Toward a new educational culture - matching human networks with the technical architecture

摘要

This paper provides an overview of the implementation and growth of Education Network Australia (EdNA), a national framework for collaboration and co-operation throughout all levels of the Australian education community - involving the participation of schools, vocational education and training, higher education, government departments and professional associations. The guiding principle which underpins this collaboration is maximising the benefits of the Internet for education. The process involves a number of key foci: foremost among these is the accumulation and aggregation of quality content for the purposes of information retrieval and resource discovery; of equal significance, though nowhere nearly as developed, is the focus upon the process of building networks, in bringing together a confluence of interests from 'top-down' government-sponsored agendas, such as copyright and the information economy, with the 'bottom-up' needs and requirements of practitioners in the field. EdNA Online, a website which acts as a value-added 'gateway', is both a visible product of the EdNA collaboration and a service to its stakeholders. In recognition of the distributed nature of resources and connections available via the Internet, EdNA Online has been established with a distributed and devolved administration capability.