The context of IT is changing life on two levels:

Educators - an individual level perspective
If teachers are to be participants in modern society and reflect its operation, they need to be immersed in using information technology as much as possible and need to understand the processes and their consequences. They need to reflect on their experiences as they play the role of consumer, parent, member of a community, state and nation, and member of a team of workers in their workplace. In their workplace, they are employees, fellow workers, professional colleagues and friends. In their homes they are parents, partners, relations and friends. In their community, they are consumers of commercial and government services, information and products, a part of a consumer market, a part of a community and part of a society. Information technology is explicitly or implicitly significant in all the processes that surround the roles teachers play as they live. They need strategies and opportunities to reflect on their lives and to understand the linkages between the technologies of their experiences and the technology and processes children know and need to know. Ideally teachers would understand the relationship of technology to how we live personally and how individuals contribute to the information technology prowess of the nation. The global context that increasingly impacts on most aspects of life in Australia adds urgency to the need for this understanding.

Australians have embraced technologies in their personal lives. NBEET (1998), reports that Australia is second in the world in its adoption of computers, mobile phones and Internet services as home and personal products and services, a statistical picture supported by NOIE (1998). The pervasiveness of technology in the lives of Australians (a pervasiveness not present in schools) is a choice they make and this collective trend alters the circumstances in which we all live. Kelly (1998, p.5) perhaps captures the heart of the trend.

The issue for teachers is that they need the ability to identify, observe and reflect on the changes happening around them. Having done so, they need to begin to unravel the impact of changing Australian lifestyles on the material that they help children learn. Along with the content of school curricula, they need to identify how effective learning might occur and the very purpose of schools and education, as circumstances surrounding families change. What value can teachers add to childrens' experiences outside of schools, and how can they help children make sense of the their new and changing society, one that is fundamentally different to that experienced by their teachers as children?

Part of the dilemma is that schools are now technologically poor, compared to the technologically rich communities they serve. This is a statement that means more than measuring ratios that count computers per child and minutes per child per computer. It is about recognising that the context of children's lives in the world outside the school gate is rich in technology processes and attitudes. The context of their parents' lives is also technologically rich (Downes, 1998), leaving teachers in the position of usually having very poor technological environments from which they then interpret the world and reflect their view of the world in classroom practice. They have access to neither computers nor technological work practices which help them interpret the world inside and outside of the school gate - a sense of blissful ignorance prevails. This situation would be bad enough if it were static: however, the difference between schools and wider society increases as technology continues to change.

This document is suggesting that teachers' professional lives need changing if they are to provide children with authentic learning experiences. It is suggesting that unless teachers use technology and experience a workplace that mimics the technological processes in business, government and community, they have insufficient basis to know what values, beliefs, attitudes and skills children need to develop. Further, there is a risk that technological ignorance may prevent them from being able to critically observe and reflect upon the technological pervasiveness that surrounds their lives outside of schools. Criticism from outside the education systems begins to ask why people with such incomplete experience of society should be considered competent to teach children who are to face an information-based society: the reality is that few other people with the necessary educational skills and qualifications are ready to step into this role, leaving the responsibility on the existing workforce. Teachers need programs of professional development, which provide them with experience and understanding of the use of information technology and which provides frameworks for them to interpret their personal experiences.

Educators - the social and economic perspective
Local (national) level
The pervasiveness of technologies in our personal lives is a response of and to the growing significance of technologies in Australia's economic, business and government community. Markets do not exist without consumers who in turn demand the services be invented as their levels of sophistication change. Australia's economic position and practice is determined by its relationship to the global economy and market structure and the values and beliefs of the global society. This is not only about producing Australian technologies and technological services within all industry sectors (in a global market place), but also about the impact of globalisation of industry and technological infrastructure, on how people work, what they do and how the interrelationships between businesses are altering producer, consumer and socio-cultural practice.

Governments throughout this country are convinced that information technology is the cornerstone of economic development and Australia's ability to provide employment and hence a quality of life for Australians. International competitiveness, the impact of the new globally-operated corporations, global marketplaces, and global financial environments mean that Australia's increasingly deregulated business sector must use information technology processes in order to survive, let alone grow. The role of global networks and networking in this is obvious. Although the goals can be rationalised and defended, NBEET (1998, p.xiii) comments that Australia may well not have adopted IT processes and thinking sufficiently quickly, nor at a sufficient level and that although we know 'Australia can not simply afford to be a spectator', we may already 'be condemned to be an also-ran compared with other nations'.

For groups thinking about Australia's economic future, the role of the education sector is quite clear.

The NOIE report (amongst others), also points out that helping people participate as consumers and members of society is part of the role for schools and educational systems. So the question for this document is: what role teachers might play and how are they equipped to meet the challenge?

