A vision of the digital future - government funding as a catalyst for 1 to 1 computing in schools

This paper reports on how the Digital Education Revolution (DER) funding enabled one school to transition from having shared computers amongst students to personalised one computer to one student ratio. The aim of this study was to explore how the unexpected funding impacted on the school and was the catalyst for change that affected many stakeholders including students, teachers and parents. Whilst this case study focused on one school, this school was typical of many other Australian secondary schools that did not have an already established 1:1 program prior to the funding. Teachers in the school were interviewed and their perspectives of the implementation of the 1:1 program were documented. The paper explored the school’s computer situation prior, during and post funding to illustrate how funding had significant changes in practice both in many classrooms in the teaching and learning program, and professional staff learning.