, I could afford 20 support staff to assist students with
learning difficulties. ICT choices are not about dollars and cents; they are
about the opportunities we forgo in order to allow them. If I leave the $1
million in the ICT budget, it had better be spent well.
Time comes into the equation in exactly the same way. If we spend
more time in school learning to read, we have less time available to learn to
count. This time pressure is a constant problem in schools and in modern
life. The crowded curriculum reminds us that we are ‘time poor’. So the
time we spend on ICT had better be well spent. I am not suggesting that we
enter into the debate about which is better: 700 notebook computers or 20
support staff. But I am suggesting that we should always judge what we do
in ICT against the most demanding and scrupulous criteria. The time and
money we put into ICT could have been spent elsewhere, so the outcomes
had better be extremely good.

W H AT WOR K S FO R US, AND WHAT HAVE WE

AB AN D O N E D?

As the focus here is St Leonard’s College as a case study, I am not about

to discuss our progress or the success and failures of our talented and
hardworking staff. Rather, I will pick out some of the things that have
worked and some that have not, trying to be as general as possible for all
of our experiences are different, and schools are rarely so similar that one
can import another’s solutions directly. I will change detail on occasion
to protect the privacy of any individual. Should it seem that anything I
describe can be identified negatively with a particular individual, then be
assured that I have actually provided a composite description of two or
more persons and situations.

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So, what works? I will describe briefly a few things that, in my opinion,
are good things to do.

Ha v e a go od I C T I nfr as t r uct ure

We live in a digital age and will use information technology because it is
the norm. We have to use email well—our parents expect it. We have to use
computer-based reporting systems—our parents expect it. Our database
must be user friendly and used well by staff—our parents expect us to have
information about them and their students at our finger tips. Our website
must have some useful information for parents and students. Our intranet
had better give access to appropriate information—our students and staff
expect it.
These five uses give ample reason to have a good ICT infrastructure;
they establish minima for infrastructure and skill sets. The last bastion of
resistance by teachers to the use of ICT disappeared a few years ago as a
result of establishing these minima. Teachers learned keyboarding skills,
the user interface and file organisation, and this rapidly flowed through
into uses of Word and PowerPoint.
There are positive educational outcomes from an excellent student
database system. It works to have computer-only reporting integrated into
student records. In the 1990s, we were using Word or Filemaker for report
writing, with templates carefully constructed. When we adopted Synergetic
about five years ago, we took a real step forward. It integrated the reporting
process into the student record system; it allowed both online and offline
access; and it provided a web interface to open up online access off-site.
This system is quite popular in Victorian schools. Email and computerised
reporting really tipped the balance in getting the last few reluctant users
onboard.

Dev elop educat i onal l eader s hi p a n d t e a mwo r k

in lea rning t echnol ogi es
A few years ago we made significant progress under the leadership of a
really good Director of Learning Technologies. I strongly believe that the
most important word in that title is ‘learning’. The person in that position
must be first and foremost an educator.
When I advertised for a head of learning technologies in 2001, most
applicants were ICT professionals, many had been maths or science
teachers, but their recent skills and interests were in ICT. None could

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demonstrate the communication skills or pedagogical perspective I

required. After much thought, I persuaded my head of primary curriculum
to take on the position, offering him the support required to get enough
technical knowledge to work with the IT specialists. In nearly four years in
that position, he successfully directed many advances in the deployment of
ICT at St Leonard’s and then, according to plan, returned to mainstream
education. He is now a deputy principal in a large school overseas.
We no longer have a director of learning technologies. The role of
strategically directing learning technologies is now the responsibility of the
director of curriculum. The role of implementing learning technologies is
the responsibility of the director of finance and corporate services, and the
role of directing the professional learning of all staff is the responsibility of
the director of professional learning. This is now our third year of the new
model. Why? Because we feel we have moved on. Learning technologies
are now a part of the educational infrastructure. Our ICT needs must be
derived from the curriculum and articulated through heads of faculty and
the director of curriculum. The responsibility of meeting the needs is borne
by corporate services. There is an implication here of very strong teamwork
in senior management.

Find a reas on t o us e t he t echn o lo g y

Let me return to issues relating to the use of technology in the classroom.
Late adopters will take readily to technology when they see a purpose. The
use of ‘technology’ in its broadest sense has been catalysed in classrooms by
the widespread use of PowerPoint for show and tell, and of digital cameras
for documentation. Our early learning centre teachers, driven by the Reggio
Emilia philosophy, place a high priority on documenting the progress of
each child. This has encouraged them to become excellent users of digital
cameras and digital video.
As an aside, I am convinced that many older people first learn how to
use email attachments and digital cameras when they become grandparents.
I am convinced that the highest proportion of my staff who is using Skype
with video are grandmothers. Our primary Japanese teacher has had a real
interest in developing video conferencing, with more reason to do so than
most other primary teachers. At her initiative, she has set up a simple web-
based conferencing facility. Her skills are now of interest to other primary
teachers, whose international focus is enhanced by the aforementioned IB
Primary Years Program (PYP).

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B eware of t echnol ogy as a Troj a n h o r s e

Notebook (or also called laptop) computer programs disappoint me.
Throughout the 1990s—and to some extent, today—I hear people justify
their use as the Trojan horse that will bring constructivist pedagogy into
schools, or will force teachers to change their style. It is my belief that where
schools have become more constructivist it is through other factors than
the notebook computer programs or other technologies. Schools change
pedagogy by changing pedagogy, not by changing technology.
Last year, I watched a Year 9 maths lesson taught by an exemplary
teacher in front of a large class of engaged students in a school in Kunming,
China. She was quite young, very passionate about her subject matter, she
was clearly engaging the large class very well and she was using the latest
technology. All of her standard worksheets and overhead transparencies had
been carefully converted into PowerPoint slides viewed on a data projector.
She was a first-rate, very conventional, very didactic teacher. The technology
made no difference to her methodology. It was simply an expensive page-
turning mechanism. I mean no criticism of her methodology. She was by
no means relying on pure rote learning. China is producing well-educated
students at the highest world standards in many institutions. The point is
that the pedagogy adapted the technology to itself, not vice versa.
In our case, adopting the International Baccalaureate PYP made an
honest, coherent, widely accepted, well-implemented change to our teaching
and learning practices. There was no Trojan horse; there was no sense of a
hidden agenda. Teachers realised from the start that, despite the inevitable
implementation hump and the need for hard work, they would have tangible
professional gains at the end of the process. Our innovative programs at
Years 7 and 8 at our smaller campus, and at Year 9 at our larger campus,
have been described elsewhere and acknowledged through, for example,
the award of Teaching Team of the Year. These programs were very success-
ful and benefited from the use of readily available information technologies,
but the technologies did not drive or even ‘leverage’ the change.

B e on the l ook out for bet t er t ec h n o lo g y

There are other reasons for notebook computers. In the early 1990s, access
to information meant owning some hardware. The attraction of notebook
computers was clear. Once public access to the Internet began in the
mid 1990s, this case began to weaken. Access and ownership of one’s
information no longer meant owning the screen, hard disk and keyboard.

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In the 1990s, to put ICT power into the hands of the students meant
notebooks or very big classrooms with desktops. Nowadays, it is simply
through whatever technology you can get your hands on and choose to
use. About four years ago, it seemed to me that students started carrying
their flash drives rather than their notebooks. These drives were cheap
enough to become ubiquitous and had adequate capacity. More recently, I
noticed that students have moved on: they use their iPods to transfer their
files—and they ALL have iPods! Who needs a dedicated flash drive?
I look forward to a practical sub-notebook computer for schools—a
low-cost, lightweight, robust unit with wireless networking, no mechanical
disk drive and long battery life with just basic open-source productivity
and web-browsing software would meet the vast majority of our needs.
Specialist labs with high-end equipment for art, music and design will
suffice for the rest.

Design t he r i ght l ear ni ng s pac e s

ICT is a real estate issue. We earned a good outcome when we rebuilt our
junior school with very large classrooms. The extra space was provided
so that we could have a wet area in each classroom and eight desktop
computers, and still have space for groups to form and re-form. The rooms
are paired, with operable walls between them so that the two classes at each
grade can combine on occasion. The inquiry pedagogy of the International
Baccalaureate PYP is enhanced by the improved real estate. The sage is
never on the stage in these classrooms, but is always guiding at the side.
There is some interest in using interactive whiteboards in these classrooms,
which may develop over the next couple of years.
We have just opened our new upper school building, which also has big
classrooms relative to class sizes. We required that most of the classrooms
be big enough for some desktop computers in each room. This arrangement
encourages teachers to have students being more active and cooperative
in their learning. There are data projectors in every room. Interactive
whiteboards can be easily accommodated where required. The very large
study centre has readily available desktop computers. Some students bring
their own notebook computers.
There are labs of desktop computers, some of which are a little more
specialised: the music technology lab, visual communication and design,
and media are all very well resourced with desktop computers. Oh yes, and
we still have 400 notebooks available to our students. It is only in Year 9
that there are individually allocated notebooks for students.

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Consider t he educat i onal v al ue o f in t e r a c t ive

whiteboards
Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) can be of use. Our first two were installed in
science labs in 2003. Barry Hill, one of our ICT mentors and a physics teacher
who has used them throughout that time, offers the following insights.

IWBs give me the ability to access demonstrations of physics principles

on the web, allowing me to replace text-based snapshots with time-
variable examples. This prevents the students getting false pictures in
their heads when topics are introduced that are often hard to fix. We can
compare and share work, building libraries of resources that are always
current. Distribution of materials tailored specifically to a course or
group of students is easier.

We use data loggers to analyse experiments that are too difficult to

observe with normal school-based techniques. A current might be
induced in a conductor in a fraction of a second, but we can display and
analyse a graph with time increments of 1/50th of a second. Recording
temperature overnight or getting distance–time graphs directly from the
data logger allows analysis and explanation rather than laborious lower-
order skills like graph plotting.

In senior classes the IWB allows me to draw diagrams to illustrate the

concepts being covered. The elements of these drawings can be moved
to show changes over time. For example, we can draw two sine waves
to show interference of waves. Students misconceive this as two static
waves with the peaks combining to form an antinode. By moving the waves
across the IW, I can show the variations that actually cause the antinode.

Being able to add an explanation, or refer to an earlier screen, is a great

bonus. This could be done from the keyboard, but the flexibility of being
able to do this seamlessly with the IWB is great.

I often open a past exam paper on the VCAA website to find a question
that a student will then attempt. This can’t be done effectively with paper
as the opportunities for collaboration are reduced.

In Year 10, in addition to the above, the students are motivated to

present their work and use the IWB operations to highlight their points.

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While science has had IWBs for four years, our English teachers have
only been using them for one year. A senior English teacher wrote this
summary of her first year of using an IWB.

I started off using the IWB very enthusiastically. I was lucky enough
to have Tim in my class last year and he was well trained by Barry (a
physics teacher) and helped me. I also attended several of Barry’s
physics classes. However, I gradually gave up using the actual IW
software. I found it slowed down my ability to write/scribble rapidly as
kids verbalised their ideas and I didn’t really need to save the notes as
students were recording them anyway. Having said that, I make great
use of the IWB for sharing materials/notes with students. It is wonderful
for working through sample essays, using the highlighter to annotate
media texts or for students to display their own work. I like preparing
PowerPoint as well to guide students through tasks.

We have recently deployed two IWBs in the music school, one in the music
ensemble room and the other in the music technology room. Teachers use
music programs such as Auralia, Musition, Sibelius and Groovy Music.
Teachers and students of all ages are enjoying the interactivity of each of
the music programs. The group work on the IWB, combined with individual
work in the music technology lab, is proving very exciting to all music staff.
Our primary teachers are not using IWBs to any great extent. There
are data projectors in regular use and there is a primary computer lab in
addition to the computers in every classroom. Primary staff members have
some interest in using IWBs in the future, with the following expectations:
• increased enjoyment of lessons for both students and teachers with
associated gains in motivation
• versatility with applications across all areas of the curriculum
• allowing teachers to present web-based and other resources more
effectively
• more opportunities for interaction and discussion in the classroom
• encouraging teachers to use more ICT, encouraging professional
development
• assisting students to understand concepts more clearly through more
effective and dynamic presentations
• different learning styles can be accommodated more readily.

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Many of these expectations can be met with a data projector and wireless
mouse or tablet. I am concerned that IWBs may reduce the flexibility of the
classroom space, and I wish to prevent the IWB from becoming an altar for
the high priest of learning—far worse than the sage on the stage!

Empl oy te chni ci ans w i t h peopl e s kills

Moving beyond hardware and software, it works to have technicians with
people skills on the help desk. Their people skills are usually more important
than their ICT knowledge, which is rarely tested in depth. Those with pure
ICT skills can stay in the back room and maintain the infrastructure to the
highest levels.

U se good t eacher s as m ent or s

It works to have staff mentors, but the choice of mentors is problematic.
Often the staff who know most about the technology are not particularly
good at putting it across. Similarly, it is not unusual for the best teacher to
be the one who has had to struggle with the subject matter, rather than the
person to whom the concepts are very obvious. I have learned painfully
and often that I am hopeless as an IT teacher or mentor because IT is so
easy with my background, I cannot relate to the difficulties some people
have. The only generalisation I can make about staff mentors is that they
should be good teachers, not good technicians. Our latest approach to
staff mentors is to have a small number of staff with time release working
in appropriate parts of the College and in appropriate learning areas. It
is not hard for the physics teacher to help the literature teacher with a
technical issue, but the literature teachers seem to want to be helped by
someone from the humanities rather than from the sciences. So we are
trying this.

Don’t hold back t he i nnov at or s a n d e a r ly a d o p t e r s

It works to be prepared to let those with ideas and initiative get way
ahead of others, setting aside equity considerations for a while. Playing
with a recent slogan and turning it on its head, I espouse the notion ‘No
person held back’. Let the innovators and early adopters rush ahead. It
is going to happen anyway, so do not hold them back. And do not worry
about it. The visual communication teacher is always going to be better at
Adobe Illustrator than the drama teacher. The teacher with the tired old
worksheet will find that students no longer accept his offering that pales

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into insignificance compared with the web-based interactive resources

produced by his colleague next door. The laggards will be motivated into
catching up or will head off elsewhere for a quieter life. When an innovation
has become commonplace, most people will have discovered ways of
making it simple and routine. At this time the reluctant learner/teachers
can easily get on the bandwagon.

O f f er a v ar i et y of profes s i ona l le a r n in g o p p o r t u n it ie s
An appropriate range of professional learning works. It must be specu-
lative and exploratory on occasion, but mostly it should be very focused. It
is my opinion that the best professional learning is neither ‘just in case’ nor
‘just in time’. It is ‘on the task’ and ‘at the time’. It is important to spend
time exploring what technology is available, having brilliant presenters
like Gary Stager, Jamie McKenzie and Tom March opening people’s eyes
to possibilities. We use internal opportunities, too, such as the head of
art showing what is possible with high-end software. It is important
to allocate time for learning skills for which the user has discovered an
immediate personal need. I enjoy wide-ranging professional learning
once in a while, but I want to do my detailed learning on the task, when I
have an appropriate task to undertake. We have two staff conferences each
year—in January before the academic year starts, and in July. Faculties are
able to undertake ‘on the task, at the time’ work during these sessions.
It is not easy to know when the balance is right. This is a matter of
continuing debate at the senior management level.

TH E F UTUR E

The future requires the appropriate balance of resources that are fit-for-
purpose and yet flexible. Our purposes are clear enough; our architecture is
about right; and our infrastructure is about right.
The driver will be our vision of the learner and of the future into which
the learner will journey as a thriving and contributing member of the
community. This vision shapes our educational goals and our curriculum.
It is completely compatible with the International Baccalaureate profile of
the learner as an inquirer, a thinker, a communicator and a risk taker, who
will be knowledgeable, principled, caring, open-minded, well balanced
and reflective. It is completely compatible with the Victorian Essential
Learning Standards.

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We must continue to provide good access to information and resources

and to tools for creation, expression and communication. Our balance of
desktops and notebooks will evolve, our portal will evolve, and we expect
to implement a learning management system. Quite soon there will be
data projectors in every classroom. Depending on need, a proportion will
be linked to interactive whiteboards. We have no plans at present for tablet
computers or PDAs, but we constantly review these possibilities. A low-
cost, lightweight sub-notebook computer with about two gigabytes of
user memory would be more than adequate at present, given the other
technology infrastructure available at school, in the home and in public
libraries.
St Leonard’s College is a very good school. It is a digital school. We do
many things very well and we should do some things better. It has been
useful to me to reflect on our journey and I am grateful to a number of my
staff who have assisted with material, in particular Mark Blake, Information
Services Manager, James Digby, Director of Finance and Corporate Services,
Tom Fisher, Director of Curriculum, and Barry Hill, Head of House, physics
teacher and ICT mentor. The errors, opinions and assessments are all mine.

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 CHAPTER 8
THE ‘GOOD VIDEO
GAME GUIDE’ TO
S U C C E S S F U L I N T E G R AT I O N
O F D I G I TA L T E C H N O L O G Y:
A CASE STUDY OF INGLE
FA R M P R I M A RY S C H O O L W I T H
INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARDS

Davi d O’Brien

Our journey to explore digital technology or, more particularly, the use of
interactive whiteboard (IWB) technology began in 2003. At this point there
was no ‘grand vision’ for the buy-in or support of this new technology. The
school community had worked through a two-year process of identifying a
common vision and purpose for our work. This vision included an emphasis
on developing our students’ knowledge and use of new technologies, but
there was no clear picture of how this might be achieved or what it may
look like in practice. What had been discussed were the new political, social
and economic contexts in which we now live and work, and how we might
organise ourselves to best meet the complexities and challenges we now
faced as an educational community.

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S C H O O L CO N TE XT AN D APP ROAC H T O CHANG E

Our school, Ingle Farm Primary, is unique in terms of primary schooling in

South Australia. It is comprised of three sectors:
• a Primary sector, which caters for students from five to 13 years of age.
This group is characterised by significant poverty and large cohorts of
Aboriginal and English as a Second Language (ESL) students.
• a New Arrivals Program, which serves the needs of young people
from five to 13 years of age who are newly arrived in Australia and
require intensive English language support. Many of these students
have come to Australia through refugee or humanitarian placement
programs.
• the Special Education sector catering for students from five to eight
years of age with communication and language disorders, and students
from eight to 13 years of age with intellectual disabilities.
With such a complex and diverse student population there is no short-
age of challenges, dilemmas and issues that confront us in the develop-
ment and implementation of an effective educational program.
In his book, Solving Tough Problems, Adam Kahane (2004, p. 30)
describes contexts like ours at Ingle Farm Primary as having high ‘dynamic,
generative and social complexity’ where the solutions to problems require
a systemic view, a tolerance of emerging solutions, and a commitment to
what Fielding (1999) refers to as ‘radical collegiality’. We have used these
ideas to work through issues in our school and to focus our thoughts
around educational improvement and what needs to be done.
We adopted a model of collaborative research and inquiry based on the
belief that professional learning and student outcomes will be enhanced
through opportunities for teachers to share ideas and critically interrogate
practice in an ongoing, reflective and collaborative manner. We also agreed
that in these uncertain and complex times we needed to be open to new
ideas and flexible in our response to the opportunities that may arise.
Following a demonstration of IWB technology in 2003, we had three
teachers request IWBs for their classrooms. Teachers were told that the
IWBs were available on request and that any ‘take-up’ would not be
mandated. Since then, IWBs have been installed in over 30 classrooms,
with teachers organising themselves to meet regularly to share ideas,
lesson plans, dilemmas and knowledge gained through their experiences.
This leadership and commitment by our teachers to professional learning
were further evidenced in 2006 by the visits of over 70 schools to Ingle Farm

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Primary to participate in training and development, which were developed

and provided by our staff.
Our school context is unique and challenging. We believed that the
best way to meet the needs of our students and community in these
circumstances was through encouraging professional collaboration and
learning among our teachers. The integration of interactive whiteboard
(IWB) technology into our pedagogical practice, and more recent moves
towards a digital resource base for our teaching, are examples of how a
sustained commitment to collaborative research and inquiry by teachers
can bring about successful change.
I will now turn to the principles that we used to develop, trial and
evaluate the use of IWBs in teaching and learning. The basis for these
principles may be surprising to some!

‘ G O O D V ID E O GAM E S ’ AS G UIDES FOR T EACHING

AN D L EAR N IN G W ITH D IGITAL T EC HNOLOG Y

At the 2006 Curriculum Corporation Conference in Adelaide, I had the

pleasure of listening to Professor James Paul Gee give a keynote address on
what we can discover about ‘learning’ from video games. He argued that
popular culture often organises learning for problem solving in deep and
effective ways and that good video games can teach us much about how to
reform learning not only in schools, but for adult learning as well. He went
on to state that the real message we should take from good video games is
not necessarily to use games for learning, but to use the sorts of learning
principles that good games incorporate in our teaching.
The principles that he outlined resonated deeply with the beliefs,
principles and methods that have guided our work in equipping our teachers
with the knowledge, skills and strategies to use digital technologies in their
teaching. These are as follows.

Searc h for m eani ng and pur po s e

Video games always situate or show the meaning of words and how they
vary across different actions, images and dialogues (Gee, 2006). They do not
just offer words for words, which we understand as ‘definitions’. Games
give words situated meanings, not just verbal ones.
Any learning in an educational setting is a complex and many-faceted
phenomenon. It is not static: it comprises vital, dynamic processes operating

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in changing contexts. To promote and sustain learning in digital technology,

it has to be situated within:
• a shared understanding of the contexts in which we work and live,
and
• a collective vision that directs the learning of all members of our school
community.
In creating our vision we drew on the work of Layton (2000), who argues
that we should not begin our planning for the future by starting where
we are at today and imagining how to move forward. He states that this
approach encourages people to drag along a great deal of excess baggage.
Instead we carefully considered where we wanted to be, and where we
think we will be, and worked back through all the steps necessary to get
to that point. This process culminated in a statement that epitomises what
we stand for and believe in as a school community. It states the principles
that guide and inform our teaching practice, the qualities we are seeking
to develop in each student and the values that underpin our work in the
educational community.
Contextual issues play a major role in finding situated meaning. What
may be best practice here may not be within another school setting.
Acknowledging this, we realised that we need to be continually asking
critical questions, putting ideas into place and then playing with them. We
have had to think thoughtfully and rigorously about our work, questioning
our assumptions and drawing on research, while continually reflecting on
and inquiring into our practice. The contesting of ideas and the capacity
to learn from one another has been crucial. We are continually asking
whose interests do our schooling structures, teaching methodologies and
curriculum currently serve.

