It's what you do with IT that matters!

Abstract

'The reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools' says education chief (Bagshaw, 2016, article title). This April 1st headline for a Sydney Morning Herald article was no April Fool's joke. It referenced comments made in an address by OECD education director Andreas Schleicher at a global education forum. The statement is quite poignant for the ASCILITE (2016) conference given its theme is 'Show me the learning' focussing upon 'demonstration of learning aided by the adoption of technology in the education space' (para 4). This paper will examine questions raised by these comments, vignettes from a doctoral study that offer some answers to them, and propose the need for holistic assessment of contexts to more fully understand what is happening within them. It is suggested that while this paper is particularly relevant to initial teacher education, the principles are applicable to tertiary education more broadly.