Week 2 - Policy, curriculum and educational technology

Diagram showing the 4 elements and sub-elements of digital literacy as per the Australian Curriculum Assessment and  Reporting Authority. https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/curriculum-information/understand-this-general-capability/digital-literacy

The images used for the above diagram came from pixabay and the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority website. Online safety for students is paramount. To do this students must not publish anything revealing their address details and school location or photographs of their home.  This goes further with students having to understand that their digital footprint is long lasting includes all email and social media they utilise (Thomson, 2015, p. 14). My key learning area is history so investigating in a critical way is important. Students must been mindful of obtaining information from the internet which is reliable and as unbiased as possible.  Using credible government websites such as the Australian Parliament House, and State library website sites and organisations like the World Health Organisation will put them in good stead.

Week 2 Question

 How does current policy and the digital literacy elements from the Australian Curriculum help prepare your students for living and working in society today?

Response

The required readings from this week from Newhouse (2013) and Thomson (2015) said very little to me. I imaging this is because the Newhouse (2013) reading gave reasoning for what the Australia curriculum aims for, and the Thomson (2015) reading gave statistics.  I found the readings from Jordan (2011) and Littlejohn & Hunter (2016) provoked more of a reaction, because I have experience of how ICT is utilised for students in a public school in NSW through my two children.

Digital Education Revolution brought laptops to upper secondary school students in Australia and the National Broadband Network (NBN) was to provide fibre to the premises internet connectivity.  Jordan (2011) reiterates how Rudd et al., (2007) envisaged a, I believe, naive future education system utilising ICT, where students would, as if by osmosis, receive a fantastic education just because they had the technology.  Unfortunately, providing laptops was phased out and the NBN was substantially watered down by subsequent governments.  What many schools have now is an internet connection which not up to the task. Littlejohn & Hunter (2016) suggest that poor devices and poor internet access limits teachers’ ability to integrate ICT into lessons and I believe this to be true.  My own children (one of which is still at school) found utilising the internet at (a public) school was often an arduous task where accessing information took so long, they got frustrated.  This isn’t helped by the adoption of BYOD policies, that in some cases instantly added one thousand devices to the schools WIFI network, which was never designed for this, even if the fibre connection was as fast as possible the existing school infrastructure may not be able to cope with such an extraordinary increase in such a small area.  It once took my son a good part of the lesson to connect to Google Docs in the computer lab at school.  At one of their schools, the hardware they had was so old that the computer lab was located in the room most likely to flood; this being the only way the school believed they would be allocated new computers.  The digital literacy elements Newhouse (2013) spoke of from the Australian Curriculum have not helped my children at all, due to the ad hoc nature of its implementation.  Their digital literacy has come from their parents, particularly in relation to digital safety.  My children are lucky, their father has been involved in the IT industry across many different areas, for over thirty years, consequently they have always had access to excellent technological resources.  Unfortunately, out of a cohort of six of my son’s closest friends three do not have access to a reliable computer and internet connection at home, this is something our education departments need to address.