edna, digital education and me
Notschool.net Oz - learning free from time and geography
Notschool.net is internationally renowned as a
successful and sustainable online intervention program option
for young people most seriously disengaged from classroom learning.
Radio
National interview (mp3)
Could it work here? The following is a possible scenario of the Australian Notschool.net program in practice, loosely based upon the U.S. experience with Notschool.net in 2009.
The scenario is part of a joint proposal being put to senior
government
education
officials next month.
2011 Notschool.net Australia Scenario
An Australian version of Notschool.net is established with a distinct name and profile. The program is fully costed, and attracts supplementary funding from government, philanthropic and corporate sources for start-up costs in the first two years.
A governance group representing the interests of project partners is established with communication mechanism to AEEYSOC and other education forums. The pilot draws upon best available research and practice for social inclusion in learning in the Australian context.
A shared staff and student world class virtual learning environment (VLE) is established that builds upon the UK/US experience and jurisdiction capability and infrastructure.
Due to the flexible working conditions, the program attracts quality teachers, many of whom are not currently teaching. Part-time mentors participate in inductions and training with local and international staff, mostly conducted online. The project partners and mentoring staff establish a professional learning and resources online network with their Australian peers and with the UK and US Inclusion Trust.
An initial cohort of at least 100 young people across three regions is enrolled in the program beginning 2011, evolving in response to local needs and growing to 500 enrolments at the end of the year.
The young people referred to the program have been identified as seriously disengaged from education and mostly been out of school for more than three months. One of the regions includes a significant proportion of Indigenous students.
Young people are referred to the program through local school and community networks where existing alternative education programs are unsuitable or not available. Local partnerships are established with community service organisations providing more holistic support (such as welfare agencies and Youth Connections providers), and with families.
By starting with interests that young people self-identify, the young people quickly re-engage with learning through the project-based approach. A distinction is not drawn between formal and informal learning. Skilled mentors (usually in the same location) and curriculum specialists support highly individualised learning plans and match to school and VET accreditation frameworks. As their confidence grows they present their learning and projects with their interstate and overseas peers, and diverse online communities of interest appear.
Later in 2012, opportunities for new program partners and learner cohorts to subsequently join the project become available. The intervention program is available for implementation directly by jurisdictions or purchased through an accredited service provider.
Evaluation findings lead to improvements to the program and extension into new regions in 2012.
There is wider interest by schools and school authorities on how
elements of program may be an effective learning for other student groups.
Tags:
inclusion
notschool.net
Posted at 12:26PM Feb 11, 2010
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
Comments[2]
Deck chairs and future directions
Over the last month there has been a significant restructure of edna and career services within the managing agency Education.au.
Alan Bevan, former manager of The Le@ning Federation has taken up the appointment to manage several Education.au business units - Education and Training (including edna) and Career Technologies.
In the short-medium term, Education.au and edna services will be business as usual.
I'll be providing short-term support to the transition and future transformation of edna
I have started a new position within Education.au to address social and digital inclusion. One of the first projects is an Australian pilot of the UK Notschool.net project for marginalised young people - see www.educationau.edu.au/inclusion
An update on the outcomes of edna consultations, re-positioning of edna and me.edu.au services, and news on digital inclusion work will appear shortly.
edna, me and digital education has been a fantastic journey working with extraordinary people!
Cheers,
Mark
Tags:
edna inclusion
Posted at 12:27PM Aug 05, 2009
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
edna
futures presentation now available (slimmed down 2.5
mB ppt).
The presentation accompanies the edna
futures discussion paper as part of national ICT in education
consultation forums.
Tags:
edna2010
consultation
Posted at 12:40PM Jun 08, 2009
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
Comments[2]
edna futures discussion paper available for feedback
A series of consultation forums for Australian
education and training authorities and practitioners are
scheduled over the next two months.
The purpose of the forums is to help shape future business
directions for Education.au, edna and me to maximise the return on
investment for these services.
- What current and planned edna services are of most value?
- Are there areas of unmet need that edna and me could support?
- Future touch points between your education network and Education.au?
An
edna
2010 futures discussion paper has been prepared
canvassing your views on:
- target audiences for most value
- priorities for provision of digital content, tools and services
- communications and engagement
- funding and governance
Some of the identified priority areas for discussion:
- ICT needs for early years education
- ICT proficiency for pre-service and early career teachers
- 'demand-driven' resources - hot topics and just-in-time content
- building on me.edu.au professional networking and collaborative spaces
- Professional learning support and resources, particularly for educators beginning to engage with technology for learning
- ICT innovations and trials to critically evaluate new technologies
for learning
These forums will build upon the 2008 round of advice on ICT in education issues - see 2008 consultation report.
