Acknowledgments:

The editors would like to thank all who have contributed to the development of the MLC program: the hardworking innovative staff, the external consultants and especially David Loader who had the dream, and the vision into make it a reality.

We are grateful to the following for permission to produce copyright material: Ashton Scholastic for " A Laptop Revolution" by Pam Dettman from The Entrepreneurial School (ed. Frank Crowther ~ Brian Caldwell); International Society for Technology in Education for "Reconstructing an Australian School" by David Loader from The Computing Teacher; Gary Stager for " Computers for Kids... not Schools" and The Incorporated Association of Registered Teachers of Victoria for" Educational Computing: Resourcing the Future" by David Loader & Liddy Neville, IARTV Occasional Paper no. 22.

Copyright :

This book is copyright 1993. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher.

Publishing details :

Research and Compilation :- Irene Grasso and Margaret Fallshaw Layout and Design :- Margaret Fallshaw and Irene Grasso Editors :- Irene Grasso and Margaret Fallshaw Wordprocessing :- Julie Anthony Desktop Publishing :- Margaret Fallshaw and Lynnda Heard

Reflections of a Learning Community: Views on the Introduction of Laptops at MLC (1993) 1 Foreword :

Innovation and change have become the accepted culture at MLC making it a stimulating school both for students and for teachers. Change and growth have been accelerated by the introduction of technology.

Learning with and through technology has been a shared experience. As we have dared to be innovative and to take risks, so we have grown and our vision of what is possible has expanded. The now seemingly small and tentative step of introducing personal laptops into some classrooms in 1990 has mushroomed into the development of an entirely different school culture in which technology is not a novelty, but an all-pervasive influence. It has become a medium for constructing one's own learning which is taken for granted in much the same way as pens and paper were previously.

Many of the benefits of the personal computer were just what we had hoped for when we began the program, but the exciting thing was the synergistic effects that were over and above what we had envisaged. Technology proved to be more than a catalyst for change in learning and teaching practices; it also ushered in an entirely new culture in which the school became a community of learners, where co-operative and collaborative learning became the norm.

Visitors to the school, after observing its exciting learning environment, often want to learn more about the thinking that led MLC to initiate this program and about the way the changes were implemented. To meet this need we have put together a collection of papers written by various people who have been associated with MLC and the programs that have been developing here.

MLC is a school that values individual differences, encourages diversity and welcomes criticism and this is reflected in the variety of papers included in the collection. Its staff, as well as its students, take risks and dare to be creative. The papers here, then, do reflect what has and is and will be happening at the school, but do not necessarily represent any "official' view (if such a thing exists).

The publication includes articles which have been written over the period 1990-1993 and so, in the earlier articles, such things as the number of laptops quoted may understate what we actually have now. Even though we have moved on from the situation described in some of the earlier papers, they were included because they marked important stages in our thinking and development and so are significant, not only in an historical sense, but also for an understanding of the process of our development. In some cases t