Distribute d i nt el l i gence and cro s s - f u n c t io n a l t e a ms

Good video games use ‘smart tools’, have distributed knowledge and
recruit cross-functional teams, just like in modern high-tech workplaces
(Gee, 2006). Often each player must master a specialty, but must also
understand enough about the other specialised skill sets to coordinate
with other team members. Thus, the core knowledge needed to play video
games is distributed among a set of real people.
The process that has had the most significant influence on our
professional learning has been the release of staff from their classroom
duties to join cross-functional groups to share ideas and perspectives and
conduct research. This form of collaborative inquiry has had a positive

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impact on teaching and learning by providing a lens for examining the

technology and teaching practices, as well as developing a deeper sense of
efficacy and hope through the conversations and collegial support offered
by the group (Weinbaum et al., 2004, p. 78; Mawhinney et al., 2005, p. 36).
Darling-Hammond (1998) argues that this form of collaborative
inquiry builds intellectual capital, developing more professional roles
for teachers as they construct knowledge that is useful for both practice
and ongoing theory building, and aligning professional development
with current learning theory. Certainly, our school has sought to marshal
the thoughts and talents of the staff to guide our strategies with digital
technology in holistic, creative and constructive ways. The inquiry process
is about encouraging others’ questions, facilitating conversation, initiating
investigations and welcoming multiple points of view. It offers staff a way
to synthesise different kinds of knowledge, experience and ideas with the
intention that this will ultimately make a difference for student learning.
The process of collaborative inquiry has parallels with constructivist
and sociocultural theories of learning and encourages our teachers to ‘live’
the principle that forms the basis of our approach to student learning. This
view is supported by Johnson and Golombek (2002) in stating that:

If we view teacher learning from a socially situated perspective, it follows that

teachers need multiple opportunities to examine the theoretical knowledge
they are exposed to in their professional development opportunities within
the familiar context of their own teaching and learning experiences. It must
be understood against the backdrop of teachers’ professional lives, within
the settings where they work, and within the circumstances of that work.
(p. 8)

Evidence has shown that schools that have found ways of embedding
democratic learning into their daily practice with a strong focus on teaching
that emphasises disciplined inquiry and substantive conversation, not only
improve learning outcomes for students but do so in a manner more equit-
able than traditional schooling processes (Ladwig & Gore, 1998, p. 21).
From my observations and conversation with staff, our collaborative
groupings are providing opportunities for teachers to exchange ideas and
develop strategies for what they want to try next in a more consistent and
long-term approach to learning. Our discussions have also identified that
reflection and inquiry into teaching and the integration of digital technology
will not easily cut through the teacher’s basic assumptions and beliefs and
open up new possibilities. Our experience is showing that this will only

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take place when there is time to build relationships, mutual understanding

and trust, as well as productive facilitation that draws the conversation into
a deeper analysis of the beliefs and assumptions that group members bring
to this forum.

Si m ul ations of ex per i ence and p re p a r a t io n f o r a c t io n

Good video games operate on a principle of performance before competence
(Gee, 2006). Players can perform before they are competent, supported by
the design of the game, the ‘smart tools’ that the game offers and, often,
other more advanced players (in the game or in chat rooms). On the other
hand, schools traditionally want competence before performance.
Our professional development and support for staff have placed a high
priority on this principle of performance before competence. If we waited
for competence before the use of IWBs, they would still be in storage! There
is a strong need for ‘play’ and a ‘just in time’ approach to staff learning. At
the same time, this ‘play’ needs to be informed by the beliefs, principles
and values that guide our actions as a school community.
Second, learning is best structured by goals and preparation for action
with comprehension grounded in perceptual simulations that prepare you
for that learning (Gee, 2006). Staff can easily be seduced by the visual and
colourful nature of digital technology, but still find themselves delivering
a curriculum that shows little regard for our stated beliefs and principles
in regards to preparing our students for the twenty-first century. Like the
discerning video game player who dismisses the ‘eye candy’ in order to
achieve their goal, teachers also need to constantly reflect on the principles
that guide their practice and assess whether certain hardware and software
programs align with more contemporary beliefs about learning.

Tea c her agency, ow ner s hi p and c o n t ro l

Good video games are built on a cycle where players hypothesise, probe the
world, get a reaction, reflect on the results, re-probe to get better results—a
cycle typical of experimental science and of reflective practice (Gee, 2006).
These games let players act as producers, not just consumers. They often
have different levels of difficulty, and good games allow problems to be
solved in multiple ways. Good games also allow players to customise the
game to fit their learning and playing styles. Thanks to these features,
players feel a real sense of agency, ownership and control. It’s their game!

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Along similar lines, I believe that educational improvement requires

a truly democratic environment characterised by trust and respect among
colleagues and mutual support. This is best summarised by Elmore (2006)
where he states:

If I, as leader, induce collective action through control, I have in effect taken

responsibility for telling you what to do, which is the equivalent of a teacher
assuming full responsibility for imparting to the student what he or she needs
to know. Control falls apart as a strategy of collective action for the same
reasons that ‘telling’ falls apart as a strategy of teaching. For the ‘teller’ to
tell you what to do requires (a) that the teller knows what to tell you to do;
(b) that you are willing to consent to what the teller tells you what to do; and
(c) that you actually know how to do what the teller tells you to do. (p. 285)

He goes on to explain that if any of these conditions are not present,

the power to produce collective action is lost. Adapting Elmore’s (2006)
example (p. 285) to the implementation of digital technology:

If I, as principal, were to tell every teacher to use the IWB in particular

ways, there is no guarantee that these would be the best ways to use
IWBs, or that if they were, that I would be able to effectively communicate
that to teachers. Since I am not the one doing the teaching, the teacher
can choose, within limits, whether or how to consent to my request; if
the teacher chooses to resist, he or she substantially decreases my
ability to be an effective leader. My directive also assumes that the
teacher actually knows what to do, and implies that at the present time
the teacher is not doing it. In these circumstances it may be that the
teacher could not do what I want him or her to do because the teacher
doesn’t know how to do it; the fact that I tell the teacher to do something
doesn’t mean that the teacher is able to learn. This conundrum sounds
suspiciously like ‘I can teach you, but I can’t learn you’.

In contrast to this example, our professional growth and development

as a ‘digital school’ has been characterised by choice, collaborative and
collegial support, and authority based on moral and intellectual grounds
and personal agency rather than hierarchical commands from the principal.
There is individual ownership and control of the learning program that is

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complemented by expertise and knowledge from both within and outside

the organisation.
When we first engaged with IWBs there was little outside expertise on
which we could draw. Consequently we had to organise our professional
learning in a way that allowed for an emergent knowledge base supported
mainly by the ‘doers’ or early engagers in our school. We also received
valuable support from an interstate school, with visits coordinated between
the sites to share knowledge, ideas and resources. At the local level, our
efforts have been sustained by peer coaching, mentoring, team teaching,
inquiry groups and networking with teachers from other schools as we
sought to develop a new resource base to inform our teaching.

Consoli da t i on and chal l enge

Good video games offer players a set of challenging problems and then let
them practise these until they have achieved mastery (Gee, 2006). Then the
game throws a new class of problem at the player, requiring them to rethink
their taken-for-granted mastery. In turn, this new mastery is consolidated
through repetition (with variation), only to be challenged again. This cycle of
consolidation and challenge is the basis for the development of expertise in
any domain. Good games stay within, but at the outer edge, of the player’s
regime of competence. That is, they feel ‘do-able’ but challenging.
Similarly, our professional development needed to be deep and fair—
at first appearing relatively simple, then becoming more complex. Staff
should not feel that professional learning opportunities are set up to make
them fail, but rather to encourage them to feel that they can do better.
Put another way, effective professional learning should be pleasantly
frustrating, on the outer edge of a teacher’s competence. This can lead
teachers to experience ‘flow’—so named by Csikszentmihalyi (1990) as an
optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in
what he or she is doing.
Consolidation of professional learning has been a constant challenge
as we continually have sought to develop our capacity to make the best
use of IWBs. Length of tenure, knowledge and expertise in the use of
digital technologies, interest and confidence, personal networks, access
to professional development, and the knowledge base of our students
all play a role in the ability of our staff to use the IWBs effectively. Our
peer mentors play a key role in providing the necessary support to both
consolidate and challenge learning. Each individual has a different starting
point and areas of interest they wish to pursue and develop. By building

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social networks and linking staff with common interests we have been able
to individualise our professional development programs to meet teachers’
needs and consolidate their learning.

Low c os t of fai l ure

Good video games lower the consequences of failure (Gee, 2006). When
players fail, they can start from their last saved game. Players are encouraged
to take risks, explore and try new things.
In school contexts, people experience a lower cost of failure when
trust is present. Research by Byrk and Schneider (2002) shows that schools
in which trust exists are more likely to improve than schools without it.
Drawing on the literature of ‘social capital’, they argue that when trusting
relationships develop and are sustained, schools are more likely to have
relationships that support collaboration and collective effort to improve
over time.
Certainly our professional growth seems to have benefited from the
willingness of staff to back their professional judgement and consider the
multiple perspectives that exist across our school groupings. In the initial
stages of our ‘take-up’, many staff who asked for IWBs prefaced their
inquiry with a statement about their ‘lack of expertise’ and limited ability
to effectively integrate digital technology in their teaching.
Teachers have spent a ‘lifetime’ in cultures that promote and value
‘judgement’ rather than ‘risk taking’ and mutual support. Byrk and
Schneider (2002) remind school leaders:

As public criticism focuses on schools’ inadequacies, teachers need to

know that their principal values their efforts and senses their good intentions.
(p. 129)

We have been very careful to make sure that our words and actions
show that our staff can be trusted to do what is best for their students. In
environments where teachers feel unsupported, mistrusted or constantly
on the verge of reprimand, there will be very little risk taking and very little
learning. To my understanding, this has not been the case at Ingle Farm
Primary.

Refl ec ti v e pr act i ce
Good video games encourage players to reflect on their results and work
out ways to get better results (Gee, 2006).

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Like these games, the form of collaborative inquiry that we have

established and supported at Ingle Farm Primary provides an effective means
for teachers to reflect and learn from their experiences in classrooms with
students. When combined with insights for external experts and advisers,
curriculum support personnel and professional reading, this multifaceted
and reflective approach provides rich and deep professional growth for
those involved. It not only enables teachers to develop a sense of agency
about their practice, but also reaps learning gains for students, especially in
the kinds of learning that are going to serve their future needs.
In summary, the principles that we have taken and adapted from ‘good
video games’ developed by Gee (2006) encourage creativity, experiment-
ation and collaboration. They have provided opportunities to reconsider
long-held beliefs about teaching, learning, curriculum design and the
role of digital technology. Teachers have found our approach to change
based on these principles to be informative, challenging and supportive in
confronting complex issues in our day-to-day work. Our experiences are
reflected in the observations by Lemke (2002) about the consequences of
collaborative, community-based change and development:

As we learn we gradually become our villages: we internalise the diversity of

viewpoints that collectively make sense of all that goes on in the community.
At the same time, we develop values and identities: in small tasks and large
projects, we discover ways we like to work, the people we want to be, [and]
the accomplishments that make us proud. (p. 34)

O U T C O ME S FR O M OUR JOURNEY WIT H IWBs

Our journey with IWBs has had important outcomes for teachers and
teaching practices, for student engagement and for our school community.
Many experienced teachers speak openly about how the IWBs have
rekindled their passion for teaching and broadened their perspectives in
regards to curriculum delivery—and their ICT competence has improved
markedly! Teachers comment that IWBs have created a more engaging
and challenging learning environment for what we term ‘children of the
screen’. They provide a different scope and quality to their teaching and
learning programs. Feedback from students supports this view as well as
the tremendous advantage offered by the IWBs in terms of ‘just-in-time’
learning and the flexibility and spontaneity they offer.

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IWBs provide a fundamentally different teaching resource base,

and significant amounts of student work are now produced in a digital
format. Since the introduction of IWBs, we have seen our pedagogical
practices become more digitally based as teachers make increasing use
of ICT peripherals such as digital cameras, scanners, audio facilities,
infra-red keyboards, slates and new software. More use of digital media
is also being made in celebrations and ceremonies as students and
staff see the possibilities for more engaging modes of presentation and
communication.
In these ways, IWBs have been a vehicle for refreshing and stimulating
discussions about pedagogy and relevant curriculum. Moreover, IWBs have
brought staff and students together in collegial ways to solve problems, and
allowed students to move from being spectators to participants in the game
of knowledge creation. Most significantly, our students are developing
greater ‘agency’ of their learning. The use of these new technologies has
given them more power over their learning and promoted a greater sense
of partnership in teaching and learning with their teachers. Furthermore,
as teachers acknowledge the value of these partnerships and students’
expertise in the use of new technologies, we are seeing students become
producers (rather than just consumers) of knowledge, with increased
ownership and control of their learning.
And what’s more, our tentative conclusion is that IWBs are having a
significant impact on student achievement, at least in terms of the trends
in results of statewide literacy and numeracy testing.
Finally, the approaches that we have taken to the implementation of
the IWBs and the associated professional learning have encouraged teacher
leadership in very significant ways. This and the range of outcomes described
above have led to an acknowledgement within the school community that
we are striving to prepare students for their future, not our past.

R E F L E CTIO N S AN D CO N CLUSIONS

What we have engaged in at Ingle Farm Primary over the past four years
reflects the stages of technological use identified by Naisbitt (1984) in his
bestselling work, Megatrends. In Stage 1, the technology is used to replicate
the existing ways, gradually varying over time to a situation in Stage 3 where
it is used in new and previously unimagined ways. We have moved through
these stages as Naisbitt described, with our move to a predominantly

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digital mode of teaching and learning fuelled by the rising expectations

and competencies of the teachers as well as rapid technological advances.
For those seeking to move further into the digital mode, I would offer
the following words of warning based on our experience. New tools for
communicating, learning, collaborating and information gathering are
available to schools at an ever-increasing rate. With this comes growing
reliance on mobile phones, PDAs, email, video-conferencing, IWBs and other
technologies to keep us connected. This, in turn, increases pressure on schools
to adopt new approaches to teaching and learning as access to information
becomes faster and wider and deeper. Herein lies the danger of equating
learning with knowledge acquisition and reducing the learning process to
information gathering in the form of text, images, video and audio.
Learning has more to do with understanding and making connections
between ideas and concepts. While technology can be used to communicate
information about these ideas and concepts, it takes reflective thought and
dialogue to make meaning of these connections. As educators we need to
focus on teaching and learning first, and then selectively integrate those
technologies that can best support our instructional objectives—not the
other way around.
In this sense, I find it helpful to reflect on the question posed by
Sanders (2006), namely: ‘What is the problem for which this technology
is the solution?’ Achieving successful change in school settings, especially
those concerning the integration of digital technologies, requires careful
attention to questions such as this. In my view, the outcomes that we
have accomplished so far have been due to our preparedness to question
and to develop and collaborate in school processes and activities that are
characterised by trust, a shared vision for change and an emphasis on
developing collegial relationships.
There is still a way to go in the video game!

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 CHAPTER 9
S TA F F I N G T H E D I G I TA L
SCHOOL: IN SEARCH OF
GROUND RULES

Greg W hitby

The speaker was just getting started but, already, he had lost his audience
of young teachers.
‘Education is an industry,’ he said. ‘It is just like other industries.
Teachers are the workers in the process of production; education is the
commodity with which they work; they are judged by the edge they have
in a competitive marketplace.’
Images and metaphors reveal much about the beliefs and assumptions
of those who use them. In this case the speaker lost his audience because
its members understood exactly where he was coming from—the past!
Such old-style thinking identifies the teacher as the sole controller
of the process, the dispenser of knowledge that he or she had already
deconstructed and pre-digested. The role of the student is to internalise
this knowledge. (‘Sit still and listen! How else will you learn anything?’)
The teachers may well have been thinking of their own students back
in their classrooms. They knew only too well that these young people do
not live in a world characterised by the mindset of the industrial age. On
the contrary, they live in a world in which technology envelopes them
(Beare, 2001). Immersed in the virtual world, they have never known a time
without the mobile phone, laptop, MP3 player and the Internet. Like Mark
Twain, they sometimes feel that school interrupts a good education.

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While such relational technologies have made significant impact on

traditional structures and organisations such as media and politics, it has
had little effect on the process and outcomes of schooling.

T E AC H IN G PR ACTICE IN AN INDUST RIAL AG E

In many ways, schools as we have all experienced them, are offspring of

the industrial age. So powerfully influential were industrial processes and
their effects on all aspects of society, that schooling was actually modelled
on these processes, designed to meet the needs of a particular society in a
particular point in history. This is not a new realisation. As far back as the early
twentieth century, schools and systems operated under a business model,
which demanded efficiency and value for money. The language of schooling
changed to reflect this; anti-intellectualism grew and decisions were made
on ‘economic or non-educational grounds’ (Callahan, 1962, p. 246).
Headly Beare wrote:

The content of schooling, the curriculum itself, became modelled on factory

production lines. Children were divided into year groups; knowledge was
subdivided into subjects; teachers became specialists and credentialed
(literally certified like tradespersons) and ordered into hierarchies; the
students were controlled in class groups or batches, moving in linear
progression through graded curricula, from easy to more complex, from
lower grades to higher grades, ‘promoted’ (as are workers in factories) up
the steps …

(Beare, 2001, p. 46)

The industrial mindset structured an understanding of the nature of

the school and the work of the teacher. It still affects industrial awards
and expectations of how teachers should behave and how schools should
operate. Teachers are expected, for instance, to teach deconstructed parts
of knowledge in set units of time. The typical time allotted as a ‘period’ of
learning reflects this: so much time to settle the class … check the homework
… present some new knowledge or teach a new skill … practise some activity
… set new homework … settle class … move on to next lesson.
This pattern reflects a strong commitment to control and organisational
smoothness. It is predicated on the belief that this is the best structure
for learning to occur. This is how adults have traditionally worked in an
industrial enterprise with time and space clearly defined. However, it does

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not have a lot to do with how children grow and learn most efficiently in a
world that is changing around them.
The same mindset also encompasses the measurement and assessment
of learning, which, in turn, has a profound effect on the understanding
of appropriate pedagogy. The most valued aspect of deconstructed
knowledge—so the thinking goes—is that which can be separated and
measured. Once this sort of reasoning becomes the basis for determining
teaching efficiency, it drives pedagogy in a set direction.
And there’s more. It also influences the understanding of school
effectiveness. In the end, reform hinges on competition among schools,
with each striving to achieve mandated and measurable goals. ‘Top schools’
are the ones with the highest scores. Yet, as every reflective teacher and
parent knows, the quality of authentic education does not lend itself to
simple measures. Research shows that a ‘focus on learning can enhance
performance, whereas a focus on performance can depress performance’
(Watkins, 2001).
This industrial mindset was reinforced by the classical management
theory, which held sway through most of the twentieth century. It is
reflected today in proposals for performance pay for teachers and monetary
incentives for schools.
It is all very attractive, as well as being deceptive, in its simplicity.
People accept it because it is the way things have always been.

A P O S T-IN D USTR IAL AGE

The digital revolution has fuelled an increasingly global economy. Thomas

Friedman (2006) describes this phenomenon as a ‘flat world’ in which
developed and developing nations now compete on an economically level
playing field.
While China and India have become the new labour markets,
developed nations strive to compete in a knowledge-based economy where
creativity, innovation and skill carry economic premium. In this context,
competence in accessing, reconfiguring and applying knowledge becomes
a vital contributor to progress. This competence is very often exercised
collaboratively in both formal and informal contexts so that communication
becomes fundamental to knowledge generation and dissemination.
All of this marks the shift from an industrial age and its industrial
economy, which relied on labour, machines, physical resources and

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standardisation, to a knowledge age which now relies on intellectual

resources, technical competence and creativity.

Knowledge w or k er s
The new era has produced a new type of worker with new capabilities and
expectations. The task of these new knowledge workers is to apply emerg-
ing information and knowledge in the workplace. Their natural context is
the knowledge networks that feed from and back into a variety of sources.
Essential skills for operating effectively in this environment include: self-
management, collaboration, analysis, flexibility, facility in integrating new
knowledge, and working on different tasks at the one time.
Employers must embrace the new workplace if they wish to retain
employees who are no longer ‘anchored’ to careers and employers as they
once were. Rather, these new knowledge workers are connected to like-
minded people and groups through online communities—free to move
between virtual networks and collaborative teams.
At their best, these workers are able to operate at levels of increasing
complexity in response to the changing challenges of work. And they are
able to lead others in making similar adjustments.

T E AC H IN G IN TH E K N OW LE DG E AG E

Schooling is one of society’s key institutions for inducting young people

into the contemporary culture. It can no longer be appropriately concept-
ualised using the mindset of the industrial age.
If they are to be relevant, schools must respond to the realities of the
twenty-first century, learning to thrive in a knowledge-based society.
Teachers must be new knowledge workers. This requires much more than
the widespread use of technology in schools. It calls for systematic change
in both organisation and environment, and transformative change in ways
of imagining what schooling yet might be. It requires a dramatic shift from
control to collaboration and co-learning.
We have always had good teachers, yet the old industrial model tended
to de-professionalise them. It assumed that they could not be fully trusted
to take control of their own professional lives. There was always the need
for awards and classifications, for close supervision and reports on progress.
In the knowledge age, teachers must be seen as professionals who operate

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within frameworks that take full account of the extensive research base that
supports their contemporary pedagogy.
A pervasive sense of change, reflecting societal and environmental
turbulence on an unprecedented scale, has stimulated the quest for new ways
of understanding schools and for new models of school organisation. In the
mid 1990s, for instance, Caldwell (1995) was arguing for ‘a new organisational
image of school’ as a starting point for a new agenda (p. 7). And Wallace
(1995) was suggesting that ‘school communities … need to reconceptualise
the means by which they go about educating children’ (p. 14).
Over the last decade this has been a recurring theme in the professional
literature, both in Australia and elsewhere. A strong consensus is that schools
are at something of a crisis point; an ‘educational revolution’ is long overdue.
Certain assumptions about schooling and learning are being proposed
as foundation beliefs underpinning the re-imagining of schools for the
contemporary era; each is loaded with implications in the search for new
ground rules around the employment and development of teachers. These
assumptions include the following:
• Students are at the centre of the process of schooling. The rapidity of
change requires them to be prepared for lifelong learning. The best
context for this is a learning community—both a community of learners
and a community that is ever learning.
• This community must develop its capacity to use new information, to
share learning beyond its physical boundaries, to be open to change.
It must see both time and space as negotiable. It must create a climate
where both innovation and diversity can flourish.
• Teaching is viewed, essentially, as a relational process. This belief has
a powerful impact on the ways in which learning is organised and
fostered, and on the ways in which students and teachers interact.
• Students learn to construct new knowledge, not just receive it. This
construction is enhanced by interaction and collaboration. It employs
Web 2.0 social and collaborative tools where appropriate.
• Teachers are learners. They learn by reflection on action, from each
other, from the wider experience of their profession, from life—and
from their students.
• Among the central aims of schooling is the development of the
autonomy of learners who develop the capacity to take responsibility
for their own learning. This becomes more important the deeper we
move into the knowledge age.

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• Authentic learning transcends the barriers of disciplines, timetables and

organisational convenience. It is both interdisciplinary and integrated.
• Transparency, rather than testing regimes, is the new accountability. The
rightful place of testing is within the context of the learning processes.
In their research on top performing systems of education, Barber and
Mourshed (2007) suggest that two of the keys to success are getting the
right people to become teachers and then developing them professionally
so that they are able to make a quality contribution.
This commonsense finding raises important questions: Who are the
right people—that is, the best teachers for schools of the information age?
What are the qualities such people should possess? And how can a system,
a school, a learning community, recognise these people and develop these
qualities? These questions are worth reflecting on because they may well
lead us some distance along the road in our search for ground rules.
As in every generation, the ‘right people’ to become teachers are those
who, first of all, love children and delight in working with them. Their value
is enhanced to the degree to which they are intelligent, curious, open-
minded and creative.
All of these are desirable—dare I say, essential?—qualities of teachers
in the knowledge age. To be fully effective in the school of the twenty-
first century, teachers need to feel at home with emerging technologies,
comfortable with innovation and change, and accepting of ambiguity and
occasional setbacks.
They are good learners and good team members, able to work
collaboratively with colleagues while taking a practical interest in their
development.

T H EM E S AN D GR O UN D R ULES FOR STAFFING OF

T W EN TY-FIR ST CE N TURY S CHOOLS

The digital era has opened a world of opportunities that many educators
are only beginning to appreciate. In this world there is no single roadmap
for taking education forward, no one set of specific criteria for selecting
staff, no manual offering simple step-by-step processes for professional
development.
What we do have are emerging themes. Features of these set the
stage for the creation of signposts or pointers that might stimulate our
imagination.

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Here, then, are seven themes that can be explored when considering
the successful staffing of schools of the twenty-first century. There are many
others, of course, but seven are enough to get the essential conversation
started. Following an outline of each theme, I suggest a few ground rules
that may give rise to fruitful reflection and discussion by those responsible
for selecting and developing teachers—teachers who will be authentic
knowledge workers in schools of the knowledge age.

