Rudd's "education revolution" was mentioned a few times at VITTA and VITTA itself promoted its conference on the <a href="http://www.vitta.org.au/conference/2007/" rel="nofollow">theme of revolution</a><br><br>
This
represents an artificial use of language, which has become all too
common - words like revolution, literacy and web2.0 are used in ways
that obscure meaning and understanding.<br><br>The way language is used
at educational ICT conferences, especially at keynotes, makes me want to throw up, the list of
buzz words is enormous, eg. "21st Century skills" are most definitely
limited since they seem to involve forgetting about critical or
historical analysis of the past 40 years of computing not to mention
300 years or more if we go back to Enlightenment thinking and the Greeks <br><br>After
some VITTA conversations I became more curious and searched for some of
the fine print of the Labour Party education policy. I found these
documents (pdfs):<br><br><a href="http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/education_revolution.pdf" rel="nofollow">The Australian Economy needs and education revolution</a> (Jan 2007)<br><br>Do a search for "comput" -->> zero hits. Computer promises were not part of the original "vision"
<br><br>The vision is/was human capital investment, based on quite fuzzy analysis:<br>19th C industrial revolution<br>20th C technological revolution<br>21st C human capital revolution<br><br>The
sections demonstrating how australia has fallen behind are quite good.
It's easy to critique Howard, more difficult to develop a new vision of
substance. Instead of a real vision we get "revolution" rhetoric. Why
can't the Labour Party use language honestly and call it "evolution" or
"incremental reform" rather than use grandiouse rhetoric?<br><br>Come election time and the populist digital / broadband / increased access message emerges:<br><a href="http://www.alp.org.au/media/1107/msloo140.php" rel="nofollow">
A School Computer for Every Student Years 9-12 </a><br><a href="http://www.alp.org.au/download/labors_digital_education_revolution_campaign_launch.pdf" rel="nofollow">Labor's Digital Education Revolution</a><br><br>Noticeable
that there is no mention of programming in this revolution. There is
some talk about new things that will become possible through broadband<br><br>I
still think better things were being done at 1990 at Methodist Ladies
College (logo on laptops) and that the OLPC which now offers a real
take home computer with 3 programming environments (squeak, logo,
python) and lots more represents a superior vision<br><br>At any rate, these papers do flesh out the ALP policy substantially.<br clear="all"><br>Yes, I enjoyed VITTA a lot and add my thanks to the organisers and a very helpful tech named Paul,
<br><br>... but not the buzz words<br>-- <br>Bill Kerr<br><a href="http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/">http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/</a><br><br>