Mobile+Devices



For the last ten years or so computer technology has been more in the mode of consolidation and evolution, rather than revolution. For today, while we enjoy releases of increasingly stable and more capable software and hardware (well, mostly anyway), the urgency and energy that surrounded the introduction of ICT into the curriculum appears to have significantly waned. Just as we have grown used to technology in the classroom, we have become used to the "new" kinds of teaching practices that were ushered in nearly a decade ago. The hard edge of innovation, in technology and education, seems to be missing. We now feel, to a lesser or greater degree, comfortable with what we do with technology in the curriculum and how we manage those processes. Been there. Done that. Tick that box.

But this comfortable, incremental world is about to change. For the hegemony of the desktop and laptop computer may be under threat from an apparently unexpected quarter, and our comfortable assumptions of platform (Mac and PC), operating systems (OSX and Windows), and how to support and manage them may all go out the window (pardon the pun). A semiotic shift has begun to occur, new innovations are on the way, and a new aesthetic seems to manifesting itself. Big technology-focused companies are aware of this, new rules are being written, past winners may become losers, and the obscure the new power brokers. Is this moment the proverbial calm before the storm?

This presentation will make the case that a new wave of ICT innovation is about to be unleashed, and the problem for education is that unless we are prepared our "cool" integration of ICT into teaching and learning may, in five years time, look just a grey and tired as the teaching practices that the Navigator project set out to alter. But with this challenge will come great opportunities, including the ability to harness affordable and omnipresent communications, and tapping into new social phenomena that can energize anew teaching and learning.

**3:45pm - 4:45pm **
===If  you missed Stephen's session you can click [|here] and watch the recording. ===


 * __About the Presenter__**

Stephen Palmer graduated with first-class Honours from the History Programme at La Trobe University. As a postgraduate student he continued his research into the logic and rhetoric of Early Modern English Mathematics, along with this field's epistemological consequences for the practice of history. During this time he also lectured and tutored on the subject of European Civilization, from the period of the fall of Rome to Napoleon. Stephen has worked at Essendon North Primary School for ten years as the ICT Manager, overseeing the technological dimension of the effective integration of ICT into the curriculum. He has also worked with a range of other schools, assisting them also with the problem of managing whole-school change in the context of the better use of technology in the curriculum. Presently his energies are focused on software development, as well as a continuing and passionate interest in the innovative use of technology for social purposes.