1 Sha red pur pos e and under s t a n d in g o f s c h o o l c u lt u re

Teaching is purposeful work. Its focus is the individual student; its task is
to promote quality learning outcomes for every student. Effective school
structures and processes support teachers’ work and serve the school’s
purpose through being grounded in a deeply reflective culture that
teachers come to share, and which reminds them, in a variety of ways, of
the significance of what they do.
Such a culture reflects a broad understanding of the most effective
learning processes and the conditions that facilitate them. It draws a clear
distinction between deep understanding and the superficial mastery of
facts and skills. When teachers have internalised the principles of this
culture, they employ pedagogies that match basic theories of learning with
a knowledge of students’ characteristics and backgrounds.

Some ground rules for building shared purpose and

understanding of school culture
• The teacher is able to articulate an understanding of both the purpose
of schooling and the ways in which learning occurs.
• The teacher is a co-learner who is willing to be inducted into an ethos
of reflective practice that is strongly personal as well as communal.
• The school makes provision for serious staff exploration of emerging
pedagogies and a sharing of best practice reflecting sound theory.
• The school protects time-on-task, encouraging teachers to distance
themselves from the many distractions that can obscure the real purpose
of the school. Consistent with this, it limits the amount of clerical work
that is not seen as serving the core purpose of the school.

2 Al i gnment of v al ues
The values of the teachers, the school and the system should reflect the
shared sense of purpose and are appropriately aligned. These values would

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include student-centredness, curiosity, innovation, collaboration, critical

discernment and respect for intellectual integrity. All of the parties sharing
such values would be linked in a supportive relationship.
Frameworks and strategies supporting these values, both local and
system-wide, would be aligned.

Some ground rules for aligning values

• The teacher is able to relate his or her own core professional values
with those of the school and system.
• The school only undertakes initiatives that can be aligned with the
purpose and values that link its teachers and the wider system.
• Both school and system provide infrastructures and resources that
support the shared purpose and values.
• Many across-school opportunities are taken to reinforce the
alignment.

3 P rof essional t eam s

While teachers work with a specific group and with individual students,
they do so in the context of collaborative teamwork. They are members
of a group of colleagues and fellow learners, reflecting together, planning,
and researching as they go, up-to-date in practice and unconstrained
by old barriers. In this context, connectivity becomes the norm, not the
exception.
The teams may reconfigure for particular purposes, coming together for
a certain time in order to meet a specific challenge or to plan a special task.
The teams will often be cross-disciplinary with a focus on integrating the
curriculum and removing unnecessary barriers that isolate the disciplines.
Some teams may well work across the primary/secondary divide. Always the
purpose is to ensure coherence and continuity in the students’ learning.
One of the tasks of such teams is to share a growing understanding
of the students themselves—their cognitive development, their life
experiences and their social and cultural backgrounds.
An issue that is often focused on by professional teams is assessment
that is under continual pressure and scrutiny by interests that are external to
the school community. The teams are challenged to ensure that assessment
frameworks reflect sound educational theory and a thorough understanding
of cognitive processes, including critical thinking, reasoning, understand-
ing and problem solving. The team ensures that assessment retains
its correct place within the learning/teaching cycle where it influences

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planning, promotes student development and informs useful and intelligent

reporting. Here, as in all areas of the curriculum and school life generally,
technology can play a major supportive role.
Teaching would thus become more de-privatised as more teachers
pursue their core tasks within a collaborative culture. This culture would
invite students, parents, non-teaching staff and community members to
participate in appropriate ways.
At a very practical level, this would open up questions of respons-
ibilities, tasks and time allocations as well as salary scales. It would require
organisational structures and arrangements that would serve this pro-
fessional culture. As part of this, it would foster skills of self-management,
teamwork and the use of technology in collaborative ways.

Some ground rules for promoting professional teamwork

• The teacher demonstrates a capacity for and commitment to
teamwork.
• The school creates structures that encourage teamwork and recognise
team achievement.
• The team is often the locus for professional development (for example,
induction of staff, peer tutoring or mentoring, sharing of particular
skills and experiences).
• The profession itself revisits custom and practice relating to
remuneration, roles and responsibilities, and the use of time.

4 Flexi bi l i t y
When change is the norm, flexibility becomes an essential quality of
individuals, groups and school communities seeking to thrive.
Those who are able to respond creatively to changing circumstances
and to grasp and incorporate new opportunities become creators of the
future. In education, this can apply to teachers, to school communities and
to systems.
A flood of new opportunities have accompanied the emerging and
converging technologies, and the advent of the knowledge age. Interaction,
for instance, has become integrally associated with the social technologies.
In educational settings this is seen in the work of the professional teams I
have just been discussing. It is at its most productive when it focuses on the
processes of learning.
In the classroom, the new technology has stimulated the perceptive
teacher to move from being a controller of knowledge to a mentor and

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fellow learner. The curriculum itself is under scrutiny, now beginning to

be seen as more of a dynamic construct than a flat, linear one that sets out
courses for everyone to follow.
This leads inevitably to a new consideration of flexibility in the use
of time, space and people, which may be reflected in timetables, staffing
arrangements and the processes of grouping students for learning. It
may see teachers negotiating the use of their time within a framework
provided by the system. It may see the existing models of cohorts, classes
and disciplines actually replaced. Mobility of teachers and diverse career
pathways and opportunities need to be more widely considered.

Some ground rules for creating flexibility

• The teacher demonstrates a capacity for creative adaptation and
innovation.
• The school is prepared to implement flexible teaching arrangements,
different options in timetabling, and permeable boundaries between
disciplines.
• There is ready sharing of the strengths and talents of staff, especially in
the area of emerging technologies.
• Throughout the system, there is an acceptance of different forms of staff
utilisation, always within a framework that ensures genuine equity.
• The system assists schools to make full use of the potential of the
emerging technologies in creating more effective learning and teaching.

5 Researc h- bas ed pr act i ce

Contemporary teaching practice must be based on professional research
and the reflected-upon experience of effective teachers.
Today, the ever-increasing research knowledge base provides a strong
foundation for guiding pedagogy. While such practices need to be enlivened
by individual teacher creativity and intuition, it is important that research
is used to inform the creation of dynamic and interactive environments,
where:
• the learner is at the centre
• learning is individualised yet connected to the learning of others, and
• learners and teachers interact constructively in significant learning
experiences.
Further research is needed on the value of technology as a tool of
learning for both students and teachers. ‘Valuable’ technology is not simply

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the latest aid to conventional teaching, but rather an evidence-based tool

for attaining and expressing deeper understanding, and for enhancing
cognitive and social learning outcomes. In this way, technology can provide
better opportunities for personalising learning and communicating pro-
gress to parents/caregivers than have been available in the past.
When teaching practice is based on sound research, teachers can be
more confident in subjecting their pedagogy, including the assessment that
is an integral part of it, to constructive critique.

Some ground rules for using research to inform practice

• The teacher demonstrates an understanding of the general principles
of learning that emerge from and are validated by contemporary
research.
• The school and system promote or provide professional development
opportunities that explore the practical implications of research on
learning, particularly in the area of technology.
• The school and system ensure teaching practices that are promoted
through formal networks and professional development opportunities
that are reflective of contemporary research.

6 Connect i on w i t h ot her agen c ie s

To be truly effective, teachers and schools must work in partnership with
other agencies.
The first, most obvious of these is, of course, the home. School has
its most positive and significant impact on student development when it
shares understandings and expectations in a supportive relationship with
the families of its students.
Second, students are also members of other networks that link them—
via Web 2.0 technologies—with other students within and beyond the
school, and to community resources such as libraries, government offices
and local businesses, and to organisations and groups within other states
and countries. Teachers are well advised to account for the networks to
which their students belong, and how these memberships may support
class-based learning.
Third, teachers also have access to a wide range of professional,
community, business, industry and government agency networks. For
instance, membership of professional associations and teacher unions,
and engagement with university-, government- or system-sponsored

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professional development programs afford teachers the opportunity to

connect and learn from peers and experts external to their local situation.

Some ground rules for connecting with other agencies

• The teacher demonstrates an understanding of the importance of the
familial, social and cultural backgrounds and networks of students.
• The teacher demonstrates an interest in and familiarity with various
agencies and networks that contribute to extending the school learning
community.
• The teacher is familiar with current technology and open to new
learning opportunities.
• The school provides support for teachers in accessing networks beyond
the school.
• The system links teachers and schools in collaboration around ways of
improving pedagogy, especially through the creative use of technology.

7 B a l anc e
Contemporary school life should be characterised by balance—a balanced
curriculum where all aspects of learning are present and, as far as possible,
integrated; a balance of time and responsibilities; a balance of desirable
freedoms and essential constraints; and a balance of the various strengths
of teachers.
One of the dangers of the digital age is over-commitment and burnout,
because of the 24/7 availability of the technology. The culture of the school
must ensure that students develop skills in balancing their responsibilities,
managing their time and working in an efficient and economical way.
Teachers, too, will do their most effective work when they are in control
of their lives and have a healthy sense of self-worth and professional
satisfaction. This requires that teachers have a manageable workload,
opportunities to make significant decisions regarding their work, and the
motivation that comes from viewing oneself as a lifelong learner.

Some ground rules for achieving balance

• The teacher demonstrates personal and professional maturity, a range
of life interests and a sense of proportion.
• The school protects teachers from unnecessary and unreasonable
expectations and pressures.
• The system leads a wider reflection on flexibility in conditions and
arrangements relating to the employment of teachers and other staff.

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C O NC LUS IO N

It is clear that schools have moved into a new and challenging era. The
knowledge age, serviced by a range of converging technologies, presents a
new world of opportunities for learning, working and living.
The invitation to schools to play a leading role in this age is accompanied
by many challenges. One of the most pressing is around the selection and
development of appropriate staff. There is no quick and easy response one
can make to this challenge. Nowhere is the old industrial mentality more
entrenched than in the ways we conceptualise the nature of work. Of one
thing we can be certain, however: the old industrial mentality is totally
inappropriate for re-imagining schools of the knowledge age.
We cannot drive forward with our eyes fixed on the rear-vision mirror.
What is needed is a widespread and open conversation. To stimulate
such a conversation, I have offered a framework of seven themes and some
ground rules relevant to each.
Much of the change we are facing will be driven by our understanding
of today’s learner; how they learn and what are the emerging technologies.
The manner in which we shape this change will depend on our imagination
and the courage we have to consider the hard questions.

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 CHAPTER 10
ICT INFRASTRUCTURE:
THE CORE COMPONENTS

Peter Mu r ray

There is considerable mythology—and not a little jargon—associated with

the ICT infrastructure used in schools. The reality is that technology is but
a set of tools, albeit a vital and potentially expensive component of the
school. As such it is important that school leaders have a sound macro
understanding of the main elements of the infrastructure and the facility to
ask ICT staff pertinent questions about the development and effectiveness
of the school network.
The aim in this chapter is to provide that understanding and to
explore various options that schools have for implementing a suitable ICT
infrastructure. The intent is not to make one recommendation or propose
‘one best way’, but rather to discuss different approaches highlighting the
positives and negatives, and indicating the type of school environment to
which a particular style of ICT infrastructure is best suited. Every school
is unique in terms of its ICT budget allocation, staffing, leadership and
strategic intent. Each of these elements makes a difference to the ICT
infrastructure that a school or school system chooses to adopt.

T H E C H A N GIN G N ATUR E AN D EXPEC TAT IONS OF

IC T INF RASTR UCTUR E

The word that best sums up the nature of ICT infrastructure in schools
is change!

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Until recent times, the ICT infrastructure model in many schools was
dictated by the needs of administration, and based on long-term business-
centric principles. This ‘top-down’ approach meant that the teachers, and the
school’s main clients—its students, were at the bottom of the pile and had
little say in what their digital environment looked like and what they could or
could not access. The general pattern has been that more consideration has
been given to matters of security (for example, protecting the network from
‘invasion’ or other forms of misuse) and business applications (for example,
those dealing with school finances), than to issues relating to teaching
practices, curriculum resources and student learning.
Fortunately this pattern is changing. Teachers and students are demand-
ing more flexibility in their ICT environment and are questioning the policy
decisions of ICT managers. One of the reasons for this may be the growing
awareness and capability of teachers and students in digital technologies,
developed from their experiences outside of the school. These people have
begun to notice the massive discrepancy between what they can do on-site
at school versus what they can do at home; and they are demanding ICT
environments where teaching and learning take precedence.
School leaders are also becoming aware of this divide and are
encouraging their ICT staff to ‘open up’ access, while at the same time
continue to provide protection from the Internet ‘nasties’. This is a difficult
challenge for ICT departments and often involves a ‘ground up’ rebuilding
of their ICT infrastructure, as well as some reassessment and prioritisation
in thinking.

ICT infra s t r uct ure— new pr i or i t ie s , b e t t e r c a p a b ilit y

and more di v er s i t y
A traditional ICT infrastructure and management model in schools is
focused around a standard environment, often based on one operating
system and with little flexibility in terms of hardware choice by the user.
Fortunately this model is also changing. Not only are users wanting
more open access, they are also having influence over the platform and
other design features they want their hardware to take. Principals and
teachers are now looking for the best instructional technologies available
and then insisting that their IT departments accommodate their needs
within the ICT infrastructure. Examples of this shift in thinking and
control include the lessening dominance of Microsoft ‘Office’ software,
and increasing numbers of schools embracing Web 2.0 technologies, like
wikis and podcasting, and using creative technologies such as digital story
telling, digital music creation and robotics.

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Along with these trends are profound developments in the sophistication

of the hardware and software. Some argue that we are on the verge of a
‘platform revolution’ in schools, citing the growth of Apple being deployed
into schools around Australia as well as the growing use of ‘Open Source’
software.

C O R E C OM PON E N TS OF ICT INFRAST RUCT URE

The core components of a school or system ICT infrastructure are:

• Identity management
• IT services
• Platform
• Storage
• Network
• Internet Protocol addresses, and
• Ports.
These are discussed in more detail below.

Identity managem ent

Identity management (IdM) deals with identifying individuals in a system
(such as a country, a network or an enterprise) and controlling their access
to resources within that system by associating user rights and restrictions
with the established identity. It is also a way of tracking user access to
internal systems to ensure they are acting responsibly and within the
‘Acceptable Use Guidelines’ of the organisation.
A major component of IdM is authentication. There are a number
of options available to schools, with Active Directory being a widely used
domain controller. Each option has benefits. Openness and flexibility of the
authentication system are very important. Most schools tend to deploy a
number of systems that require authentication. Having different usernames,
passwords and processes for different applications is confusing and inefficient.
The ideal is to have a ‘single sign-on’. If a school’s authentication system is
not open, or the system deployed does not use the same standards, then it
may not be possible to unify usernames and passwords.

IT ser vic e s
IT services are the systems required to effectively operate in a technological
environment. These will include services such as:

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• Email
• Administration system—student records
• Web services—Internet site
• File storage/authentication
• Learning management system (LMS)—learning portal
• Enterprise virus management
• Backup system
• Remote access
• Print services.
In some situations these services will be delivered by the school, in some
cases by the education system, and in others by an external provider.
IT services should also encompass data storage, disaster recovery (DR)
and business continuity (BC). The school or system office IT department
may run reliable and efficient systems, but when disaster strikes without
proper DR and BC policies and processes in place, the consequences can be
catastrophic! Schools that have encountered natural disasters like floods,
fire or hurricanes, or indeed human disasters like vandalism, have learned
from bitter experience the importance of risk management, disaster
recovery, and having ‘backup off-site’. Fire can occur in any school.

P latf orm
Schools have a choice of platform or operating system on which to host IT
services, including Microsoft Windows, Linux (Open Source) and Apple’s
OSX server environments. These days it is not unusual for schools to run a
hybrid of all three operating systems (OSs), making the decision on what is
best for the designated task. Each system has advantages and disadvantages.
Typically schools are dominated by Microsoft-centric solutions, but schools
can be clever with their technology expenditure by looking at non-
Microsoft options. For example, Apple’s OSX server environment has an
enterprise-based email system included at no additional cost with the
following features: group email, blogging servers, personal serving, group
calendaring, wiki server, and podcasting server.

Storage
Data storage is an emerging issue for schools and systems. Staff and students
continue to demand more storage capacity. They need to store data for long-
term retrieval as part of the school’s information management system. The
trend line is surging upwards, placing ever additional burden on school
systems. The traditional view had storage located on hard drives in individual

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servers. While this is still an adequate method, larger schools are implementing
centralised storage solutions, in particular with Network Attached Storage
(NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN). Both warrant close consideration.

Network
A typical network environment will consist of some form of core switch,
which provides central distribution of network services. Depending on
the size of the school or system, this could be a single switch, a stack of
switches or a chassis-based core switch. A switch enables network traffic to
be distributed to various devices that are connected to the network. It can
be used to isolate network traffic to various zones. Typically, optic fibre will
radiate from the core to outlining buildings where edge switches will be
located to further distribute network services.
Networking is a complex topic and there are many ways they can be
designed and implemented. Experience with ‘amateur’ network efforts in
schools points to the need for experts to design the system. A common
approach is to divide the network up into ‘virtual zones’ called VLANs
(Virtual Local Area Networks). A VLAN is a method of creating individual
logical networks within a physical network. Multiple VLANs can co-exist in

Figure 10.1 Core network elements

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such a network. The main advantages of VLANs are that they reduce data
traffic congestion across the network and isolate it just to the VLAN; can
assist in managing LAN security; and aid in the management of computer
labs through remote access and software deployment systems.
The network elements found in a typical school environment are shown
in Figure 10.1.

Internet Prot ocol addres s

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a unique address that certain
electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other
on a computer network utilising the Internet Protocol standard (IP)—in
simpler terms, a computer address. Any participating network device—
including routers, computers, time-servers, printers, Internet fax machines,
and some telephones—can have their own unique address.
An IP address can also be thought of as the equivalent of a street address
or a phone number (compare: VoIP [voice over (the) Internet Protocol]) for
a computer or other network device on the Internet. Just as each street
address and phone number uniquely identifies a building or telephone,
an IP address can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network
device on a network. For further reading I suggest that you visit http://
computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure5.htm.

P or ts
A port is a special number present in the header of a data packet. Ports are
typically used to map data to a particular process running on a computer.
Ports can be readily explained with an analogy: think of IP addresses as the
street address of a block of flats, and the port number as the number of a
particular flat within that building. If a letter (a data packet) is sent to the
flats (IP) without a flat number (port number) on it, then nobody knows
who it is for (which service it is for). In order for the delivery to work, the
sender needs to include a flat number along with the address of the flats to
ensure the letter gets to the correct destination. Port numbers work in the
same way for delivery data packets.

C O NC LUS IO N

School and system ICT environments are highly complex. Even the smallest
schools require most of the services listed.

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Understanding the core components of ICT infrastructure—at least to

the level presented in this chapter—is vital for school and system leaders.
Having this appreciation increases the likelihood that relevant questions
can be asked of IT staff and ICT companies to ensure appropriate decisions
are made about digital technology.
One thing is certain: ICT infrastructure will continue to develop quickly
and with increasing sophistication and importance. Therefore, existing
goals and aspirations need to be rethought continuously, and educational
leaders need to be part of that development process.
In closing, to learn more about the topics or the terms used in this
chapter, call them up on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. It is a
useful, up-to-date source of information on digital technology.

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 CHAPTER 11
ICT SUPPORT

Pet er Murray

Having the right people in an organisation is critical. Schools are no

different, and for most school and school system leaders having the right
staff in information and communication technology (ICT) areas is a major
challenge. Attracting good ICT staff and keeping them is a major challenge
for schools. While salaries are important, there are other factors that can
assist in employing and retaining quality personnel. In this chapter we
explore different methods for providing ICT support to a digital school and
associated strategies for staffing.

‘ 2 4 / 7 /365’ DE M AN DS

One of the changes that has occurred in schools over the last few years is
the expectation that ICT systems are always available. The old concept was
that schools would only operate between (say) 9am to 4pm and therefore
the ICT systems only needed to be available during those hours.
That is now a distant memory. Students, staff, parents and the wider
community expect to access the school network, like all other networks, 24
hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (24/7/365). Teachers and
students in a digital school will rightly expect to have the network available
for use 100 per cent of the time.
As the demands to provide relevant ICT services grow, so too does the
need for schools to support the increasingly complex environments. No
matter what size the school, some form of ICT support is required. This can

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range from providing desktop support for users to providing support for
complex network and server environments. It is no longer acceptable that
school ICT systems are down for long periods of time, nor is it acceptable
for staff and students to wait long periods of time for their IT problems to
be resolved.

T E C H N ICAL S UPPO R T—IN TERNAL OR

O U T S O U RCE D ?

Schools can choose to manage their entire ICT support through internal
staff, outsource to companies that specialise in ICT support, or use a
combination of the two. In some situations schools do not have the budget
to pay the ‘market’ rate for IT professionals and outsourcing is their only
means of getting the necessary higher-level technical support. The success
of outsourcing very much depends on who is providing the support and the
quality of the SLAs (Service Level Agreement) that have been put in place.
The concern with outsourcing has been the lack of ownership of the
problem by IT companies and a lack of understanding of how schools use
ICT. In recent years, some of these companies have just focused on schools
and have made an effort to understand their technology needs.
There is no one perfect solution to IT staffing in terms of outsourcing
or employing internal staff. However, some trends that seem to have been
successful across many schools include:
• Have at least one technical person employed by the school. Even if this
is a low-level position, it provides a point of contact for staff. In some
cases this person may be a teacher with allocated time; however, this
is not ideal.
• IT support in schools is cyclic, and during busy times (start of year,
reporting) a good approach is to outsource additional technical support.
In this way, IT people feel valued and teaching staff can have their IT
support effectively dealt with during stressful times.
• Many vendors provide phone support on hardware, and in some cases
on software. Apple Computer, for example, provides an optional Apple
Care Protection Plan where, at a small cost, users have access to a help
line to gain support on hardware issues, operating system questions and
other Apple applications such as iLife. This type of vendor support can
take pressure off IT staff and the small upfront cost can be aggregated
across the hardware purchase over the life of the hardware.

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 IC T S U P P OR T

Types o f I C T s uppor t pos i t i on s

What kind of ICT personnel you opt to use will depend very much on
your situation, with factors like size, type of technology used, funding and
degree of school control over the employment of staff impacting on the
best mix. Below are some typical ICT support positions. In smaller schools,
one person might need to take on several of these roles.
• Help Desk Officer—The Help Desk position is the face of ICT
support in a school. It should be the central point where IT incidents
are reported. Even small schools should have some form of Help Desk,
even if it is staffed for only a few hours a day.
• Technical Support—Larger schools should have technical support
staff, in addition to the Help Desk, who are available to provide ‘Level
1’ support to users. Typically these are roaming roles and can assist staff
in their classroom or in their office.
• System Administrator—The Systems Administrator is responsible for
ensuring ICT services are operating effectively, and for implementing
new services. Their duties include updating operating systems on
servers, updating services as new versions are released, integration and
authentication and the like. In some situations, Systems Administrators
are responsible for SOE (Standard Operating Environment) build and
deployment.
• Network Administrator—The Network Administrator is responsible
for the effective running of the school network. This includes switch
configuration and deployment, VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) set-
up, network security (internal and external) and Internet connectivity.
• Computer Manager—The Computer Manager is usually responsible
for the day-to-day running of the technical team, establishing work
priorities and project timelines. The Computer Manager will usually
also have some technical work to carry out.
• Director of ICT—Large schools should have some form of strategic ICT
position, a role that should bridge the gap between ICT support and the
ICT academic needs of the school. The position will usually manage the
ICT budget and inform the strategic ICT direction of the school.

