Associate Professor Jill Blackmore

Deakin University, Faculty of Education, Geelong. 3217

Phone:03 52271483

Fax: 03 52272014

Email: jillb@deakin.edu.au

Dr Richard Johnson

Faculty of Education, Deakin University, Burwood 3125

Phone: 03 9244 6438

Fax: 03 92446752

Email: rjj@deakin.edu.au

Ms Wendy Warren

Faculty of Education, Deakin University, Geelong. 3217

Phone: 03 52271483

Fax: 03 52272014

Email: wendyw@deakin.edu.au

Much has been written about the potential of new learning technologies for transforming teaching and learning, and indeed the organisation of schooling. The report Digital Rhetorics (1998) talks about the 'context of escalating and changing demands for literacy and technology learning worldwide. The rapid and far reaching technological advances of post industrialism and the associated shifts in employment patterns have prompted calls for a society and workforce able to cope with the demands of work and life in these changed and changing times (Digital Rhetorics 1998, p.1). Furthermore, 'the message is that our schools need to teach learning processes that are better for the way work is evolving. Above all, this means teaching the skills and habits of the mind that are essential to problem solving, especially where many minds need to interact' (Rohlen 'Social Software for a Learning Society' quoted in Fullan, 'Return of Large Scale Reform,' 1999, p.251).

Much has also been written about teacher responses to new learning technologies - how teachers resist new technologies, the 'techno sceptics' and the 'techno boosters', how they accommodate them in marginal ways - 'the techno pragmatists'; who innovate and radically change their practices through the use of communication and information technologies. A number of recent reports indicate a gap between policy, practice and the capacity of organisations to provide the conditions and resources in schools to creatively use new learning technologies as in Digitial Rhetorics (1998). Increasing attention is being paid to the changing social relations that mediate the use of communication and information technologies. In this new 'information' age, teacher resistance, reluctance and fear is bound up with the implications for both their work and their impact on a society where knowledge has been replaced by information - misinformation and disinformation (Digital Rhetorics 1998, p.39). Teachers are traditionally perceived as having serious concerns for ethical, cultural, political and general quality of life matters which cannot be reduced to an engineering definition of bits and bytes (Digital Rhetorics 1998 p.40).

Manuel Castells perceives post industrial society as being an informational or network society - informational because 'the social attributes of information generation and information processing go beyond the impact of information technologies and of information itself' (Castells 1991 pp.37-8). He suggests that individual and collective identity has become more significant as people gain meaning, not from what they do but who they are, or believe they are. He sees not only new social structures but new social dynamics occurring in which increasingly power and control goes to those who control the knowledge and information. New technologies simultaneously make us more interdependent and also more 'cut off'; as communication integrates the production of words, sounds and images while simultaneously customising them to fit individual desires, tastes to the moods of different identities. He suggests that the instrumentalism exchanges means that individuals, regions, countries are switched on or off according to their relevance in the network. So the self is in antithesis to the net (Castells 1991). He also considers that professionals have been marginalised in this shift in what counts as expertise, as have alienated social groups. Information technologies challenge the basis upon which professional expertise has been a key aspect of the twentieth century. It ends the distinction between production and consumption in the social system - students are no longer just consumers of information they are also producers.

This paper draws from the Learning in New Environments Research Group action research project, a pilot study in a large metropolitan secondary college in Melbourne, which is exploring the social implications of new learning technologies for changing relations between students, between teachers and students, between teachers and between family and school. Our focus is on the warmware - the people and how they can work with the hardware and software as part of their pedagogy.

The paper draws from the first round of data collection from the teachers in an on going action research project in a region with a high level of socio-economic and cultural diversity. We were in that sense interested in the professional development indeed renewal of these teachers. The school is in a lower socio-economic area with wide cultural diversity. It is not well endowed, but has a pleasant environment, physically and also in terms of the relationships between students and teachers. There is a sense that both teachers and students feel comfortable coming to this school. The computing facilities are relatively limited - older computers, located in three computer rooms, although most teachers have laptops.

