The Sydney Morning Herald today has published an article noting the end of the Digital Education Revolution - money that has supplied laptops to students in Australia and the consequential NSW Department of Education and Communities policy change to encourage schools to support BYOD (bring your own device).
The DEC has noted equitable access to technology as a major concern and jokingly suggests cake stalls as a viable solution to gain funds for students who cannot afford to bring their own device. Non-Government schools have the advantage of being able to register as a charitable organisation, to encourage people to give tax deductible donations, but government schools cannot do this. Unfortunately, no real alternative has been suggested at this point to help those students who are from a lower socio-economic background.
The SMH also suggests that teachers need training, so that they can be "confident users across a range of platforms". I think that this misses the point of BYOD. Teachers do not need to train students in the use of technology, but rather need to recognise that most apps are platform independent and it doesn't actually matter which platform students are using. If students are using google docs, they can be on any platform. If students are creating a video, they can use a variety of platforms (with a camera).
As a teaching profession, we need to become platform independent and lead our students in learning regardless of their device.
The original writer for SMH was Dan Haesler who blogs at http://www.danhaesler.com/
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