ATTR ACTIN G AN D R E TAIN I NG QUALIT Y IT STAFF

Salaries are an important component in schools finding good IT staff and

then retaining them. However, in many situations schools do not have the

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budget to pay the market rate. If schools do have control over salaries, then
accurate benchmarking is the first step. Find out what a similar position is
being paid in the market place and then attempt to match this as closely
as possible.
There are a number of other factors that are useful in negotiating with
potential IT employees or for retaining your IT staff:
• The cyclic nature of schools can be used to your advantage. IT people
like the fact that there is some ‘quieter’ time during school holidays
where they will have time to work on new projects, rebuild systems or
update SOEs.
• Professional development and certification are important—where
possible offer this as part of the annual package. Those who have not
had to pay the bill for IT support training will soon appreciate the
significant difference to those paid for teacher development. Several
schools pulling together to employ a course instructor to train a group
of staff can offset costs for these courses.
• Many IT staff love ‘tech toys’. Keep their equipment up-to-date; ensure
they have the latest and best gear to use. Where possible, give them
extra gear to use, like a SmartPhone or an iPod that could be used also
as a portable hard drive for technical work. In the overall scheme of
things these are small costs to pay. If it keeps them working happily for
another year, then it is worth the cost compared with that of having to
replace a staff member.

IC T T E C HN ICAL S TAFF CE R TIFIC AT ION AND

R E- S KIL LIN G

ICT systems change rapidly. For instance, a new operating system will be
released, a major mail upgrade will be made available, and the backup
software the school is using will be updated. School-based technical staff
may have been originally employed based on the certifications they hold.
Three years on, those certifications will invariably be out of date, and in
some cases irrelevant. Therefore, schools need to recognise the importance
of ensuring ICT staff have appropriate up-to-date certification and
professional development opportunities.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, ICT certification and training courses are
very expensive and schools are often reluctant to commit precious funds.
However, without that ongoing investment your sustained digital school

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development is put at significant risk. Moreover, in some situations, schools

may have to re-skill technical staff if old systems have been replaced with
new ones.

TC O — TO TAL CO S T O F OW NERSHIP

Too often schools just focus on the cost of the computer hardware. It is all
too easy to be ‘blinded’ by a bargain whereby computer vendor Y indicates
he can replace your computer laboratory of 24 machines for $20 000. How
many schools or education authorities have you seen that have opted
initially for ‘cheap gear’ only to spend significant monies redressing that
problem. The lesson of PC clones should still be remembered.
Schools need to take into account many factors in the total cost of
ownership (TCO). For example, what capabilities do the computers in
the laboratory have, what extras will need to be added, what software is
included, how reliable is it, how much technical support will be required
to maintain it. TCO should be calculated on the life of the laboratory—in
many cases three to four years.
One example of TCO is with Apple technology. Included with every
Apple computer is an extensive range of software suited to a digital
classroom. The Apple operating system (OSX) is inherently stable and
basically free of attack by viruses. It is easy to support and over a three year
period, the TCO is lower than an equivalent Windows environment, which
upfront may have cost a couple of thousand dollars less to purchase.

B U D G E T ALL O CATIO N

Following the total cost of ownership theme, it is important that schools

recognise the need to spend effectively in ‘backend’ technology. The trend
in some schools is to focus on what is visible—desktops and laptops—and
put cheaper, lower-quality infrastructure in place behind the scenes. It is
often hard for a school leader to see value in spending an extra $5000 on
a network switch or another $1000 per annum on server maintenance.
Unfortunately this approach can lead to ongoing infrastructure problems,
with teachers and students getting frustrated, and all the money spent
on the desktops and laptops being wasted because the network is down
50 per cent of the time!

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Depending on the size of your IT department and the trust you have
in them to make large IT hardware purchasing decisions, you may want to
consider committee-based decision-making processes. Alternatively, you
may wish to use a consultant you can trust to assist in the process. Bear in
mind the observations made in Chapter 5 about being ‘in control’ of the
spending. There are also a number of excellent Australian email lists and
forums focused on technology in education where opinions on hardware
selections can be sought.

D O C U ME N TATION , DISASTE R REC OVERY AND

B U S IN E S S CO N TIN UITY PL ANNING

ICT technical people are generally poor at documentation, in particular

with disaster recovery planning and updating as system configuration
changes. The importance of appropriate documentation on the working
of the various systems and their integration markedly increases when you
lose a key member of the ICT team and someone new to the technology
has to be quickly brought up to speed. Quality documentation is one way
of managing—and, indeed, markedly reducing—the level of risk borne
by the principal. School leaders should implement procedures where
there are twice yearly audits of ICT documentation. In some situations
it may be appropriate to engage an external consultant to review this
documentation.

‘ T E C H N ICAL V E R S US ACAD EMIC ’ SUPPORT

There should be no such concept as ‘technical versus academic’ support.

The two should go hand in hand. Technical support staff must recognise
that teaching and learning are central to all that they do, and supporting
the teacher or student in the classroom is critical. Too often barriers are put
in place by technical people because they fear the academic needs might
compromise IT security. In almost all situations there are alternative ways
of working, and some ICT staff may need to shift their mindset to ensure
they always support the curriculum requirements of the school. This culture
needs to be fostered. If your IT department is not supporting the needs of
the students and staff, then there should be some accountability for their
action. Don’t be afraid to ‘let incompatible staff go’. While there might be

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some short-term pain while replacement staff are found, the ‘breath of
fresh air’ that will result when the ‘right’ IT person is found will be well
worth it.

C O NC LUS IO N

A quality ICT infrastructure and an ICT support team that can both
maintain and consistently develop the digital technology are fundamental
to the sustained development of a digital school.
Arranging effective ICT infrastructure and staffing support requires
commitment from school and system leaders. Getting the ‘right’ technical
people is crucial. Radical as it might first appear, by spending less on
equipment and more on ICT support staffing, you will likely achieve the
higher-quality services that make staff and students want to engage with
the technology.

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 CHAPTER 12
MANAGING AND
SERVICING THE
I N F O R M AT I O N N E E D S
O F A D I G I TA L S C H O O L

Karen Bo nanno

With the advent of the personal computer (PC), the Internet, the World
Wide Web and Web 2.0 applications, millions of people are now creators
and sharers of information in a digitally connected world. The early vision
of the WWW by its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, was for a single, global,
collaborative information environment. An extension of this vision has
been facilitated by the Web 2.0 technologies that enable users from around
the world to connect online and share knowledge and expertise through
blogs, wikis, multimedia sharing services, social networking and community
tagging tools. Web 2.0 is about ‘conversations, interpersonal networking,
personalisation and individualism’ (Abram, 2005). It is likely this level of
communication, collaboration, community and contribution will be an
expectation of our students within the digital school environment. Virtual
places and spaces, preferably within an educational context and hosted
locally, will need to be established to facilitate teaching and learning
approaches that cater for this level of activity.
Prensky (2001) argues that the students of the twenty-first century
are not like the Baby Boomers who represent the majority of the current
teaching profession. Today’s students—the Net Generation—think, behave

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and process information very differently. Prensky coined the phrase ‘digital
natives’ and clarified this by stating:

Our students today are all native speakers of the digital language of
computers, video games and the Internet.

This student generation has grown up with computers and the enabling
information and communication technologies (ICTs) that have changed
the way we share and exchange information and collaboratively construct
and create knowledge. These are the students who have been ‘born with
the chip’ (Abram & Luther, 2004) and whose digital toolkit allows them to
move adventurously through the maze of a hi-tech, socially-networked,
virtual environment that entertains and informs.

C H AL L E N GE S

The attributes of the Net Generation, as identified by Prensky (2001) and

Abram and Luther (2004), provide multiple challenges for the digital school
in the area of managing and servicing the information needs of the school
community.
Students’ ‘nomadic’ nature of receiving information, preferably in
multimodal format, at really fast (twitch) speed via multiple connections
from multiple locations, challenges the bandwidth, equitable access to
and availability of high-end computers hosting the latest suite of software
applications. School policy on connectivity to external applications and the
use of mobile phones, iPods and the like are further challenges.
Multitasking and agnostic behaviour, whereby the Net Generation
are capable of distributing their attention across multiple applications
to randomly access information in a variety of formats, are challenging
school information management and collection development policy. Also
challenged are the concept of the school library as being a place and space
for teaching and learning, and the importance of developing information
literacy skills to improve the quality of the question asked by students to
successfully link them to the best information.
For example, the overzealous blocking of Web 2.0 applications may
need to be reconsidered as these students work best when they are
networked with others in their ‘collaborator’ mode. This may also challenge
how schools deal with shared authorship under the current assessment

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methods, but it will most definitely challenge the digital school when it
comes to who owns the information generated in the collaborative Web 2.0
environment. Issues of copyright, intellectual property and plagiarism will
haunt every school.
As experiential learners, these students crave interactivity, immediate
response and instant gratification. These behaviours will challenge how
teacher librarians service students’ information needs through the provision
of virtual reference services, personalised attention for research support
at the point of need, and the adoption of Web 2.0 applications such as
Real Simple Syndication (RSS) to filter the information flow. This will also
challenge how teachers interact with their students in the information-
creation process through their responsiveness and feedback to students,
and their coordination of the cognitive process in a virtual environment.
What is more, the student’s principled and direct beliefs and values,
which are often exhibited through risky online behaviour or practices,
are already beginning to challenge how schools deal with privacy, social
responsibility and ethical behaviour in a digital environment.

R IS IN G TO M E E T TH E CH ALLENG ES

In an attempt to address the challenges, school executive and educational

policy makers will need to consider how to:
• effectively manage the productivity, discovery and usability of
information
• identify and apply standards to ensure ‘interoperability’
• source, manage and disseminate multiple, dynamic formats of
information
• actively address and apply copyright, intellectual property and privacy
requirements, and
• develop information fluency in every student.
These considerations are discussed below.

Mana ge th e product i v i t y, di s cov e r y a n d u s a b ilit y

of informa t i on
The development of information management policy within schools and
education systems is essential. The scope of such policy might include, for
example, online publishing standards, acceptable use of digital tools and

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spaces, copyright and intellectual property rights, collection development,

resource management, filtered and disputed materials and plagiarism.
The purpose of the policy is to guide, direct and protect the user and the
school or education system. It should exhibit the following characteristics:
• accountability
• compliance
• information exchange
• information accessibility
• preservation
• enhancement, and
• privacy.
(Bonanno, 2006, pp. 27–28)

These characteristics address the responsibility of the creator of the

information, the life of the information, legislative requirements, application
of standards, intellectual property, access rights, the process for collaborative
engagement, publishing standards, preservation and archiving of valuable
information, information enhancement for continuity and sustainability,
and confidentiality.
The policy needs to address the adoption of specific standards. The use
of metadata to manage and service information needs is crucial. Metadata
is defined as:

structured, encoded data that describe characteristics of information-bearing

entities to aid in the identification, discovery, assessment and management
of the described entities.

(Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, 1999)

Basically, metadata is information about information. Table 12.1 gives

an example of a simple metadata record.
The elements in Table 12.1 (page 136) are based on the standards of the
Dublin Core metadata scheme which has widespread acceptance across the
library sector. The Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2) provides
the framework for the allocation of the values. The primary aim of metadata
in an education context is to improve discovery. Additional elements and
the related values can be added to increase the discovery rate and to assist
the user in identifying how useful the information is likely to be.
Access to digital information, resources and objects can be improved
by the application of metadata, either at the time of creation and/or at the

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Table 12.1 Simple metadata record

ELEMENT NAME VALUE

Title An introduction to metadata
Author/Creator Chris Taylor
Date 29 July 2003
Publisher University of Queensland Library
Format Text/html
Identifier http://www.library.uq.edu.au/iad/ctmeta4.html
Language English
Relation Library website

time the item is catalogued, usually within the library and information
management system (LIMS). If the digital information is valuable, then it
is worth making the information available by describing it with metadata.
In addition, metadata is extremely useful for the management of the
information in respect to security, storage, archiving and preservation. As
Anderson (2007) states:

The characteristics of the Web and the way it has developed are not
conducive to traditional collection and archiving methods ... It therefore
becomes necessary to think about how the traditional skills and expertise of
professional library and information staff could be harnessed in order to rise
to these challenges. (p. 44)

Creators, authors and contributors of websites, blogs, wikis, multi-

media sharing services and social networking applications apply ‘fuzzy’
metadata. Therefore, to make this type of information available, if
considered valuable under a collection development policy, the record
is catalogued with metadata on the LIMS with a link to the information
hosted on a separate server. A search of the LIMS then provides access to
a wider range of information formats within a given discipline or subject
area. One disadvantage of this separation of metadata from the original
information item is that the linkage will be lost should the item be moved,
deleted or modified.
Changes in technology also mean the preservation of digital informa-
tion can be extremely difficult as the hardware and software used can
become obsolete within a three-year cycle. A great deal of content can be

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produced by the individual student and stored with services outside the
school network. As these services are owned by private organisations, there
are questions about what happens to these repositories if the organis-
ation decides to remove the service, charge for the service, or change the
service significantly. This means additional expense to transfer the digital
information into a file format that can be accessed. One means of addressing
this issue is to maintain the content at its lowest level, such as ASCII text,
and to apply cataloguing standards and controlled vocabulary within a
LIMS to make the information accessible and useful. Further development
of virtual learning environments (VLEs) should help to address this
fragmentation of information while retaining metadata standards and
preservation requirements.

Identi fy and appl y s t andards t o e n s u re in t e ro p e r a b ilit y

Interoperability refers to the capacity of digital information systems to
transfer or exchange information among its various components, or
data sources. An effective metadata scheme supports interoperability
by providing a formal structure to identify the knowledge structure of
a given discipline, and to link that structure to the information of the
discipline through the creation of an information system that will assist
the identification, discovery and use of information within that discipline
(Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, 1999).
To explain a metadata scheme in simpler terms one can refer to the
purpose of applying controlled vocabulary to created or sourced information
during the allocation of metadata elements. A controlled vocabulary is a
selected list of words and phrases usually chosen by trained professionals
who possess expertise in the subject area. The Schools Catalogue Information
Service (SCIS) subject headings (SCIS, 2007) is a controlled vocabulary
designed specifically for a school environment. The linkage of controlled
vocabulary to an information item is essential for high-level precision and
recall of information.
The Internet does not operate under a recognised metadata scheme;
therefore, there is no controlled vocabulary to assist in the management
of the information. Meta keywords can be inserted into the web page,
but these are applied at random by the creator who can manipulate the
keyword entry so the web page ranks better in a search result and insert
words that have no relevance at all to the body content. There is differing
opinion as to whether search engines actually recognise and use the meta-
tags in the delivery of search results. The practice of ‘tagging’ a keyword to

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a digital object (especially in Web 2.0 applications) to describe it is not part

of a formal classification system. In most cases a collection of tags has been
created by an individual for their own personal use.
Information resources available on the World Wide Web suffer from
feral cataloguing. There is incongruent use of subject identifiers and
keyword vocabulary, multiple styles of in-house developed metadata
schemes and no common search domain. Minimal standards apply when
it comes to classifying or categorising to assist in the retrieval of relevant
information. Taylor (2003) refers to the outcome of this structure for a user
as an experience of ‘high recall and low precision’, where:

The high recall refers to well-known (and frustrating) experience of using an

Internet search engine and receiving thousands of hits. It is popularly known
as information overload. The low precision refers to not being able to locate
the most useful documents. The search engine companies do not view the
high hit rates as a problem. Indeed, they market their products on the basis
of their coverage of the web, not on the precision of the search results.
(Taylor, 2003)

In these circumstances, interoperability is compromised as the LIMS

cannot exchange information seamlessly or make the information easily
available for further use without double handling. A fully integrated VLE
that accommodates the library or ‘knowledge centre’, related online
learning and community areas, and the personal learning environment
(PLE) will help to improve the interoperability of information systems for
schools and education authorities.

Sourc e, m anage and di s s em i nate mu lt ip le , d y n a mic

f orma ts o f i nfor m at i on
In the 1980s, many school libraries began to embrace the automation of the
school’s resource collection, which was primarily print-based. Use of the
PC and, initially, Windows-based library automation software, supported
by online public access catalogues (OPACs), which replaced the card
catalogue, provided multiple points of access to the school’s resources. A
decade later, these systems migrated to web-based library and information
management systems providing access to the school’s resource collection,
online databases and a richer content base of information formats via the
OPACs and, at times, via remote web-based access.
As early as the 1990s, it was recognised by the library information
service sector that libraries would need to change. While the digital era

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had not yet fully arrived, there were calls for doing away with ‘physical
libraries’. However, Crawford and Gorman (1995) argued that a ‘library
without walls’ made no sense as a replacement for a real library:

Libraries will increasingly offer services to remote users as well as users in

the library ... [and] must continue to seek innovative ways to provide access
to information and materials not locally held. (p. 165)

They added:

Although the physical collection will continue to be a primary tool, [libraries]

need to adopt tools and techniques that will make extended libraries work.
There are many such tools already in existence and many more will evolve
in the years to come. (p. 165)

The longer-term aim was therefore to consider information produced

in digital environments, such as online databases, websites and Web 2.0
applications, as just another format to collect within an overall collection
development policy of the school community.
A VLE of the future will host the next-generation LIMS that embraces
the information complexity of Web 2.0 applications by including features
that will cater for tagging, social bookmarking, learner-centric search and
browse facilities, virtual reference, RSS, Semantic Web, visual and touch-
screen OPACs.
Research by Mallan et al. (2002) investigating the impact of new
technologies on the role of teacher librarians in Queensland highlighted
that advancements in technology continually challenge the knowledge,
skills and practices of the school library profession, particularly in the
area of information access and processing. Their research also identified
a feature of school libraries that has not changed significantly over the
years—students and staff see the school library as ‘both a work place
and a play space’ (Mallan et al., 2002, p. 5). This view was reinforced in
the research by Hay conducted during 2004–05 with Years 5–12 students
from 46 metropolitan and regional public schools in Queensland and
Victoria. When students were asked to identify how their school library
helped them with their learning, Hay (2006) reported:

A positive learning environment that supports student learning where

students feel comfortable and can pursue their own information, ICT and
recreational interests, was central to students’ view of the school library.
(p. 30)

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The physical facilities, access to a range of resources, computers and

related technologies and school library personnel were also viewed as
important. Hay states:

Just under half of the student responses regarding ICT use and assistance
specifically referred to the importance of having access to computers in the
school library to complete a broad range of information seeking, information
selection, transfer and storage, knowledge creation and production tasks.
(p. 31)

These research findings support the view that the dominant ethic
of librarianship is service. It is from this focus that a school library in a
digital school will continue to draw on all forms by which information is
communicated, use technology creatively and intelligently to enhance the
services to the end user, promote access to information within a safe and
ethical environment, and draw on the past to create the future in servicing
the information needs of teachers and students.

Address a nd appl y copyr i ght , i n t e lle c t u a l p ro p e r t y a n d

priv ac y re qui rem ent s
Being a good steward of copyright compliance within a digital school is a
difficult, and sometimes traumatic, task. Copyright infringement is often
the result of ignorance or confusion as to the legitimate rights of the
user of the information. Displays of this ignorance or confusion abound
in the school environment, ranging from ‘I found it on the Internet so I
thought I could just drop the image into my presentation without needing
to acknowledge the source’ to ‘I thought I could just forward the article
I found on the Internet rather than just sending my friend the web link’.
These examples of copyright abuse are mainly due to the current thinking
that any material that is provided digitally or is available on the Internet is
copyright free. But a word of caution: the absence of a copyright statement
on a web page does not automatically mean that copyright does not exist.
Clear conditions on the use of information gathered from any source
are vital. Most digitally published materials do carry terms and conditions
on how the information can be used. These conditions are provided through
a copyright notice or a licence agreement. Unfortunately, most users of the
Internet—and, in particular, Web 2.0 applications—rarely make it to the end
of the web page where these terms and conditions are clearly hyperlinked
to documentation. For example, one clause from YouTube states: ‘You
agree not to distribute in any medium any part of the Website, including

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but not limited to User Submissions (defined below), without YouTube’s

prior written authorization’ (YouTube, 2007). A major downfall with the
documentation provided on the sites is that it is usually text-centric and is
unlikely to be read by the user.
The concepts of fair dealing and library exceptions need to be
communicated and must definitely be endorsed and supported by the
school leaders. Teacher librarians play a vital role in providing advice on
copyright compliance and the proper use of copyright materials in a digital
school. With the increasing complexity of copyright and the diverse formats
of information now emerging, it is also wise to call on additional support
to clarify copyright issues within a school-based context. The information
sheets for educational institutions within Australia produced by the
Copyright Agency Limited (2007) and the Australian Copyright Council
(1994–2008) are a good starting point as well as providing contact details
for further communication on copyright matters.
Even an alternative to copyright, Creative Commons (Creative
Commons n.d.), claims flexible use but still carries a term ‘Some Rights
Reserved’. The catchphrase, ‘Share, Remix, Reuse—Legally’, promotes
Creative Commons licences that allow for more freedom of use, but with
reservations. The core element appears to be exercising respect for another
person’s work by giving them credit where credit is due. Is this not acting
in a socially responsible way? This is the attitude that needs to be fostered
in a digital school at the point of retrieval of information and at the point
of creation of information.
In addition, socially responsible behaviour needs to be encouraged to
protect the student’s personal profile. Students need to understand that
online publishing has its hazards and it comes with responsibilities. Posting
information about inappropriate behaviour may have ramifications.

Devel op i nfor m at i on fl uency o f e ve r y s t u d e n t

Concerns have been expressed about the techno-centric assumptions of
the Net Generation, especially when it comes to how information savvy or
digitally naive they really are. An initial literature review by Combes (2007,
p. 23) into the information seeking behaviour of the Net Generation
questions whether these assumptions are ‘based on fact or merely
observations that describe what young people appear to be doing when
using ICTs, rather than their actual skill levels and achievements’. Her
research with over 1000 students aged between 17 and 22 indicated that
‘while students are confident in their ability to use technology to find

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information, they are less confident in their ability to manipulate [or] use
the information they have’ (p. 31).
The change in the information landscape over the last several years
requires more attention to helping students understand and navigate
the digital information environment. The term ‘information fluency’ has
recently emerged as an extension to the focus on information literacy and
skills development. Lorenzo (2007) defines the term as the ‘acquisition
of three primary skills: basic information technology skills (including
computer literacy); information literacy skills; and critical thinking skills’ (p.
2). Today’s students need to become information-fluent. This means being
able to:
• ask the right questions to identify the most appropriate search terms to
effectively transact a successful search query;
• develop and apply high-level online research skills that require
responsiveness to search results and utilising decision-making skills to
revise the information-seeking process;
• be discerning users and understand the limitations of various search
tools and the idiosyncrasies of specialised search facilities;
• check the reliability and validity of the information sourced;
• use information ethically and know when and how to give credit to an
information source; and
• actively engage in constructive knowledge creation knowing how
to integrate sourced information to expand their understanding and
knowledge of the world.

B R ING ING IT TO GE TH E R —DESIG NING QUALIT Y

VIR TU AL LE AR N IN G E N V IR O NMENT S

The core components for the development of a virtual learning environment

(VLE) are shown in Figure 12.1. Such environments should be built
around a learner-centric infrastructure and provide for smooth workflow
between web-based modules. This means that students and teachers are
able to move seamlessly between LIMS, curriculum, online communities,
assessment and their personal learning environment (PLE).
A well-designed VLE is characterised by the following:
• an effective and efficient collaborative environment
• provision of quality information to improve decision making and critical
thinking

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Librarians add Teachers search Teachers or Students publish

research items to and link in community to assessment
support teaching resources from contributors upload blogs and team
and learning digital libraries files of any format portfolios
from own drives

Knowledge Learning and online Portfolio

centre communities areas Own online
General library Display and storage area for
Teacher reference communication of curricula, non-
Library materials to course or curricula and
community participants professional
Other libraries, e.g.
development
archive, admin, etc.