What are the ways we feel about computers? One reading of the image of the computer being carried on the top of the porter is that of a computer being like any other commodity, depicting the 'ordinariness' of the computer. It is just a machine, a piece of equipment. Another reading, of this image is that computers are a burden, an added weight, bearing down on people, both physically, emotionally and intellectually.

How do teachers feel about the introduction of computers, and how does this impact on how they adopt, adapt or reject computers as pedagogical tools. Andy Hargreaves talks about the emotional dimensions of teachers' work and teacher's professional identity. 'If our understanding of theory and practice of educational change need to extend beyond the school, they also probe deeper into the heart of what teaching is, and into what moves teachers to do their work well. Good teaching involves more than being efficient, developing competence, mastering technique and possessing the right kind of knowledge. It also involves emotional work. It is infused with pleasure, passion, creativity, challenge and joy' (Hargreaves 1997). Fullan (1997) also refers to how teachers respond to change both intellectually and emotionally. Noddings (1992) argues that educational reform efforts too often elevate cognition above care as a priority for improvement. Care for persons, things and even ideas, become marginalised as a result. People respond to the unknown at an emotional level first. This is exemplified in the following incident recounted by Rushkoff (2000).

Rushkoff (2000) points out that the people who succeed in the device-driven networking economy of the future will be those who create applications, interfaces, and designs that conform to human need and expectation rather than technological need. The trick here is to put ourselves back on to the human side of the cybernetic equation. What does a person naturally do with a device in a certain environment? Rather than struggling to bring people to technology, we contested that we should figure out how to bring technology to people. Instead of turning the old man into a proper mouse-user, one could turn the mouse into a proper remote control. In other words, get the warmware to drive the hardware and the software. Yet in education, in our view, quite the opposite is happening.

As academics being expected to adopt new learning technologies we can empathise with how school teachers respond to similar demands. At a recent meeting which was meant to show academic staff the latest software that the University had purchased to enable courses to be put online, we later viewed the meeting through 'warmware lenses'...

There were fifteen academic staff at the meeting sitting around a long rectangular table. The two demonstrators sat opposite each other with notebook computers which were each projecting on separate screens in front of the room. There were several comments made about the 'dueling computers'. Between the 'dueling computers' there was the anti-warmware trademark of a spaghetti-load of wires. Around the table there were Associate Professors, Senior Lecturers and Lecturers discussing their courses. But the two people with the power were the two behind the computers.

The context of the meeting was dominated by a focus on software - the program 'TopClass'. The key hardware issue was ignored - that the Faculty of Education's use of Macintosh hardware was incompatible in many respects with the new TopClass designed for IBM/compatible PC's. But these decisions had been made for us - and we were now deciding when and how we could adapt to these technologies.

This was a meeting in which the academics, the teachers responsible for pedagogies, were removed from the curriculum development process. What was to be written was limited to what worked best in the short space of the text on screen. They did not feel in charge. When viewing a case study developed by an academic present at the meeting, the discussion was around how there was 'too much text on the screen'. This was a paragraph of a few hundred words. The case study worked perfectly well in the paper version but on the computer screen text was restricted not to put the viewer off. Some suggested that the language itself was not appropriate for an online presentation. There was no mention of content or the pedagogical or intellectual aims of this text. This was not an environment conducive to the considerations of warmware. It did not nurture confidence in using TopClass or develop an understanding of how TopClass could serve the needs of academics offering courses. It was disempowering for many of the academics involved because it was a technicist view of professional development, not a pedagogy-driven view that took into account relationships and practices. The message was clear - 'we have bought TopClass and thou shalt use it; and in order to survive, thou shalt teach your courses online. The empty vessel (TopClass) is there, pour your course into it'. Pedagogy was reduced to the constraints of what the technology could offer ñ how many links, levels and images . The message was that the software is easy to use and everyone can do it - implying those who did not were resisters. Assistance was in the form of an excellent Internet site, classes on the use of TopClass and software demonstrations. We had to learn to use the software and then adjust our pedagogy to suit the hardware and software.