That schools might shape the future of Australia is a long-held belief in our culture and in wider educational theory: schools both reflect society and act as agents to change it. Schools provide students who participate, with the advantage that they might be better citizens and workers and perhaps help resolve the worker shortages that limit Australia's economic development. NBEET (1998) clearly emphasise the shortage of workers in the IT industry and of IT literate workers in all industries. It is now well established that IT literacy is also about thinking skills, analysis skills, communication skills, team work skills, problem solving skills and creative processes; classifications of skills which will sound familiar to every educator whose curriculum documents reflect the Mayer key competencies. Schools have long resisted the calls that their only role is to supply a workforce. Indeed most employer groups have asked for graduates who have multidisciplinary skills, creativity and positive attitudes, and a broad base of skills that could have been derived from Mayer's key competencies list. In helping teachers define what information technology is and what it means in the context of the concerns for Australia's future, it may be useful to help teachers understand the connection between the skills now embedded in schools curricula and practices, and the skills which are valued in workplaces and what the collective impact is when the country makes use of its skills. This context provides not only the rationale to use technologies in schools, but provides guidance in the skills to embed in the activities children undertake with information technology while learning.

A range of national and state policies have recognised the importance of students emerging from school with IT skills and backed this with commitments stated as goals. For example the Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century (http://www.detya.gov.au/schools/adelaide/text.htm, accessed 1/6/1999) states as goal 1.6

This document is suggesting that educators and education systems do have a responsibility to support Australia's efforts to compete in a technologically-enabled global market place and that what students are taught and how they are taught has considerable impact on that. It is suggesting that curriculum documents already have embedded into their frameworks the skills that are necessary to help students become consumers and producers of products and services and that the documents illustrate the potential to help students develop creativity and attitudes that will support them in all facets of Australian life. This document also suggests that teachers need to consider their curriculum documents in the context of the connectivity enabled by global networks and that their classroom activities need to contribute to helping children understand the impact of global connectivity on individuals, nation-states and global well-being.

Educators - the global context
The link between globalisation and telecommunications systems is well established and its power understood. The sheer size of the new communities, the diversity of consumer marketplaces, the collective wisdom, the melting pot of political and ideological beliefs and the concerns for the future of the earth are all facets of the Internet that are ever present in the commentaries about the impact of this global network on our lives, countries and society. Understanding the Internet only as a technological artefact, or as a place to store information may not be enough. Selwyn (1998) claims, "There is no sense in adopting the functionalist philosophy of this technology that posits a priori neutrality for technological artefacts, whereby technology merely has its good or bad uses or is merely a tool". Teachers should be aware that the Internet is socially and politically constructed and also socially and politically useful. Teachers who do not use it will not have opportunity to gain this awareness.

Globalisation is not simply an extension of the national picture. It is not confined to multinational companies or overseas markets nor is it just understanding other cultures. It is an encompassing framework in which local contexts are part of a global frame. It is the context in which individuals and families live. Globalisation, information technology, financial structures, the environment, culture and society are synonymous and interconnected. Teachers have a role of helping children see beyond their local lives, towards the integrated global picture. They can exploit the global connectivity provided by technology to do this. This needs to occur with the understanding that the same technology permeates the mass media, and thus has profound impact on the view that children in classrooms see of the world. The difficulty for educators is how to make use of these technologies to enhance educational programs or perhaps to redefine educational programs so students can become critical in their use of information rather than passive consumers of media.

If we accept the previous view, teachers need the opportunity to use information technology as often as possible and in as wide a range of circumstances as they can. Teachers need to take into their hearts that globalisation and the impact of information technology are central to this learning technology competencies movement and the future. Globalisation is not only the concern of business and Government. It alters personal lives, within and outside of western society. Children and their teachers need to understand that.

This process starts at primary level, goes through the whole of education, and indeed is a lifetime process. (NBEET 1998, p.37)

For teachers then, this document suggests that they need to be immersed in circumstances which enable them to confront globalisation and the use of information technology in the globalisation process. They need also to understand the local context and defend how activities in schools are part of the holistic context.

State Governments should examine the quality of IT education at the primary and secondary levels with a view to implementing the world best practice in terms of IT and teacher competence. (NBEET 1998, p.xiii)

Although most teacher competency movements in Australia emphasise the use of learning technologies throughout curriculum and encourage teachers to use technology to support learning processes, government position papers also ask schools to consider the significance of IT education in schools. This document recognises that IT studies in Australian school need competent and capable teachers and that alongside programs which encourage all teachers to understand why learning technology is so important, it is also important to provide support to those teachers who teach in information technology programs of study and IT related disciplines. Further this document recognises the significance of also supporting those educators in schools who manage and develop the increasingly complex and extensive IT environments and learning technology programs in schools.