Administrators
add items and
news to Teachers channel items Teachers publish to
support school to knowledge centre for blogs and professional
community storage, tagging and development portfolios
communication easy retrieval

Figure 12.1 The integration of personal, communal and organisational knowledge

(Concord Australia Pty Ltd. Used with permission)

• facilities for responsiveness, review, feedback and interactivity

• accessibility to information and data
• reduced costs, lower handling and robust storage
• flexible integration of information from various sources and in dynamic
formats
• portability of information.
Anderson (2007) highlights some of the broader implications of
personal spaces within VLEs:

These collections will become extremely important to people, developing

into a form of personal archive of a lifetime. They may well contain content
from a person’s educational experience and have direct links with Personal
Learning Environments. ... [and therefore] a person’s personal path through
the information space will become profoundly important. This path might
include a record of the history of interaction with information sources, the

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setting up and continual modification of personal filtering mechanisms,

records of group interactions ... and the use of other people’s filters and
knowledge. (p. 46)

One further potential aspect of a school’s VLE is the establishment of

a ‘tribal community’. For the student, this shared space provides peer-to-
peer connections and interaction, caters for the coordination of cognitive
activity and development of personal learning plans, provides access
to resources and personnel to assist with the information retrieval and
knowledge creation, and accommodates the need for responsiveness and
feedback between teacher and student. Through the use of these tribal
community spaces, students’ educational experiences (formal and informal)
are captured as a record of their learning journey and achievements, and as
a foundation for further development.

C O N C L U S IO N

Policy development for the provision and management of information

services is crucial. Such policies at school and education system level can
help to sort and sift information from misinformation, guide the handling
of disputed or filtered materials, and provide criteria for determining
access to applications that may have been previously blocked. Information
processing standards, as a key component of the policy, need to be clearly
stated and applied to facilitate the identification, retrieval and use of
quality information. If an information item is worthy of creation, it needs
to be processed accordingly. Ethical practice and social responsibility in the
creation and use of information need to be documented and integrated
across the curriculum and carefully aligned with the copyright, intellectual
property and privacy requirements of an educational institution. A policy
position on a whole-school approach to information fluency across
current and emerging technology environments is essential. Educators
cannot assume that ‘technology-immersed’ students are automatically
‘information-smart’ users.
These policy issues are not new. Library and information professionals,
including teacher librarians, have been dealing with these issues, and the
relevant services to address policy, for decades. It is surprising that at a time
when the information landscape is becoming more complex, some school
principals and education system officers are endorsing the replacement
of teacher librarians with personnel who are unqualified and ill-prepared

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to effectively and efficiently manage and service the information needs

of the school. Hay’s (2006) research offers a strong counter argument in
concluding that

Students value the flexibility of access provided by the school library, as well
as the expertise of the teacher librarian as an information and technology
specialist who can help meet their needs. The students in this study
identified the school library as a dynamic and unique place, compared to
classrooms, PC labs and other specialist rooms within the precinct, because
of the availability and flexibility of [its] resources and services ..., and the
individualised and customised attention the teacher librarian and library staff
could provide students at the point-of-need. (p. 37)

Any moves towards the under-funding and demise of school libraries

will have serious implications for the future of schooling. It would be
unthinkable to have to consider the re-establishment of a school library,
or its futures equivalent, in later years. New, informed commitment by
educational leaders and policy makers is needed to manage and service
the digital information needs of schools and education systems. The
development and implementation of strategic planning in this area would
certainly exemplify ‘smart-information’ thinking and practice.

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 CHAPTER 13
DEVELOPING AND
S U S TA I N I N G T H E D I G I TA L
E D U C AT I O N E C O S Y S T E M :
THE VALUE AND
POSSIBILITIES OF ONLINE
ENVIRONMENTS FOR
STUDENT LEARNING

Dan In g varson & M ichael Gaf fney

Over recent years, there has been an increasing variety and sophistication
of educational software and related ICT systems available to support and
manage student learning. This digital technology comes in many guises—
from software that is highly specific in content and directed in terms of
instructional approach, to more complex multifaceted applications that
have broader scope and offer choice and flexibility in the ways students
and teachers communicate, learn and develop knowledge.
In this chapter we will overview recent developments in online, or
virtual, learning environments and offer a framework for considering their
appropriateness and value in contemporary school settings. We will look at
the implications of these developments on teaching practices and suggest
guidelines for school and system leaders for making decisions about the
form of virtual learning environment (VLE) suited to their context.
Decisions about VLEs need to consider two fundamental questions:
• What is the purpose of creating a VLE in your school or education
system?

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• How does the VLE align with other components of your ICT planning?
Answers to these questions should always be based around the
educational value of ICT, and the need to carefully integrate investment
and implementation of digital technology with the purpose and vision,
organisation and work practices, and community characteristics of your
school or system. These are the premises underlying this chapter.

TH E EM E R GIN G E LE CTR ONIC LEARNING

E N V IR O N M E N T

The detailed history of virtual learning environments is provided in

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
History_of_virtual_learning_environments). They are discussed in brief
below.

Computer-assisted learning
The earliest forms of electronic learning environments were described
under the label ‘computer aided learning’ (CAL). This term was used from
the early 1980s in school contexts to refer to computer programs that
were installed mostly in computer laboratories or on individual machines
by ‘tech-savvy’ teachers, and led students through a specific topic or skill
development process.

Learning management system

In the early 1990s, the ideas and practices of CAL began to evolve into
the concept of the ‘learning management system’ (LMS). In early
LMSs, content and delivery were essentially the same thing. Content was
selected and developed by publishers to be processed by teachers and
students in specific ways. Schools were faced with the situation of choosing
various forms of content, usually from different publishers and which may
or may not be appropriately aligned with their local or prescribed curricula.
Further, it was often not possible to transfer or integrate content between
different publisher products. This lack of interoperability caused difficulty
for schools and publishers.

Learning content management system

The ‘open standards’ movement emerged as a response to the problems
highlighted above. It was focused on ways to share content across different

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LMS applications and led to the rise of the ‘learning content management
system’ (LCMS) or Content Repository.
The LCMS is an online library with a range of digital content provided
by teachers, government departments, education authorities or other
agencies, or purchased from publishers, which is stored and made available
to and by schools and education authorities. However, these tend to be
complicated and labour-intensive systems, requiring staff dedicated to
managing the content.

Intranets
Intranets are web-based systems where content and tools are made
available via a login. They may or may not be automatically organised into
classes. Intranets are used for navigation and as indexes to other tools. In
this way intranets serve as ‘portals’.

Local area network

The model of the ‘local area network’ (LAN) being accessed with user-
name and password ‘logins’ has persisted as the most common way
for educational organisations to store and share files. This design has
advantages and disadvantages.
On the positive side, the capacity to share digital files has made for
faster development and sharing of information. On the downside, there is
a tendency for file servers to become messy and clogged. This is because
information has been stored with insufficient labels or ‘metadata’, making
retrieval and use of that information more difficult. To this point, it has been
the organisational ability of individual teachers and the technical skill of the
LAN administrator that have determined the effectiveness and efficiency
of local networks.
The LAN has been and will continue to be a significant component
of the virtual learning environment. As more consistent ways to ‘tag’ and
store information are developed and agreed, the digital content created and
used by teachers and students will be more readily available for supporting
quality teaching and learning.

V ir tual learning environment

Over recent years, education authorities in the United Kingdom decided
that the concept and practice of the ‘learning management system’ were too
restrictive and focused on ‘controlling’ learning. In response, they coined
the term ‘virtual learning environment’ (VLE). This is meant to convey a

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less didactic, more open application of digital technology, which is more

directed at learning and less about management and control.
As a consequence, a range of open and dynamic VLEs have been
created in the UK. These VLEs are web-based applications, meaning that
they are used through a web browser and provide ‘anywhere, any time’
access. However, having reduced the focus on content management and
being relatively independent, free-flowing web applications meant that
important integration with the school and system administration systems
was poor. Hence, what emerged was the same problem that had been
experienced years before with content management.

From ‘v i r t ual ’ t o ‘m anaged’ l e a r n in g e n viro n me n t s

As some schools and education authorities began to realise that VLEs
were unable to work with their other digital information systems, they
began looking for alternatives. The result was the idea of the managed
learning environment (MLE). The underlying notion here is to link student
management information with the learning environment. Put simply, this
means being able to use information from the student administration
system in the design, monitoring and assessment of student learning
being supported through the learning systems. More and more school
and education system leaders are realising that they need to have inter-
operability between the administration systems and the learning systems
within the school, and across the education system as a whole.

Towa rds ‘l ear ni ng pl at for m s ’ a n d ‘ d ig it a l e c o s y s t e ms ’

The term emerging as the most likely next phase in the development
of online learning environments is ‘learning platform’. Underlying this
concept is the desire to keep students’ learning central to the provision and
outcomes of K–12 education, to have ‘interoperability’ between different,
digitally based information and communication systems, and form a base
that can be built upon into the future as both the technology and our ability
to use it in education develop.
The elements or pieces of the emerging learning workspace for students
and teachers that have been described to this point make up the digital
ecosystem for a school. Examples of software associated with various
elements are listed in Table 13.1 (page 150).
While there are other components that may be present or can be added
at a particular site, the most important aspect of a digital ecosystem is that

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Table 13.1 Examples of software in school ‘digital ecosystems’

SOFTWARE DESCRIPTION
Blackboard Learning management system with a structured
approach to how a ‘course’ (rather than a ‘student’)
is put online

myInternet myClasses Virtual learning environment

Moodle Simple open source virtual learning environment

Drupal Website content management system, used as a

portal

SharePoint An intranet

D-Space Learning content management system

‘Well-organised file server’ A basic virtual learning environment

one component can both ‘feed’, and ‘feed off’, another. This quality is called
interoperability and should underpin the design of digital technology
at school and system level. The ways in which information might move
between the various elements of a school’s digital ecosystem is shown in
Figure 13.1.
From a school or education authority leader’s perspective, the concept
of the digital ecosystem focuses attention on what various parts of the
technological infrastructure can provide, and how each part relates to
others in support of student learning. For example, at class level it is
important for teachers to know and be able to link individual student and
whole cohort achievement information to the design of programs. This can
assist in achieving a higher degree of personalisation for each student in
the learning opportunities that are provided to them.
Similarly at school level, there are various forms of student information
that are vital to students’ engagement and development, including
their health, attendance, family situation, academic history, personal
development, interests and aspirations. The use of such information can
have a significant impact on the design of teaching programs as well as the
broader curriculum, structures and policies of the school. Effective school

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Student Information Systems Staff Planning

Report Assessment Progress Lesson Curriculum
writing reporting reporting planning planning

Student
records Content Management
Content Authoring
Network System Learning Environment Teacher- Subject
Web-Based Tools created facility
content content
Network
logins
Virtual Learning Environment
File server
folders Class Subject Student
Computer software pages areas areas
access

Communication, Authoring Content Repository

Class Tools and Collaboration Tools Learning Media Library
Interactive Discussion Social objects centre content
whiteboard forums networking
1 to 1 School Portfolios
laptops portal
Class Directed Open
desktops student student
authoring authoring
Computers on
wheels

Figure 13.1 Elements of a school digital ecosystem (Vrasidas & Glass, 2005)

leaders understand that the different stages, departments and subject areas
of the school have different needs. This also applies to their use and needs
in relation to the digital learning environment. Hence, while there may be
a single ‘ecosystem’ for each school, it will have many distinct parts whose
needs and potential need to be recognised and considered.
Finally, at the level of the system or education authority, the significance
of the concept of digital ecosystem can apply to ways in which information
about student engagement and achievement is used to inform decisions
about individual school resourcing and staffing, as well as develop strategies
for networking schools and supporting the growth of the intellectual,
social, financial and spiritual capital available across the system (Caldwell,
2007). In this sense, the interoperability of information about the student,
the home, the curriculum, the school and the school system, characteristic

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of a healthy digital ecosystem, can provide a more responsive, personalised,

effective, equitable and efficient learning experience for each student.
To this point, the aspiration of a healthy digital ecosystem remains
largely unrealised in schools and systems. And while there may be many
reasons for this, some of the lingering questions in the minds of educators
include:
• Why are we investing in online technology?
• What do we expect to happen as a consequence?
• What does ‘success’ actually look like?
The issue is whether teachers, principals, system officers and education
policymakers have taken enough time to understand the possibilities and
be explicit about their expectations of online environments.
Questions about how these environments are designed to operate and
what they are supposed to achieve must be carefully considered. Otherwise
we may end up wasting resources and developing ‘sick digital ecosystems’
that contain pathological entities intent on undermining the vision and
culture of the school or system. Examples of the latter would include
software applications that are introduced to monitor or control processes
or performance with no appreciable benefit in effectiveness, efficiency or
esprit de corps for staff or students.
In summary, the point about these emerging learning workspaces—
from the earliest computer-assisted learning to the emergence of learning
platforms and digital ecosystems—is that we need to understand the online
environment that we are creating, or intend to create. And we need to take
time to consider how the various digital components that constitute that
environment can be brought together to form a cohesive, healthy digital
ecosystem where information flows in timely and useful ways in support
of student learning.

T E C H N O L O GY AS TO OL S FOR T EACHING AND

L E AR N IN G

Whatever their technical design or sophistication, every piece of software

or computer application used in education should be regarded as a tool to
support student learning. Nowhere is this more evident than in the classroom
where these digital tools can either support or straitjacket teaching.
One way of describing the interplay between the tools available and
teaching approaches is shown in Figure 13.2. The vertical axis is about the

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Control
1 2
Teacher-focused Teacher-focused
Content-driven Collaborative tools
Interaction-driven

Prescribed Content Student Experience

3 4
Student publishing Student-focused
Teacher guide Teacher guide
Students/world as Students develop their own
audience understanding
Wiki, Blog Learning journal
Open

All quadrants are needed to provide quality teaching.

Figure 13.2 Relationships between ‘open versus closed’ teaching practice and
‘predetermined versus experience-based’ content, and the use of digital tools

teaching process and shows a continuum from tightly teacher-controlled

(that is, focused on ‘what suits the teacher’) to more open teaching practices
(that is, where there is more two-way teacher–student involvement in
deciding the direction of the learning). At one extreme is where the learning
path taken by students is predetermined by the teacher; at the other it is
designed and reviewed by teachers and students in light of progress. The
horizontal axis is concerned with content and illustrates a continuum from
the use of externally predetermined content to drawing on content chosen
and researched on the basis of students’ experiences. At one end, teaching
and learning is about working with content determined elsewhere; at the
other it is concerned with finding and developing content of relevance and
significance to students’ personal contexts.
All four quadrants can be used effectively by teachers, depending
however on the circumstances. They are generalisations about teaching
practice and, for our purposes, serve as bases for considering how digital
technologies can be used in classroom settings.

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One way of gaining an understanding of the framework is to consider

some ‘offline’ and ‘online’ teaching and learning artifacts and experiences
associated with each quadrant. These are shown in Table 13.2.

Table 13.2 Comparing ‘offline’ and ‘online’ examples across teaching practice—content
quadrants

QUADRANT OFFLINE ONLINE

1 Textbook Static content VLE
2 Small group Forum, Mindmap
3 Newsletter Interactive global posting
4 School camp Learning journal with digital footprints

In Quadrant 1, the focus is on predetermined content and a high degree

of teacher control. This is the area where most VLEs live! Teachers choose the
content, determine the order in which every student will work through that
content, and set the learning and assessment tasks. The selection and control
of content are the key features of the teacher’s work and VLEs are designed
to assist with this. However, VLEs have high overheads in terms of content
entry, training and other set-up costs before teachers can use them effectively.
As a consequence, many teachers are reluctant to start, and those early
adopters who do, have tended to give up and move on to other possibilities.
In Quadrant 2, teacher-directed use of collaborative tools and techni-
ques are evident. The focus shifts from predetermined content towards
topics and issues drawn from students’ experiences. These are discovered
and discussed through dialogue among students and between students
and teachers, rather than by static textual review. Tools that represent the
online version of these types of teacher-driven student discussions include
chats and forums.
Many VLEs have simple basic versions of these tools. Unfortunately,
some teachers have found that they need to do more work to get the same
result as they would through the usual, offline class group discussion. On
the other hand, they have also observed that there are different dynamics
that occur in online interactions to those that happen in normal face-to-face
classroom situations. There is still a way to go with these tools. They need
to capture the nuances of classroom interactions and be able to summarise
for the teacher what has occurred with the interactions in a way that can
reduce the teacher’s work, rather than the teacher having to read every post
and comment to try to glean what is important.

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In Quadrant 3, there is an open approach to teaching the predetermined

content used for learning. The validity of the content from particular media
is questioned and assessed through student feedback and critical thinking.
The wiki has shown itself to be an effective medium for this process.
Interestingly, Wikipedia is the best example of its success, and not only
because of its accuracy content (yes, we need to get over our fears of incorrect
content, but it has been shown to be as accurate as any other source!). In
fact, the main benefit is that students who are involved in the authorship
of wiki pages and who have suitable guidance from their teachers learn to
come up with accurate and agreed answers gleaned from multiple sources.
It is that process of review and reflection around the content that provides
for deeper and longer-lasting learning.
In Quadrant 4, teaching practices support student exploration and self-
generation of the path to learn. It highlights the constructivist approach to
learning, with students’ experiences being the key means for engendering
adventurous, creative problem solving and critical thinking. Buzz words
aside, students cannot work in Quadrant 4 without a solid basis in literacy
and numeracy or an effective scaffold designed by teachers to support their
students.
A recent Australian study (ACMA, 2007) highlighted some important
implications for Quadrant 4 teaching and learning in reporting that

Over 40% of children and young people have some of their own material
on the Internet and one third have a social networking site. From the age of
14 onwards 70% or more of teenagers have engaged in some form of web
authorship. (p. 9)

This reflects an historic change in publishing. Never before have so

many young people had the chance to publish to a world audience on such
a scale.
In this context it is important for educators to realise that new, digital
forms of self-directed learning are burgeoning among school-age students.
This learning needs to be recognised, informed and guided by the school, as
well as inform and guide the school in its curriculum design and teaching
practices.
Currently, there are few teaching tools that specifically exist in Quadrant
4. Computers are not great at supporting these open-ended, flexible
forms of teaching as yet. We believe that as more tools are developed for
Quadrant 4 teaching practices over the coming years, we will see more
high-quality teaching being supported through their use, to supplement

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teachers’ strategies in ways that educators have been aspiring to do offline

and online since the time of John Dewey.
Gifted teachers use all quadrants, but at the right times with the right
students. They are able to move their students ‘out of the everyday’ to engage
and help them to achieve deeper levels of understanding. The provision and
use of Quadrant 4 tools are suited to those moments when the teacher sees
that it is the ‘right time’, and has the option to ‘release’ students to fully
immerse themselves in their learning. These types of digital technologies can
make those moments more evident for all teachers, not just the gifted ones.
A summary of the types of digital tools associated with each of the
quadrants is presented in Table 13.3.

Table 13.3 Examples of digital tools associated with teaching practice—content

quadrants

QUADRANT DIGITAL TOOL FOCUS

1 Interactive whiteboard Practices of author, publish, consume
2 Virtual Learning Moving content online, and practices
Environment of author, publish, consume, respond,
assess, record, compare, review
3 Wiki Questioning, assessment, feedback and
critical thinking
4 Resilience and Higher-order thinking practices of ask,
reasoning tools (due brainstorm, choose, act, review, find
in the future) another solution, share, compare

One purpose of this chapter is to debunk the myth that the use of
digital technology automatically means a more open, learner-focused
education that prepares students for the twenty-first century. Rather, it is
the quality of the teaching that makes the biggest difference to student
outcomes. The goal of technology is to support, extend and improve the
quality of teaching that is provided to every individual student. It is the
teachers that matter, not the technology.
Improving student outcomes is a complex process. Digital technologies
can support student learning by extending the repertoire of teachers and
informing their teaching strategies. Future developments, for instance,
might include Google searches especially customised for school education
in response to questions such as ‘What could work for my class—and this
student—today?’, as well as more sophisticated systems to track student

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engagement, achievement and wellbeing. These types of possibilities can

provide a scaffold for teachers to improve their teaching.
We need to have inspirational educational goals for the use of digital
technologies. Otherwise we risk those technologies being solely used
to meet the administrative needs of schools and school systems. While
these are necessary functions of an ICT system, they will not bring about
improvements in teaching practice and student achievement.
This discussion of the use of digital tools to support and improve
teaching reflects our longer-term aspirations for the use of digital tech-
nologies. However, today there are a number of pressing practical questions
facing educators and educational planners and policymakers about what
technology is available and how to make best use of it. In the final section
of this chapter, we will overview some important considerations to assist
educational leaders in making decisions about technology, especially how
to develop and sustain a vibrant virtual learning environment.

W H AT T O L O OK FO R IN A LEARNING PLAT FORM

Understanding the interplay between teaching practice and the use

of various digital tools—for example, as discussed in terms of the four
quadrants above—is vital in determining the type of learning platform
(LP) that would be useful or appropriate for your educational setting. This
provides the basis for considering a range of design options for LPs.
The basic premise is that LPs should help to organise, expand and
streamline the ‘teaching, learning and assessment space’ occupied by
students and teachers. In general terms, the modern LP will provide a house
for content (either written by your teachers or purchased and imported), an
online page where students go to see that content, and a set of collaborative
and class administrative tools. Becta, the key government digital education
authority in the UK, lists the core features of LPs as:
• Content management and content sharing
• Class assessment management
• Collaboration and communication
• Assignment and portfolio management
• Interoperability.
In practice, each LP is different due to differences in needs and context,
but there are some common functional requirements. These can be
aggregated into three areas: content, management and communications.

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Content
In effective learning platforms, users create resources to meet the needs of
learners. They tag those resources to make them discoverable by others,
who can further tailor those resources in terms of content and sequence
to meet their personal requirements. This provides efficiencies in staff time
needed to find relevant content, and in the re-use of existing content to
meet specific needs of learners.
By ensuring content is packaged in a way that can be used on a variety
of platforms, the learner can access and transfer content when and where
they wish, and in a format of their choice. Further, through allowing the
direct submission of students’ work for assessment and having systems in
place to monitor progress, not only can valuable time be saved, interventions
can also be made and feedback given in timely fashion.

Mana gem ent

Use of the learning platform should provide a means of meeting learners’
accessibility needs—both in terms of disability access and for those learners
who cannot attend physically.
Second, the ability to assess and map learners’ needs to data stored
in the organisation’s management information system (MIS) provides a
sound basis on which to develop individual targets and education plans.
This ability to plan lessons and provide a focus for prereading, extension
activities, practice activities and discussions around topics allows teachers
to plan in a more natural way and keep learners on track and working at
their own pace.
The ability to sequence learning activities means that teachers retain
control over the learning path. It ensures that the most effective or
appropriate path is highlighted, while leaving the learner with opportunities,
where appropriate, to choose a different route suited to their targets and
interests.
Third, in effective LPs the use of unique learner identifiers means that
learners and teachers can be provided with secure information directly
relevant to students’ individual learning targets and plans. The learner and
teacher can be digitally grouped to support collaborative approaches to
learning.
A fourth feature of effective management in LPs is the capability for
student information (including attendance and performance data) to be
transferred between schools and education sectors, thereby supporting

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smoother transitions and progressions, continued learning portfolio

development and more informed longer-term planning.
Finally, worthwhile LPs incorporate elements to manage access rights.
These promote efficiency by providing targeted personalised learning
resources to those who need them, rather than providing blanket licensing
for everyone.

Com m uni cat i ons

Effective LPs contain discussion forums, blogs, wikis, email and other
messaging facilities to support peer communication and review processes.
They are also inclusive of learners not comfortable or unable to participate
in face-to-face discussions. A further aspect of communication function-
ality is the use of audiovisual conferencing to remove geographical barriers
and wasted travel time by linking and sharing teaching resources nationally
and internationally.

