Category Archives: school digital ecosystem

11. Individualism, Networking and Mass Schooling

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Mal Lee

The new normal that is going to seriously challenge most likely every school and education system is the expectation that learning with the digital, in a socially networked world will be strongly individualised.

The individual will expect to make the key decisions, not have the state.

Allied will be the growing recognition that all in society, from the early years onward, should be free and actively encouraged to grow their desired traits and capabilities, to pursue their own interests and passions, and in the process to develop the competencies they believe most apt.

Ironically this is happening at a time when many pressure groups in society are pressuring governments to compel the young to conform to a perceived ideal form. 

The question for all schools, do they want to better individualise their teaching and learning?

If so how do they;

  1. transition from a teaching and learning environment strongly geared to mass schooling
  2. create an ecosystem that gives students greater agency over their learning, and allows the students to pursue their interests and passions and to grow their particular strengths 
  3. in their school, at this point in its evolution provide an apt balance between the core learning society expects schools to grow in all the young, and student’s desire to develop the skills and attribute they value?

It is an immense challenge, that bids each school community address the purpose and nature of schooling in a rapidly evolving networked society.

In going digital and social networking the world has provided all, the young and the old the opportunity and tools to take charge of their learning and to learn what they want, when and where they want, how they desire.

Negroponte’s 1995 prescient observation has become the new normal.

In being digital I am me, not a statistical subset (Negroponte, p164, 1995).

A quarter of a century on the dramatic shift from the mass to the more personalised is evident in most every facet of society.

A notable exception is the world’s schools.

There the focus continues to be on the mass; on teaching class groups, on all students following the same, state mandated syllabuses, and assessing all students in the same way.

Near every facet of the school ecosystem is directed to mass schooling. Internally the schools are still invariably organised around common age class groups, with those class groups moving in a lock step manner through 12 -13 years of schooling. All classes invariably follow a common, externally prescribed curriculum, with every student obliged to sit the common tests.

Externally the exam boards, the curriculum authorities, the teacher educators, inspectors, and invariably the local universities and media all work to reinforce the focus on the mass.

While these bodies can provide the flexibility to individualise the teaching more fully most have chosen to strengthen the focus on mass schooling. 

It is seemingly an educational given that every student must learn the same things and develop the same competencies.  

Moreover, the sameness is being increasing imposed on teachers, on the competencies all must all have, what they’ll teach and how. 

Decades of bureaucratic and political control of schooling have spawned the assumption that the state, and not the individual, the parents, or the professional educators, should decide what the young will learn, how, when, where and with the ‘right’ technology. 

It is not the reality of everyday life and work, particularly within a digital and networked world. Rather every one of us – regardless of government desires – controls our own learning. We as individuals decide what we will learn, how, when, and where, with what tools and rightly develop the capabilities that go to make each of us who we are.

While many schools, and even systems have over the decades striven to better individualise the teaching and the learning most have struggled, stymied by an ecosystem preoccupied with sorting and sifting the masses, identifying the future leaders, and weeding out the perceived also rans.

If anything, the last fifty years have seen an increased emphasis in schools on shaping a conforming mass, in a manner the government and the pressure groups deems appropriate. Where some of us were fortunate to create an education system in the 1970s that sought to better individualise teaching and learning, and to cater for the full range of students, including the non-conformists, one will struggle today to find a system or government that seriously espouses nurturing the individualism of the young, of applauding the growth of distinct competencies and readying individuals to thrive within an ever more networked, inclusive, and interconnected world.

One wonders how serious many schools and systems are about democracy in their schools, of readying every young person to take ever greater control of their learning and nurturing their individualism?  

The provision of a more individualised schooling will, as flagged, be difficult.

The most important step is deciding it should happen.

It is appreciated there are heads and senior bureaucrats who have no desire to change or to cede any of their autocratic control.

The next is clarifying and strategizing one’s desires, and over time shaping a school ecosystem that naturally facilitates, grows, and recognises each student’s capabilities, all the while lessening the impact of the key elements of the mass mode of schooling.

It is about getting the balance right.

Respect, trust, empowerment, agency, inclusiveness, genuine collaboration, and the willingness by heads to distribute the control of the teaching and learning will be critical.

As will curriculum flexibility, the willingness to use different class configurations, project based teaching, collaboration, remote teaching, the recognition of, and the building upon student’s out of school learning —- and teachers willing to cultivate a class teaching environment that better individualises the teaching and learning.

The great aide teachers have today, compared to 50, even 25 years ago is the array of ever more sophisticated digital and network technologies.

In the 1960s many of us individualised our teaching using a typewriter, a duplicating machine, reams of paper and a library of books.

Countesthorpe College (UK) in the 1970s famously sought to individualise all its teaching, using the same paper base.

The shortcomings of the paper technology invariably proved too much.

Most all of those shortcomings can be overcome by the digital and networking technologies.

Serendipitously the COVID experience and the extensive use made of the digital resources and competencies of the connected families has alerted schools, parents, electorates, and treasuries to the relatively inexpensive facility to better individualise the children’s teaching and learning.

Now is not the time for me to propose how your school might better individualise its teaching.

That is best left to each school, its teachers and community.

What this post can do is alert schools and systems to the growing expectation worldwide that schools will continually mirror the ways and expectations of society, and that in time it will pressure schools and electorates to shift the focus from a strongly mass mode of schooling to one that better individualises every child’s teaching and learning.

  • Negroponte, N (1995) Being Digital Sydney Hodder and Stoughton

9. Schools as Networked Organisations

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Mal Lee

All teachers and heads, and indeed all school decision makers should understand the workings of schools operating as networked organisations, the impact the new mode will have on their teaching and the school, the possibilities open and the implications that flow.

So too they should recognise the uniqueness of schools as networked organisations, and the constraints that uniqueness will impose.

But most crucially all should understand networked organisations are dramatically different entities to the traditional school, on trend to be evermore so. 

Networked schools oblige all within to continually attune their ways and thinking to a naturally evolving, increasingly integrated, socially networked, and complex synergistic environment.  It is a natural transformation over which governments have limited control.

It is a macro understanding that will assist them recognise the almost boundless opportunities the mode provides to enhance the teaching, but also alerts them to the need to continually adjust their ways as they seek to reap the potentially considerable dividends.

