[Yr7-10it] "education revolution" and other buzz words

[Bill Kerr]

Rudd's "education revolution" was mentioned a few times at VITTA and VITTA
itself promoted its conference on the theme of
revolution<http://www.vitta.org.au/conference/2007/>

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.

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

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):

The Australian Economy needs and education
revolution<http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/education_revolution.pdf>(Jan
2007)

Do a search for "comput" -->> zero hits. Computer promises were not part of
the original "vision"

The vision is/was human capital investment, based on quite fuzzy analysis:
19th C industrial revolution
20th C technological revolution
21st C human capital revolution

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?

Come election time and the populist digital / broadband / increased access
message emerges:
A School Computer for Every Student Years 9-12
<http://www.alp.org.au/media/1107/msloo140.php>
Labor's Digital Education
Revolution<http://www.alp.org.au/download/labors_digital_education_revolution_campaign_launch.pdf>

Noticeable that there is no mention of programming in this revolution. There
is some talk about new things that will become possible through broadband

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

At any rate, these papers do flesh out the ALP policy substantially.

Yes, I enjoyed VITTA a lot and add my thanks to the organisers and a very
helpful tech named Paul,

... but not the buzz words
-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
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