Earlier this week Department of Education and Early Childhood Development released its Digital Learning Strategy, Unlocking the Potential – A digital learning strategy for Victorian learning and development settings (2014 – 2017). The Digital Learning Strategy outlines the Department’s plan to strengthen digital learning in order to improve learner outcomes.

Unlocking the Potential – A digital learning strategy for Victorian education and development settings sets out three interconnected strategic themes and a set of actions:

• Unlocking learning potential: a focus on curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and reporting, which will be enabled, supported, extended and re-imagined by digital technologies
• Harnessing technology: leveraging infrastructure to support teaching and learning
• Changing culture and supporting innovation: strengthening leadership, capacity building and promoting and adopting evidence-based practice and partnerships.

The strategy addresses early childhood, schools and vocational education and training settings and:

• describes the rich learning opportunities that digital technologies offer
• outlines the challenges and opportunities Victoria faces in achieving widespread and effective use of digital learning
• describes 12 key actions that will be undertaken by the Department.

Practical ICT planning resources and programs are also available to support school leaders to drive change and implement a whole school approach to technology-enabled learning.

The release of the strategy is a valuable step in supporting schools in implementing ICT, and reaffirming the view that learning can be significantly enhanced by an explicit focus on identifying and demonstrating the opportunities and benefits that digital technologies can provide across curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and reporting.

Unlocking the Potential – A digital learning strategy for Victorian learning and development settings can be accessed at: http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/department/Pages/unlockpotential.aspx