One of the greater adjustments will entail enhancing and making greater everyday use of their social networking skills and understanding. All need to appreciate the power and centrality of both the formal and informal social networks, their pervasiveness, dynamic nature, the openings they can provide, the efficiencies, and economies they can yield, the unintended impact they can have and why the art of networking is a core skill every teacher needs to grow throughout their career.

It is appreciated it’s art that isn’t likely recognised in any teacher standards document, selection criteria, data set, initial teacher education or professional development program but it is central to the workings, growth and critically the leadership (Asia Bank, 2017) of networked organisations.

Traditionally schools have operated as largely stand – alone, insular, segmented, organisations, that controlled their own affairs, used their own resources, all literally within the school walls.

That insularity was in large dictated by the use, and in time the dependence, on paper as the underpinning technology. Paper, while historically a revolutionary technology, was and remains a limited technology. Be it in the form of books, work sheets, exercise books or letters paper must be distributed by hand, and as such needed to be used within a physically compact site.

As Tyack and Cuban (1995) noted, few thought little about the situation. That is what schools were. Or at least until an infinitely more sophisticated technology began displacing paper and changing the operating base.

The schools were moreover relatively simple, loosely – coupled organisations (Weick, 1976), built upon largely autonomous, segmented divisions, invariably located within distinct sections of the school site. Likely paper played its part in fostering that segmentation and the creation of discrete infants schools, science faculties, art departments and the like, all having their own space, which most staff rarely left during the working week.

It was relatively easy to scrutinise the work of each division.

Even in the 1990s most schools operated as stand-alone entities, with the internal units run largely autonomously. 

Most schools in the 1990s had only telephone lines at best in the faculty rooms, rarely any within the classrooms.

The insularity and segmentation were heightened by the invariably strongly hierarchical organisational and communications structures, where all powerful unit heads focussed on their part of the educational production line. Few departmental heads were concerned about the macro workings of the school.

While astute social networking was important, particularly within the establishment schools, it’s use was very much limited by the communication’s technology. Some might recall long distance calls were a big deal, expensive, made only after gaining approval. 

That situation largely held until the start of this century.

As the networks spread, became ever faster, more sophisticated, inexpensive, and ubiquitous they unobtrusively began fundamentally transforming schools’ workings and challenging long accepted thinking and practises – on trend to evermore so.

Those challenges should be addressed by a knowing staff forever onwards.

The physical, and the associated social networking, allied with the efficiencies and opportunities that came with digital convergence soon lessened the use of paper, lowered internal and external school walls, transformed school communication, blurred long established boundaries, challenged the retention of aged practises, and promoted increased integration and staff and job reconfiguration.

While the rate and extent of the transformation has been different in every school, in less than twenty years schools worldwide have ceased being stand-alone, insular, largely segmented organisations working only with their own resources and have become more networked organisations, outward looking, increasing dependent on the resources and connectivity of the networked world.

As Lipnack and Stamps (1994) presciently observed the possibilities with networked organisations are virtually boundless, limited in the main by the human imagination.

In 2010 Lee and Finger, and group of international colleagues wrote of Developing a Networked School Community (2010).

They envisioned this type of scenario.

Figure 2.3: Networked School Community – Mid range structural Change 

Lee and Finger (2010, p42).

They moreover detailed the many educational, economic, social, and political advantages and challenges of the networked mode.

In reflecting on the model, it is much the same as that schools unwittingly employed during the COVID lockdown, with the ‘school’ operating online, the Cloud providing most of the resources, and the student’s and teacher’s homes the facilitating infrastructure and connectivity.

That networking, and the use of the expertise and resources of others is on trend to increase, but with several significant caveats.

Physical schools, that students attend most working days of the year will remain the norm. 

The fully virtual networked organisation will remain the exception in schooling, restricted in the main to distance education, and older age cohorts.

The full productivity of nations can only be achieved when the young attend the physical place called school and the free the parents to work.

Schools as networked organisations have thus – likely always – to operate and grow within the now century plus old traditional school structures.

The current, often dated, legislation of most every nation will moreover limit, likely forever, school – and hence government – control of the networked school to within the school walls, and school hours.  While the technology and desire might exist to extend that control several high level court cases have already made it clear the legislation will restrict school and government control to the traditional remit.

Any effort to extend that control will on present indications be vehemently opposed by most of the electorate. The young and old expect, nay demand they be in charge of their personal use of the digital 24/7/365, lifelong. By extension digitally connected families expect to control the family use of their technology, free from government involvement.

The emerging reality is that the more schools network and spread their operational footprint they won’t have formal control over a sizeable portion, unless they genuinely prepared to collaborate, and respect, trust and empower all powers in the wider networked community.

Currently the signs are that only in a small proportion of schools and education systems recognise the irrevocable transition to a more networked mode occurring, the possibilities and the imperative of better understanding the new scenario.

Presently most schools and governments appear to be more interested in using the network technology to unilaterally control ‘their’ schools and maintain as best they can traditional ways.

It bears remembering that the same network technology can be used equally well to control and micromanage every school operation, or to trust, empower and genuinely collaborate with one’s community.

You can be best attest to how it is being used in your situation, but it is highly likely that you are in a school that has transitioned to a more networked mode but where every facet of the school’s workings is still unilaterally controlled by the school and/or the state.

How long the electorate will allow its schools to reject the new normal time only will tell.

If you’d like a quick overview of the contrast between the traditional hierarchical form found in most schools and the networked look at John Kotter’s explanation at – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIGkUDhuUJc

  • Asia Development Bank (2017) On Networked Organisations. Asia Development Bank 2017
  • Lee, M and Finger, G (eds) (2010) Developing a Networked School Community, Melbourne ACER Press
  • Tyack, D and Cuban, L (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia. Cambridge. Massachusetts. Harvard University Press
  • Weick, K (1976) ‘Educational organisations as loosely coupled systems’. Administrative Science Quarterly21 1976

Corona Virus, Schools and the Window of Opportunity

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Mal Lee

Overnight the corona virus has obliged society and the educational decision makers to rethink the nature of schooling in a connected world – in a way few other events have. 

There is a societal focus on the role of schooling, and online education the world has rarely seen.

It has opened the window for the serious consideration of how schools might better genuinely collaborate with their families in the education of the young in a networked society.

The irony is that where only months ago governments were banning digital devices, and supporting schools unilateral control of teaching today that are reliant on those personal devices, the family digital ecosystem and are seemingly wanting to collaborate with the families in the ‘schooling’ of the nation’s young. 

