A bouquet to the government for its planned investment in ultra-fast broadband. From an education perspective, this is the most significant technology initiative in schools since, well, the introduction of pen and paper to classrooms.
I’ve written about the government’s plans and the implications for schools in the latest edition of Education Aotearoa. But there’s a few more things to say – bouquets and brickbats to award.
Has enough money been allocated to do the job? $1.5 billion – to be matched by the private sector – won’t be enough. Will this mean a further injection of funds or perhaps a revision of the initiative’s objectives? The good folks at the Ministry of Economic Development have assured me that there will be enough to go round, but their explanation of the funding model hurt my brain!
I also wonder what students will use to access ultra-fast broadband once the cables have been laid. My experience is that classrooms – at best – have a couple of ancient desktops gathering dust in the corner and maybe a pod of laptops or a computer lab that they can book. Time to get cracking on improving the ratio of students to netbooks/laptops/iPads.
New South Wales is pushing on with plans to issue netbooks to students, and recent research shows this can be a very good thing for achievement in schools. Great to see the Labour Party considering a policy position on this.
If teachers were faced with a classroom of students with computers, would they know what to do? Professional development is critical, and what’s currently available to schools could do with revision and extension. Some of my buddies are astonished at the notion of training teachers to teach with ICT. No one taught me how to use Flickr! The justification is simple – we require consistency and quality of teaching, as well as equal learning opportunities, for all our young people.
Another bouquet, though, to the government for opting for a bit of bulk buying where there are obvious efficiencies. Their announcement that Pharmac’s role will be extended to take charge of hospital medicines is an example of what is hopefully a trend towards sensible centralised procurement.
Remember that peculiar hue of paint that all school buildings used to wear? The introduction of Tomorrow’s Schools in 1989 put a stop to that. It shifted many of the financial and administrative responsibilities for managing schools from the centre to elected boards of trustees – permitting schools to choose their own colour of paint. Great for schools wanting to develop their own localised teaching and learning programmes, but crazy when applied to ICT infrastructure.
It’s crazy to have every school negotiate separately for data traffic. It would be crazy for some schools to opt in and others to opt out of joining the incipient National Education Network. The very successful laptop scheme for teachers shows how a centrally organised programme is still able to give schools a degree of choice while saving the system from the burden of every teacher researching and deciding which laptop to buy.
Making the most of ultra-fast broadband requires some big decisions elsewhere in the system. Are we up for it?