While pedagogies have always been limited to access to and type of technologies available (overhead projectors, video recorders, etc.), or as those of us in distance education know: the limits of pages and production requirements in print material, the difference here is that academics have to be 'managed' to fit what was increasingly a standardised format of the technologies. What could be put 'on screen' was restricted on the assumption that people did not read text on screen. As academics, any discussions about how this would limit the critical and intellectual work were out of bounds. Our doubts were silenced for fear of being positioned as resisters, unable 'to go with the flow' of the new network society.

It was not surprising, therefore, for us to find in our interviews with many of the teachers at the metropolitan secondary college, the highly technicist and skills oriented way in which teachers referred to what they wanted when it came to professional development in learning technologies. When asked what they would like to do around technology, they wanted to 'learn to do PowerPoint'. This exemplified the effect of the checklist approach to teacher professional development and acquisition of techno - literacy embedded in policies on the take up and implementation of technology. Teachers, as stated in the Standards Council of the Teaching Profession, (1999) Guidelines for the Evaluation of Teacher Education Courses (Appendix) are expected to display a range of competencies around the use of information technologies. These read like a checklist resulting in teachers getting issued a driving license. This policy text focuses on outcomes, and similarly fails to address the relational aspects of learning to use technologies. The hardware and software are put before the warmware.

What this meant was that when the hardware and software was not available, ready made for use, teachers tended to rapidly cool off. As the mathematics teacher commented '... I mean with my experience you're constrained with physical ... just you're physical requirements and we have 3 technology rooms, I don't have access when I need it'. Indeed, as in many schools, the integration and use of technology in classrooms was not widespread. The laptops for teachers program had not led to implementation of learning technologies in the classroom beyond administrative and assessment tasks and curriculum planning. As one of the teachers said:

Change theorists, particularly when referring to new technologies, talk about the need for a sense of technical competence or reaching a threshold that teachers have to experience before they feel comfortable with their use in the classroom. So questions such as how or why the use of PowerPoint will improve classroom practice and student learning, why one should use PowerPoint and how and when it could be a more effective teaching approach that would enhance learning or engage students are not even considered at this point.

Bigum et al in the report Digital Rhetorics argue that there is a marked change in the 'business' of teachers lives - 'New machines have become associated with new practices: we have the means to report and objectify through the production of endless flows of information, and our context of practice ñ the emerging meaning of so much of our practice ñ becomes increasingly one of gathering and reporting information.'(Digital Rhetorics p.37). They refer to the widespread 'technology refusal' on the part of many teachers which is as much a generational feature rather than teachers as being conservatives when it comes to change. They see adults being 'caught in a time warp, having been formed and trained in very different technocultural conditions' and therefore finding it difficult 'living on the very cusp of a major paradigm shift', the informational revolution, creating a sense of 'pronounced professional insecurity' because their previous practices are no longer working (Green & Bigum 1998 p.88).

The privileged status of the teacher is challenged in a number of ways in contemporary schooling that makes teachers feel 'out of control'. First, by the 'exteriorisation of knowledge' in that they are no longer the selectors and decoders of school knowledge. This changes the basis of teacher authority in the classroom and society more generally. Teacher - student relationships are challenged because teacher control and authority was achieved through specialist expertise, not only over the pedagogy, but also over content. Now students bring to schools a range of skills and computer literacies, a familiarity in the use of technologies, but also a capacity to access other information sources. Many students, meanwhile, were competent technology users and interpreters of meaning, as they brought to school a range of experiences from the home and their peer cultures. The ways in which they had learnt computer literacies was through playing in games parlours, with friends, through collective trial and error. For them, technical collapses were not disasters, but just the way of learning that was typical, given that few referred to instructions. Rather, the relations of play around which they learnt was through quite complex oral discussions with friends (Sefton-Green 1999). Nespor suggests that this view of knowledge and learning differed from notions of schooling - 'school is considered a special space in which students are endowed, as individuals, with abstract, context-independent skills and knowledge' (Nespor 1999 p.169).

Yet it was the students that probably displayed more overtly the different ways of learning. Zoe Sofia (1998) talks about how boys 'tinker', are much more likely than girls to engage with computers as a 'bricoleur', more willing to experiment or to work with 'black boxes', to 'let go' of certain aspects of understanding, and 'fiddle around' with technology as a trial and error process. They identify more closely with the computer, seeing it as a second self. Girls she suggests seek to understand things in minute detail before they are willing to move ahead or experiment, seeing computers as a tool rather than a personality that one interacts with (Turkle and Papert 1992) - the techno and the techno- pragmatists evident amongst the teachers.