Presently the young experience two types of learning with the digital. The structured tightly controlled linear teaching of the school, that distrusts and disempowers the young. And the highly laissez approach used 24/7/365 outside the school walls, where near on 3 billion digitally connected young (UNICEF, 2017) have largely taken control of their use of and learning with the digital (Lee, Broadie and Twining, 2018).

They are diametrically opposite, with the young outside naturally adopting the approach used by 4 billion plus of the worlds digitally connected (ITU, 2018).

Schools and systems globally have seemingly dismissed, or have not noted that global phenomenon, in the main making no effort to recognise, build upon or complement the global connectivity or universal nature of the approach learning employed.

The virus provides the chance for more schools to enhance the nexus between the two, now parallel approaches, and to collaborate with and provide astute support and leadership for the world’s digitally connected families.

But it is only a momentary chance. Already parents, the wider society and teachers are desperately wanting to return to the schooling they know.

Globally there is a small cadre of schools, that after years of astute preparation are demonstrating what is possible.

There are another group doing their utmost with the online despite that lack of preparation.

And likely globally there are schools where the teachers are going out of the way to continue their teaching with a mix of paper and digital resources.

However, most governments and education authorities in announcing the arrangements for their schools during the virus proclaimed they were taking schooling online. 

They were taking a 1920 model of schooling, which is strongly site based online, from Kindergarten to Year 12, in every area of learning.

The claim sounded highly assuring in a time of crisis.

The trouble was that in most instances it was a myth, convenient spin. 

Literally overnight, with no planning, consultation, staff or community preparation, or infrastructure testing total education systems were through some magic wand waving to move from a wholly site based operation to working online.

Some exceptional schools, that have done the years of preparation have handled the challenge well.

Most however have struggled, with both the concept of teaching in a digital mode, and the logistics of teaching wholly online. One example sighted sought to unilaterally impose a 1920 model of teaching on the lives of all its families, specifying to the minute when students were to switch subjects, and the sanctions that would be applied if they did not. 

Glitch after technical glitch has been experienced by near all.

Little is the wonder most are wanting to return to the established ways.

That said maybe this is the cock-up schooling and particularly governments had to have.

What is now patently obvious from the pandemic experience is that physical attendance at a physical place school must be core to schooling forever.

The virus has daily underscored the critical role schools play in allowing young parents to work.

A related reality is that a century of unsuccessful school change has affirmed that the core structure of schooling will rarely, if ever be changed.

It is possible to make and sustain change within those 1920 structures, but – and it is a vital ‘but’ – it is virtually impossible to achieve sustained structural change in schools. History over the century has continually affirmed the attitudinal, political, structural, educational, legislative, legal, cultural, logistical and societal constraints to be overcome.

While it is pleasing to note is the number of commentators urging schooling take advantage of the virus to introduce fundamental change all fail to grasp how tightly the standard model of schooling is woven into the fabric of modern society.

Change can, and has been made within the existing structures. 

That is where to take advantage of the jolt provided by the corona virus. The culture can be changed, a digitally based school ecosystem grown, control of the teaching and learning can be distributed, genuine collaboration can occur between the schools and families and a greater nexus established between the in and out of school use of the digital.

Work on the reality that society will expect the kids to go school, and return home at a set time each day, five days a week, for X days of the year, and break for holidays in the same weeks each year. 

And just maybe some of the opportunities opened by the pandemic will be realised.

Just maybe governments will better understand how central personal devices, family digital ecosystems and digitally connected families are to the 24/7/365 learning of the young, and just maybe when schools return to the standard model governments will still want to genuinely collaborate with the families of the young.

  • Lee, M. Broadie, R and Twining, P (2018) Your Kids Being Digital. A Guide for Digitally Connected Families.Armidale Australia Douglas and Brown
  • UNICEF (2017) Children in a Digital World. UNICEF December 2017 – https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_2017_ENG_WEB.pdf

Schools as Digital Constructs

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

In moving schooling from a paper to digital construct the way is opened to shift to an increasingly sophisticated, powerful, flexible and naturally evolving operational base, and allow schools to continually provide an apt, ever richer, contemporary 24/7/365 education.

Critically the shift in thinking enables schools and systems to better accommodate the world of accelerating, seemingly chaotic, often uncertain digital and societal evolution they are operating within, and importantly to evolve and grow in harmony with the rest of society.

Theoretically, as indicated in the last post (Lee and Broadie, 2019), the possibilities for teaching and learning opened by a digital construct are virtually unlimited, with possibilities being added daily as the thinking develops and the technology evolves. 

While that might hold in many fields of endeavour, schools as formal government controlled institutions with defined obligations, having to contend with societal expectations will always be more constrained than most other organisations. 

That said the success of the schools that have gone digital, and adopted a socially networked mode have demonstrated schools can move some distance along the digital evolutionary continuum, and with apt leadership and support can evolve ad infinitum.

The facility to do so will differ markedly with the type of school, likely the size and type of education authority, and the government of the day. Independent, and largely autonomous schools will invariably have greater scope to move, as will smaller government systems. 

While individual schools can make a significant shift ultimately the government of the day must play a lead role if the schools/system is to move from Industrial Age staff selection criteria, working conditions and remuneration or to remove the blockages imposed by the likes of statutory examinations boards, basic skills tests and inspectorates. 

Tellingly, mostly unnoticed, many nations now have in their distance education schools/system ground breaking digital constructs, that have long abandoned their correspondence schools, which astutely couple the evolving technologies, social networking and face to face teaching, and provide an important insight into what is possible. Significantly many of those schools already have working conditions and remuneration arrangements markedly different to the mainstream schools.

The key variable in any construct shift will be human, with the decision makers opting to move to a digital construct or choosing to reject or minimise the opportunities opened and stay with the lower order variant.  

Thus far, near all the world’s education authorities and schools have chosen, consciously or not, to stay with the latter, to fend off digital disruption and natural evolution, and to largely deny the opportunities opened by a digital construct.

While most schools and systems have chosen to retain, and laud the paper construct, outside their walls the world continues to evolve at an accelerating rate, daily distancing the young’s in from the out of school use of and learning with the digital (Friedman, 2016). The digitally connected young outside the school naturally, and unconsciously employing a digital mindset, embracing networked learning, taking charge of their 24/7/365 learning with the technology, and daily growing their version of being digital (Lee, Twining and Broadie, 2018).

