David Nettelbeck may be an experienced teacher, but as his first full-length book, Computers, Thinking and Learning: Inspiring Students with Technology (ACER), hits the shelves, he admits to being ‘just a bit nervous!’

‘I’m not a computer boffin—I’m not that into fancy bells-and-whistles stuff,’ says David, an English teacher and school administrator who readily admits to being ‘an older bloke’. As a long-time fan of the educational theories of Donald Graves, pioneer of the ‘process writing’ movement, David says that he realised even back in the days of the Commodore 64 that computers were the obvious solution to the ‘cut and paste, edit and draft’ methods that he was teaching his students. ‘Telling students to rewrite a final version longhand seemed ridiculous,’ he says.

‘I don’t think teachers can avoid technology. Whether we like it on not, we all have to be involved.’ He has never regarded computers as either just a tool or as a toy, ‘it’s a whole new approach to teaching and learning. I’m interested in how an ordinary kid in an ordinary classroom can be helped by using a medium they’re familiar with.’

But simply providing every student with a computer isn’t the answer, either, David says. ‘I was somewhat irritated by the laptop movement, where private schools in particular required every student to have a laptop If you’re asking parents to pay thousands of dollars for something that’s only going to be used as a glorified typewriter, what’s the point? And there are big equity of access problems, too.’

David saw that there was a real need to develop materials that helped teachers to offer students ‘new ways to think and learn’—and humanities students, not just maths, science and ICT.

The origins of what has become Computers, Thinking and Learning came from workshops and conference papers that David has developed over the last few years. ‘What I was doing seemed to hit the spot with other teachers,’ particularly the fact that his take on technology was ‘jargon-free, simple and practical—one of the chapters in the book is called “Avoiding Death by PowerPoint”!’

A number of his articles and conference papers were published, and ‘ACER picked up on an article and asked me if I thought it could be expanded into a book.’ David found the 18-month process of putting the book together ‘really quite a painful! I think I wrote at least 10 drafts.’

After the initial approach from ACER, there were drafts and re-drafts in extensive consultation with ACER’s ‘amazingly patient editors.’ Then the manuscript went out to external reviewers, and David says incorporating their suggestions was ‘very difficult. They all gave different and conflicting advice.’ Then there were the ‘marketing imperatives—I was reminded to talk about girls as much as boys, to give examples not just from Victoria but from all states, and not just from my subject perspective, so in the end I used a lot of examples from a variety of classroom situations—in geography and history as well as English.’

And now it’s out, what’s David’s advice for the teachers who will read the book? ‘Remember that it’s not prescriptive: I’m saying this is how I’d do it and how my students responded … but you need to go and find your own method.’