Many of us remember being startled from a 1970's heat-induced classroom doze by the fearful speaker box springing to violent life. When I visit schools and see these artefacts from a gentler, more analogue time, I secretly fear it will ...
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Waving the virtual wand
Virtualisation is a technology increasingly on the radar screens of schools grappling with the multiple challenges of containing computing costs, managing IT support and maintenance loads, and allowing students and teachers to access learning information from any device at any ...
More »One stop shop
Australian schools have until the end of September to download and preserve any teaching support materials they need from the EdNA online network before it is shut off at the end of the month. The Federal Government pulled the plug ...
More »Is augmented reality the next big thing?
It seems every time I attend a conference, there is another 'next greatest thing' positioned in the educational marketplace offering to not only engage but enrich the learning experiences for all. We have seen a smorgasboard of hardware enter our ...
More »Friend or foe?
Within days of the European Assembly releasing a report recommending the European Parliament ban mobile phones and wireless networks from schools on health grounds, a second report emerged from the World Health Authority which classified radio-frequency electromagnetic fields as "possibly ...
More »Talk time
Communications between school and home, teacher and student, and all the variants in between has always been at the heart of the education process. Increasingly the conduit for communications is technology, whether it be an emailed school newsletter for parents, ...
More »Past its use by date
A national e-waste scheme which will ensure old computers and TVs are recycled in an environmentally sensitive way is finally on its way, offering a much sought after service for schools and private individuals. While the metropolitan rollout of the ...
More »The great divide
An important litmus test of the success of the Federal Government’s $2.4 billion Digital Education Revolution (DER) will be undertaken this year when 12,000 Australian school children in Years 6 and 10 participate in the National Assessment Program for ICT ...
More »Pirates in the playground
A collective shudder went down the spines of hordes of high school-aged children across the world late last year when a US judge shut down the LimeWire file sharing service. Popular with many teenagers as a way to access music ...
More »The new challenge
The October launch of Telstra’s T-Touch Tab, which sells for $299, is likely to unleash a torrent of teenage pester power just in time for Christmas. But it also signals yet more challenges for schools that are already pressured to ...
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