The paper construct, with its focus on learning within the physical site and virtual disregard for any learning outside the school has likely inclined most to disregard the reality that formal schooling occupies less than 20% of the young’s annual learning time. They seem conveniently to forget today’s schools are operating within a rapidly evolving, chaotic, increasingly connected world where most global change happens naturally, unplanned, with myriads of consequences and unintended benefits and disbenefits. Disruption, seeming chaos will invariably result in order, and a new normal.

Among the many challenges in shifting to a digital construct is to obviate the inefficiencies of natural evolution (Pascale, Millemann and Gioja, 2000). There is need to marry the natural with planned change, to continually take advantage of the pertinent global megatrends in creating and shaping the desired learning environment and culture.

The early adopter schools have demonstrated how that can be done.

But ultimately governments must lead the way for school construct change to happen and be sustained widely.

While visionary, often maverick heads and governments have orchestrated pronounced construct change, history reveals all too often that change is ‘rectified’ and the dents removed with the change of head, or government. Invariably the dents are removed by the application of stultifying carry overs of the paper construct. The great dampener, is the use of principal selection criteria that favour those wanting to maintain the status quo, and which accords no importance to the new head being able to grow the construct shift underway.

Governments must be responsible for the human construct it employs within its schools. If it opts to stay with the traditional then it should bear the political, educational and economic consequences. If it chooses to shift it needs to ensure the total construct, the total digitally based ecosystem is attuned to realising the shaping educational vision.

The Opportunities 

Even at this still relatively early phase of the Digital Revolution the opportunities opened for schools moving to a digital operational construct are immense, and largely limited by the human imagination. 

Many of the possibilities the authors have examined in earlier writings, all of which can be read on the Digital Evolution of Schooling website.

There are a few that merit special mention.

The move provides the opportunity to:

  • Return to first principles and clarify the desired shaping educational vision. It bids all associated with the school to question, and to continually question the aptness of all paper construct practises in a digital context.
  • Have all associated with the school/s, but particularly the leadership approach contemporary schooling, and the wider education of the young, with a digital, and networked mindset – not as now with an analogue.
  • Ensure the educational vision, the clear sense of purpose guides the creation and daily shaping of a school ecosystem and culture that facilitates the desired learning and resourcing. 
  • Identify those facets of schooling to be retained within the digital construct – which are likely to be many.
  • Evolve the school/s, largely in step with society’s ever rising expectations – rather than as now daily falling further behind.
  • Have schools play a more integral and productive part within a networked society and economy, moving them out of their current insular situation, making them more efficient, effective, economic and productive, contributing more fully to the growth of not only the young but also the local and national economy. 
  • Transform paper constructs into digitally mature organisations, built in large upon a tightly integrated, ever evolving, increasingly sophisticated, synergistic digital ecosystem, able to readily interface with and contribute to the networked world.
  • Realise John Dewey’s (1916) century old desire of more consciously cultivating both the informal, out of school learning with the formal, in school in the holistic education of each child.
  • Better individualise every child’s education, and build upon the young, from around the age of three taking charge of their use of and learning with the digital, learning to learn and naturally growing their being digital.
  • Have the schools genuinely collaborate with their digitally connected families in the education of each child, with both parties aware of where they should focus their efforts in growing the child’s holistic education. 
  • Accommodate both planned, and unintended change, and to optimise the benefits that flow naturally from chaotic evolution.
  • Grow a set of operational parameters for a continually evolving digitally based ecosystem and culture, where the young are trusted and empowered – rather than, as now trying to accommodate the young being digital within an aged paper construct where they are distrusted.
  • Have the digital underpin all school operations, normalising its ubiquitous use in and outside the classroom, using it to complement the other media, and accrue the efficiencies, economies, synergies and enhancement that can be achieved, intended and unintended.
  • Have the schools, as formal institutions recognise that while they can never lead the way in the young’s use of and learning with the digital they can better recognise, build upon and provide direction to the 24/7/365 use and learning.
  • Rethink the current Industrial Age structures, processes, working conditions and remuneration and gradually move to those befitting a digital construct. 
  • Complement the site based with networked teaching, learning and assessment, that can occur 24/7/365, anywhere, anytime.  In the upper secondary years, strong arguments can be mounted for much of the learning to happen off site, in jobs, apprenticeships, internships or intensive workshops.
  • Employ a more networked mode of school resourcing, where the school and the families pool their resources and expertise, and where schools can draw upon the resources of a networked society, and lessen its near total reliance on government/parent funds.

The educational vision

As we detailed in the last post, the paper construct has led to approaches to schooling, teaching and learning that we continue to accept as ‘normal and correct’ without thinking. Having pursued those ‘normals’ for aeons we understand the type of learning they produce. But we have yet to identify the learning possible within a digital construct.

These now need to become the subject of acute observation and research. 

The most obvious of these new affordances are:

  • Time learning. If students accept and enjoy the learning challenges that schools lead them into, they can radically extend the time they spend learning. This makes student engagement vital, so that learning is driven more by their internal desire to learn rather than external pressures.
  • Just in time access to information. ‘Road-bumps’ in learning, caused by lack of knowledge or understanding can be rapidly overcome, so that they don’t inhibit and damage the flow of learning.
  • Individual learners taking charge of their learning 24/7/365, lifelong. The implications of the learner, and not so much the ‘authority’, taking charge of their use of and learning with the digital, from around the age of three through to death are profound.
  • Connection to people. Ideas can be discussed online, and forums allow learners to follow the discussions of others. This can bring a multiplicity of people into students’ learning networks and raise the importance of students verbalising and discussing their current understanding.
  • The importance of learning to learn, relative to learning a formal curriculum. A key feature of the digital world is the extremely rapid growth of knowledge, which necessitates life-long learning for all. This also implies that state derived curricula and assessments need to focus on competence in a field, and to change as the societal perceptions to be competent evolve.

The Way Forward

The move to a digital operational construct necessitates schools having school principals willing and able to orchestrate the shift, and its continued evolution.

This has been strikingly apparent in the schools that have made the shift(Lee and Winzenried, 2009), (Lee and Broadie, 2018),and indeed in the digital evolution and transformation of all private and public sector organisations.

