Editorial

The issues raised by Bill Rey about the difficulties of being an "edtech" in high schools highlight the little progress we have made in gaining acceptance in the secondary school. The skills required to be a good teacher, change agent and curriculum specialist are not easily rewarded and considered frills in a tight budgetary time. Derick Unwin reflects on his ability to predict and claims that the tools for efficient provision of learning systems are now at our disposal. He feels that we should now be changing the curriculum to make it more relevant and pertinent for students. As we move our focus towards the information technologies the older ones are being left behind and may have something still to offer; Andrew Greig talks about the role of television in this context. Colin Latchem raises the idea of a national body (and so do others), this might be one of the main topics for the next conference in Perth. Certainly some national organisation must be generated, as the disorganised groupings have not been effective in gaining acceptance for the field. There are many competing groups that really need to be consolidated, if we can only get together!

The papers by the Ausburns, Kember, and Perry and Hemstrich indicate new areas of development, using the new public data base systems, and developing training systems based on the information technology. These developments focus more on the skills of instructional design which are becoming recognised as important skills in areas other than the traditional school and higher educational settings.

For the next issue at the end of this year, I would welcome other comments and especially reports about developments that have paid off! There must be some light at the end of the tunnel.

John G Hedberg