Redefining education: 1 to 1 computing strategies in Victorian schools

This paper focuses on three schools in Victoria (Australia) that introduced 1:1 mobile computing devices for students’ use in learning. Each began their roll out of devices in 2013. It was a time when an interest in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies was beginning to appear in popular media (Topsfield 2013) as a response to the cessation of various Federal government funding programs for buildings and 1:1 computing in Australian schools. Although each school had an interest in BYOD each chose to introduce a programme that mandated a specific device be purchased or leased. The decision to go to a specific device was based on simplifying the management of the restrictions placed on student uses of the device. The schools individually adopted different forms of student ownership of the devices extending from full purchase to leasing arrangements with different levels of school and personal responsibility for the device. It is not possible to attribute changes in how learning occurred to the introduction of the devices alone. It is of note that the shift to 1:1 computing largely reflected or amplified changes to teaching and learning that surrounded and pre-dated the introduction of the devices