An election has just been held in Australia and will bring a Labor government into power after 11 years of Liberal (Conservative) Party rule. The first priority of the new government, according to Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, is an “education revolution”. The key planks of this policy include promises to link every school to a proposed national high-speed broadband network and to give every student in years 9 to 12 access to their own computer through tax rebates worth $2.3 billion to low- and middle-income parents.

While this is potentially exciting, it will take more than computer hardware to help students develop innovative and adaptive thinking and interpersonal skills. Hopefully, this may also encourage a rethink in education to allow for genuinely collaborative, deep, creative, critical, interdisciplinary and process-based learning rather than content-based and test dominated curricula that predominate in most areas.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this may lead…

Photo: flickr: Quick Step by Kiri 😀