Note that I'm not absolving teachers of any responsibility to educate themselves here. I said I'm well-equipped to use ICTs in the classroom and to enable my students to do the same. I got there by practising, researching and teaching myself, and am sure many others could do the same. There is the whole 'digital native/digital immigrant' idea that suggests people of my generation have the skills and attitudes to teach ourselves about ICTs, while older people do not. I don't know how true that is (after all, I have taken those skills for granted since I was a little kid), but I concede that it may be harder for some.

Life wasn't meant to be easy, and working life in particular rarely is.

this article seems somewhat opposing the general flow
[of the authers previous writings]

""Fuelling the next terror..June 3,2011
Time for a new focus on food..June 2,2011
Why is nobody talking about safe nuclear power?..May 4,2011
Time for an independent voice for science..April 12,2011...""

but i note elements of them
within his words

i like beginnings..and endings
so naturally focused on this

""Australians..as a diverse and enterprising people
were able to seize*..and develop the new opportunities
of the 21st century..as they emerged.""

here julian enters fanticy land

[private money..is too self obsessed
to gamble with its own money....the money
wants what govt has
and wants govt..to seize it or build it..for them]

then take it..from the people
and then double the costs of delivery...
making sepperate..'business'..of its parts...

but mainly just running it down..
while maximising its proffets
into their own..private pockets

""The grounds..for every single one of them
were already laid,,*in 2011""

when juliar..seized the union movement
revealing the real ju-liar..

then barefaced stating..no carbon tax slush fund
for greenie capitalists...*in my party...

then selling out
to the greenie bankers....
wanting public cash...by public debt

while selling..every important bit of real/value
land farms water gas rights

to china and middle east oil sheiks
or frontmen..for overseas money men

i like this helpfull
carbon tax slush fund/hint..

""all that was wanting..was the courage,
the vision and the investment to achieve them.""

and the bleach bottle redhead liar
deliverd in spades
thus was the future sold to corperate intrests...

[using the compulsory superTAX fundies]...
to lord it over the peons
forced to pay..as they earned less and less

made in australian peons*
*owned by coorperation

big business bonus
public burdon...by one sided...'mutual obligation'
and private mates/rate deals...where odious governance
created odsious debt burden..upon their landless peoples

ya just gotta love
the predictability of colonisers
thinking to proffit from stolen land

then...jointly loosing it to those who claimed higher right..
by bits of paper/private prisons and threat of punitive punishment or plain force

tax em till they drop
their love of govt subsidies...never stop

Julian, I see a much brighter, freer, less fearful, harmonious and rewarding future for humanity.

It is all based upon energy. By 2050 we will have low cost, compact energy units based upon a mixture of Gen VII fission and fusion.

These will be supplied firstly to third world and developing nations. They will use these for power, desalination and transport fuels, probably hydrogen. The power will liberate them from the tyranny of carbon fuel restrictions imposed by developed nations. Desal will give them water for domestic, commercial and irrigation applications.

Their food production will increase; they will trade amongst similar economies and then gradually compete in a sustainable way with the developed nations. Conflict within and between will be reduced as they increase education, development of their own social equity and justice and stabilize their politics based upon reduced intervention and western dependency.

Australia will by then have come to terms with the silliness of fanciful dreamers that tried to convince us we could lead the world in climate adaption, food production water management, urban design and knowledge export, when we should have concentrated on core competences to produce things that other nations might actually buy.

We will reach this conclusion because we will have realised that to export such “soft” products and services we would actually need “customers” for these. We will also have realised that in each of these disciplines we have not yet actually done any of this for our home markets and are currently 10 to 20 years behind those who have. We will have also have recognized the extent to which such dreaming has utterly devastated the otherwise strong economies of those who have gone before, like the EU.

Sadly, we are likely to see a continuation of the March of Folly, the pursuit of that which is contrary to self interest. This will happen because of the “plausible” dreamers, lots of information, no knowledge and no common sense.

Otokonoko
“these opportunities to take good ICT resources and make them great go to waste”

It doesn’t matter much whether an ICT or anything else is good or bad to start with.

What matters is how quickly it can be improved upon.

There are now schools and universities using almost nothing produced in Australia, and I’m sure that companies such as Apple, Microsoft, SAS, Cisco, Lenovo, Hitachi etc need to be given a lot more money from the Australian taxpayer via the education system.

Although I haven’t heard any words of thanks being said to the Australian taxpayer from companies such as Apple, Microsoft, SAS, Cisco, Lenovo, Hitachi etc.

Maybe they will say thanks to the Australian taxpayer in the year 2050.

Or maybe Australia will be completely sold out by the year 2050.

*The more we import, the less likely we are ever going to value add, and the knowledge based society is just a pipedream.*

Not really Vanna. It seems to me that you are failing to acknowledge
how the world has changed. Manufacturing has become more complex,
more automated and more specialised. Take an Apple Ipad, there are
parts in there from all over the world. Specialist companies, some
make the touch screens, some the memory, some the processors etc.
If the Japanese tsunami did one thing, it showed how the global
supply chain is interlinked.

Trying to make everything here not only increases costs to consumers,
but also raises costs for efficient exporters.

It is pointless for us to try and reinvent the wheel, better to
find new niches, where we have a comparative advantage. That will
really come down to the entrepreneurial skills of the 5% of the
population who have that aptitude.

I gather that around 80'000 people in WA are still employed by
manufacturing, so its a myth that we make nothing.

Matrix Composites makes specialised stuff for the oil industry.
In Fremantle they build ferries, exported globally.
Truffles and their production is a new growth industry. At 3000$
a kg, well worth doing and we are doing it.
We sell Sandalwood oil to the world's perfume houses and the remains
of the wood for incense stick production. Far more profitable then
growing food on that land.

Slowly our niches are developing, but it will take a while, given
that our past attempts to produce everything, were a dismal failure.

Yabby,
We are manufacturing things, but not in the education system from what I have seen.

My gripe/complaint/observation is that teachers are hoping that by importing everything, they will produce students smart enough to export something.

Not likely.

More likely the students will never export anything, because they are being trained to import everything.

Meanwhile, India also wants to be the “knowledge powerhouse” of the world, with plans to increase its university student numbers from 12 million to 30 million in a few years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12597815

That’s more than the entire population of Australia, and they will be churning out 30 million university graduates about every 4 years.

Having worked with a few Indian students, they will not be satisfied with importing everything from somewhere else. They will want to produce something or make something.

Australia has minimal chance in any niche when faced with that type of competition.