Dear Vanna,

I'm a student of the world - and I found this film inspiring in its simplicity.
Your example demonstrates that children need to connect with the things they are learning and with the people who are guiding them.
I'm all for Australian examples, nevertheless, we all share a common humanity, so why should we not also look to the wider world for stories like yours?

Poirit,
I know, I know.

That is possibly why there is hardly a thing left in the classrooms that has been made in Australia.

The author doesn't like American influences in our classrooms. But here is a teacher enthralled with the iPad, an American device.

http://ozteacher.com.au/html/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=743:ipad-review-jessica-harvey&catid=17:technology&Itemid=116

She likes the iPad, because she doesn't have to understand the file structure.

I know of students who do understand the file structure of iPad. In fact, they write application to go onto iPad. They do it in their spare time to earn money to further their studies.

They don't live in Australia, and that is now becoming a major difference between students in Australia and elsewhere.

vanna, we're never going to agree about the importation issue, simply because every school with which I have been involved makes considerable use of Australian resources. Textbooks in particular tend to be generated by local companies to address specific curriculum requirements set out in syllabus documents. The use of tailored software like maths games is on the way out as the push for Web 2.0 technologies (creating rather than passively using) grows stronger.

Where you are correct is that we make extensive use of American programs such as the Office package and the Adobe Creative Suite. I put it to you, though, that this is much more beneficial for students than developing a local alternative for use in schools that will never be used in the outside world. Students engage with the packages they will be required to use when they pursue careers in business and industry.

Where I think you ARE onto something, though, is your mention of kids creating apps for iPads. There is a spirit of innovation in that, and one that can be transferred across a wide range of subject areas. Present students with a problem, have them generate an app to solve the problem. It's not just IT we would be teaching there - it's IT, it's maths, it's science, it's literacy - it hass applications across the whole curriculum. It would be wonderfully rewarding and would engender in students the belief that they have the tools and the ability to use them to solve a wide range of problems. That is certainly more relevant to life as a whole than having the ability to reach Band 10 on NAPLAN or achieve a great mark on QCS.

Dear Vanna,

Interesting article - I'm a bit of a technological dinosaur (although I'm improving). I've only been using a computer and the internet since early 2009.
My young son, however, is reasonably computer savvy (better than me, not surprisingly).
If I had wanted him to learn to read "The Cat in the Hat", I would have suggested that he go and retrieve it. This would have necessitated him thinking where it was. He would have walked to his bedroom, then to his bookshelf, and then gone to shelf that contained the book.
There would have been structure to his thought processes in locating the book - as opposed to it magically appearing at the press of "one" button.

Otokonoko, Porit
If you investigate thoroughly enough, most of the publishing houses in Australia are actually owned by US parent companies, and they are choosing to use more of their own staff. Within a decade or so, there will probably be no textbook writers left in Australia.

But it is not just textbooks being imported into schools, it is everything else from the light switch to the lawnmower.

Back to the article published by the teacher of IT in a high school.

Her words were ”
These products are truly amazing and wonderful and students love them because - they don’t have to think.”

THEY DON”T HAVE TO THINK.

Hmmm.

There was the attempt to remove maths and science out of primary schools in QLD (too hard and too male). There also seems to be great opposition to NAPLAN and to exams in general, but NAPLAN and exams require thinking.

I wonder where teachers think applications on iPAD come from. Do they think these applications are developed by mythical creatures who live in a far away land, and then give these applications to Earth people in Australia as a gift.

No.

So many are being written by students in India. Many of Microsoft's programs are also being written in India, which was once thought of as being a third world country.

These students have learnt how to think. Their education system made them think.

How do we win, then, vanna? In the past, you have pointed an accusing finger at teachers for importing almost everything. Now you're telling us that even locally-produced textbooks from ostensibly Australian publishing houses aren't good enough because they have American parent companies. It seems that the problem is not, as you have previously suggested, a problem with teachers. If no textbooks are Australian enough for you, do you suggest that we should simply not use textbooks at all?

Interestingly, it works both ways. The online systems used in my diocese are generated by Editure, an Australian company that has bought a considerable market share in the USA. I suppose there is a chance that the software was developed elsewhere, though this is unlikely as their software division is based in Melbourne.

All of this, though, is barely related to the topic at hand. The statistics offered by the OECD places us near the top of the developed world in most indicators related to education. I would like to see us AT the top, not NEAR it. With the innovative overseas ideas described by you, vanna, and by others in this discussion, it is increasingly obvious that we need to pull our socks up if we are to retain our place, let alone improve it.