CRN Summit: The classroom of 2020

CRN: Ray, as someone who presumably signs off the cheques on these, what's your reaction to the notion that you're going to be buying kit every two years?

Paxton: One of the first meetings I had in the school was with Simon (Potter, the school's IT manager) about projected costs for the next 10 years around leasing or buying or combinations of both. It's always in your thinking. Finance committees of our board have to look at the whole cost of IT over a really long period of time. It's not how we pay for the IT, it's how we plan for the payment over a significant period of time.

CRN: What control do parents committees have over IT spending?

Paxton: In terms of governance the operational leadership and direction of the school is the headmaster's role. The headmaster briefs the board on the plan for technology which would have been consulted upon.

There would be no veto around that, but there might be some veto around how much it cost because the finance committee of the board has other accountabilities. Staff wages, everything. A cost factor could be questioned and challenged around IT, but not the educational direction of what you're trying to do.

CRN: How successful is Australia at using technology in education?

Paxton: Australia is very first world in the way it delivers learning. You might go to America and have cloud everywhere, but you still have teachers teaching from lecterns. Whereas in Australia and New Zealand there is a wonderful sense of how learning is flexible and the teacher has various roles. We really have potential.

Torre: I totally agree. The technologies are all here in Australia, the speeds are all here, everything is here that we need. It's really the costs associated with taking advantage of the technology itself.

CRN: How big is the bandwidth cost for a school like MLC with a one-to-one program in place?

Field: We're changing models there. We've previously had a limited bandwidth plan and we actually chart it and it changes your thinking. You then limit what the students can do before school, at recess and at lunchtime. You're constantly taking it up and down and looking at where the holidays are coming in and trying to keep right to that level. A lot of energy and time has been spent doing that but we are just about to move to an unlimited plan, which our consultant has sourced for us.

Quinn: Not that we're anywhere near overseas standards but pricing for internet fees has come down dramatically just in the last 12 months. MLC is about to halve what they were paying in their new contract, and it's going to unlimited. That's a big shift recently. It's become a bit more competitive in Australia, but wholesale pricing to Australia is better. We're nowhere near what overseas costs are - we're factors of 10 above what they can get it for in the US and so on. You have to budget for it on an ongoing basis.

Field: It certainly does limit what you can do. Scollaborate is a very high-demand, virtual-world program. We have 70 schools in 12 countries trying to work out how to use virtual worlds for learning. Our participation in that is linked to access via broadband. Whilst we are the world leader in that currently, if we have to constantly struggle on access [it could be a problem]. But American schools don't [have the same issue with expensive broadband].