READY FOR THE WORLD
EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY VISION
INTRODUCTION Canberra Grammar School’s Education Technology (EdTech) Vision reflects and forms part of the overall strategic vision for the School. This document refers specifically to the creative use of digital technologies at Canberra Grammar School to provide a flexible and challenging environment, designed to engage contemporary, responsive teachers and learners to meet the needs of the 21st century. CGS aims to be a leader in the use of digital technologies for education within Australia and the world. Technology forms a major part of how the School supports staff to enhance teaching and learning, and acts as a means to achieve improved educational outcomes for students. The School wishes to be open with its vision and the initiatives that develop. The vision has been captured from research together with input from School leaders, teachers and students.
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ALLOWING PEDAGOGY TO DRIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY Canberra Grammar School has a strong tradition of excellent teaching, with classes ranging from early learning to Year 12, and focusing on a broad range of subject areas. The following ideals govern the introduction and use of educational technology within the School. • Utilising technologies, to their potential and as tools, not barriers. • Encouraging device interoperability, allowing staff and students to work through a variety of devices. • Training teachers and staff about effective pedagogical uses of technology, including »» Clarifying what tools are most effective for tasks. »» Conducting one-on-one support projects. »» Training groups for professional development. • Developing improved teaching capabilities through technology, including »» Facilitating tracking and intervention. »» Managing assessment and feedback. »» Enabling teaching that encourages higher-order thinking. • Maintaining reliability, trust and confidence in educational technology. »» Conducting project-based technology implementation and change. »» Providing effective education technology support for staff and students as they explore innovative technologies. »» Investing in high-quality hardware and software infrastructure.
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MOVING TOWARDS A PAPERLESS SCHOOL FOR IMPROVED OUTCOMES AND EFFICIENCY The School aims to reduce its reliance on paper and printing, partly for cost and environmental benefits, but also to improve learning outcomes and to gain process efficiency. CGS delivers effective face-to-face teaching and this is to be enhanced, not replaced. It is recognised that certain activities, such as exam preparation and note-taking, are often best undertaken on paper. The move towards a paperless School is achieved through the following initiatives. • Utilisation of the Learning Management System as the primary student and staff facing system for online interaction, including »» Consistent presentation of course structure online that fits with the classroom experience. »» Document sharing with students. »» Course announcements and formalised communication. »» Holistic, consistent means of assessment and feedback and the potential to experience and deliver their understanding in a variety of electronic formats. • Providing tools for students to access and create electronic text in a supported manner, such as text readers. • Paperless forms for permission, data gathering and school processes. • Communication within the School, with support staff, to parents and the School community.
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ACHIEVING HIGHER-ORDER THINKING Technology within the School can be used to substitute manual teaching approaches, but it can also augment, modify or redefine the way teaching is conducted to improve learning outcomes. The following are initiatives that have been shown to improve learning. • Supporting student time management through electronic means. • Incorporating alternate assessment approaches, including »» Utilising automated formative assessment. »» Providing structured feedback. »» Facilitating student collaborative projects. »» Allowing student peer-to-peer assessment. • Presenting course materials in a wider range of modalities, such as flipped learning. • Incentivising learning using competition and completion goals. • Providing spaces where technologies and devices can be applied, to encourage different ways of thinking.
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PERSONALISING LEARNING At Canberra Grammar School, students are educated as individuals. Technology can assist in delivering personalised learning in the following ways. • Allowing teachers to provide differentiated curricula, responsive to student needs, guiding students along different pathways including learning tasks and assessment, as they demonstrate their understanding. • Providing tools that allow adaptive assessment that automatically adjusts to students’ levels of understanding • Enabling students to build on formalised learning through enquiry-based learning that can lead to demonstrations of their understanding in multiple modalities. • Allowing students, through teachers, to showcase their works to peers, the wider school, parents and the community. • Providing representations of the progress of individuals, to inform teachers, pastoral tutors and students themselves.
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PREPARING FOR A TECHNOLOGY-ENHANCED WORLD Canberra Grammar School aims to prepare students to be intelligent, innovative and international, and to also encourage them to be leaders, teachers and lifelong learners. The School recognises that technology can be used to assist in such preparation. • Providing access to a vast array of information available online, while providing guidance to discern the value of such information. • Offering opportunities to innovate and solve problems through individual and collaborative computer-assisted projects. • Facilitating international thinking through inter-school collaborations and initiatives by providing technologies, such as video conferencing, to engage with other students globally, regardless of physical location. • Encouraging compassion, confidence and creativity through collaboration on written and verbal presentations and by aiding the production of multimedia works. • Measuring key competencies across multiple curricula, to ensure character development. • Supporting the implementation of the Digital Technologies National Curriculum that promotes an understanding of digital systems and data through the use of systems, design and computational thinking. • Facilitating high levels of education in digital technologies and supporting aspirational explorations of cutting-edge technologies, providing students with exposure and experience using technology of the future. • Engaging learners through digitally generated physical and virtual representations of the world around them and allowing them to model that world. • Exposing students to a broad range of technologies within the school that exemplify best practice in business and the community. • Assisting in the management of co-curricular and pastoral activities, including processes associated with mentoring and discipline. • Supporting student, family and community engagement.
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