How will the new Australian curriculum impact education's interactions with the ICT sphere? 

Information communication technology (ICT) is already commonplace in schools, with tablets, laptops, school networks and the internet long having superseded the pens, pencils and dog-eared textbooks of old, and access to the sum total of the world’s knowledge is now just a click away.

But there is so much more to learning than the simple acquisition of knowledge, and the new national curriculum for Australian schools recognises this. Devised through the collaborative efforts involving all Australian states and territories and led by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the new curriculum was endorsed by the Education Council in September 2015. The ambition is to provide students with a well-rounded education that enables them to leave school as successful learners, confident, creative individuals and active, informed citizens – in line with goals stated in the Melbourne Declaration, a guiding document signed by all Australian education ministers and which gives shape to the development of Australian education up to 2018. A key acknowledgement of the declaration is that major changes in the world, including globalisation, international mobility and rapid technological advances, are placing new demands on the education system and that rapid evolution is required to adapt.

Computerising the curriculum

The new curriculum is based around seven general capabilities. There are the ones you’d expect like literacy and numeracy, the more philosophical subjects like critical and creative thinking and personal and social capability, as well as the broader moral and societal areas of ethical and intercultural understanding.

But the final and perhaps most crucial pillar underpinning the success of future generations is information communication technology (ICT) capability. While the other core areas are clearly essential educational criteria aimed at producing intelligent, ethical and moral adults, ICT is the medium through which people are increasingly experiencing and interacting with the world. It’s what we use to communicate, follow the news, shop and do business. It’s also the filter through which we will increasingly develop our sense of who we are, discover the world and our place in it and in some cases even find our careers or life partners.

The medium is the message

It’s not surprising that ICT has been recognised as a vital cog in the wheels of educational progress. Just like reading and writing, which were the essential basic tools of learning for centuries, now everyone will be using a computer, software, systems and the internet for their school work. Without sufficient mastery of the medium, students will be at a huge disadvantage and this becomes even more relevant when you consider the place of Australia’s young people in the future of a global knowledge-based economy, where electronic information exchange will underpin everything.

The fact is that there is huge complexity when it comes to not just the employment, but the development, deployment and management of ICT hardware, software and systems – and more and more it’s no longer simply the IT person’s responsibility. To make the use of everyday technology feel more seamless, there are a host of skills from network setup and management to security protocols and file backup systems that will need to be second nature to our future young adults.

Five steps to ICT success

The curriculum sets store in four practical aspects; investigating with, creating with, communicating with and managing and operating ICT. A fifth aspect is concerned with social and ethical protocols and practices when using ICT. This puts the focus on helping students experience the practical and creative, as well as intellectual and philosophical implications, of using ICT while teaching responsibility and accountability in using these seriously powerful tools.

• Investigating with ICT covers strategies for wrangling vast amounts of data and information and trying to make some sense of it all. Once described as trying to take a sip of water from an open fire hydrant, dealing with the sheer volume of and varying information available through ICT systems via the internet is an important skill.
• Creating with ICT doesn’t just mean using Photoshop, but covers the use of ICT tools to generate ideas, plans and processes as a response to a need or creative intention.  
• Communicating with ICT helps students to understand the advantages and limitations of the medium, focusing on ways to effectively collaborate and exchange information, as well as overcome some of the challenges.
• Managing and operating ICT recognizes that using complex systems requires a detailed understanding of the functions, processes, procedures and devices involved.
• Applying social and ethical protocols and practices when using ICT explores the benefits and consequences of using ICT systems, and the impact of the use of ICT on our society.

From theory to practice: Making the system a success

Of course, no curriculum will be successful without being effectively taught. Digital pedagogy is due to become an even hotter topic in light of findings from a recent study in OECD countries which reveals that that there is no positive correlation between the number of computers in schools and academic performance.

In fact, Australia, which has the highest average internet usage time per day of all the OECD countries and averages more than one computer per pupil in schools, has shown "significant declines" in reading performance. The conclusion of the study was not that technology negatively affects learning, but that new ways of teaching must be developed to ensure that technology is being used to make learning more effective, and not getting in the way.

A big challenge in this area is the speed of change in the digital age, and the truth is that it may take longer to bed down agreed pedagogies and curricula than the relevant lifespan of a particular new technology.

Infrastructure and educators both require support

For schools, this places a fresh focus on their ICT infrastructure. The concern is not only for the future, but whether current systems will be robust enough to support the new ICT curriculum right now.

Networks, storage and devices should be future-proof, scalable and adaptable enough to evolve and accommodate new teaching methods and material which become available as new technologies disrupt the environment. Teachers will have to be equally adaptable, and training and support is crucial. Many teachers won’t have been educated in a technology-rich environment and they’ll need help to understand and appreciate the potential of ICT in the digital age so they can successfully guide pupils through a high-tech landscape in which they themselves have no solid points of reference.

The winners of course should be the students, who will doubtless benefit from this more progressive stance in education. Students should leave school with an in-depth understanding of not just the current capability of ICT, but also its world-changing potential.

Employers should also be happy, with school leavers more readily equipped to operate in a digital disrupted business environment.

The recognition of the all-pervasiveness of ICT not just in Australia’s future, but in our present, is a big step towards protecting our country’s relevance in the world economy. After all, what job these days doesn’t involve using a computer for at least some tasks? In an age where mobile phones wield more baseline processing muscle than the desktop PCs of just a few years ago, you don’t have to be a graphic designer or data analyst to be harnessing the power of ICT.

The demand for digital is real and the introduction of the new ICT curriculum is a vital step on the journey towards better learning. It will hasten the evolution of teaching, both in method and medium, and help our young Australians be leading players on a technology-dominated world stage.