Educated Guess: Networks Or Notebooks?

The Age

Tuesday November 24, 1998

GLENN MULCASTER

A high concentration of computer access in Victoria's school system has created what some educators claim is one of the best learning environments in the world.

As the state school system moves toward a planned student-to-computer ratio of 5:1 by mid-2000, school administrators face choices about the deployment of particular technology: notebooks or networks?

The multinational computer vendors have long praised forward-thinking school principals, school councils, education groups and parent associations, who have dipped deep into their own pockets to give their kids a headstart on the academic trail.

Packing a PC in the schoolbag is now a common task for Victorian children, especially in the private system.

Newspapers and radio stations have highlighted the theft of notebook computers and the dissent of parent groups who don't want to be forced to pay for notebook computers they consider to be out of their price range.

The reality is that computers are disappearing because they have been absorbed into the curriculum. They are no longer solely the tools for students of computer science and electronics. Critics such as Senator Lyn Allison, a Victorian Democrat, describe current IT funding arrangements for most state schools as a dog's breakfast - piecemeal and under-funded.

However, as individual schools make a choice of technology platform, they have a number of relevant case studies to evaluate.

At the very least, Victoria has the strongest computer-based education experience to draw from, since the Melbourne Methodist Ladies' College pioneered the introduction of laptop computers in the State in 1990.

Di Fleming, principal of Kilvington Baptist Girls Grammar School in Ormond, has travelled to the United States, Britain and New Zealand as a guest of technology vendors such as Toshiba and Microsoft to spread the word on the usage of computers in Victorian schools.

"The independent schools have run with it because they have the autonomy," she said. "But the technology policy of the State Government has been insightful."

One of the major projects of the State Government is the Vic-One network, a high-speed communications system to link all Victorian schools and communities. It is being installed by second-tier telecom carrier AAPT.

Paul Doherty, Education Victoria's general manager of IT, says that the focus has remained on learning outcomes.

His department has anointed six state schools as Navigator schools, to act as pathfinders for the deployment of technology in the classroom - four in metropolitan Melbourne and two in regional areas.

He said the changing face of the education experience in those schools was interesting. "It's no longer just teacher-centred learning," he said. "They are getting away from the blackboard and chalk."

None of the Navigator schools has chosen to prescribe notebooks for the general school population. This is why the experience of two private girls' schools in the southeastern suburbs offers a unique opportunity to study the notebook or network computer (NC) model of computer access.

KILVINGTON, led by Fleming, is an enthusiastic adopter of a notebook computer scheme because the school believes it offers a far greater opportunity for what she calls the three As - access, acquisition and application.

Fleming's stance is supported by Ken Rowe, principal of Frankston High School, who says the notebook PC is becoming a tool as useful and ubiquitous as the pocket calculator. His school was the first Government school in Australia to encourage parents to buy notebook PCs for students.

He believes a notebook offers more value for money because it can be used for up to 10 or 12 hours a day instead of just homework.

``There must he half a million computers in and around Melbourne that aren't used during school time because they are plugged in at home," Rowe said.

He said he enjoyed regular dialogue with other schools in Victoria about computer use in the curriculum.

``It's an inter-systemic thing. It's not just the private schools or the state schools talking to each other," Rowe said. ``I work closely with Geelong Grammar, Kilvington and Melbourne Grammar.

``We have an almost missionary zeal about the teaching program because this group of schools in Victoria is leading the world."

Meanwhile, the Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School in Canterbury is keen to get the message across that parents of Strathcona girls do not have to buy notebook PCs.

The school is in the first year of a remote and home access system to the school network - a Unix-based system built using equipment from Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems.

Kim Perkins, information services manager at Strathcona, says the school emphasises that the strategy is not desktops and floppies - but remote access to school files from school or home.

Kilvington and Strathcona, both founded in the 1920s, offer an interesting comparison and have both received visitors to evaluate their installation.