Look at t he cul t ur al as w el l as t h e t e c h n ic a l f a c t o r s
A key technical element of LPs is their capacity to organise content so
that it can be shared and built upon. Therefore, the most valuable tools are
those that upload content, organise content and send content to a class.
These are often the most used tools and replace the traditional file server
for sharing content.
When content (word documents, website links, pdf or any digital
file) is uploaded, it needs to have information added so that it can be
identified and retrieved when needed. This information is called metadata
or ‘information about the information’. Metadata can include details about
the subject, topic and year level and allows files to be grouped in ways
that make sharing easier. (See also Chapter 12.) This capability requires
effort to enter and update the content, and this has been one of the barriers
to take-up of virtual learning environments. Teachers need more time to
upload their Microsoft Word files on to the LP than to save it to a file server.
For content that has been ‘authored’ (that is, done in a web browser), the
changes are easy and quick. On the other hand, if teachers use Word or
other like applications to create and maintain their content, then additional
work is needed to gain the benefits of an organised LP.
But there are more things to consider in choosing an LP than the
technical aspects and capabilities. The implementation of digital technologies
in schools is about school change, not purchasing a product. If your school

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is new to technology, or has entrenched ICT systems and personnel, the

development of a learning platform may well meet with a lukewarm
response.
In the initial stages, the implementation of an LP often means that
teachers’ ‘freedom’ to have a plethora of files and photocopies is reduced.
However, as the school moves through the change process, the isolation,
duplication and poor use of resources (often brought about through lack
of communication between staff) are reduced. Teachers’ private class-
rooms become a little more exposed, and an audience is a powerful
motivator for change.
As the implementation of the LP progresses, collaboration and
management tools become more important. These developments work to
support the later stages of implementation to do with systemic integration—
for example, linking student achievement data with student background
information and developing portfolios that follow the students through
their various stages of schooling, and potentially beyond!
Questions to ask when choosing an LP are presented below. These
have been adapted from the listing provided at http://ferl.qia.org.uk.

Questions to consider at school or central office level:

• What content should be on the LP?
• Who should be responsible for new and shared content?
• Who decides the metadata?
Questions to ask of potential suppliers:
• Does the LP already contain content, or are materials available
separately from the supplier?
• Is the system purely a shell in which you place your own content,
or sourced elsewhere?
• How easy is it to write and upload materials?
• Is uploading content to the LP a simple ‘drag and drop’ process,
or more complicated?
• Is it easy to create online tests?
• How much HTML (web authoring) knowledge is required? (Less is
better!)
• How easy is it to do administrative tasks, like enrol students onto
the LP?

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• How open is the system? Does it allow you to share with other
resources or systems you might have? Does it ‘talk to’ your
Management Information System? Does it meet the standards?
• Are the other functions (such as communications, student tracking,
assessment) easy to use and well designed?
• Is installation, technical support and training included in the
purchasing price? Is training face-to-face online, or both?
• Is there an email or web-based user group you can join and monitor
before purchase? And if so, what sorts of comments have existing
users made?
• Can you get an evaluation version to install and test before buying?
• Is it configurable to the look and feel of your school or education
system?
• Does the supplier offer a hosting service, where the LP is hosted
on their servers rather than yours, therefore reducing your need to
provide technical support internally?
• Which other schools or education systems are using or planning to
use the LP that you are considering? Are there reference sites or
demonstration courses available?
(http://ferl.qia.org.uk)

The Internet is a good place to look for information on learning

platforms. For example, the ‘EduTools’ site (see http://www.EduTools.info/
index.jsp?pj=1) provides reviews of functionality.
EduTools give a comprehensive breakdown of the tools and users’
opinions, as the reviews are largely written by the software users, rather
than the businesses. The list of comparisons can be overwhelming and
sorting out what is important and what can be left until later is essential.
The feature listing provided by Ferl (originally an acronym for ‘Further
Education Resources for Learning’) is shown in Table 13.4 (page 162).
As stated previously, the most important first tools of a learning
platform (or VLE) are their information organisation tools and class
communication tools. Having teachers put the resources for students
in a well-organised file server is a good test—if they are not doing that
well, then the additional work to add content to an LP will be very difficult
for them.

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To this end, many schools have started out with a software program
that is free and written in Australia called Moodle. This is a basic all-in-
one program that competently provides the features that a school starting
out with digital LPs will require. The main advantage is the low impact of
getting started with Moodle. It can create momentum in moving teachers
on to a digital learning platform.

Table 13.4 Feature listing and user opinions on learning platform tools

Learner Tools Support Tools Technical Specifications

>>Communication Tools >>Administration Tools >>Hardware/Software
Discussion Forum Authentication Client Browser Required
Discussion Management Course Authorization Database Requirements
File Exchange Registration Integration UNIX Server
Internal Email Hosted Services Windows Server
Online Journal/Notes >>Course Delivery Tools >>Company Details/
Real-time Chat Test Types Licensing

Whiteboard Automated Testing Company Profile

>>Productivity Tools Management Costs / Licensing

Bookmarks Automated Testing Support Open Source

Calendar/Progress Review Online Marking Tools Optional Extras

Searching Within Course Online Gradebook

Work Offline/Synchronize Course Management

Orientation/Help Student Tracking

>>Student Involvement >>Content Development

Tools Tools

Groupwork Accessibility Compliance

Community Networking Content Sharing/Reuse

Student Portfolios Course Templates

Customized Look and Feel
Instructional Design Tools
Instructional Standards
Compliance

(Source: EduTools 2007, CMS: Feature List. http://www.edutools.info/feature_list.jsp?pj=4)

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S U C C ES SFUL ICT IN SCH OOLS

There is a wide range of factors that contribute to successful use of ICT in

schools. Among the most important is leadership involvement among the
school executive, including a close alliance and collegial exchanges between
ICT and Teaching and Learning specialists. These day-to-day behaviours
and relationships need to be supported by organisational factors such as
clear school plans and policies (including ICT plans integrated with overall
school and system directions), the optimal use of physical plant and other
resources, and the embedding of ICT in critical business areas (Moyle, 2006;
Robertson, Webb & Fluck, 2007).
These factors highlight that successful use of ICT is mostly concerned
with relationships and attitudes among people and providing the
opportunity for them to ‘talk about it’ at all levels. In planning, then,
recommendations should always be focused on the avenues for having the
right conversations in a positive and progressive framework.
In other words, successful use of ICT has much to do with developing
the right culture within a school or school system. For example, policies
often contain aspirational statements like the following:
• ‘We are a secondary school that establishes the educational platform
for young people to contribute confidently to their world with wisdom,
imagination and integrity.’
• ‘We provide resources and skills to optimise the learning possibilities
via new technologies.’
• ‘We permit maximum access, both internal and external, to the school’s
ICT facilities.’
Key questions in looking at how the culture supports or works against
successful use of ICT are:
• At what point do the aspirational goals cease to be the guiding ones
and alternative premises become the reasons for how ICT is designed,
implemented, supported and used in the classrooms?
and further:
• Who gets to decide what technologies get used in which ways?
Careful balancing of the roles and responsibilities of school executive,
teacher leaders, ICT specialists and system officers and policymakers is
needed to develop and sustain a conducive school culture where teachers
are effectively engaged in developments—rather than made to feel
powerless in the face of successive waves of ICT rollouts and upgrades.

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For example, if we have a goal of permitting maximum access and

are aiming to develop people of wisdom and integrity, what would be the
aspects of a school or system network that might help reflect this? Current
networks may be well built, secure and controlled. But too often they tend
to be based on a negative premise of ‘don’t allow people to do things if
they do not have explicit permission to do those things’. Another example
is where schools encourage their teachers to explore and develop their
capabilities with digital technologies, but their ICT policies restrict staff by
not allowing them to override filters.
School and system networks may have the highest-quality equipment,
expensive and robust storage arrays and servers, and be founded—like all
good business networks—on the principles of safety, control and efficient
administration. However, in our experience, quality teaching requires
flexibility, adaptability, trust, openness, guidelines and guidance and rarely
works well under tight control and direction.
The best outcomes for students involve an appropriate balance and
alignment among the teaching, technology and policy elements of the
school and system operation, but that is not always evidenced. When
considering implementation of digital technologies, it can be enlightening
to see which of the areas leads or drives decisions in the other. For example,
to what extent does the technology drive the policy, which in turn influences
the teaching? Or is the alternative direction possible?
This is in no way a criticism of the IT staff. They are working to a
set of goals that the school or education authority has set down. However,
in an effective education network there is always the need for flexibility.
By having the conversation about what is allowed or not (that is, what is
driving the functional boundaries) in a proportioned manner, you can find
an appropriate balance between IT needs, school policy and teacher needs.

Nothi ng to fear but fear i t s el f

Fear of the unknown is all too often the driver, as well as the ‘frustrater’,
of policy. To deal with this, the impacts of policies need to be carefully
considered and explained. For example, the impact of return on equipment
costs and on the tools available for teachers, and the opportunities for
extended and engaged learning for students should be made clear. This
provides the framework for the executive to do the job they are hired to
do—that is make judgements.
Consider this example: If there was a 10 per cent chance that a student
was going to bring a bomb to school, it would provide a different outcome

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to if there was only a 0.000005 chance of this occurring. The judgement on

the level of concern would again change if the bomb was to just spray a
small amount of confetti. Would you set an explosives expert up to swipe
every child every day if there was a 0.000005 chance of confetti or a 10 per
cent chance of injury? In other words, the combination of the likelihood of
something occurring along with the impact of it occurring are core pieces of
information that executives require to be able to make judgement.
With digital technologies it is difficult to understand both the likelihood
and the impact of policy decisions. Therefore, it is often best for decisions
to sit within a review cycle rather than to be set in stone. This can allow for
decisions to be reviewed and change.
Let us consider an example of how ICT policy affects teachers:

There was a set of teachers who wished to use sound bites with their
classes. However, because of lack of access to a CD burner, they had
to ask the IT or Media department to do so. As a consequence, the
time frames were lengthy. Furthermore, when the CDs were eventually
burned, the network was not able to meet the teachers’ aims. If the
teachers had been given a $50 CD burner, then the workload for both
the IT and Media departments would have been reduced, and the
opportunities for the students would have increased.

This example highlights the principle:

Where a teacher can demonstrate their competency in a technology and
a desire to undertake an activity, the bias should be to support that teacher to
undertake that activity.
This involves wherever possible, devolving decision making to a person
or group whose key performance indicators are about successful teaching
and learning rather than controlling and management.

G U ID E LIN E S FO R SCH OO L AND EDUCAT ION

S Y S TE M L E ADE R S

An essential factor in successful development and implementation of

digital technologies is engagement by school and education authority
leaders in these key decisions. These individuals are the ones responsible

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for developing a cohesive organisational culture. It is the organisational

culture that drives teaching practice and student learning, and it is the
enhancement of teaching and learning that needs to drive the consideration
and implementation of digital technologies in educational settings. Leaders
at the school level (school executive and leading teachers, and at the
system authority level), officers, managers and directors require more than
a passing understanding of the technical and educational issues associated
with the take-up of digital technologies.
Second, it is important to plan and to be realistic. A useful way to
commence planning is to assess where you are. In this respect, we would
recommend the Becta Self-review Framework: An introduction (see http://
school.becta.org.uk). From there, a powerful way to model the use of digital
technology is to do your plans as wikis, not word documents—or at least
have a wiki element. In this way, ICT plans become spaces for teachers or
system officers to talk about the change plan. They become active and lively
rather than neglected and dusty.
Finally, make sure that you match the technology in your setting to
your aspirations for teaching and learning, and for your organisation as
a whole. Know what the technology can do, but have the pedagogy to
drive the technology—not the other way around. The ‘wild wonderful web’
continues to throw innovation after innovation at us. Given the complexity
and pace of change in education systems compared with that of the
Internet, it can often feel like you are only just coming to grips with the last
innovation when the next one hits you.

WH AT’ S N E XT?

Web 2.0 brings the next generation of opportunities (and headaches!)

to educational leaders, and it is already encouraging discussions around
why we structure our schools the way we do. For example, ‘school 2.0’
(http://www.school2-0.org/), outlines the proposed changes to schooling,
schoolwork, the school community and the school systems.
In a world where students are publishing regularly to their peer groups
and finding their own (often unguided) way in the digital world, the
question is how might we take innovative tools available on the Internet
and create a set of tools that supports the types of creative and engaging
teaching and learning, especially those explained earlier under Quadrants
3 and 4.

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The tools that we have discussed in this chapter have only been
around for less than 10 years, and the Web 2.0 tools discussed above
have been around for two years. It is a safe bet that they will continue to
change significantly and quickly over coming years. The question is: How
can schools and education systems adapt to take advantage of emerging
technologies? Our students really need us to make that change.

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 CHAPTER 14
P R E PA R I N G Y O U R
TEACHERS AND YOURSELF
F O R A D I G I TA L S C H O O L

J o h n H o dgkinson

In these early stages of the twenty-first century, new demands and

opportunities are emerging for students and schools as a consequence of
global networking—or what Friedman (2006) calls ‘the flattened, globalised
world’).
One of the key responsibilities of educational leaders is to ensure that
teachers are well prepared to work in ways that make appropriate use of
digital technologies. To do that, principals and system officers must not only
understand the needs of staff but also appreciate the value and potential
of digital technologies, and be able to lead and manage the processes of
change required to position their schools to educate the young people in
their care using those technologies to their best effect.
In a digital school, digital technologies form an integral part of everyday
functions and operations. These technologies are important resources for
supporting the delivery of the curriculum and the achievement of outcomes
desired by the school community, governments and other important
stakeholders. They should be integrated rather than viewed as ‘add-ons’ or
ends in themselves. And while they may appear complex, even daunting,
their role after all is simply to support learning and teaching. Technology
is no substitute for the relationship between the teacher and the student.
The quality of that relationship has been consistently shown to be one of

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the most critical elements—if not the most critical element—in the success
of the student.
Ensuring teachers have the requisite knowledge, skills and attributes
is difficult. Experienced teachers have an established repertoire of teaching
practices and ways of working in the school. Requiring teachers to
discard—or alter—significant amounts of their intellectual capital, often
built up over many years, will have a profound impact on them. This is
especially so in these times when there is a workforce in schools with a
high median age. Requiring teachers to learn a new set of skills will be easy
for some and difficult for many. Digital technologies can be intimidating for
people who were born before the digital era.
Given the different experiences, ages and outlooks of teaching staff,
and considering the life opportunities of students that are at stake, careful
and wise management of the change process is called for. Get the change
process wrong, and you will achieve mundane compliance at best. Get it
right, and you will boost the creativity and performance of both staff and
students.
This chapter is aimed at school executive with responsibilities for staffing
and presents an overview of their strategic role in staff development. The
purpose is to assist school leaders to make decisions suited to their particular
situations and staff. The focus of the chapter is based on the understanding
that we are preparing the young people in the schools’ care for their future,
not ours. Their future will stretch to at least the 2090s. We can have little
idea of the details of that time. But we can say with reasonable certainty
that it will be different from these early years of the twenty-first century.
Our students’ futures will involve the use of new technologies in dealing
with new global issues, new local issues, new societal issues, and new ways
of working alone and with others.
In this context it is essential that as educators we guide young people to
develop the capabilities that will help them change and adapt themselves
and their environments to that future.

N O ‘ S ILV E R BUL L E TS’

There are no ‘silver bullets’—or simple solutions—for ensuring staff are

well prepared to teach the essential knowledge, skills, understanding and
values in ways that result in high engagement and achievement of all
students in all settings. Each of us tends to develop our own strategies.

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We are wary of the trap of adopting someone else’s solutions, preferring to

adapt what is useful to suit our own context and staff needs.
This makes sense because every school is different—every school has a
different combination of staff, students, facilities and resources. Also, every
member of the school community is different, with differing life and work
experiences, differing knowledge and skills, and differing ways of working.
If school leaders are looking for all staff to move at the same rate in
integrating digital technologies into their practice, they will be frustrated
and disappointed. A school could consist of at least three different ‘gener-
ations’ of teachers, each needing the different mix of professional learning
and personal support and challenge to change their beliefs and practices.
One way of dealing with this diversity of staff background in planning
for professional learning is to consider some questions along the following
lines:
1 The preferred future for your students, your school and your teachers:
• What is your preferred future?
• To what extent is this shared by members of your school com-
munity?
• If you have no clear picture as yet, how do you intend to develop
one?
• What will be the principles underlying the process for developing
a preferred future?
2 Your teacher demographics:
• What is their age profile?
• What are their knowledge and skill levels?
• What are their personal attributes, aspirations and preferences,
particularly when it comes to dealing with change?
The message here is ‘know your teachers’ before you provide support
or apply pressure for them to change. For example, a summary of the
characteristics of ‘digital natives’ (those under 25 years of age) and
‘digital immigrants’ (those over 25 years of age), shown in Table 14.1,
provides some interesting comparisons.
3 The culture of professional learning in your school or system:
• What programs and processes are in place for teachers to acquire
new knowledge and skills?
• Are they encouraged and supported to practise these new areas of
knowledge and skill?
• Are they encouraged and supported in taking risks with new ways
of working?

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Table 14.1 Comparing digital natives and digital immigrants

DIGITAL NATIVES DIGITAL IMMIGRANTS

(UNDER 25 YEARS) (OVER 25 YEARS)
Grew up with ICT as a normal part of life Have learned to use digital technology
Are closest to the way students think Think and process information in a more
and learn ‘linear’ way than their students or digital
natives
Are comfortable with the instantaneous Need time to think
nature of their lives
Have a higher ‘muscle twitch speed’ Have a lower ‘muscle twitch speed’ than
than their elders had at the same age digital natives
Are social networkers Still print emails and talk about ICT
objects as ‘machines’

(Source: Prensky 2001)

• Is professional learning seen as an ongoing and integrated element

of their work or a series of disconnected one-off activities?
Teachers need opportunities to connect their learning to past experiences,
current demands and opportunities, and future needs and possibilities. The
design and delivery of professional learning programs at school and system
level should reflect this.
There will be other issues to consider. These include:
• ICT hardware and software. What resources (including funds, facilities,
support staff) are available/needed? How can these be most effectively
and efficiently sourced, purchased, prioritised and allocated. There will
also be strategic issues with the who, what, where, when and for what
purpose. Who will make those decisions, and what criteria will be used
to ensure equity? And most importantly: Can the system that is being
put in place be scaled up without major rebuilding?
• Accessibility of the ICT. Who will have access to what, when and where?
Who will make those decisions, and what criteria will be used?
• Universal, fast and reliable connectivity and capacity. People become
frustrated with delays. Fast and reliable connections within the school
and to the outside are critical to success. Without proper connectivity
and capacity, changing work practices will be much more difficult.
• Digital literacy of teachers. The aim is for teachers to have the confidence
and competence to use ICT as a normal part of their everyday work.
This involves the right mix of knowledge and skills to work with current

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technology, as well as the capability to move with and incorporate

appropriate ICT changes into the future. Teachers also need to feel
that any shortcomings or problems they have will be managed in a
confidential way.
• Access to high-quality learning resources. The quality of the resources
available for teachers to embed ICT in their normal work practices is
critical. In the early stages of development of a digital school, most
teachers will not have the skills needed to develop their own resources.
Learning resources available from outside the school for student
use must be carefully piloted and evaluated before decisions about
implementation are taken.
• Location-specific factors. What are the protocols in your school for
undertaking a major change such as the design and implementation
of digital technology at your school? Who are the influential people in
the school community? Who needs to be involved? How can staff be
involved in the way that best meets their needs? How can parents be
involved to enhance their understanding and support? What factors
about the school community will support, and what will hinder, the
changes?
• Time for teachers to learn and become comfortable with using ICT.
Teachers need time to reflect on their work, the way they can incorporate
digital technologies, and the changes they need to make. Teachers
require opportunities to explore and practise using technology until they
can use it as easily as they have used a stick of chalk or a whiteboard
marker in the past. They need time to plan, to trial, to evaluate and
to develop resources, and the cost of this time must be included in
the school or system budget. Inadequate provision of time for learning
means the teachers, the technology and, eventually, the students are
‘short-changed’.
Combined with these issues and factors associated with the
introduction and use of digital technologies are two further areas with
implications for teachers’ work. These concern: (1) the emergence of Web
2.0 technologies and their implications for curriculum design, and (2) the
policies and organisational arrangements in place with regard to data
storage, intellectual property and knowledge management.
In planning professional learning for teachers, these two areas also
deserve careful attention.
1 Teacher awareness of Web 2.0 technologies—curriculum design
implications. Do you know how many of your teachers use Web 2.0

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or related technologies—in either their personal or professional life?

These technologies include wikis, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo,
MP3s, Instant Messaging, YouTube, Second Life, and Google Scholar.
Most of these technologies did not exist 10 years ago, but they are in
common use throughout society today, especially by young people. As
the use of Web 2.0 technologies becomes more widespread teachers
will need to re-think the curriculum content and methodology for its
delivery. Traditional curriculum was linear in its organisation, with silos
and pigeon holes—also called ‘subjects’. The curriculum of the future
will be organised using networks and integration and the language of
curriculum will be different.
2 Teacher facility with data storage, intellectual property and knowledge
management. How do you currently store data in your school? Who
owns it? How is it accessed? By whom? For what purpose? And
what plans do you have for developing policies and organisational
arrangements on data storage and associated issues like intellectual
property and knowledge management into the future? Common forms
of data storage at present include:
• computer tapes or cassettes
• CD
• DVD
• USB drive
• online storage—free or hired or your own server.
The era of the CD has almost passed. Online storage will be the way
of the future. As these trends unfold, teachers’ facility to ‘navigate the
data storage landscape’ at school and at system level will become a
more important professional capability—particularly with the emerging
issues of intellectual property and appropriate use protocols associated
with the advent of collaborative digital workspaces.

Y O U R ROL E AS A ‘ R OL E MODEL’

The ways in which you use digital technologies in your day-to-day work
send a powerful message to staff about the priority and value that you
place on developing knowledge and skills in ICT. Using technology to
provide information as well as seek comment or feedback is one way of
modelling. Working with staff on the development of online resources
or software designs (for example, in student assessment and reporting)

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is another example—particularly where those innovations serve to ease

the administrative burden on staff or excite their curiosity about engaging
students in different ways.
Another aspect of modelling is shown by the ways in which you
communicate with colleagues—locally, regionally, nationally and globally.
The process of designing a digital school and implementing the design
successfully cannot be undertaken in isolation. Networking with other
individuals and schools is a critical element in successfully achieving the
goal. Do not limit this networking to your local area, or even to your system
or state or nation. ICT allows you to network with schools and people
around the world. Use networking to model learning for your staff.

Dev elop your s el f t o be a s ucces s f u l le a d e r

To successfully plan and implement the design for your digital school, you
must be competent and comfortable in your role as the leader of the school.
To lead the digital school, you must have a clear vision of your goal and
share it with your school community—all those involved in and with the
school. Unless you have a goal that can be defined and shared, others will
not be willing to join you on the journey.
You must know and understand your school community. Who has
influence and power? This is not so much about positional authority, but
rather about the influence and power of certain individuals and groups in
the school community. Who do people follow and in which direction? How
can you use this to achieve useful outcomes for the school?
Third, you must know the national and international trends in ICT and
in education. An essential element in the design of the digital school is a
future orientation. What do you know about how ICT will change into the
future, and how young people will use it? How can those uses be adapted
to enhance their learning?
Fourth, you must know how to lead and manage. Leading is about
moving the school community towards achieving desired ends. Managing
is about ensuring that the environment, the processes and the procedures
that will make that happen are in place.
Fifth, you must know how to influence and persuade. Positional power
will achieve minimal compliance at best. If done with judgement and
wisdom, influencing and persuasion will achieve commitment. Persuasion
does not happen by chance. To be successful, you must be credible; people
must feel that they can believe you. You must make good sense; your

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arguments must be rational and logical. You must keep your word; integrity
and honesty are critical. Do not promise anything that you cannot deliver.
You must win their hearts before you can win their minds.

S U C C ES SFUL CH AN GE TH ROUG H PROFESSIONAL

L EAR N IN G

Professional learning is a change process. To achieve the types of outcomes

desired for and by your staff, the approaches and program designs for pro-
fessional learning need to be informed by research about successful change.
Fullan (2007, p. 5) identifies elements for successful change as follows:
1 Define ‘closing the gap’ as the overarching goal.
2 Attend initially to the three basics: deprivatisation of practice, learning
in context, and lateral capacity building.
3 Be driven by tapping into people’s dignity and sense of respect.
4 Ensure that the best people are working on the problem.
5 Recognise that all successful strategies are socially based.
6 Assume that lack of capacity is the initial problem and then work on it
continually.
7 Stay the course through continuity of good direction by leveraging
leadership.
8 Build internal accountability linked to external accountability.
9 Establish conditions for the evolution of positive pressure.
10 Use the previous nine strategies to build public confidence.
These ten elements cover similar areas to issues and principles of leadership
that I have described—having a goal, working with the professionalism of
the staff, and providing a conducive environment in which people can learn
and change. These elements provide a guide for evaluating your professional
learning activities, packages and programs.

