The introduction of an open-ended MicroWorlds based assignment in a pre-service teaching degree produced interesting results. Students engaged with the task at very high levels and produced work of high quality; so much so that marking trends were reversed. This paper explores the design and implementation of the task and how for many students it…

Digital video is an exciting emerging technology that can be used in schools to support, extend, or change pedagogy and curriculum outcomes. In particular, student-generated digital video has potential to enhance or change pedagogy. In this paper, we review relevant literature in this area and outline results from a recently completed research…

In 2003 the authors visited four schools in the Western Australian Department of Education and Training's Kimberley Education District to investigate the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in the curriculum for students who have diverse needs. The visits also provided an opportunity to investigate how teachers in remote school…

Females are under-represented in education, training and employment in the area of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Research shows that girls are tuning out to ICTs in school and they have a low participation rate in ICT related tertiary study and employment. The Tech Savvy report by the American Association of University Women (2000)…

This paper reports on two questions from a survey of year 11 and 12 girls' perceptions of the two advanced computing subjects available within Education Queensland (EQ). The two subjects are Information Processing Technology (IPT) and Information Technology Systems (ITS). Similar to trends in other western countries, the Queensland experience…

This research explores how community cohesion can sustain teacher participation in a small scale, mixed mode (face to face and online) PD course. Secondary school teachers in Queensland undertook a mixed mode PD course utilising Education Queensland's Learning Place. The results indicate significantly longer participation than required and when…

Professional development for teachers is often described as a journey. This paper, using the findings from a small-scale study interrogating professional development in ICT, offers the alternate metaphor of an interwoven Celtic knot to explain this phenomenon. It will show how the four key elements identified as being critical to creating the most…

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…

ICT curriculum integration is the apparent goal of an extensive array of ICT initiatives in all Australian states and territories. However, the reported impact of ICT use by teachers on learning and teaching is by no means consistent. Explanations offered for this in the literature include the influence of teacher confidence and expertise, and…

A group of volunteer students who had previously completed a first year undergraduate information technology subject were tasked with producing audio supplementary material for new students undertaking the subject, to be disseminated through podcasting. The production process, from inception and scriptwriting through to the final recording, was…

This author states that he feels privileged to have been able to contribute to a number of teacher professional associations since the early 1980s at both the local and national levels. His involvement with the Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE) was for a period in excess of 18 years as the Computer Education Group of the ACT…

This article presents an open letter to the Professional Communities of Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACCE). In preparing for this article, the author looked back over the contributions of other fellows in publications and ACCE Minutes, and recognized that each had led the ACCE family in this endeavor. Creating direction was the…

This article reflects on twenty or more years of development and research in educational computing. It argues that the emphasis on exploiting the technology in the service of contemporary ideas about learning held by many of the early workers has been lost to a focus on the technology itself and its capabilities. In schools this has led to an…

In the first issue of "Australian Educational Computing," in 1986, Cumming and Abbott reported a controlled comparison of top-down and bottom-up teaching strategies for Grade 5 and 6 students' use of a simple logic programming language. They found that both strategies were rated highly by students and teachers, and gave useful learning; and that…

This paper describes the advancements that have occurred in the use of educational technologies over the past ten years (1995-2005) and argues that progress has been slow and reminiscent of the slow progress observed in the previous decade (1985-1995). The paper argues that one of the principal reasons for the less than spectacular results stems…