Second, the technologies are also limited and imposed, in the sense that it is constructed elsewhere, outside the pedagogical frame, and their availability is severely constrained. With limited availability, as in our case study school, the sustainability of any small changes were difficult and teachers quickly lost confidence and interest when access decreased (Blackmore 1997). As a teacher commented earlier, she used to use computers primarily for word processing. Now she had no formally time-tabled classes, and that it was a win/lose situation due to lack of resources. 'Once the GLOW [Good Learning on the World Wide Web] project happened, that was great for her class, but my class and the other English class have no access to a computer room any more'. Ironically, innovation in one area was a win/lose situation as resources moved in that direction and away from wider usage. The lack of any sense of progress in her own techno-literacy meant she avoided its use, rather than sought it out.

Third, teachers spoke of how expectations around learning technologies had risen, with any professional development sessions on the Curriculum Standards Framework II (Victoria) and outcomes building in their use, thus linking being a good teacher with being techno-literate.

Fourth, the technologies themselves are 'uncontrollable', another layer of uncertainty within the contingent factors that make for a successful teaching and learning, technically fallible and unreliable.

Many teachers were deterred from the use of information technologies when technical problems meant well planned lessons were disasters.

Fifth, the expectations about incorporating learning technologies was preceded by a multiple reforms imposed on teachers and schools that radically transformed school management and the nature of teachers' work - performance management, curriculum and assessment reforms, new careers, contract employment etc. Technology therefore becomes just one of many reforms that have been imposed in recent times onto teachers in ways that have made teachers feel deskilled and overwhelmed (Blackmore et al 1996). One of the teachers sums up what most staff saw the previous reforms as producing a shift away from more innovative and progressive pedagogies and structures, for which the school was well known over the during the 1980s, to a more conservative approach to curriculum and pedagogy, the result of the standardising effects of the reforms that focus on student outcomes in limited academic measures.

Apple and Jungck (1999 p.133) refer to the paradox facing teachers around their professionalism:

In Victoria, studies of the reception of reform (Johnson 1995) over the previous decade indicated the emergence of a culture of conformity which had also produced a culture of dependency on others for innovation, one made more difficult to shift because the majority of teachers were near the end of their careers. Now the logic of technology, which was both part of and in addition to the administrative logic, was bearing down on teachers.

This cultural context is largely ignored when dealing with the implementation of new learning technologies. And as with earlier reforms, there is a lack of systemic support in terms of professional development and expertise in computing. Computers in this wider systemic cultural context, are seen to be merely just another prescribed reform that takes up considerable investment of time, labour and money of both the teacher and the school, often to the detriment of what teachers see as their core work. Teachers therefore feel that while students may benefit from computers, they as teachers, lose out. Computers are for many teachers, just another set of changes in their professional lives that are leading to further intensification of their labour. This is in an environment in which change has been increasingly prescribed in a more managerialist manner, in which teacher professional autonomy has been put under threat.

Rather than take a proactive position, many teachers were passive in how they saw professional renewal. This passivity, which was manifest in much of the types of professional development where it had reduced to implementation of government policy during the past decade, was one of 'just tell us how to do it and we will do it'. Some teachers, as the rhetoric promised, expected computers would do something different and that it was merely about getting the right package to fit the right pedagogic moment, and about us, working with them in the school in an action research project to provide the ready made teaching solutions and software. Computers there were just another pedagogical tool. As a teacher said:

A technicist approach that focuses upon the hardware and the software tends to disempower teachers when they find there is no technical solution for what they are told is a problem with or deficiency in their teaching, which is how many teachers read the policy texts. The culture of many schools after a decade of reforms was one that was not conducive to risk taking, discovery or teacher based initiatives. The new leadership hierarchy in schools meant innovation was left up to those in leadership positions. There was also a linear understanding of one's own learning. To continue ...