Without an astute chief executive officer, with digital acumen, able to set the expectations, communicate the vision and daily orchestrate the daily workings and growth of a digitally based school ecosystem there is little chance the shift will occur, let alone be sustained.  Great deputy heads, highly committed staff and supportive communities can all assist, but the head must lead.

The head must moreover understand that the construct shift is first and foremost a human challenge, where the school community shapes – on the fly – an organisation it believes can best deliver the desired education.

It is not, contrary to the current approach, a technological challenge, best left to the ‘ICT experts’. 

For well over a quarter of a century the universal propensity has been for teachers, ICT coordinators, principals, administrators and particularly governments to focus on the technology, and often only the technology (Lee and Winzenried, 2009), (Lee and Broadie, 2018). Invariably the first step has been to purchase the latest gear, and to laud its purchase. Few appear to understand they have simply been trying to shoehorn a limited use of the digital technology into a paper construct, constrained by Industrial Age structures, processes and mindset.

Not surprisingly the billions spent on digital technology for schools hasn’t magically occasioned construct change, nor will it.

The challenge is for school leaders to identify and gradually shape an organisational structure, a learning environment and culture that takes advantage of the evolving digital technology to provide the desired contemporary education.

The schools and education authorities that have moved to a digital construct have recognised the imperative of putting the educational agenda to the fore and then addressing the many human and technological variables that assist further the agenda.

They have also appreciated they can hasten the shift from the paper to digital construct by tackling those variables largely unconstrained within the existing construct. The shift from an analogue to digital mindset, distributing the control of the teaching and learning, trusting and empowering all, enhancing the family-school collaboration, ensuring all students have the technology, recognising out of school learning with the digital, pooling the home and school resources and expertise, the establishment of an integrated school ecosystem, social networking, and the adoption of a culture of change can all for example be fostered within the existing operational parameters, with few involving an overt clash with the established ways.

History suggests the evolution in schools will be gradual, the schools moving along an increasingly higher order evolutionary continuum, shedding the ways of the paper construct, overcoming the impediments to change, working increasingly within a digital construct.

The authors’ research with the early adopter schools (Lee and Broadie, 2016), points strongly to;

  • The schools, while each shaping their own course, in a seemingly chaotic world will move through remarkably similar evolutionary stages as they shift from the paper to increasingly digital construct
  • Each displaying, regardless of type or context, common attributes at each stage
  • Most schools in their evolution and shift to a higher order of operation needing to move through each of the evolutionary stages
  • The evolutionary continuum continually lengthening as the thinking, expectations and technology becomes more sophisticated
  • Primary/elementary schools moving faster along the continuum than the secondary.
  • The schools lessening their dependence on the physical site for much learning, taking increasing advantage of networked learning and teaching. 

Movement along the continuum will rarely be constant, more often it will be the case of two steps forward, and one step back, often with a change of head the school regressing to the world of paper (Lee and Broadie, 2016).

The unplanned commonality evidenced globally in the young’s use of the Net (Tapscott, 1998), and more recently in the children’s use of and learning with the digital (Lee, Twining and Broadie, 2018) is seemingly mirrored globally in schools shift to digital construct. 

Conclusion.

While still early days, with appreciably more research to be undertaken the strong suggestion for any school, or education authority seeking to move to a digital construct is to note the key traits evidenced in the evolution of all digitally mature organisations. 

  • Dewey, J (1916), Democracy and education, New York Macmillan.
  • Friedman, T (2016) Thank you for Being LateNew York Farrer, Straus Giroux
  • Lee, M and Winzenried, A (2009) The Use of Instructional Technology in Schools, Melbourne ACER Press
  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2016) A Taxonomy of School Evolutionary Stages. 2ndEdition Armidale Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/
  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2018) Digitally Connected Families. And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016, Armidale, Australia, Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/–  
  • Lee, M. Broadie, R and Twining, P (2018) Your Kids Being Digital. A Guide for Digitally Connected Families. Armidale. Australia Douglas and Brown http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/–
  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2019) ‘Moving Schooling from a Paper to Digital Construct’. Linkedin -19 August 2019 – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/moving-schooling-from-paper-based-digital-construct-mal-lee/
  • Pascale, R.T, Millemann, M, Gioja, L (2000) Surfing at the Edge of Chaos NY Three Rivers Press
  • Tapscott, D (1998), Growing up digital: The rise of the Net Generation, McGraw Hill, New York

Digitally Connected Families: And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Three years ago, we embarked in researching the history of the digital education of the world’s young between 1993 and 2016, concerned the world’s schools were making little progress in going digital.

The journey took us into unchartered, and largely unseen and yet fascinating territory where the families of the young globally had for the past twenty plus years successfully readied the young worldwide to learn with the digital, from birth.

More than 60% of the world’s young are now digitally connected, and have normalised the 24/7/365 use of the digital – with no financial support from government.

We are delighted to be able to now share our insights into this historic educational development – with the release of Digitally Connected Families: And the Digital Education of the World’s Young, 1993 – 2016.

It is available at – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/–

At this stage, it is only available as an e-book.

It is – as far as we know – the first historical analysis of the young’s learning with the digital, in and out of schools, in the period 1993 – 2016, from the release of Mosaic and the world going online, through to roughly today.

The desire was to provide a research base upon which the authors’ and others could build.

The chapters:

  1. Introduction
  2. The Digital Revolution and the Changed Nature of Youth, and Youth Education
  3. The Young, and the Evolution of the Personal Mobile Technologies
  4. Schools, Digital Education and Mobile Technologies
  5. The Evolution of the Digitally Connected Family
  6. The Two Models of Digital Education
  7. The Digital Learning Environments
  8. Learning with the Digital
  9. Pre-Primary Digital Education
  10. The Mobile Revolution
  11. On Reflection
  12. Conclusion

The Global Leadership of Digitally Connected Families

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

In addition to taking prime responsibility for the 24/7/365 digital education of the world’s young the digitally connected families over the last two decades unwittingly took an increasingly greater lead role in the provision of that education.

Critically – and largely unseen- they took that lead worldwide. What we have witnessed over the last twenty plus years – and see today worldwide – is a naturally evolving phenomenon, over which governments and education authorities had held no sway.

In examining the past 20 plus years it soon became obvious that the digitally connected families had – and continue to have – significant advantages over formal schooling in providing the desired rapidly evolving 24/7/365 digital education.

