I have had a couple of exciting meetings this week (30 October 2007) with IT consultants from the Department of Education regarding the vision for ICT and it’s integration into the state schools. This is supposedly what’s happening and where it’s all heading.
* Depending on the technical ability and the technical enthusiasm shown from schools, every classroom will be provided with an interactive whiteboard (IWB) and video conferencing units (VC units) within the next 6 – 8 months (sometime in 2008).
* The current student email portal will change to make it more student focused and student friendly. It will be more simple than what it currently is. It will reflect the social aspect of current popular webmail providers, similar to a Hotmail setup, allowing real time chat etc. It will replicate what is currently happening in the real world.
* Connected Classrooms are going to increase every child’s current 2MB storage to 10MB with a student ‘Backpack’ storage allocation. This will allow students and teachers to access their 'space' anywhere.
* The Department is going to set up a similar program to YouTube. It will most probably be known as DetTube, where students can upload school (educational) based images and video. You will only be able to upload using your DET password and login to reduce instances of cyber bullying and the uploading of inappropriate images.
* Students around the state will be surveyed to find out what they like in ICT to help guide the Department in establishing what learning tools to implement into the school e.g., wikis, chat, social pages (web 2 tools). These tools will be made available to students and be driven by the students (user).
* The current staff portal has an ‘In Principal’ page which will be updated regularly with new software, learning tools, lessons and ideas to keep teachers informed of what’s happening. One idea is for schools to have several ICT Coordinators (1 per 5 staff) to share the responsibilty of keeping updated on changes and then in-service other staff members.
* The staff portal will have online Microsoft courses for the training and development of teachers.
It was also mentioned numerous times that every school will need to begin educating students and staff on the Acceptable User Policy (AUP) for mobile phone use, as mobile phones are being seen as a major learning tool that will most likely be used by every student in the classroom by 2010 (within 3 years).
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2 comments:
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