T i ps for s ucces s ful s t af f dev e lo p me n t

Even though the professional learning must be tailored to the context of
different teachers and school communities, the following list can be used
as a general guide for successful staff development in the use of digital
technologies.
1 Remember that professional learning is task-specific and role-specific,
and should be focused on the ways that ICT is used and how to use it.

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2 Plan professional learning by involving the groups of the teaching,

support and administrative staff who will be using it.
3 Individualise professional learning to suit each person’s needs and
state of readiness for learning and change. This means organising the
learning in ways that are sensitive to individuals’ needs, including trust,
confidentiality, individual level of confidence, privacy and differences
in learning style.
4 Have the ‘key influencers’ of the relevant staff groups lead professional
learning.
5 Make sufficient time available to staff to learn, practise and apply
the new knowledge and skills in an environment where they are
encouraged to take risks and supported when they make mistakes.
Different people will require different amounts of time to learn and
implement the learning.
6 Accept that professional learning is ongoing, not a one-off event.
7 Ensure professional learning is followed up with ongoing support, for
example, through a help desk or online manuals, with that support
tailored to suit the needs of the person and their role in the school.
8 Evaluate and redevelop approaches to professional learning through
feedback from the participants and with input from the local (and
possibly external) designers and advisers involved in planning the
future of your school.
9 Celebrate the outcomes of professional learning. Find ways to show
the staff that the changes they make to their knowledge, skills and
practices are valuable and valued.

C O N C L U S IO N

The preparation and professional learning of staff to teach and work in

schools of today and tomorrow require focused attention on the value
and use of digital technologies. As the leader of the school, you need to
appreciate the context faced by your staff and students as they go about
the core activities of teaching and learning. You need to be aware of the
planning issues facing the school community and be prepared to shape
and model the processes for embedding digital technologies.
As a leader, you need to understand change and the characteristics
of successful professional learning. At times you need to influence and
persuade, as well as review and evaluate what is happening. Do not allow

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yourself to become frustrated when members of staff do not make the

progress you expect. Rather take the time to reflect, to consult and to plan
and carefully implement the changes to achieve the ends you and your
school community desire.

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 CHAPTER 15
PRINCIPLES AND
G U I D E L I N E S F O R C R E AT I N G
A D I G I TA L S C H O O L

Mal Lee & M ichael Gaf fney

The shift to a digital operational mode offers schools immense opportunities

to provide students with a quality education for the twenty-first century. By
‘going digital’, schooling takes on different forms to what we have known to
this point in the history of education. It is an exciting time to be an educational
leader! It is also time for acumen; for taking a fresh look at the working of
schools; for envisioning new possibilities; and assessing and developing
one’s and others’ capabilities to bring those possibilities to fruition.
In this chapter, we will overview the principles and factors to be
addressed in developing a digital school, and provide guidelines to assist
you in your situation. Our aim is to encourage you to move from reflection
on the ideas that have been presented by the various contributors to action;
from consideration of the theories and concepts of digital schooling to the
strategies and practices that will bring those elements to life in real school
settings with real teachers and students.

O P E R ATE H OL ISTICAL LY

By now it will be apparent how important it is to think holistically, that is,

having the mindset that not only removes artificial divisions between the

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learning in the school and the home, and between the school’s educational
and administrative operations, but also sees the relationships and synergies
between them. In a networked school community dependent on a shared
digital infrastructure it is imperative the total operations are always borne
in mind.
The same holistic thinking and operational mode apply to education
authorities. Many authorities are at least as segmented as schools—
internally operating along divisional lines and externally functioning in
relative isolation to other education systems. One consequence is that
schools have to contend with the challenge of competing and, at times,
seemingly contradictory system priorities and policies—for example,
when curriculum expectations are thwarted by access in infrastructure and
connectivity, or when aspirations for personalised learning confront the
industrial realities of teaching loads and ‘allowable’ class sizes.

Integra t ed pl anni ng
The holistic perspective should be a fundamental principle of school and
system planning. Sample questions about evidence of holistic planning in
your situation include:
• Has your organisation adopted planning processes where information
from different groups flows effectively across the organisation to inform
decision making; or is planning divided among different committees,
with little overlap of personnel, handling distinct responsibilities?
• Does the ICT group address the technical issues without sufficient
consideration of the human or educational variables?
• Does the school marketing team operate without input from the ICT
team?
Your answers to these questions indicate the extent to which your
organisation has a planning model in place appropriate for contemporary
networked development. They also allow you to assess the extent to
which present arrangements inhibit holistic integrated planning and
development.
One way of approaching the tasks of planning with digital technol-
ogies is to use those technologies in the actual planning process. Tapscott
(2007) indicates that there are increasing opportunities to use emerging,
online collaborative technologies in the daily operations of the school. For
example, he suggests that wikis are an excellent policy development tool,
and blogs can be readily used as a reflective tool with staff and students.

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P ersonal p rofes s i onal l ear ni ng

What do you need to know and how can you enhance your awareness of
the digital technologies that would be of value to your educational setting?
Do you have an appropriate working understanding of the digital resources
that are being used and are currently available?
To this point there have been insufficient opportunities for existing and
potential school and education authority leaders to gain and maintain an
appropriate level of understanding about digital technologies available to
schools. While we are conscious of the multiple demands on educational
leaders, it is now apparent if one is to shape and use the digital resources in
ways that in the end benefit students’ learning, then a working knowledge
of the technology is vital.
We suggest that the best way to develop that knowledge is through
on-the-job, hands-on experience, and to supplement it with the occasional
concerted external expert advice and training courses. For example, our exper-
ience has demonstrated the near impossibility of explaining the potential
of an interactive whiteboard (let alone an integrated, web-based database-
driven communications, content management and function management
system!) to those with little experience with the technology. You need to give
people the opportunity to ‘have a go’ at using the technologies, and provide
them with the security and trust to take risks and make mistakes.
Appropriate resources for on-the-job learning and staff training
need to be included in annual budgets, while bearing in mind that as the
technology becomes more sophisticated and multifaceted, the need for
professional learning grows.

Exercise 15.1
Auditing your knowledge and use of digital technology
Using a spreadsheet, list all the digital technologies used or likely to be used
by your school(s). Include the hardware and software, the key systems and web
facilities.
Beside each, indicate the extent to which you have used that technology,
and your level of understanding of the implications of using that technology. For
each technology where your understanding is low, jot down ways you could learn
more about its potential and use (for example, consult workplace colleagues,
‘Google’ the term, search Wikipedia ...).

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Contemp or ar y l ear ni ng
Curriculum change and policy development are a feature of professional
life in most schools and education authorities. However, the pace of
change in the digital world is such that the school’s instructional program
may well need refining more regularly. Consider, for example, online social
networking. This technology was virtually non-existent in 2005 and yet
within three years has become a global phenomenon and a normal part of
young people’s lives across the developed world.
While we understand that schools have to operate within the curriculum,
assessment and reporting policies set by their education jurisdictions,
there is always some latitude to better align the ‘delivered curriculum’ or
instructional program to the learning opportunities and demands of the
contemporary world. With this possibility in mind, consider the following
questions:
• How relevant is your instructional program to students’ everyday real
and virtual lives?
• Do teaching practices provide appropriate opportunity for students to
achieve essential and worthwhile contemporary learning outcomes?
• Does your instructional program ‘stand alone’ within your school, or
is it networked to recognise that learning is happening outside the
classroom, in the home and in the community?

Hom e–school nex us

In 2008, the majority of schools continue to operate as isolated entities,
certainly in terms of taking account of students’ learning that occurs
outside the classroom walls. A key principle of leading a digital school is
developing the connection between students’ homes and their schools.
From this perspective, consider the following questions:
• What moves has your organisation made to create a networked school
community through the use of technology?
• Do you have a policy or plan to create such a community; or have your
efforts—at least to this point—been rather spasmodic without any
overarching framework?
Creating a networked school community begins with developing
a strong home–school nexus, but can extend beyond this to include,
for example, education providers such as institutes of technology and
universities, sister schools, national and international online education
communities, and local and global community agencies.

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Many of the facilities you put in place to forge that nexus with the home
can equally be used with the other parts of your networked community.

Ana l ysi ng t he s i t uat i on

To create and sustain a digital school, it is wise to conduct a detailed
situational analysis of the present operations, the strategic foundations
(such as organisational vision, philosophy, agreed principles), and organi-
sational performance. The results can be used to identify the strengths as
well as those facets needing attention.
Most analyses can be undertaken internally, but it is often a good idea
to involve a critical friend or external evaluator. Some additional validity is
possible where a group or network of schools use the same critical friends
or external analysts.
Identifying the key variables and having key staff examine the school
performance against key performance indicators (KPIs) is an effective
whole-school development exercise. In selecting the areas to analyse, it is
important to look at human as well as technical variables. History shows
that while attention is usually focused on the actual digital technologies,
the reality is that variables like planning, funding, leadership, teacher usage
of the digital technology, staffing, staff organisation, working conditions
and staff development are as important as the actual infrastructure and
ICT support.

Exercise 15.2 Conducting a situational analysis

As a sample situational analysis, identify the percentage of:
• teaching staff using the digital technology to varying extents in their
everyday teaching
• teaching rooms with ready broadband access
• teaching time in the year when the school’s network is down.
Can you immediately provide the current percentage for each of those KPIs?
If you have to check, note how long it takes to find an answer.

An important part of any situational analysis is to talk with staff and elicit
their concerns and frustrations with the technology, and the improve-
ments they would like. Once you know your scene, you can then begin
prioritising your efforts, conscious at all times of the increasing interplay
of the variables.

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Tota l teacher us age

Central to the development of a digital school is having all teachers (and by
‘all’ we do mean 100 per cent of the teachers) using the appropriate digital
technology in their everyday teaching. Achieve that and not only will all
students also use the tools, but the growing expectations of the staff and
the students will stimulate the sustained growth of the digital school.
With total teacher usage, the next, very real challenge is to continue
to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the teaching and to do your
utmost to improve the learning of every student in your care.

V isi t the pat hfi nder s

Visiting schools that have achieved total teacher usage of the digital
technology or are operating to varying extents as digital schools is a
powerful means of professional learning and of informing your planning.
There can be much to discern about the leadership of those schools as
the differences between those strong on the rhetoric and those that are
actually going forward will be evident.
The Australian schools highlighted in the case studies presented in
this book may be an option for some, but there are increasing numbers
of comparable schools throughout the developed world. While still in a
minority, there ought to be pathfinder schools nearby that you can visit.

D IG ITAL IN TE GR ATION

One of the significant challenges for traditional schools is to achieve

digital integration throughout the organisation. A major impediment is the
segmented organisational units within the school, the propensity for each
unit (or dare we say ‘empire’?) to look only to its domain, to guard its patch
and demand annually ‘its share’ of the budget. That kind of organisational
structure and associated middle-manager leadership—within schools and
education authorities—has not only spawned the growth and retention of
separate systems, but also inhibited the emergence of schools where the
leadership team thinks holistically and is comfortable with developing an
integrated learning community.
Converging digital technologies can combat—at least to some
extent—the tendencies for segmentation in school organisations through
using a common ICT infrastructure that enables all members of the school
community to make use of the systems wherever they have web access.

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As a way of assessing the level, or the potential for digital integration

in your setting, you might ask whether your existing organisational model
is conducive to the development of a digital school; that is, consistent with
the attributes mentioned at the end of Chapter 1.
As a further task, you might like to undertake Exercise 15.3 where you
are asked to list all the databases, large and small, used by your organisation.
Completing this task will provide you with valuable information about the
present situation in your school/education authority and some insights
about the challenges ahead.

Exercise 15.3
Compile a spreadsheet of all the databases, small and large, currently used by
the school. Include:
• those hosted within the school, and those externally hosted
• those that are stand-alone, networked and web-based.
Depending on the size of the school, you might need to offline someone to
handle the task.
In preparing the spreadsheet:
• describe the purpose of each; that is, library, accounts, hall bookings,
ex-students’ association, etc
• name the type of database used
• indicate if it is web-based
• identify with each who/which area is responsible for operating and
maintaining that database
• indicate which databases are automatically upgraded when edits are made
to the master database.
Upon completion of the task, identify what the school needs to do to integrate
all the operations, and make all the services readily accessible through a common
web-based login to all the relevant members of the networked school community.
At the same time identify which of the database services can best be externally
hosted, and which internally.

Staf f i ng
Secondary and K–12 schools are staffed with people with specialist
expertise and a commitment to their area of teaching. However, some
do not have the knowledge and skill sets needed to work in or lead a
digital school. In seeking to develop a digital school, you need people who

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possess or who are willing and capable of acquiring the requisite skills and
understanding.
We appreciate the difficulties of changing key personnel, and do not
for one moment want to appear inhumane, but the bottom line—as Greg
Whitby indicated in Chapter 9—is that a digital school calls for a different
skill set from staff.
Traditionally the professional positions in schools have been filled by
teachers, or by former teachers. In digital schools, there is the need for other
professionals, each with particular expertise to handle diverse functions.
These include business operations, marketing, network management and
ICT support. With this in mind, consider the following questions:
• Do you need to rework your mix of educational and other professionals?
Do you have the capability and authority to do so, or do you need to
present the case to your local education system authority?
• Given that quality network managers and ICT support staff with the
desired credentials are much desired in many quarters, do you have the
facility to remunerate those ‘other professionals’ at the market rate, or do
you have to make do with less available expertise, at least for a time?
• Do your duty statements for educational and support staff embody the
desired skills and understanding? What qualities and competencies are
you expecting of the new teachers that you employ?
• Are there positions that you no longer need?
These are a few of the questions to consider as you seek to staff and
develop your digital school.

Work i ng condi t i ons

Allied to the question of staff capability is the importance of establishing the
appropriate operational parameters and working conditions for staff em-
ployed in a digital school. This is a very complex area because the vast majority
of working conditions and enterprise agreements used with teachers have
emerged from the traditional, paper-based school organisational model.
The networked and digital technology opens the way for significantly
different working conditions. Currently early adopting teachers across the
world are exploring the options. Some of these options might enhance the
student learning, while others will simply overburden already committed
teachers. For instance, we are already finding technology companies
promoting 24/7/365 teaching support!
In this changing context, it is imperative that school and education
authority leaders work with their staff and relevant unions to identify the

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desired operational parameters for teachers and associated administrative

and support staff working within a digital school. We encourage you to make
best use of the technology and vary the working arrangements accordingly,
but always keep in mind the need to formalise those arrangements. For
example, we believe that currently very little thought is being given to addi-
tional demands being placed on staff by administrative emails—sometimes
sent at any time of day or point in the year, and expecting instant response.
Now is the time to stop, reflect and identify the desired operational
parameters for working within the digital mode. As an aside, one of us
learned some time ago about the importance of establishing the desired
operational parameters. When conducting one of the world’s earliest online
teacher’s conferences in 1995, phone calls for support came in from across
the globe at all hours of the day and night! He very quickly moved to set
the support parameters within which folk were happy to work!
One suggested way of beginning to address the issues of changing
work conditions and operational parameters is described in Exercise 15.4.

Exercise 15.4
Conduct focus groups—with key groups of staff—to discuss the impact of the
shift to the use of digital technology upon their working conditions. Ask staff to
identify those developments that are:
• easing their workload, or making their work more efficient
• adding unnecessarily to their workload.
Also ask staff about the developments that they would wish to see, the new
operational parameters they would like explored, and also the ways of old that
should be dispensed with.
We suggest that you hold discussions with:
• the executive team
• the administrative and support staff
• the information technology/services staff
• teacher groups, drawn from the various parts of the school.

Staf f deve l opm ent

Ongoing development of staff is an essential component of leading a digital
school. One key aspect of staff development is the provision of timely
support for the teachers as they begin to use digital teaching resources.

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Effective models of staff development need to go well beyond the

‘off-site short course’ to ensure sustained staff learning and support. One
strategy for looking at the appropriateness of your staff development model
is described in Exercise 15.5.

Exercise 15.5
Identify the funding set aside in this year’s school budget for professional
development of staff. In determining the amount, make sure that you include
‘hidden’ costs such as:
• the time release provided to staff mentors
• the relief teaching time provided to enable teachers to test new technology
• the proportion of the library staffing allocation set aside for the development
of the school staff.
What funding has been set aside for the leadership team, the teaching staff
and the ICT staff?
What other avenues and sources of funding are available for professional
development?

ICT infra s t r uct ure

Without a quality and highly reliable school ICT infrastructure with the
appropriate digital storage, network backup and disaster proofing that is
regularly updated, the development of a digital school cannot be sustained.
Following is a recap of the key components:

Network
The importance of quality ‘plumbing’ cannot be overstated in light of infra-
structure growing apace and technology becoming more sophisticated.
In ‘user’ terms, you need a network with high-speed Internet access to
each teaching room, which operates 100 per cent—not 95 per cent—of the
class time during the total teaching year, and ideally beyond.
In assessing the quality of your network, it is worth considering these
questions:
• Can your network provide a 100 per cent level of reliability and, if not,
what has to be done to ensure it can?
• Are you able to store and back up the growing body of digital holdings?

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• Can your network operate with a loss of power from the grid?
• What would happen to the school’s vital digital holdings if there was a
fire, vandal attack or storm damage?
In a similar vein, Peter Murray (see Chapters 10 and 11) urges principals
to ask questions of their ‘IT’ coordinator. A sample list is presented below.
We suggest that you try them out with yours.

TE N QU EST IO NS T O A SK YOUR
‘ I T’ C O O RDINAT O R
1 What is your backup strategy?
2 Can our web server be hacked and what is our security strategy?
3 Are we retaining email independent of users?
4 Are we considering server ‘virtualisation’?
5 Are we deploying scalable infrastructure?
6 What remote desktop solutions are we using?
7 What strategies are we using to implement a simple authentication
mechanism?
8 What incident tracking systems are we using?
9 Are we using ITIL philosophies?
10 Are we considering Apple and/or Open Source solutions?
(Source: Peter Murray)

Servers and hosting

The decision about where to host services (internally or externally or
some variation thereof) has significant implications for the development
of your infrastructure, administration and communications systems, ICT
support model and budget. Have you examined the best way forward? Also
remember, by going digital, you do become more dependent on technology.
It is vital therefore that the requisite ‘insurance’ is taken.

Instructional technology
Some questions to consider in relation to the choice and use of instructional
technologies include:
• Who makes decisions about which instructional technologies are
chosen? Is it the ICT coordinator, the business manager, individual
teachers or the school leadership?

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• What criteria are used to make the choice, and how do they relate to
the desired teacher and student use of the technology?
• What influence do teachers have in the choice of teaching software?
In the traditional paper-based school, teachers had considerable say in
the choice of texts and library books. Do they have a similar say in relation to
digital teaching resources? Of note in this regard is the UK education policy
initiative to provide teachers with £200 of credit each year to acquire the
desired software. Does your school or education system have a comparable
form of direct teacher support?

Technology in the home

In reflecting on your ICT infrastructure, what thought have you given
to taking advantage of the digital technology within the home? Are you
unnecessarily duplicating some of that technology? Most of the contributing
authors to this book share Roger Hayward’s (see Chapter 7) misgivings
about laptops. It is appreciated that ‘ubiquitous computing’ is all the rage
in the USA, but aside from making some technology corporations and
politicians happy, we wonder if better educational returns could be achieved
by creating networked school communities that build on the technology in
the home.

ICT suppor t
The attainment of 100 per cent ‘up time’ depends not only on the technology,
but also on the ICT support arrangements.
It is now clear that as the networks become more sophisticated and
the reliance upon them increases, so will the need for quality ICT support.
Some of this will be provided ‘in-house’; some will probably need to be
supplied from external agencies.
Historically, the traditional school staffing formulas have frustrated the
engagement of quality ICT support for schools. In early 2008, many schools
still rely on its dedicated teachers—often with only limited technical
expertise—to maintain its infrastructure.
It is incumbent on school and education authority leaders to institute
a model for the years ahead that will provide schools not only with the
requisite ICT support, but also with the expertise to enable the schools to
meet future needs with the desired functionality and reliability.
What is your situation? Are you, like many schools, dependent on one
person whose leaving could place the school’s operations at risk?

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Inf orma ti on s er v i ces — i nfor m at io n ma n a g e me n t

The last decade has seen many schools and education authorities reduce
their school library personnel, ironically at a time when the need for
information professionals in schools has been growing apace.
As highlighted in Karen Bonanno’s Chapter 12, it is vital that the
school—possibly in conjunction with the education authority—provide
its community with the appropriate information services support, which
includes a whole-school information management regime able to
accommodate the burgeoning amounts of digital information generated or
used by the digital school.
Central to these operations will be an astute information professional,
or (very likely) a team. In most situations those people will be teacher
librarians or school librarians.
In the research for their book, A History of the Use of Instructional
Technology in Schools, Lee and Winzenried (2008) observed that in general
terms, school librarians have had to change their role more than any other
part of the teaching force, and thus have become very astute in appreciating
the changing information needs of schools. That knowledge ought to
be capitalised upon in developing the digital school. Some questions to
consider are:
• Do you have in place the personnel and the systems to accommodate
this vital area?
• Have you got the policies and the systems to ensure the school is
managing its digital assets appropriately—and within the local laws?
• Do you have the library and ICT staff competing to control the school’s
information and, if so, are you at a point where you need to restructure
operations to provide the desired support for the future?
Within a complex digital information landscape, school leaders are
going to have to consider and plan for the rapid evolution of the Web
as a global collaborative information platform. If Web 1.0 is about ‘read’
and Web 2.0 is about ‘read/write’, what will Web 3.0 be? If students and
teachers can pull information from the Web and be creators, editors and
sharers of information within Web 2.0, then what will be their capabilities
in Web 3.0? How will a digital school progress to manage and service the
information needs of the school community in those circumstances?
The semantic web has been muted as an extension to the Web, whereby
‘web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a
format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them
to find, share and integrate information more easily’ (Wikipedia, 2008e).

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Currently, we are able to access ‘mash-ups’, which are a recombination

of web-based multimedia digital formats from a range of sources. The
philosophy of Web 3.0 may well be dynamic information collections that
are constantly evolving to meet user needs.
Within a digital school, intelligent collecting of information needs to
be in harmony with the creation and use of information. The skills and
capabilities of those trained in the library and information profession, such
as teacher librarians, will be of paramount importance in the development
of the digital school’s information and service systems.

D IG ITAL ADM IN ISTR ATION AND

C O MM UN ICATION S S YSTE MS

One vital aspect of the digital school that was not addressed in depth earlier
was the school’s digital administrations and communications systems.
Ideally schools need web-based, common database-driven systems
that can be accessed through the one ‘log in’ by all members of the school’s
networked community. Those systems should be highly user friendly
and, most importantly, should enhance the organisation’s efficiency and
save all members of the school community time handling the mundane
clerical tasks.
Sadly, in 2008, many of the systems in schools leave much to be
desired and invariably add to the staff’s workload and frustrations.
Moreover, most do not provide the decision makers ready information
on the effectiveness of the many operations undertaken in a school day.
At this point most school administration and communications fall well
behind their counterparts in small business. In 2008, staff should be able
to take advantage of the employer self service (ESS) human resource
management systems, while school and education authority leaders
should be able to secure an instant understanding of the state of play of
every formal request.
Does your existing system allow you to identify the current situation in
the handling of a request, or allow you to swiftly communicate electronically
with any subset of your school community?
If it does not, you should be on the lookout—possibly the warpath—to
identify an appropriately priced system that does. We are talking about
what is now old technology, but for some reason schools would appear to
have missed out.