Both schools maintain that the success of a technology-in-education program hinges on the integration of the chosen platform into the syllabus.

Perkins says the technology issues are behind them and the learning benefits have begun. The Year 10 revision notes for geography were coded entirely in HTML and put on the Web site.

``The quality of material you can put up on a screen is so much better than on paper," Perkins says.

Strathcona has 100 families using Homelink, a dial-up computer service that costs $250 per year per family for access. It also includes Internet access through a gateway at the school.

Although the Web-based graphical user interface shields students from much of the complexity of the system, Perkins says the girls have had to develop a familiarity with file transfer protocol, compression techniques and other utilities.

``They learn that, if they compress a file at school with WinZip, it makes it quicker to download on the home computer," he said. The only software requirement on the home PCs is for identical applications used at school.

Perkins says the exposure to network computing has sparked student interest in Unix. While students and parents are encouraged to seek advice on the appropriate hardware, Perkins says one student recently asked about buying a PC suitable to run Red Hat Linux.

The school is planning to expand HomeLink further next year and will trial a suite of office applications titled StarOffice, which is free to licence-holders of the Sun Solaris servers.

Year 11 Strathcona student Panayiota Samartzis said her family bought a PC two years ago and was able to take advantage of the system once it was activated this year, without any further investment in new hardware.

``Before Homelink was established, if I wanted to take some large computing assignments home to work on, I would have to save the file on separate disks because it simply wouldn't fit on a normal floppy disk," she said. ``With the introduction of Homelink, I could save it into my private area at school, go home, connect to school and immediately access it.

``You could say I have all the information I need at my fingertips. But that's the beauty of Homelink. I can start something at school and have almost immediate access it at home, without having to worry about carrying around a laptop."

Meanwhile, Fleming said she was motivated to embrace a computer-based learning program when she realised that 85per cent of job categories that primary-age children will face when they finish their education did not yet exist. Jenk Akyalcin, director of computing technology with Kilvington, said his role went beyond technical issues. He is also the science co-ordinator at Kilvington.

``We make sure (Kilvington students) are autonomous learners," he said. ``It is important for the students to have access wherever they go. They can achieve harmony between learning and technical objectives."

He said there were good examples where constant access prompted the students to explore their machines.

``In physics, I had one girl who used Excel to calculate a mathematical relationship we were studying," he said. ``That's not something that can be done unless you have the tools available all the time."

He said it was important to encourage the students to play with the computers, experiment so that the technology became transparent.

This was overcome by delivering new PCs to students before the start of summer holidays, so they could become used to the system before the new school year.

Year 9 student Colleen Chew shares her PC with her father, a self-employed computer programmer.

She has found computer skills rewarding because the school had been involved in a volunteer Web development project for a Down Syndrome group and she signed on as a beta tester for Kahootz, the Telstra Web resource.

Ken Rowe said that, next year, Frankston High School would have more than $1.5million of computer equipment in use by a large proportion of the 1400 students enrolled.

Rowe acknowledges that equity of access is perhaps the biggest problem facing Victoria's educators.

However, he said the parents of Frankston students were not high-income earners and had been supportive of the scheme from the start. ``This area is of a lower socio-economic grouping than others in Victoria and they made the effort," he said.

Before the start of a trial in 1994, 91 families and 41 teachers agreed to join a pilot program. The scheme was co-sponsored by the Education Department through the Australian Council of Education Research and Japanese electronics firm Toshiba.

The 250-strong intake in Year 7 this year features five classes of 25 students, who all have notebook PCs, and a further three classes of students, who have Internet access at home.

The other classes are given access to classroom sets of computers for particular subjects.

A group of 100 prospective Year 7 students were also turned away.

He stressed the notebook scheme was not designed to encourage new enrolments. ``We did it to enrich the technology experience in the classroom," Rowe said.

He said technology was important to the school, but music, physical education and language education remained some of the other strengths.