But computers were also different from other reforms. Whereas other forms of curriculum change were more familiar, readily integrated, accommodated or revised in the daily practice and isolation of their classrooms, the use of computers was overt, self conscious and evident to peers. The processes of learning were more institutionalised and formalised.

Finally, one cannot talk about individual teacher's responses to new technologies as distinct from culture of the schools and how that school itself was perceived more broadly. Increasingly images and representations of what constitutes a good school in education markets are linked to the number and newness of computers evident in classrooms and their networking. Images of good schools are closely associated with teachers with laptops and students clustered excitedly around pods of computers in the centre of the classroom. Computers play an increasingly important part in the formation of school identity, and how teachers perceive the school and its capacity to support their responses to computers (Blackmore 1999).

For many teachers and schools investment in hardware and software was equally out of the control, given the inability of the community to raise the necessary funds. Teachers were themselves investing in hardware at home. One expressed surprise at the benefits that flowed on to her son in terms of his engagement with computers. At this school, there was a sense of loss of a past era where the school was seen to be innovative and able to provide a curriculum that was both inclusive and progressive. Now there was a sense of not knowing where the school was going in these new environments as the technologies were often out of the grasp of the teachers and the inequities they had sought to remediate were now exacerbated. Teachers identified closely with the school, and therefore with this is loss of identity of the school as being innovative as innovation was so closely attached to technologies (Blackmore 1997).

A wider sociological analysis considers the impact of technology on schools more generally - the polarisation between computer rich and computer poor learning environments. These are the circumstances in which schools have also 'lost control' of their futures because of their inability to raise funds. Many teachers therefore saw gaining access to computers as the pre-condition for really taking on computers in the classroom.

Computers, their visibility, access and use, therefore in our view infuse school identities as well as teacher identities.

So while the use of learning technologies is increasingly being equated to good teaching, their uncontrollability goes to the heart of teacher's sense of self. Jennifer Nias (1989) suggests that English primary school teachers reported that to 'feel like a teacher' was about being in control. Pat Thomson (1999 p.6) quotes a principal, Alan, seeking to develop learning technology capabilities through his leadership team with teachers :

New information technologies therefore challenge teacher professional identity because they seemingly 'take control' away from teachers over what students do and how they do it, shifting emphasis from professional knowledge to information. This is a significant paradigm shift in teachers' work and professional identity.

There were few teachers in our study that did not express a desire to know more about learning technologies. This was because increasingly discourses about good teaching equated it to use of learning technologies. Using learning technologies became a simplistic signifier of innovation and distinguished some teachers from others in the more competitive environments of some school cultures. Teachers were quickly able to identify where they were positioned in terms of picking up on learning technologies. For example:

But we found that even those teachers who were seen by their colleagues to be competent and frequent users of computers, were utilising computers in classrooms as part of relatively passive pedagogies. While they were called upon by their colleagues for assistance and ideas, there was no systemic way in which teachers related to each other or exchanged ideas about what they were doing. It was more incidental and accidental. While this forms a large part of the serendipity characteristic of the ways in which people learn, where immediacy in response is important to get over a particular technical hurdle, there was not a well developed culture about how we can learn from each other to do this better. There was a sense that new types of networks and relationships were developing, and a greater awareness of they as teachers learnt themselves. Most saw learning teams and collegiality as a critical starting point in using the technologies better as well as new forms of school and curriculum organisation

Interestingly, while discourses about communication and information technologies are often connected with assumptions about innovation, rapid change and new work practices, few of these discourses draw upon theories of educational change, in particular those which relate to the dissonance between attitudes and feelings about radical change, and how it impacts on teacher work identity with respect to learning technologies. Most of the literature has focused upon the technical aspects, the hardware and software, but not the 'warmware', so critical to sound pedagogical practice. So we have this discussion with one of the teachers:

While this was a teacher familiar with technologies, his sense of competence was severely challenged, there was no certainty, and he was used to that. But the issue here was about communication, not about a technical issues. He did not talk about there being an exchange of ideas about how one might use the technologies in enhancing learning. Furthermore, the 'learner centred' view of how to use technologies which has long been championed by Papert (1993 a & b), in which digital technologies can significantly enable and enhance still tends to see teachers as individuals; as though pedagogy resides in the teacher and not in the relationships teachers have with their students and colleagues. Yet in our case study there was not yet a culture in the school that saw technology as a collective challenge.

