As part of our 3-year strategic plan to integrate learning technologies to enhance student learning, this summer we invested a great deal of time and resources upgrading our IT network, hardware and software. Our teachers are learning innovative strategies and skills to utilise the latest technologies in the classroom. But why do we focus so much attention on technology?

If we teach today in the same way we were taught when we attended school, then we teach our students to be ready for the last century. It is not even good enough for us to teach our students to be ready for the world of today. We need to be teaching our students to be ready for the world of tomorrow, to be ready for the world they will enter when they have completed their formal education.

The ways we access, use and create information has changed dramatically because of technology, and this has changed what it means to be literate. Our students need to be learning the basic literacy skills that will be vital to their future. Our students need to be using a variety of technologies to access, analyse, use, create and share information.

We use technology at school not because we believe the machines will make our students "smarter" but because new technologies are the pencil and paper of today and of the future.

(by Phil Clark)