----------------------------------------------------------
Schedule of forums to date:
- 13 May: National Catholic Education Commission
- 1 June: ACT VET
- 2 June: ACT schools
- 3 June: Association of Independent Schools
- 9 June: WA schools and VET
- 9 June: WA Catholic education
- 11 June: NSW schools and VET
- 15 June: SA Catholic education
- 16 June: SA schools
- 18 June: SA VET
- 18 June: Tas schools and VET
- 19 June: Tas Catholic education and independent
- 23 June: Vic schools and VET
- 30 June: Qld VET
- 7 July: Qld schools
- 20 July: NT Catholic education
- 21 July: NT schools
Plus discussions with higher education representatives.
Thanks to all state and territory facilitators for helping with forum arrangements!
edna
2010 futures discussion paper - direct comments
and feedback also welcome (contact details are on the paper).
Tags:
consultation
Posted at 04:52PM May 26, 2009
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
Comments[1]
Below is a graph of percentage of edna and me users who responded 'very useful' or 'useful' when asked 'How useful are the following edna and me services to you?'
Survey now closed - thanks for all your responses.
The prizewinner will be notified this week and further results highlights will be available shortly.
Tags:
survey
Posted at 04:59PM May 21, 2009
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
5 minute edna & me user satisfaction survey
The edna team have commenced business planning for
directions and developments for the latter part of this year and 2010.
Your feedback on edna and me.edu.au services will help planning and make these services as useful as possible to you.
Take out 5 minutes to go into the prize draw for a $100 book or music voucher.
Please promote to survey in your networks to get as broad feedback as possible.
[Read More]
Tags:
feedback
market research
Posted at 11:48AM Apr 07, 2009
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
edna recently commissioned market
research with first year teachers about how they
currently use ICT in their teaching, and how their pre-service
training prepared them for using ICT.
The focus group participants were mostly Gen Y from Adelaide
and Melbourne.
Albeit limitations of focus group method, these early career teachers:
- were 'digital natives' with much greater reliance on ICT than their more experienced colleagues;
- use the web much more in lesson planning than directly in their teaching - Google and Wikipedia predominate;
- mostly described their pre-service ICT training as patchy and inconsistent;
- experienced similar barriers to previous teacher market research - limited school infrastructure, site blocking;
- advised owners of websites to 'keep it simple'.
Some lessons for future planning of me.edu.au and other collaborative services - somewhat surprising from the Facebook generation were reservations about sites that require logins and disclosing information to their colleagues.
Further research on opportunities to support beginning teachers is scheduled for this quarter.
Beginning teachers and ICT market research report
Despite the varying situation in the classroom and the staff room, it was clear that virtually all these first year teachers relied totally on their computers for their own professional needs, especially preparing for their lessons.
edna market research report
Practically all my preparatory work involves me using my computer - mostly it's getting ideas off the Internet.
Our generation grew up with computers. We used them at school ourselves, so we've got an idea what it's like from a student perspective.
quotes from participants
The Australian government is committed to work with the Deans of Education to ensure that all new student teachers achieve competence in the use of ICT. From 2009, new teaching students will have to attain appropriate skills in this area before they are able to graduate.
Australian
Government Digital Education Revolution Policy Statement
Tags:
beginningteacher
market research
Posted at 05:10PM Feb 03, 2009
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
Are young teachers more ICT savvy?
In March 2008, edna commissioned market research into ICT use by Australian educators.
The graph above shows how a sample of 1167 Australian educators have assessed their capability into the use of ICT to support their teaching. Each band shows the percentage of educators with similar levels of teaching experience who fall into one of the 4 categories. Findings include:
- ICT proficiency is much greater for teachers with over 2 years experience than those in the first 2 years of their career
- overall ICT proficiency levels are similar for educators of all experience levels after 2 years practice - 68-70% compared to 43% of those in their first 2 years (proficient or transforming practice)
- a greater proportion of teachers who are further into their career (10-20 years plus) rated their proficiency as transforming practice
- late career teachers also use the Internet more frequently - 89% use the Internet daily compared to 74% in the first 5 years of their practice
- the sample group is likely to be slightly biased towards those
with greater ICT knowledge
This research appears to dispel conventional wisdom that new teachers are more ICT-savvy than their more experienced counterparts.