Since the advent of the WWW an empowered young, with the support of their families, have played a lead role in the out of school digital education. Over time they have naturally accommodated the accelerating digital evolution and transformation, while the schools struggled.  The young, with time to explore and a strong desire to share, are often ahead of their parents in the use of digital connectivity. And considerably ahead of their teachers.

With the advantage of hindsight, it is easy to see why, and why even the most visionary and well led of schools took so many years to achieve digital normalisation. The reasons lie in the organisational arrangements, the educational model used and the attitude adopted.

Organisationally the established schools of the world continued to use the tightly controlled, inflexible linear and hierarchical structures that emerged in the Industrial Age, while the digitally connected families employed a highly agile model, able to evolve naturally at pace.

Helbing in commenting on the Digital Revolution reiterated the inability of all manner of bureaucracies to accommodate rapid, uncertain change and the importance of moving to the use of highly agile self-regulating units.

In a rapidly changing world, which is hard to predict and plan, we must create feedback loops that enable systems to flexibly adapt in real time to local conditions and needs (Helbing, 2014).

The shift globally to greater school autonomy was a step in that direction but in examining the plethora of controls imposed by governments and their bureaucrats – controls over the likes of working conditions, the allocation and use of funds, school times, purchasing, imposed digital systems, reconciliation of accounts, treatment of students, the curriculum and the mode and time of assessment it was apparent that ‘autonomy’ was limited.

In contrast the digitally connected homes of the world, operating as small self-regulating units, within a laissez faire environment with their own resources, and responsible for their own children had no such constraints. They could instantly acquire the technologies they wanted and use them as they wished. Quietly over time they have taken advantage of the dynamic highly fluid nature of their situation to quietly create increasingly integrated and powerful digital ecosystems.

The teaching model employed by schools was – and continues to be – highly structured and controlled. It was throughout the period insular in nature, inward looking and fixated on the physical place called school. Education in the use of digital devices was invariably taught within class groups as a discrete subject. The schools followed a set, linear curriculum where the class teacher directed the teaching and student assessment, accommodating all manner of external controls and management checks.

In contrast the digital education model outside the school was completely laissez faire, freewheeling, seemingly chaotic, invariably non-linear, done ‘just in time’, undertaken anytime, anywhere, invariably in context.  It was wholly individualised, directed by the learner’s desires, with she/her deciding where to turn if support was needed.  That said the nature of the teaching and learning adopted was remarkably similar worldwide. It very soon became the new universal normal for the young.

Importantly the self-directed learning with the digital was highly appealing to the young, exciting, intrinsically motivating, with no need for any assessment other than by oneself and through recognition by their peers.

Significantly throughout the period – even though in hindsight they did very well – many parents continually looked for support and direction, and to collaborate with the schools. In the first half of the period this reflected the lack of digital understanding and in the second when the increasingly sophisticated converging technology took the learning to a continually higher plane.

Parents struggled to find that support.

In 2002 Pew Internet studied the digital disconnect between the schools and the homes, noting

Students are frustrated and increasingly dissatisfied by the digital disconnect they are experiencing at school (Pew Internet, 2002).

The genuine collaboration didn’t begin until the late 2000s when the first schools moved to a digital operational mode and recognised its educational sense.  As Lee and Ward (2013) observe, it would appear the home – school collaboration will not occur until schools have gone digital and are ready attitudinally.

The work of the digitally mature schools globally from around 2010 – 2012 demonstrated that schools could with the right principal and mindset play a lead role in the 24/7/365 education of the young – if they are of a mind to recognise and build upon the out of school learning, and genuinely collaborate with their digitally connected families. They had the educational expertise desired by most families, and the ability in a 24/7/365 setting to take the young’s working knowledge of the digital to a significantly higher level.

But it all came down to attitude.

The young and the parents of the world have shown from the advent of the Web – like the visionary school leaders – the importance they attach to their children’s digital learning.

Most governments and school don’t.

Despite the fine sounding rhetoric about the digital the priorities of developed nations are expressed in their basic skills tests.  The priorities expected of principals invariably relate to the perceived basics like PISA score performance and most assuredly not an appropriate holistic education for an evolving digital and socially networked world.

While there are ‘maverick’ digitally mature schools globally pursuing the latter in 2017 they are still rare.

Disturbingly not only are most schools unable to accommodate exponential digital evolution and change, but most – along with their governments – are not interested in so doing.  Even when schools have developed approaches to the use of digital that empower young people and which listen to how they learn best in the digital world, these approaches can atrophy and disappear when leadership changes. This suggests that the ways most teachers perceive their accountability are so strongly linked to traditional industry-age schooling that this can rapidly outweigh the benefits they see of digitally empowering the young, as soon as the school leaders cease to make this a priority.

A telling reality is that a quarter of a century after the advent of the WWW and decades of societal digital transformation globally, digital education performance in schools is still being assessed by paper based exams.

Little is the wonder that the digitally connected homes of the world are taking an increasing lead the 24/7/365 digital education of the young.  Tellingly the 2011 Project Tomorrow report (Project Tomorrow, 2011) noted that while the digitally empowered parents wanted to collaborate with the schools if the schools chose not to the parents would take the lead,

That is what is happening globally, largely unseen. As the strength of the young’s capability to use digital grows, and as industry-age schooling continues to produce only meagre advances in the learning of the young, the stage is being set for a breakdown in parents’ belief in how well their children’s schools are preparing them for life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digitizing the School Administration

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

An oft forgotten but increasingly important aspect of digital evolution and creating the desired increasingly effective and productive school ecosystem is the digitization of the school administration. In the same way, the move to a digital operational paradigm obliges the school to markedly transform its culture, organizational structures, teaching and communications so too it needs simultaneously to develop an administration appropriate for an ever evolving digital and socially networked school, and society.

Within the traditional, highly segmented, paper based school with its pronounced division of labour, where most of the administration and communication was handled by the ‘office staff’ school administration barely rated a mention in the literature on the school development.

It was a largely ancillary operation that most educators, including many in leadership roles, knew or cared little about.

All that changes and changes significantly when the school moves to a digital operational mode and creates a tightly integrated digitally based ecosystem.  The old divisions of labour are blurred and the internal walls are lowered or removed as the educational and the administrative operations are seamlessly intertwined. Educators who previously needed the services of an administrator to carry out a task can now usually do the task themselves, while administrators who previously required teachers to be involved in the process of communicating administration functions to pupils and parents and in following up to ensure completion can now often do this directly.

