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Jan 15, 2001
International Perspectives (cont'd)
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Australia: Leading with Laptops
By Amy Poftak
In the late 1980s, long before "anytime, anywhere learning" was even a gleam in Microsoft's eye, a group of Australian educators had a prescient thought: how would education change if every child had a notebook computer?
Ironically, the idea had roots in America, with MIT professor Seymour Papert's "constructionism," a philosophy that learners should be actively engaged in constructing new knowledge-in building "artifacts," such as computer programs, that are personally meaningful. David Loader, then principal of the Methodist Ladies' College, a private girls' school in Melbourne, seized on this notion of giving kids tools to create and better control their learning environment.
So in 1989, along with a team of committed teachers, Loader formed a plan to start a laptop program. They would begin with one class, then expand to include an entire grade level, and finally all classes and grades in the school. Then they made it happen. By 1990, each fifth-grade girl was toting a Toshiba T1000SE and using LogoWriter to create multimedia presentations across the curriculum.
The Methodist Ladies' College proved to be pioneers in this effort. Following their lead, several private schools-which comprise 40 percent of Australia's schools-launched laptop programs. This movement spread to public schools in the mid-1990s. Today, some 45,000 students and 60,000 educators across Australia are using notebook computers. The government also has joined in, providing more than 37,000 public school teachers in Victoria their own laptops for $150 per year.
Powerful results, now borne out in studies, show that students in laptop programs collaborate more, write more, and apply critical thinking skills more readily than other students. Students are able to take ownership of their learning and work at their own pace. Teachers, too, are affected-adopting new roles as learners and facilitators.
While these successes are not unique to Australia, the original vision was. What did they know that others didn't? For one, Australia has a long tradition of progressive education, spending a large part of the 1970s and 1980s researching best technology practices from countries around the world.
Some educators feel a key difference is the somewhat radical attitude that parents, not schools, are responsible for paying for the laptop, whether they own or rent it. Kelly Starr, an American teacher who traveled to Australia in 1995, noted that ownership was a vital part of the "invitation to be a part of the learning process." While there were affordability issues at Methodist Ladies' College and other schools in Australia, they worked with parents to find a solution. "Time and time again we found that where parents have the attitude that this program benefits their children, they will make the sacrifices necessary to make it possible. This is true across all socio-demographics," says Bruce Dixon, a former principal whose company, Computelec, has worked to establish notebook programs since the early years.
| To read more about laptop learning in Australia and technology-rich classrooms around the world, Transforming Learning, edited by Jenny Little and Bruce Dixon, is available through SchoolKiT. |
The laptop revolution in Australia made big news, drawing attention from curious educators around the world, including a team of Americans who came in 1996 to observe what was happening. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Amy Poftak is executive editor of T&L.
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