For some, the new technologies did create opportunities for self-development that got away from the known and mundane, and revitalised them and their teaching, but again in a highly individualised way. One of the teachers said:

But how would this lesson have changed if this teacher had begun with putting the learner first ? How would he have done this differently in terms of the technology? And if he had been working with the legal studies or accounting teacher? What would have happened to the textbook?

But tied up with all this was also a matter of professional judgement. Teachers were unsure as to when and where as well as how to use even the limited range of computer technologies available to them. This is the issue of professional judgement, one that is about making teachers feel informed about their decisions. Lankshear et al (2000, p.34) refer to the types of questions that teachers need to ask: Why are we doing this, when is it a good idea to do this, what can we sensibly do with this facility, how does it affect our practice?

The issue of 'use value' works two ways. First, was the 'use value' great enough for teachers to invest time and energy to learn about computers and second, how did they judge the value of the use of the computer in enhancing teaching and/or learning? Sometimes these were confused. There may be moments when the use of computer mediated instruction that is interactive and self pacing may free up teachers to do other things - plan, do professional development, talk with colleagues etc. and indeed make space and time ie. enhancing teachers time and work. And there are times when computers can enhance student learning in terms of providing motivation, doing something in an alternative way, being more efficient in time, extending students and enabling something to be done that was not possible without the computer. These are not the same thing, nor are they mutually exclusive, but bringing them together is important when integrating the new technologies.

But how do we make those judgements? Level of enthusiasm, time on task, outcomes? Is merely doing something on computers teaching and/or learning?

The implication here is that playing games assumes a higher level of understanding and therefore learning whereas chatting about what is being written is not. Here is a professional judgement about the use value of computing that is both gendered and assuming certain theories of learning - that learning on technology is of more value, more abstract.

So what is our position in all this? Our interviews with the staff at this school indicates that there is now the accepted position in education that we are past questioning whether computers should be used in education. The following principles characterise a scenario which we are working with to act as a basis of professional development with the staff which is premised upon putting the warmware before the hardware and software:

• Maintain the strength of what you have developed over the years - good relationships among the staff and students that is nurtured through the mini-school system. Professional development should occur on that basis. Professional development initiatives should meet these three questions: How will it contribute towards maintaining good relationships among staff? How will it contribute towards maintaining good relationships between staff and students? How will it help the work of each mini-school?
• Each teacher is asked to consider and then answer a series of questions: What would you like to change in your teaching? This question would be put after due consideration to the questions above with regard to staff relations, staff/student relations and the mini-schools. It would be important to consider when to ask the question, who should ask/put the question, what should be the environment for answering the question and what should be the steps that follow?
• Staff need to know about the resources available to support their professional development. A detailed inventory of all resources, material, human and financial could be made available to staff. Among the resources we would recommend the names of three members of the academic staff from the University on what could be called a 'PD consultative team'. The academic staff and the school staff on the consultative team may need to be prepared to go into teachers' classes on their request, observe them teach with particular reference to the area they have nominated as 'wishing to change' and then consult with individuals or groups of teachers.
• Professional development would be based on the pedagogy of the teacher and information and communications technology solutions would be suggested and taken up in that context.
• An 'action plan' would be drawn-up by each teacher with the opportunity to consult with members of the 'PD consultative team'. The 'PD consultative team' could be flexible enough to include invited guests in response to requests made by teachers or with content expertise in the key learning area of the individual teacher in question.

The ideas that make up this scenario will be put to teachers in the context of interviews and based on the following 'warmware principles' that will be put out for teacher response.

If the new learning technologies are to produce informed teaching and learning there needs to be a level of cynicism that is maintained.