The digitization of the administration directly impacts the growth and evolution of the total school ecosystem, and helps drives the increased productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of all school operations, educational as well as administrative. An increasingly sophisticated, integrated, effective and secure, client focussed, user friendly digitally based administration is critical in helping position the school for continued growth and the enhancement of learning.

It thus vital from the start of the evolutionary journey the school leadership factors into the shaping of the desired totality the apt digitization of the school administration, linking it integrally with all the other developments.

The modifier ‘apt’ is very important. Invariably schools have for years made greater use of the digital in the administration than in their teaching, but while usage is invariably spotted, silo like and seldom tied to the creation of the desired culture and ecosystem and the realisation of the school’s shaping vision.  It needs to be. Forty years ago, Mal was associated with the digitization of the student assessment in the Australian Capital Territory’s secondary colleges.  It was rightly seen as an administrative breakthrough but was not directly linked to the creation of an integrated learning environment. The same continues to happen today.  Indeed, many of the moves with administrative systems, particularly those imposed on schools by government and education authorities work to create a culture antithetical to that the school is wishing to create.

It is very important to both choose and configure systems that support the school’s shaping vision.

It is moreover important to employ digital systems that also enhance the school’s productivity, and minimise the administrative load of the users, the staff and the clients. Sadly, the history of the use of the digital in school administration is characterised by the rhetoric far exceeding the reality and the inability of the technology providers to deliver their promises. While great advances have been made in recent years and there are some highly sophisticated and effective apps and Cloud services schools can use, all too often schools globally are obliged to use systems that add to the user’s workload and frustration.

Going digital is not some magic panacea. It must be done well, always supporting the realisation of the school’s shaping educational vision.

Schools should work from the outset on the assumption that the school will want not only to astutely digitize all its administration but also to have all its operations in a form, and with an appropriate level of security, where virtually every facet can be accessed 24/7/365.  Understand that you’ll want to;

  • merge the digitization of the administration with the shaping of the desired totality
  • move all the current paper based practises to the digital
  • do so as soon as is feasible, aware the timing needs fit with other ecosystem developments
  • use digital services consonant with the school’s shaping vision and the desired culture and ecosystem, and which enhance the school’s productivity
  • distribute the administrative load enabling wherever feasible the users to control their ‘accounts’, be it to edit an email, change an address, to notify an absence, to complete a form or to make a payment.
  • a structure that allows the school to readily and inexpensively to update services and to take advantage of better apps, Cloud services and yet unknown facilities when the moment comes.

The approach should be one of identifying who is the most appropriate person to have responsibility for a task and to enable that person to complete the whole task, communicating with and involving others digitally as appropriate. Junior people are enabled to take greater responsibility while senior people can avoid putting loads onto others through being able to time-effectively complete those parts of the task they have previously delegate to others

In going digital, and networked the school has always to be conscious of the security of the services. But in saying the school should also be realistic and nuanced, and identify which administrative processes can be made freely available to all and which need some degree of security.

While the initial digitization moves should rightly be the shift away from the paper based practises allied should be the replacement of dated non Web based systems with those than can be accessed anywhere, anytime 24/7/365.

Carefully scrutinise the school’s continued use of any tailored digital systems, particularly those hosted by the school that might be better performed, more cheaply by Cloud based services.

Understanding the current situation in your school identify which of the current

  • paper based processes should be digitized first
  • digital operations need to be updated by an app or Web based service
  • operations (if any) aren’t consonant with the kind of ecosystem and culture you want to create and which the school needs to try and rectify.

It is appreciated that many schools will be obliged to use systems dictated by government.  Bureaucracies have become very adept at using the networked administrative systems to control and micro manage ‘their’ schools.

Do your utmost to take charge of the school’s digitized administration and communication, and adopt solutions that advance the creation of the desired ecosystem and culture, understanding that at times the school will be obliged to use the mandated systems.

Set the goal of providing your staff and clients with a digitized administration at least on par with the best SME offerings, that continually reduces their workload while simultaneously improving the intuitively, efficiency, effectiveness, economies and productivity.

Recognise with the digitization of the administration you will likely experience, like elsewhere in the ecosystem, both the intended and unintended benefits, but also going on experience undesirable disbenefits. While the unintended should be optimised, the disbenefits will have to be removed.

Conclusion

While left to the end in this series the digitization of the school’s administration is no less important in the total scheme of things than any other of the many variables flagged for attention.

Indeed, in many respects the school’s app and its Web based administration will likely be many clients first encounter with the school.

Failure to get the administration to the level expected by a digital society and the school’s image will be markedly damaged and the school’s facility to offer an apt education for a digital and socially networked world seriously questioned.

It is a vital performance indicator.

 

Integrated Client Support

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

 An effective and highly efficient digital communications suite is critical if the digital school is to provide the kind of integrated client support expected in a digital and socially networked society.

What is now apparent (Westerman, et.al, 2014) – particularly with business but increasingly in the public sector – is that clients no longer differentiate between a face to face and an online experience; it is but an experience.

The term – and indeed the concept of – integrated client support is rarely as yet experienced in schools. A Google search will unearth few references specifically pertaining to schooling.  It is more commonly used in the corporate sector and areas like family law, health and psychological support (Queensland Council of Social Services (2013). However, the provision of well orchestrated, quality support for all students and their families is something every good school has for generations believed is essential.

It is partly that schools haven’t seen the need to label that student support and pastoral care, but it also that most schools still don’t regard their parents and students as clients. We recommended in an earlier post that to thrive and remain viable digital schools would benefit from focussing on meeting and indeed exceeding their client’s needs and expectations.  This is an area where one can use the smarts of the digital to that.

All schools could benefit from having an integrated increasingly sophisticated client support arrangement, even if they choose not to label it as such. The aim should be to provide all teachers and counsellors ready access to the latest information and data on each child and family, packaged in a way that can provide the best possible support.  Most schools tare likely still working with a variant of the old teacher mark book, without ready access to the plethora of other information on the child’s development, in and outside the school. In a socially networked environment there should also the ready digital facility to share appropriate information with other agencies supporting the client.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is now also clear that most school’s paper operational base, and the associated inward looking, physical site fixated mindset has markedly impaired school’s ability to provide the requisite individualised high quality client support.

