Funding+ICT's+in+schools

One of the things that concerns me most about the use of ICT's in schools is very much influenced by my current experiences. The students at my school have at most 3 computers in each classroom (when they are working) and although they do have internet access their budget is minimal. Students do not have the opportunity to access a computer hub and teachers use computers with educational software to support literacy and numeracy or as a reward system for behaviour management. We do not teach the use of web 2.0 technologies and do not have a whole school approach to an ICT curriculum. I am the special education coordinator and have a passion for using ICT to engage students, particularly those with special needs and have over the past 8 years sourced a wide variety of assistive technologies, most however have failed due to the limitations of our computer systems. I have explored power point and clicker 5 linking to google earth and various video images from the web and have recently use wordle with my students. They are fascinated by this small taste of what is possible to explore. I found this interesting snippet of text from a book called Learning for the Future from the Curriculum Corporation. Go to [] for a look. The piece of text discusses some of the requirements for the effective use of ICT's in school by first analysing the needs within the school context, developing policies to integrate information resources and ICT's, evaluating outcomes including the effectiveness of the programs and any required professional development for staff, the equity of resources and developing budgets to set up/maintain and support ICT's. Cheers Bronnie:) I work in a public primary school and our students are fortunate enough to have a rich availability of technology. All 12 of our classrooms plus the staff room has an electronic whiteboard, all classrooms except the four grade 5/6 classrooms have six classroom computers. In the grade 5/6 classrooms every student has a mini lap top. In addition the school has a computer lab with 30 computers. Across all levels students attend 1hour of computer studies with a specialist teacher. In addition students from grade 2 - 4 attend an additional 30 min with their classroom teacher in the computer lab, in addition to classroom usage in sessions such as literacy rotations (this includes preps and grade 1's). It should be noted that this school has made ICT a priority in their charter and these resources have been budgeted for and acquired over a period of six years. (11/8 - Lisa Rankin)

I congratulate your school Lisa and feel happpy that the students are enriched in ICT's. Great work Cheers Bronnie Whitelaw August 11th 8:54pm

Here here..! Lisa highlighted the point that their school has copious resources for ICT because the school values this in the students education. Funding does drive resources however valuing them will be a huge driver also.Cheryl Cheryl (August 14th 9.10am)

As parents of school-aged children you also have a voice in your local school. What have you done to support the parent body to ensure access to information communication technologies? Please share your ideas either here or on a new page ... for instance, have you (as part of the parent body) written to your local member of Parliament to seek support for ICT infrastructure support for your school? [Sharon, 14/08/2009]