• For most teachers, pedagogy is a personal issue. In order to connect with the personal pedagogy of a teacher or for them to discuss their pedagogy with others in an open and meaningful way there needs to be trust.
• Teachers often learn best from other teachers. They find it easier to relate to teachers who understand their work and even their curriculum. Examples can be located in a context to which they can relate.
• Teachers are most unlikely to discuss their pedagogy in an open meeting with fifteen people whom they are unlikely to work with on an ongoing basis. Teams working across the curriculum in ways that focus on shared projects.
• Students are a part of the pedagogical process and need to be included in the planning of online courses, in working with learning technologies
• Refer to the needs of the teacher first and then ask: How can the hardware/software/web site be used to cater for/satisfy/integrate with those needs?
• Teachers need to articulate demands for software to reflect their needs in teaching style and curriculum content. There needs to be more generic software that can be used by teachers in various content areas and that cater for different teaching styles.
• If one considers computers as both about social practice and part of the cultural context in which they exist then one would ask questions such as what is it about school cultures that encourages people to play, to explore, to take risks? And what social practices that arise around computing are considered to be more productive and educationally sound? What are the types of cultures in schools that encourage risk taking and allowing teachers to make mistakes and 'let go'?

A different way of thinking about how learning occurs with regard to computers is one of 'situated learning'. While situatedness suggests specificity of time, place and space, 'situations themselves are confluences of widely distributed streams of activity'(Nespor 1999 p.169). Thus the 'funds of knowledge' that students bring to schools arise from 'diverse social networks that interconnect households with their social environments and facilitate the sharing or exchange of resources, knowledge, skills and labour essential for the household's knowledge if not their wellbeing' (Nespor 1999 p.169). With regard to computers, there are a range of 'funds of knowledge'óincluding fun parlours, out of school play with friends, from families - the communities of practice of students that are increasingly important. Nespor argues that we need to consider student learning beyond the formal and adult/child relationships, to expand it to include media-entangled, spatially distributed student based funds' of knowledge. But learning is not always adult centred, and adults presence is not a condition of meaning making associated with learning. This is difficult for teachers to deal with, but it does provide teachers with a space in which they can develop their own techno literacies and curriculum. Computers highlight this assumption about what constitutes learning, because they provides more overt access to different media mediated relationships, and force a recognition of the largely ignored area in research of informal learning associated with popular culture and peer relationships. Nespor argues that 'kids are the central participants, exchanging, invoking, inhabiting and appropriating adult produced representations that circulate though the spaces of popular culture'(p.174). What we are suggesting is that we can learn from and utilise these techno-literate students in more productive ways in classrooms.

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Zoe Sofia, (1998) The Mythic Machine in H. Bromley, and M. Apple (Eds.) Education/Technology/Power:Educational Computing as a Social Practice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press

Graduates will be expected to have achieved the following outcomes appropriate to teaching in the subject discipline/Key Learning Areas and levels for which they are preparing to teach in using learning technologies to enhance student learning and teaching organisation:

• demonstrate a critical and creative approach to learning situations†
• demonstrate a developing competence and confidence in the use of a†range of learning technologies in the classroom. Beginning teachers†need not be expert in all aspects of learning technologies, they are†however expected to be computer literate and proficiency is desirable†in:
• using basic computer applications, including word processing, data†base and spread sheet packages
• using desktop publishing and presentation software
• using multi-media and interactive presentations
• using communication technologies including the world wide web†and electronic mail
• using courseware specific to particular KLAs.
• demonstrate an awareness of a range of learning technology resources and how they can be integrated constructively and creatively with other resources to produce a challenging and rigorous curriculum
• create a classroom environment in which learning technologies are an integral component
• employ learning technologies to assist students develop critical skills of analysis, reasoning, problem-solving and decision making and provide opportunities for students to be engaged in activity which is essentially self-regulating and cooperative
• demonstrate confidence and competence in solving common basic problems in using software, hardware and networks in classroom contexts
• demonstrate use of computers for aspects of reporting and record keeping, administrative duties, lesson preparation and presentation, and professional interaction
• demonstrate alertness and responsiveness to the social and ethical considerations associated with discriminating and responsible use of learning technologies such as equity of access, privacy and copyright. Beginning teachers should also be equipped with strategies to assist students in dealing with sensitive material which may challenge, offend or deny societal or personal values.

(Standards Council of the Teaching Profession. (1999) Guidelines for the Evaluation of Teacher Education Courses. Melbourne, Victoria: Department of Education, p.8-9.)