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Lea rning pl at for m s

As Ingvarson and Gaffney indicated in Chapter 13, one of the most import-
ant decisions that school and education authority leaders have to make
concerns the shape and functionality of their online learning platforms.
These can very easily become immensely expensive white elephants.
As Lee and Winzenried (2008) and Becta (2007) indicate, despite
the immense hype and proselytising by the advocates, actual teacher
and student use of the systems and of the myriad features therein is still
minuscule. While it is appreciated that use could be markedly constrained
by the failure by schools to successfully address the factors facilitating total
teacher use of the instructional technology, one needs to consider very
carefully the alternatives, possibly better and significantly less-expensive
options emerging in Web 2.0.
We suggest that you look very closely at the actual student and teacher
use of the existing online student portal systems, identify the better-used
portions, and then decide if a significant outlay of monies can be justified
educationally.
Related to this is the propensity of some school and system leaders to
assume that all schools and education systems should be using e-Portfolios—
the student’s digital collection of work undertaken—where all the data is
stored on the school’s or authority’s network. We would strongly argue that
you do not contemplate moving into this arena until undertaking in-depth
research and becoming aware of the potential challenges, costs and actual
educational benefits of such a move. This is a hard one!

B U D G ET

Ingle Farm Primary School, discussed in Chapter 8, is a low socioeconomic

government primary school that has been able to become a pathfinding
digital school. We can name a number of similar schools. Indeed we
contend that virtually every school in the developed world could become a
digital school if a wise principal so decides.
However, in making this observation we are also conscious most
schools in the developed world have only around 2.5–3.0 per cent of their
total annual budget to spend on digital technology, and that many are also
constrained in their use of those limited resources by the local education
system authorities.

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While the pathfinders have shown it is possible to become ‘digital’, the

other reality is that schools in comparison to other information-rich
industries have grossly inadequate funding for both the technology and
the associated staff development. While some governments are prepared
to inject supplementary funds, if all schools are to become digital and
continue to make best use of the ever-more sophisticated technology, a
greater proportion of the recurrent funding does need to be made available
for that purpose.
However, in saying this, we urge governments, education authorities
and schools to look closely at the current school buying patterns and
identify where savings can be made when schools shift from a paper to
digitally based mode. Of some note in this regard is the finding that schools
that use interactive whiteboards have been able to markedly reduce their
considerable annual photocopying expenses.
As a second step, we recommend that educational leaders and
policymakers critically evaluate the present spending on ICT, and give careful
consideration to issues associated with the total cost of ownership. For
example, school laptop programs—even when ‘part subsidised’ by parents—
are immensely expensive, as well as being of questionable educational value.
There is not only the cost of acquisition, and replacement every three to four
years, but also the attuning of the school’s infrastructure to accommodate
the laptops and the considerable cost of support. One only has to look at
the special powered student lockers bought by some schools to house the
students’ laptops to appreciate the consequences. By contrast, schools using
interactive whiteboards do not need to consider replacing them for another
10 to 12 years, or paying immense annual software licence fees. The personal
computer strategy, with its three-to-four-year outlay of very considerable
monies, is not the only one open to digital schools.
Has your school done an in-depth analysis of its current ICT expend-
iture and ascertained if it is in fact sustainable, or desirable? Ways of
approaching this question are suggested in Exercises 15.6 and 15.7.

Exercise 15.6 Analysing expenditure on digital technologies

Bring your leadership team together and ask each person to identify three areas
where they believe significant financial savings can be made in the shift from a
paper-based mode to a digital mode of school operation.

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Exercise 15.7 Evaluating the use of instructional technologies

• Which of your instructional technologies are the most used in teaching and
learning? [By ‘instructional technologies’ we mean those technologies used
by teachers to supplement their voice in their teaching.]
• Which of your digital instructional technologies—hardware and software—
are most used? What data have you to support that belief?
• Which technologies are now obsolete and could be done away with?

EV AL U ATIO N AN D R E FLE CTI ON

Does your school or education authority engage in regular evaluation and

reflection on the use of digital technology?
Do you involve staff and students in that discourse?
To what extent have you and your colleagues been able to ‘de-
mythologise’ the use of ICT and come to see it as another tool to help
enhance teaching and improve student learning?
Lee and Winzenried (2008) found few published school-based studies
(even those about schools with annual ICT budgets well over $1 million!)
that seriously evaluated expenditure on ICT. That finding is consistent with
the experience of our contributing authors.
In most instances professional educators can soon ascertain the worth
of a strategy or a tool, particularly if they involve their very ICT savvy clients
in the discussion. It is therefore of concern that so few evaluations of the
technology and of the processes used to implement them appear to be
taking place. Related to this, some questions to consider are:
• Has your school analysed the effectiveness of implementation of digital
technologies and the outcomes produced, and then reflected on the
educational or administrative value of its investment?
• Do you have Key Performance Indicators against which to evaluate
school performance in moving towards a digitally based mode of
operation?

Tak e a dva nt age of t he ‘pol i t i ck in g ’

One of the realities of governments—national and regional—is that
every so often (invariably near an election) funding is made available for

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technology. It happened with TVs, with video recorders, and now with
personal computers and other forms of infrastructure and digital tools.
Historically, most of the funding is for items that will provide good
media coverage and often does not fund basics like staff development or
infrastructure and support. Notwithstanding, the leader of a digital school
ought to seek to get a fair share of that money—and work to ensure that
its expenditure is used to best effect and reported against its impact on
student outcomes.

Celebra t e t he s ucces s es
The digital mode of operation offers schools immense and exciting
possibilities. In the hands of astute educational leaders, it provides the
opportunity to create effective, engaging networked school communities
that educate young people for the contemporary world.
But the efforts that need to be expended in realising this potential are
substantial. Therefore, when your ‘KPIs’ are reached, take the opportunity
to celebrate your success. Staff will have put in immense effort and many
will have dramatically enhanced their teaching. Take the time to savour
those achievements.
When you reflect on your leadership—whether it be in schools, in
education authority offices, or in other settings—your experience will
invoke some special memories and the satisfaction that you have made
a meaningful and positive difference to the lives and learning of others in
these changing times.

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 APPENDIX

P R E CU R S O R S TO P L A N NING:
T EM P LATE S FO R D I S C U S S IO N GRO U PS

1 S E L F -E V ALUATIO N FO R SCHOOL LEADERS

Answers and reactions to these questions and statements will help illus-
trate the values, beliefs and attitudes that influence how you approach tasks
and people.
• What are your core values and beliefs about schooling and/or learning
and teaching?
• Within the parameters of accepted school norms there are various
acceptable differences in leadership approach. For example, if forced
to choose, do you feel more comfortable with service, tradition and
harmonious relationships or setting new direction, innovation and the
energy of change?
• Do you see the work you are doing as redefining schooling or building
on and improving what exists?
• Do you see your approach modifying current curriculum directions
and pedagogical approaches or setting new ones, or both?
• Where in your judgement is the balance between curriculum content
and learning process?
• Can you visualise a ‘school/schooling of the future’?

Recommended resource
Dr Julia Atkin’s paper, ‘From Values and Beliefs to Policy and Practice’
(1996) outlines how you can gauge values and beliefs at the individual and
group level, use them to galvanise group effort, assist in developing policy
and practice, and in reviewing success.

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2 F O CUS ON L E AR N IN G: CULT URE

Answers to these questions will influence—if not determine—many

policy, practice and school cultural issues. Individual reflection needs to
be followed by group discussion and reflection to build some acceptable
models that define commonality and acceptable diversity at this level about
the purposes that are being undertaken.
• What is it you remember from your own education?
• What aspects of human interaction/teaching and learning do not
change over time, in spite of the context and technology?
• What is it about learning and human interaction that you would not
wish to lose and/or cannot afford to lose as the future unfolds?
• How do you understand the role of teachers? What is the role you
would like to see teachers play? What aspects of their current role
should be kept? What aspects can be allowed to go?
• Do you see learning as sequentially stepped, or less linear and more
web-like, as both, or other?
• How would you combine both linear sequence and web-like connec-
tions in the one school culture?
• Is there a reasonably consistent view among students, staff and parents
as to what that ‘learning moment’ looks like? Can it be described in
a small set of illustrative examples?
• For most people, intellectual development is central to schooling.
What is the place of social, emotional, physical, aesthetic and spiritual
development? What are the priorities and relativities for your school?
• What strengths and weaknesses exist in your parent body? In what
areas, if any, can the school community decide that parents will take
the lead and the school provide the secondary role?
• Salusinszky (2007) suggests that the more technology dominates our
lives, the greater the challenge to remain connected to the source of our
creativity, solitude and stillness. How would these aspects, if accepted,
be described and incorporated in school life?

Group ex erci s e
A tested and successful process for parents and staff is to describe and
rank the skills, knowledge, behaviours and attitudes of the perfect Year 12
student graduating from your school in 2026—that is today’s babies; or
choose a nearer date based on when the students of parents involved in the
discussion leave the school.

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The list is easy to determine as positive human qualities are almost

universal. However, the ranking exercise is vital. For example, would
creative and critical thinking skills rank above respect for authority? If so,
what influence does this have for teaching and learning and school culture,
policy and practice?

3 FO CU S O N L EAR N I N G: EVI D E NCE OF QU A L I TY

What evidence shows that quality learning is occurring? Will basic skills
tests be the only or best measure? What other data can you collect?
The following points are drawn from Dr Julia Atkin’s work.

It is generally agreed that quality learning results in:

• increased confidence and skills
• enthusiasm to share and express learning
• increased independence; increased self-direction
• growth and progress.
The learner is:
• willing to ask for help
• able to put learning into practice
• able to question further
• able to define problems and experiment with new ways to solve
• prepared and able to interact with others
• able to recognise when it is appropriate to work interdependently
• actively involved
• increasingly self-directed.
The learner experiences:
• a sense of achievement and success
• good feelings about self
• the learning as relevant
• valuing of the learning/expressing by others and/or self
• pride in achievement/learning
• affirmation in own way of knowing and being.

What data can you gather that will assist in making judgements in these
areas?
What learning occurring outside the classroom can you leverage off?

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Resources
See Resources at the end of the next section, ‘Focus on teaching’.

4 F O CUS ON TE ACH IN G

Quality of teaching is the most significant influence on student outcomes,

outside of who students are and what their parents/family provide.
• Staff are finite in number in your school. What is the most effective
way to use their skills? What is the most efficient manner to use their
energies and time? What can be given priority—especially professional
learning resources under your vision and values?
• What aspects of current classroom practice need to be improved? What
is good practice and should be kept?
• How many of your current staff will you have with you in three years?
Five years?
• What is the current rate of staff turnover?
• What groups of teachers come and go?
• What use of teacher time can be discontinued? Is it possible to move
non-teaching tasks to non-teaching staff?
• Do you control staffing? If so, what staffing profile would best fit your
purposes?
• What does your staff capabilities audit look like, especially in the areas
of cognitive research, learning and pedagogy, and the use of ICT in
teaching and learning?
• What are staff professional learning needs relative to your agreed
commonality and acceptable diversity in the area of values and beliefs
about teaching, learning and the purposes of schooling?
• What is your school record of moving from professional learning to
implementation? If, like many, it is not good, why? How can it be
improved?
• Who are the key people in your school? What are their skills and
values?
• Who are the early adopters who will showcase best practice? Provide
these groups with quality resources and support in the initial phases.
This is an agreed school plan and those able and willing to lead need to
be supported and seen to be supported.
• Who are the best senior staff for supporting teachers in teaching and
learning using digital technologies?

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Resources
Consider the following resources:
Dimensions of Learning (http://www.mcrel.org/dimensions/whathow.
asp)—a model that uses knowledge about learning to define the
learning process. Its premise is that the five dimensions of learning are
essential to successful learning. The dimensions are:
a Attitudes and perceptions
b Acquire and integrate knowledge
c Extend and refine knowledge
d Use knowledge meaningfully
e Productive habits of mind
Teaching for Understanding (http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ALPS/tfu/)
is a part of Active Learning Practice for Schools (ALPs). ALPS is an
electronic community dedicated to the improvement and advancement
of educational instruction and practice. They aim to create an online
collaborative environment between teachers and administrators
from around the world with educational researchers, professors and
curriculum designers at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education
(http://gseweb.harvard.edu/) and Project Zero (http://www.pz.harvard.
edu/index.cfm).
Herrmann Whole Brain Learning (http://www.herrmann.com.au/index.
htm) or (http://www.hbdi.com/home/index.cfm). People learn in many
different ways. The brain is the source of who we are and how we learn.
Ned Herrmann (1988) combined research on right brain/left brain
differences with research on the Triune brain to create a metaphorical
model to explain the process of thinking and learning. Depending on
which aspects we engage, our learning processes can be very different.
Brain dominance leads to thinking style preferences, which impact
what we pay attention to and how and what we learn naturally.
Integral Learning Model (http://www.learning-by-design.com/; http://
www.learningtolearn.sa.edu.au/Colleagues/pages/default/atkin/;
http://www.learningtolearn.sa.edu.au/Colleagues/files/links/
IntegralLearning.pdf). Dr Julia Atkin is an education and learning
consultant. Her work with educators over many years focused on
reflection and dialogue around two key questions: What is powerful
learning? and What is powerful to learn? Julia’s approach bridges the
gap between theory and practice. In October 2003, The Bulletin named
Julia as one of Australia’s Smart 100—a list of 100 people, ten in 10
fields, making a difference to Australian society through innovation.

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Five Minds for the Future by H. Gardner (2006). (See Bibliography) The
International Congress for Schools Effectiveness and Improvement
(http://www.icsei.net/)—the desire to make schools more effective
through a continuous quest to better understand what the big ideas
mean, both theoretically and in practice. Effectiveness studies gave
birth to this movement just over two decades ago, a period that has
amassed an impressive body of knowledge on effective schools,
effective leadership, effective teaching and how those interplay with
one another to enhance student learning. The School Improvement
movement emerged, seeking to apply the lessons learned while urging
caution on policy makers overly keen to apply simplistic remedies.

5 D IG ITAL CO M PO N E N TS

• What has been invested in ICT over the last five years? What returns
have been seen on that investment? Where has learning improved?
What improvements in teacher effectiveness or efficiency have been
noted? What data supports anecdotal evidence? If that money had
been invested in other ways, could the returns have been different?
For example, if a different range of digital technologies had been used,
would different results have been seen? What if those monies had been
expended on resources other than digital?
• What are the technological opportunities that currently exist, and what
may be coming? What risks do you run in moving towards these new
technologies, and what risks are run in not moving?
• What bandwidth and network infrastructure currently exist? What
bandwidth do you need for digital video streaming, video conferencing,
a large repertoire of podcasts? Are there more bandwidth intensive
uses for your network? How is the network used and how might that
use be improved?
• Does the ‘pipe’ into and out of the school match your internal capacities?
If not, what options are open to you?
• Have you banned portable devices such as mobile phones and iPods or
are you endeavouring to find ways to use them productively? Why was
this decision made?
• How can you use and build on the popularity of blogs, social network-
ing, mobile phones and iPods?

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• What technologies are currently used in teaching and learning? Why

are these used and others not? Do they achieve their purposes? Are
their purposes explicit?
• Much of the material accessed by students and staff digitally is
unedited, not refereed and often anonymous. What learning processes,
policies and practices are needed to have staff and students scrutinise
all material?
• Arguably one of the great risks for schools regarding their duty of care
and for student wellbeing is the propensity of the Internet to encourage
both freedom of action and words with anonymity. To be able to remain
unaccountable for one’s words and actions is not a socially positive
manner in which to interact with others. What processes does your
school use to build positive social habits? How does a school moderate
such human propensities amplified by the Internet?
• Do teachers have access to appropriate digital resources for teaching
and management; for example, personal computer, key software
applications, email, personal portal, portable digital storage, ISP access
at home capable of supporting school commitments?
• Do students have access to appropriate digital resources for learning
and building of knowledge?

Resources
Learning in an Online World (series), published by Curriculum Corporation
for MCEETYA (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training
and Youth Affairs)
• Bandwidth Action Plan (2003)
• Contemporary Learning (2005)
• Content Specifications Framework (2006)
• Content Strategy (2004)
• Learning Architecture Framework (2003)
• Learning Architecture Framework: Tasmanian Case Study (2004)
• Leadership Strategy (2006)
• Online Curriculum Content Investment Agreement 2006–08 (2006)
A very good resource is to visit other schools, see what they are doing, offer
reciprocal visiting rights and share experiences. Visit local schools across
all sectors; all have something to offer and often the differences are not
as large as expected. Where possible, venture further afield and repeat the
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 INDEX

administration systems vi, 167, 191 digital technology xi, xii–xiii, 1, 2, 3, 10,
Australia 38–49
digital education revolution 1, 2
digital technology use by young in educational leadership 3–4, 9, 38–50,
homes 69–73 178–195
Australian Communications and Media digital understanding 4
Authority (ACMA) 69, 71–72, 155, in education authorities 39–41
204 in integrated schools 178–195
personal development 38–39, 180
Becta xii, xvii, 2, 40, 50, 60–61, 157, 192, 204 responsibility for digital technology
Self-review Framework 184 38–41, 84–87
e-Learning 56–58, 85–86
computer aided learning (CAL) 165 eMINTs 56
computers evaluation
laptops 86–87 of digital schooling 194–195
teacher usage x, 4, 23, 49, 192 situational analysis 30, 32–33, 182–183,
connectivism 49, 57–58 192–194
Crosby Grid 25–28
Cuban, Larry 52–53, 62 financing digital schools 192–193
limitations 192
digital ecosystem 146–167 redeployment of funding 192
digital integration 42–44, 183–184 role of principal 38–40
digital natives/digital immigrants 62, 133, total cost of ownership 129, 193
154, 170–171 Friedman, Thomas
digital paradigm 4, 8, 12–13 triple convergence ix–x, 4–6, 11, 49
flexible, every changing structure World is Flat, The ix, 4–6, 49–50,
12–13 107
implications ix–xiii, 3–4, 7–13, 38–50 Fullan, Michael
integrated operations 42–43, 60, 179 professional learning 175–176
knowledge workers 42–43, 60
networked organisations 76–79 Gee, James Paul 95–96, 98, 100–102, 208
personalised learning 18–21 Generation X
purpose and possibilities 12–13, characteristics 16, 17, 35
85–86 Generation Y
digital schools x, 9, 76, 183, 185, 193 characteristics 16, 17, 35
digital take-off 7, 51 Gore, Al 69

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Harnessing Technology 1–2, 52, 73 copyright 140–141

homes information fluency 141–142
digital divide between homes 72–73 intellectual property 140–141
digital technology use by young 69–72 interoperability 137–138
disadvantaged home initiatives 72–73 OPACs 138–139
learning by young in homes 73–76 Ingle Farm Primary School 93–103
home–school divide 69–72 instructional technology 7, 40–41, 188–189,
home–school nexus 76–79, 181–182, 189 211
appropriate technology 40–41
ICT infrastructure 42–47, 118–124, 187–189 consonance with educational goals
computer platform 119, 120–121 46–47
designing for school’s core business educational opportunities 85–86,
119–120 95–96
hosting—internal/external 43–44 embedding 97–98, 100–101
identity management (IdM) 120 financing 47–49
internet protocol (IP) 120, 123 life cycle 41
network 122–123 role of educational leaders in choice
‘Office–centric’ focus 119–120 40–41
ports 123 teacher acceptance 7
storage 121–122, 136, 140, 143, teacher understanding 7
172–173, 202 teacher usage 7
ICT support 90, 125–131, 182, 185, 189 use in replicating ways of old 11, 103
24/7 support 125 within students’ homes 69–70
certification 126–127 interactive whiteboards (IWBs) 7–8, 87–90,
internal 126 193
nature of help 126–127 impact on learning 7–8, 49, 77, 87–90,
outsourced 126 93–103
recruitment 127–128 intranets 148–149
staffing mix 128–129
training 129 laptop computers 86–87
ICT usage learning
achieving total teacher usage 7–8 areas/classrooms 87
Illinois Institute of Design challenges for schools 15–21
Schools in the Digital Age 10, 11, 69, impact of computer games theory
75–76, 210 93–103
information management 45–46, 121, in digital age 16–21
132–144, 190–191 keys to success 18–21
archiving 135–136 personalisation 18–21
disaster proofing 187 preparation for work and life 18–21
feral cataloguing 138 learning management systems (LMS) 57,
management information systems 147
(MIS) 45 learning platforms (LP) 46–47, 146–167,
management of information assets 192
45 alternative options 166–167
information services 190–191 consonance with educational
challenges 133–134, 144–145, 190–191 objectives 46–47

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 IND E X

educational benefits 150–152 St Leonard’s College 80–92

essential attributes 157–162, 165–167 school staff organisation
place in ICT ecosystem 149–151 hierarchical structures 12–13, 32–24,
selection 160–162 105–106
shortcomings 166–167 integrated teams 10, 12–13, 23–24,
Lee and Winzenried 112–114
A History of the Use of Instructional structural impediments 12–13, 23–24
Technology in Schools 7, 9, 11, school staffing 105–117
190, 192, 194 key competencies 108–110
selection 110–117, 184
management of risk 44–45 staffing mix 184–185
metadata 135–137, 148, 159, 160 working conditions in digital school
MLE see learning platforms (LP) 185–186

Naisbitt, John teachers

Megatrends 11 development 91, 168–177, 186–187
stages in use of new technology 11, early adopters 8, 41–42, 90–91, 199
103 essential competencies for digital
New Zealand schooling 110–117
Digital Horizons 61 flexibility 113–114
notebook computers see laptop computers mentors 23, 27, 63, 88, 90, 100
professional teams 112–113
paper-based paradigm 13, 20–21 reflective practice 98, 101–104, 111
division of labour 13 teaching
Industrial Age structure 13 integration of digital technologies 7–8,
segmented teaching and learning 20 96–97
‘sorting and sifting’ of students 20 technology corporations
pathfinding schools 6–7, 183 impact on choice of technology 10, 40,
planning 10–12, 21–29, 30–37, 58–63, 130, 43, 189
145, 179–180, 196–202 triple convergence x, 4–5, 11, 49–50
‘Crosby Grid’ 25–28
holistic 10–12, 179 United Kingdom (UK) x, xii, 2, 3, 49, 72–73,
human change focus 10–12, 30–37, 149, 157, 189, 204
179 Becta xii, 2, 40, 52, 60, 61, 157, 166, 192,
ICT plans 10–11, 145, 163, 166 204
integrated 10–12, 179 Computers for Pupils 72–73
networked school communities Dfes 1, 60
76–77 Home Access Project 72–73
preferred futures 21–29 USA 189
Prensky, Marc 62, 74, 132, 133, 171
principals VLE xii, xvii, 137, 138, 139, 142–144,
personal development 9, 38–40, 146–148, 154
173–175, 180
responsibility for digital technology 9, Web 2.00 xii, 8, 53, 68, 74, 78–79, 109, 115,
38–40 119, 132–134, 138, 139–140
role in digital school 9, 38–49 Wikipedia 20, 53, 124, 147, 155, 217

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 leading a

leading a digital school

digital
This important book informs educational leaders about current
school
developments in the use of digital technologies and presents a
number of case studies demonstrating the value and complexity of
these technologies. It encourages leaders to engage in the process

Edited by Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney

of successful change in their own school community by providing
guidelines and advice drawn from emerging research.
Leading a Digital School is a rich source of information about joining
the new ‘education revolution’. It shows clearly and concisely how
schools can integrate digital technologies creatively and wisely in
order to enliven teaching and support student learning.

Mal Lee is an educational consultant specialising in the development

of digital technology in schools. He is a former director of schools and
secondary school principal and has written extensively on the effective
use of ICT in teaching practice.
Professor Michael Gaffney is Chair of Educational Leadership at the
Australian Catholic University. Mike has wide experience as a teacher, an
education system senior executive, and as a researcher, consultant and
policy adviser to Australian governments in areas of education policy,
curriculum and teaching practices appropriate to 21st century schooling.

ISBN 978-0-86431-896-1

PRINCIPLES AND
9 780864 318961
PRACTICE
Edited by Mal Lee and
Michael Gaffney