Aussie IT 'must help with Labor education revolution'

After Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard's announcement last week that Labor plans to turn every school in Australia digital, representatives of the country's IT industry are calling on the new government to establish a trade advisory group to assist in implementing its "education revolution".

The Labor government has promised to provide individual access to a computer for every student in years nine to 12 as part of its digital education revolution.

Sheryle Moon, CEO of industry body the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), described the government's digital education plans as an "enormous technical and logistical task" which will require an attached industry consultancy to be fully realised.

"The basic thing we need to address right now is the logistics, because the first byte of the education revolution is getting the infrastructure in place," she said.

"We need to look at the whole gamut of things required to make this plan work: hardware, software, security, networks, curriculum ... but the first thing is to get it off the ground, and industry experts will need to be on board from day one."

Moon's comments come after Julia Gillard's opening speech as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education last week, where she told the Australian Industry Group that Labor plans to "turn every Australian school into a digital school".

The AIIA's Moon went on to say that the logistics of the program could be managed by a small group of experts, and that the government need not necessarily be looking for top-level executives to head up an advisory group, and should instead target established project managers with a high degree of technical expertise.

"I wouldn't say we need CEO-types for this," she said. "We're not talking about a simple rollout; the government will need to take on board people with advanced technical knowledge."

While the digital education initiative is a federally sponsored program, Moon said that an industry group would also be needed to assist the government in negotiating local variations across state and regional levels, as well as those between government, independent and specialist schools.

"We'll want the networks to be at least at the same standard nationally, no matter what type of school it is, but apart from that it can't be a one-size-fits-all approach; it's not just a simple IBM with Windows job, it depends on the needs of each school."

Moon also expressed concern over the current level of training teachers have in employing technology as part of the curriculum across all subjects.

"There's no doubt that teachers need upskilling, not just in the use of the technology itself, but in how they integrate curriculum with digital media," she said.

"The most important thing at this stage though is that we get the infrastructure in place, because once it's there it's a real incentive to train teachers, but without it we're stuck."