The past decade has seen the expansion of personal digital technologies into schools. With many students and teachers now possessing smartphones, tablets, and laptops, schools are initiating one-to-one and "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) policies aiming to make use of these "personal devices" in classrooms. While often discussed…

Traditional learning spaces have evolved into dynamic blended tertiary environments (BTEs), providing a modern means through which tertiary education institutes (TEIs) can augment delivery to meet stakeholder needs. Despite the significant demand for web-enabled learning, there are obstacles concerning the use of EOTs, which challenge the…

Tasmania, one of the first locations to have communities connected to the national broadband network (NBN), provided the context within which to ask significant questions about the implications of the NBN for all levels and sectors of education. This paper reports findings from a research project that developed innovative methodology to explore…

Despite significant investment in school one-to-one device programs, little is known about which aspects of program implementation work and why. Through a comparison of two implementation models, adopter-diffusion and saturation, and using existing data from the One Laptop per Child Australia laptop program, we explored how factors of…

Research into children's learning with digital technologies is represented by a growing body of literature examining the relationship between home-school technological practices. A focus of this work is on the notion of a "digital-disconnect" between home and school. This argument suggests that children are such native users of…

This paper reports qualitative findings from a study that investigated Australian university staff and students' perceptions and use of current and emerging technologies both in their daily lives and in teaching and learning contexts. Forty-six first-year students and 31 teaching and support staff from three Australian universities took part in…

E-learning technologies are often seen as a driving force in the democratisation of contemporary education. However, few researchers have focused on inequalities in online learners' access to technologies or their abilities to use them. In 2009, we assessed The University of Western Australia's "SmARTS" outreach program, investigating…

This paper explores how girls take up, disrupt, and disavow interest in ICTs in their lives. It examines questions of access and of social risk in relation to computers in the home and how these are nuanced by gender. The paper draws on samples of text from advertisements, government websites and focus group interviews with high-school girls in…

In this edition of Innovate-Ideagora, Al McCord and Denise Easton report on developments in this online community, which now boasts over 400 members. As members engaged in active discussions about ways to support sustainable, accessible technologies, discussion coalesced around rumors of a $10 laptop and what such a development might mean for…

Asal and Harwood explore how today's information technology is changing how teachers educate and are educated. Focusing on the United States, with useful insights from the classroom digital revolution in a few other places (the United Kingdom, Australia, and India), the authors investigate the impact of today's technologies on education--how they…

Australia wide, all school systems are in the process of providing teachers with computers and there is an expectation that new teachers will possess the expertise to use them in their teaching. In addition to using computers for basic word processing and data manipulation, early-career science teachers need to be able to use a range of…

This study examined similarities and differences among children who regularly use computers at home, including difference in their families and communities. The following characteristics were identified as key factors that might be associated with differences: gender, age, parental computing experiences, number of computers in the home,…

National priorities set by an Australian ministerial taskforce provide clear guidelines to develop pedagogy that integrates ICT. Although these guidelines do not specifically address rural and regional school needs, the two priorities: promoting pedagogic leadership and creating new learning environments, are of particular interest. But how are…

This study examined how children, drawn from K-6 grades in 3 primary schools in southwest Sydney, use computers in their homes and the physical and social environments within which they use them. Key issues explored were diversity of access, range of uses, and factors which influence use, including gender, age, and parental and sibling role…

This paper is the second part of a longitudinal study on the reliability of and access to ICT technologies in remote schools in north Western Australia [WA]. Part One was featured in the last issue of "AEC" ["Australian Educational Computing"]. It was an investigation into the access and practicalities of online opportunities…