Digital Commons Network^™

Performance Of Continual Quality Improvement For Learning Process In A Microwave Engineering Based Core Subject, Mazlina Esa, Rozeha A Rashid, Mohd Saidfudin Masodi, Razimah Abdullah

Razimah Abdullah

Leadership And Learning With Ict : Voices From The Profession, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle (consultant)

Leadership matters’ and ‘start with the pedagogies, not the technologies’, say Australian educators. Voices from the profession provides an overview of what a cross-section of over 400 of Australia’s educational leaders saw in 2005 as factors that contribute to how leadership supports learning with information and communication technologies (ICT) in Australian schools. It presents some of the issues raised and solutions proposed by the educational leaders who participated in this research. This paper draws on the words of the participants throughout, to illustrate findings and to give the report authenticity. This research shows that integrating ICT into teaching and learning …

Evaluation Of An Online Community: Australia's National Quality Schooling Framework, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young, Keryn Mcguinness, Peter Cuttance

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

This chapter considers the development and implementation of Australia’s National Quality Schooling Framework (NQSF), created particularly for teachers and others involved in improving school education. This large-scale, highly structured, and outcome- focused community space, funded by the Australian government, was developed as a means of building and testing knowledge. Using Wenger’s infrastructure for communities of practice, the chapter evaluates the NQSF in light of its capacity for engagement, imagination, and alignment. Although these three are often intertwined, we conclude that firstly, users value the space for engagement and that this needs to be supported by a national telecommunications infrastructure. Secondly, …

Teachers As Designers In Computer-Supported Communities Of Practice, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

School classes can be conceptualized as bounded communities of practice made up of teachers and students working together to build knowledge. Teachers make design decisions about physical and virtual spaces supported by information and communications technologies, and about curriculum. Design influences how students go about their work, and their learning outcomes, but its processes are rarely observed. This paper, based on observations and conversations in schools, explores how teachers engage in designing learning environments. It argues that while most teachers display leadership in design decisions for their classes, they should build on this experience to influence policy and become more …

Innovating With Technology: The Challenge To Education Policy, Leadership And Management, Gerald White

Dr Gerald K. White

This presentation introduces the topic of using ICTs in education from an Australian context by posing the question of 'Why?' It then goes on to briefly examine the introduction of computers and the World Wide Web, cites a seminal report entitled Australia?s Future Using Education Technology, and finally, refers to a paper about the evolution of methods of communication that humans have developed for common use and which are fundamental to education.

Transforming Learning/Transforming Schools: Do Models Of Deployment Of Digital Technologies Support Transformative Teaching And Learning And School Leadership?, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

Government primary and secondary schools across Australia are introducing digital technologies to support teaching and learning. Systemic models of deploying the information technology (IT) infrastructure to support this use of digital technologies however, can be at odds both with organisational models of school leadership and management, and with approaches used to support teaching and learning. Efficient IT deployment strategies drawn from the private sector are being applied within the school sector. These IT deployment approaches tend to be based upon centralised and standardised management models where the amount and nature of the software is limited and controlled. At the same …