Technology is fundamental to global progress. The forward charge of digital resources has forever altered how we communicate with each other and how we conduct our daily lives. Students are tethered to their iPads, smartphones, and laptops, while chalkboards, textbooks, and overhead projectors have become relics of the past. Education is moving into the digital age. Pedagogies have changed to engage the latest digital technologies. The methods of distribution are now a blend between face-to-face and some other combination of virtual interfaces. The content is moving from traditional text-based learning to text-plus-multimedia. The community is now involved in the development of content.
Key Digital Strategy Elements
- Outside-in approach
- • A system-wide view by function
- Re-orient system focus to be Student/Learner centric – Establish a lifelong student record they control -Encompass past achievement AND future aspirations
- Focus on free flows of data • Enable personalised and data-driven learning • Information to follow the student through the system
- Align agency investment and governance to strategy
Schools Cloud ”Moving spend out of the server room and into the classroom”
A brokered cloud ecosystem provides service quality, data integration and cost benefits
1. A standardised but not centralised approach
2. Initial focus on Microsoft and Google office productivity and commonly used software applications
3. Commercial outcome – “Software as a Service” only
4. Enable schools to exit ALL on-premise server infrastructure
5. Enable greater levels of inter-operability
Benefits for Students
In the digital age, students are experiencing a revolution in how they are presented with — and study — new information. For young people, technology is only going to become more entrenched in their everyday lives.
Aside from the obvious benefit of not hauling a stack of books around, mobile- and Internet-based technology brings educational content to life. The impressive body of knowledge in every field of study can be shared between communities of individuals who continually challenge themselves to delve deeper into a subject. Educators and students can benefit from applications that individualize schedules, give us suggestions, remind us to practice, and assess strengths and weaknesses.
In addition, intuitive technologies can help facilitate connections between subject areas that we might not have identified on own. Students can have a truly interactive experience with today’s digital learning resources. Textbooks don’t talk back. As students, we didn’t receive feedback from these books, and, as teachers, we see how difficult it is to spark interest and inspiration with such limited tools. In contrast, the promise of digital content is that it evolves right alongside its users. Students now have the ability to view videos of historical events or listen to the audio of landmark speeches if they are embedded into digital texts. The topic of study comes to life through multiple dimensions.