The 4-scale ICT capability rating loosely maps to ICT capability frameworks developed by Australian education systems - see edna ICT professional learning frameworks and resources theme page
edna is currently investigating the specific ICT needs of beginning teachers and how ICT support and service may better support their needs. We will report on this research shortly.
| Rating | < 2 years | 2-5 years | 5-10 years | 10-20 years | > 20 years |
| Foundation | 22% | 7% | 5% | 8% | 6% |
| Emergent | 35% | 25% | 24% | 23% | 27% |
| Proficient | 38% | 43% | 44% | 40% | 33% |
| Transformational | 5% | 25% | 26% | 29% | 33% |
| Use of the Internet every day | 74% | 74% | 90% | 84% | 90% |
Which of the following statements best describes your current use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in your current work or teaching practice?
Foundation - developing my ICT skills
Emergent - using ICT to support teaching and learning
Proficient - confident in use of ICT to support learning outcomes
Transforming practice - new ways of engaging students within
and beyond the classroom/learning environment
[Read More]
Tags:
market research
Posted at 04:37PM Nov 01, 2008
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
Stakeholder advice and recommendations
Advice and recommendations from national
consultation (excludes higher education):
-
education.au and edna are well placed to extend
their national leadership and brokerage role in areas including:
- national and international innovations and trends in ICT in
learning - digital pedagogies, content, standards and architectures
- ICT in education policies, exemplars, cost-benefits and risks -
communicated in an accessible and timely way to enable
informed decision-making at the local level
- Support national knowledge sharing - convene forums on key
challenges and point to lessons learned in other jurisdictions or internationally
- Advocacy for reforms in access and pricing of broadband
provision for education
- Greater focus on communication strategies with education
practitioners (eg professional learning support or provision of
tools) with a parallel strategy to stakeholders on benefits and
risks of national services (eg employee productivity gains, lessons
learned from innovations that may be applicable to jurisdictions)
- Provide ICT and educators market research data disaggregated by sector
- Bring edna and other national services closer to the point of
delivery - through links on local portals, embedded web services
(eg targeted RSS feeds), modules or code that can be integrated
into local systems
- Enhance the presentation layer of edna to improve usability
and appeal (a priority in 2008-09 edna work plan)
- Review the collection focus and points of difference of edna
repository services and more recent collection initiatives such as
The Le@rning Federation
(schools), Learning Object Repository Network (VET), Australian Learning and
Teaching Exchange (higher education) and public search tools
and repositories
- Reform the governance structure of edna to achieve greater engagement of stakeholders in determining service priorities (underway in 2008-09 edna work plan)
Tags:
consultation
edna2010
Posted at 12:32PM Sep 12, 2008
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
Support for current edna and education.au initiatives
Common feedback on edna and education.au intiatives
include the following:
- Widespread support for the www.me.edu.au professional
networking initiative as both a professional resource and potential
as a teaching tool
- High levels of support for edna community spaces (especially Groups) where they supplement
local provision of support for educators, and particularly where
they facilitate collaboration and networks across borders, sectors
and jurisdictions. An exception to this view was expressed by one
schooling jurisdiction that Groups should be provided on a
fee-for-service basis
- Support for upcoming web conferencing facility (Wimba Classroom)
albeit with strategies to manage demand
- High value placed upon safe and spam-free places for educators to experiment and evaluate emerging technologies for learning - most jurisdictions are not well-placed to provide these types of sandpit environments themselves
-
Widespread support for the development of tools and
services that can be provided locally and/or integrated into
jurisdictional and institutional infrastructure
- High levels of support for facilitation of collaboration across
sectors and jurisdictions where common issues relating to using
technologies to enhance teaching and learning require national and
strategic conversations.
- Strong support was expressed for leadership in the use of emerging
technologies to support educational delivery and professional
learning and for provision of evidence based research into the value
and use of technology in learning.
- Provision of seminars and leading speakers was strongly supported.
Tags:
edna2010
education.au
consultation
Posted at 01:01PM Sep 11, 2008
by Mark Tranthim-Fryer |
Mark Tranthim-Fryer
- Location
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Organisation
- Education Services Australia
- Sector
- More than one sector
- Role
- Administrator
- Communities
-
Aust Digital Revolution, community capacity building, digital inclusion, Digital Storytelling, Inclusive Technology, market research, me-edu-au, OpenID, Social Networking
