INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN SCHOOLS AND IN VICTORIAN & AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM DOCUMENTS

Teachers, the general public and media, departments of Education and curriculum documents use the terms 'ICT' (Information & Communication Technologies), 'digital technologies', 'computers in education', and so forth in many ways and with very different meanings with respect to school education. This leads to much confusion and a lack of clarity for all concerned. This has led to a complex landscape that challenges many teachers and teacher education students, as the same term is used to mean a range of different things, while different terms sometimes refer to the same thing.

This paper will first seek to explore and clarify the terminology through the range of ways that technologies are used in schools by teachers to support their students' learning, including as a way to present content, for assessment, for administration, for simulations and visualisations of concepts, and in ways that require students to use technologies so as to develop their understanding.

The paper will then explore and expand upon where and how Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) and the new subject 'Digital Technologies' appear in the Victorian state curriculum and in Australian curriculum documents and what they entail.