Meredith Holczer

University of Maryland University College

EDTC 645, Summer 2015
Integration of Technology: Global
Perspectives
Individual Synthesis Report For Country Case
Study: Queensland, Australia
Instructor: Dr. Tamara Blesh

Introduction
I found two great online articles about Australias use of technology in an education
setting. The first article is The Global Search for Education: The Tech Report - From
Australia and the second article is The Global Search for Education: Got Tech?
Australia. The first article focuses on conceptualization technology in Australian schools.
The second article focuses on how to learning with technology in Australian schools.
My synthesis report is on comparing the two articles on Australian educational
technology to gain a better understanding on how Australia views and uses technology
in education compared to the United States.

Analysis
Teaching and learning across Australia has seen many changes in recent years
with an increased use of technology in our schools. This has been supported by
successive federal and state government investment programs, most recently through
the Digital Education Revolution policy of the previous Labor government. Schools are
supporting the use of technology with ongoing resources allocated to their technology
infrastructure. There is a growing conversation around Bring Your Own Device policies
within schools (Rubin, 2013). This is different in the United States. In the county I work
in, we do not encourage students to bring their own devices. In some schools, teachers

may use students devices if they are brought to class but it is not a requirement to do
so.
Technology has become further integrated into the daily operations of most
Australian schools. All teachers are now required to implement the Australian
Curriculum, published solely online and linked directly to digital curriculum, assessment
and teacher professional development resources (Rubin, 2015). The United States at
this time does not require all teachers to solely implement curriculum online. The United
States is getting better using technology for curriculum and assessments.
Traditionally, the role of the teacher relied on sound content knowledge in their
specific areas of expertise, high level pedagogical understandings and the ability to
engage students in learning. These are still important attributes but teachers are now
required to supplement these with additional skills and capabilities in the use of digital
technology to support learning. Instead of being the 'font of all knowledge,' teachers are
required to be effective facilitators of student learning both within and outside the
classroom at any time (Rubin, 2013). This is also different from the United States
because teachers do use technology outside of the classroom for their jobs however we
do use technology outside of the classroom in most schools to conduct learning and
activities.
Intercultural understanding is a key dimension of the Australian Curriculum. The
deployment of technology opens up opportunities for global partnerships and
collaboration to grow, increasing opportunities for greater understanding between
cultures. Australian students studying Mandarin, Indonesian and Japanese languages

can now access the Language Learning Space that offers access to native-language
tutors based in China, Japan and Indonesia and provides opportunities for students to
engage more fully and deeply in other cultures in the course of their language learning.
The development of global citizenship is supported by collaborative tools that are now
becoming more fully embedded in classroom practice (Rubin, 2015). I thought this was
interesting when I read it considering the class I am taking is about global technologies.
In Australia, they use technology to have a global outreach to understand various
cultures. This is an important piece of their curriculum and how they use and
incorporate technology into the learning environment.
The new Australian Curriculum has been made 'machine readable,' which
enables it to be directly linked to digital curriculum resources for students and for
teacher professional learning, as well as other data in the future such as curriculumrelated assessment items. The Australian Curriculum is only available online, and
teachers access this through a system that enables them to customize their view of the
curriculum according to their subject area and curriculum approach. Technology is a
cross-curriculum perspective running through the new Australia Curriculum, and there
are a number of technology subject areas as well that include coding, which has not
previously been part of the Australian Curriculum (Rubin, 2013). In my county, I am able
to view my curriculum resources online however I am not able to customize or get direct
links to interactive lesson plans. Also, in my county we are pushing for cross curricular
subjects areas like reading about Social Studies topics as opposed to teach them in
isolation. It seems like Australia has taken the technology wave a step further and is
already using cross curricular technology into its education curriculum completely.
4

Conclusion
The two articles in this synthesis country report look at the ways the Australian
view and uses technology. From the information I analyzed, it seems that the Australia
education system is on track with technology integration both inside and outside of the
classroom. Australia does not seem to be lacking with the use of technology. It would be
interesting to see how the Australian system uses technology in education next. It
seems that the Unites States is slightly behind Australia with its education technology
integration. I wonder since Australia is highly into global learning, if they would be
interested in global learning with us. It would like to see Australia teaches teaching
United States teaches on how to be global.

References
Rubin, C.M. (2013) The Global Search for Education: Got Tech? Australia. Huff Post
Impact Whats Working. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/theglobal-search-for-edu_b_4183496.html.

Rubin, C.M. (2015) The Global Search for Education: The Tech Report - From Australia.
Huff Post Impact Whats Working. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/the-globalsearch-for-edu_b_6689152.html