That shortcoming will continue while ever schools continue to operate within an analogue paradigm. While many schools have begun to tinker with the digital, employing the likes of online bookings for parent teacher interviews the reality is that they require a mature digitally based ecosystem before they can readily provide the apt, integrated, individualised, efficient and effective client support.

The system needs to be integrated within the wider school ecosystem and consonant with the ways and expectations of an evolving digital and socially networked society, where teaching and learning is happening 24/7/365 and geared to time poor parents highly reliant on their mobile technology.

Long gone are the days where the support can be only site based, reliant on the physical attendance at the place called school.  It is the client that needs to be to the fore, not those supporting the clients.

It needs to be a system that sits – and evolves readily – within the school’s wider ecosystem and where the supporting information and data is readied in the main as a normal part of the school’s everyday operations.

It will be a system where the relevant staff play a lead role but where their contribution – whether face to face or online – will be supported by a suite of pertinent information and data.

Ideally the clients should be able to access much of the desired information and the current data when convenient online at either at the school or the complementary agencies websites.  If the client wants additional support they should be able to do so initially digitally and only when truly needed face to face.

The key is to envision the desired digitally based ‘integrated client support’ arrangement from the outset, to identify the likely information and data required, to liaise with the pertinent complementary agencies and services in its creation and to build the model as one shapes the school ecosystem, gathers and makes available the data and creates the digital communications suite.

Done astutely and in conjunction with the shaping of the school’s digital communications suite and refinement of its student data and management system schools shouldn’t need for the expensive integrated client support systems being pitched at the health and social service markets.

  • Queensland Council of Social Service (2013) A Guide to Integrated Delivery to Clients 2013 -http://communitydoor.org.au/sites/default/files/A_GUIDE_TO_INTEGRATED_SERVICE_DELIVERY_TO_CLIENTS.pdf
  • Westerman, G, Bonnett, D and McAfee, A (2014) Leading Digital. Turning Technology into Business Transformation, Boston, Harvard Business Review Press

 

BYOT and Digital Normalisation

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Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Having all students use in class the suite of digital technologies they use 24/7/365 so naturally as to be near invisible is critical to the on-going digital evolution of the school.

As Lee and Levin elaborate in their freely available (http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/) BYOT and the Digital Evolution of Schooling until schools are willing to distribute their control of teaching, learning and personal technology, to trust, respect and empower their students there is little likelihood of the school normalising the use of the digital and furthering the school’s digital evolution.

Rather the school, even if spending thousands on digital technologies, will remain operating within a paper based, control over operational paradigm unable replicate its client’s normalised use of the digital outside the school walls, and to meet both the client’s and society’s rising digital expectations.

Schools have ultimately to trust and empower all their students.

That is critical if they are to normalise the whole of school community use of the technology, and position the school culturally and technologically to continue its digital evolution.

The point that Lee and Levins make in their book is that BYOT- which is where the school encourages the children to use in class the digital technologies they are already using 24/7/365 – is but a phase, albeit a critical phase, in the digital evolution of the school.

BYOT – contrary to the views expressed by many – is not primarily about the technology but rather is a vital educational development where the school declares its willingness to cede its unilateral control of teaching, learning and technology and to genuinely collaborate with its digitally connected families and to work with them in providing a mode schooling befitting a digital and networked society.

It is a major step in creating a 24/7/364 mode of schooling that actively involves all the ‘teachers’ of the young – not simply the professionals in the school.

When all the students use their own personal technologies naturally in the classroom a new norm is achieved, a norm where the technology recedes into the background and the learner and the desired education takes precedence. With normalisation BYOT as a label very soon disappears from the school’s vernacular.

That said it bears reiterating that in 2017 relatively few schools globally have achieved digital normalisation – for the simple reason that it is very hard to do.

As Lee and Levins (2016) address in depth, and this series of blogs affirms the readying of the school for BYOT and in turn digital normalisation requires astute leaders who over time are willing and able to address the plethora of variables needed to significantly change the culture and thinking of the school, and create an integrated digitally based ecosystem able to continually make best use of the digital.

BYOT and Digital Normalisation

Posted on by

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Having all students use in class the suite of digital technologies they use 24/7/365 so naturally as to be near invisible is critical to the on-going digital evolution of the school.

As Lee and Levin elaborate in their freely available (http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/) BYOT and the Digital Evolution of Schooling until schools are willing to distribute their control of teaching, learning and personal technology, to trust, respect and empower their students there is little likelihood of the school normalising the use of the digital and furthering the school’s digital evolution.

Rather the school, even if spending thousands on digital technologies, will remain operating within a paper based, control over operational paradigm unable replicate its client’s normalised use of the digital outside the school walls, and to meet both the client’s and society’s rising digital expectations.

Schools have ultimately to trust and empower all their students.

That is critical if they are to normalise the whole of school community use of the technology, and position the school culturally and technologically to continue its digital evolution.

The point that Lee and Levins make in their book is that BYOT- which is where the school encourages the children to use in class the digital technologies they are already using 24/7/365 – is but a phase, albeit a critical phase, in the digital evolution of the school.

BYOT – contrary to the views expressed by many – is not primarily about the technology but rather is a vital educational development where the school declares its willingness to cede its unilateral control of teaching, learning and technology and to genuinely collaborate with its digitally connected families and to work with them in providing a mode schooling befitting a digital and networked society.

It is a major step in creating a 24/7/364 mode of schooling that actively involves all the ‘teachers’ of the young – not simply the professionals in the school.

When all the students use their own personal technologies naturally in the classroom a new norm is achieved, a norm where the technology recedes into the background and the learner and the desired education takes precedence. With normalisation BYOT as a label very soon disappears from the school’s vernacular.

That said it bears reiterating that in 2017 relatively few schools globally have achieved digital normalisation – for the simple reason that it is very hard to do.

As Lee and Levins (2016) address in depth, and this series of blogs affirms the readying of the school for BYOT and in turn digital normalisation requires astute leaders who over time are willing and able to address the plethora of variables needed to significantly change the culture and thinking of the school, and create an integrated digitally based ecosystem able to continually make best use of the digital.

  • Lee, M and Levins, M (2016) BYOT and the Digital Evolution of Schooling Armidale Douglas and Brown – http://douglasandbrown.com/publications/