The digital age has spurred radical changes across all sectors of Australian society, filtering right down to classrooms nationwide. For primary and high school education, the introduction of digital interactive learning has replaced the majority of traditional pen to paper methods. But in an ever-digitising world, where exactly is technology taking our education?
Technological influences have seen the needs of today’s learner change immensely. With children as young as one engaging with devices such as iPads, technological abilities are enhanced and our youngest minds now require technology for engagement. Progression in the classroom to adhere to these modern needs has seen the introduction of devices such as iPads with educational applications, interactive white boards and laptops.
For Alphington Grammar School, digital devices in the classroom are all about relevance and engagement. According to principal Vivianne Nikou, “as educators, our job is to find and use the methodology that today’s learner engages with, and the only way to do this is through technology”.
The school employs a “blended model” with some classroom activity based on books and the other on technology. Nikou says that introducing technology in the classroom creates “opportunities to make the teaching relevant and targeted” and to teach on an individual student’s ability.
For Mark Robertson, principal of Oakleigh Grammar, “the reality is that our youngest learners have an expediential ability to develop skills with technology”. This ability needs to be adhered to through all teaching methods. Oakleigh Grammar employs a ’30 per cent model’, with a third of classroom education taught via technology, but the majority still taught using traditional methods.
With technology employed in the classroom for many years, questions are turning to the future of education in Australia – focusing on a traditional versus technological debate. For Nikou, the future of Australian education will one day be entirely digital.
“I think that there will be a time in the future where key assessments will be undertaken using technology and that the importance of pen and paper will be reduced.”
However, in the meantime Nikou says the value we should place on the traditional book cannot be overstated.
“People still place value in the action of sitting with a book.”
For Mark Robertson, the future is about the needs of the learner, expressing the school’s commitment to “preparing students for life after school”. Robertson understands that by “looking past the gates of Oakleigh Grammar, one can see technology has impacted every industry, so educators have an obligation to prepare students to enter that world”.