AISNSW ICT Management and Leadership Conference

Jen Sharman Director - Knowledge Services Roshan De Silva Dean of Digital Learning and Innovation Karlo Karlovic ICT Integration Project Manager

The 17th annual AISNSW ICT Management and Leadership conference provided an opportunity to hear from keynote speakers focusing on future directions in education. The first keynote was from Dr Catherine Ball, who focused on the future of education and the age of the never-graduating student. The second keynote was presented by Glen Gore, former Amazon Web Services Chief Architect, who talked about navigating the changing technology landscape and leveraging cloud technology. The third keynote was presented by staff from two schools that had recently replaced their School Management System. It was an honest and detailed summary of their experiences, positive and negative, and highlighted the importance of collaborating with staff and having an in-depth knowledge of requirements and expectations. The conference also provided a valuable opportunity to both collaborate with peers and technology suppliers and join sessions that promoted new ideas, technical skill development, and shared learning experiences. This year, several members of the Knowledge Services Department were fortunate to attend the conference held at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Roshan De Silva (Dean of Digital Learning and Innovation), Karlo Karlovic (Implementation Project Manager), and Jennifer Sharman (Director of Knowledge Services) collaborated with Andrew Merrick, a consultant at King’s who works with Knowledge Services to automate manual processes, to present a workshop titled, “Automating Tasks in Canvas: Designing Business Rules.” Andrew has worked with Roshan and Karlo to “surface” Canvas assessment tasks in the student leave workflow so that a parent can see the tasks that their son will be missing when on leave. As part of this framework, Canvas assessment tasks are also surfaced in Trumba, the School’s calendar, to ensure that academic staff have visibility of other departmental tasks when setting an assessment task. Students and parents also have access to the assessment tasks in Trumba and this assists in planning and time management. The King’s session was well attended, and resources were shared with workshop participants who raised some worthwhile questions and discussion.

AISNSW ICT Management and Leadership Conference

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The modern technology landscape allows for a multitude of advanced system Integrations. But how does data retention and cybersecurity fit into this efficient but often scary world? Three workshops from the 17th annual AISNSW ICT Management and Leadership Conference covered exactly that.

Integrations with external systems means the collection and collation of data is made much easier than ever before. However, once collected, the deletion of outdated and unnecessary data is often left on the wayside, which shouldn’t be the case. Four experienced software engineers, teachers, and eLearning coordinators covered exactly this. The workshop Digital integrators Panel: Sharing Your Process [and] Vision led by Emma Lord, Head of Software Engineering and Digital Technologies at Emanuel School, posed that data which fulfil their useful life within the organisation needs to be proactively monitored and assessed regularly. Data that are kept on internal and external systems may give unlawful and malicious access to a large volume of private and important data with ease and can be easily avoided. One way to mitigate the danger of data leakage is to enforce data retention policies. Charles Alexander, the Legal Counsel for AISNSW, led the workshop, Addressing Privacy Principles Through Data Retention, and covered this topic with a panel of industry experts.

Privacy can be met through informed data retention policies that include deletion of data once the organisation deems them unnecessary and safe to erase while still fulfilling compliance and regulatory obligations. Such policies make the “reward” of attacking an organisation much less attractive to cyber criminals. Other effective measures to ensure cybersecurity include the Zero Trust architecture. This architecture requires constant user verification, the principle of least privilege, and strong network monitoring. Implementing these measures across a school, which, although a challenging undertaking, is a worthy one.

One of the most exciting presentations was delivered by Dr Susan O’Donnell and Adrian Raynor. Their presentation focused on delivering the Australian Curriculum through virtual reality (VR). In taking up this challenge, the Queensland Department of Education VR Learning and Design Hub based at Bentley Park College, Cairns, has designed VR ready-for- use modules that fully align with the Australian Curriculum units and has collaborated closely with schools to ensure that they are ready and equipped to use the units effectively.

Despite the past limitations of VR, such as being difficult to operate and expensive to set up, it is now readily available. The current educational climate has changed and progressed as technology becomes ubiquitous. Educators realise VR may represent a challenge for adults, including teachers, but it is a natural environment for students and one that requires implementation. For young learners, the transition to harness the special characteristics of VR to enhance and enrich learning has proved to be a simple evolution, especially in the context of the Australian Curriculum. However, the use of VR for learning and teaching does not rule out the possibility that all other educational tools should, or could, be discarded. The traditional tools of textbooks, videos, PowerPoint, and whiteboards still have relevance in the classroom. VR cannot replace the classroom setting that still requires direct instruction, discussion, and collaboration; however, what it does do, is provide an immersive experience that cannot be replicated using traditional technology. Therefore, by providing a multi-sensory experience, VR has its own unique features, which may range from the passivity of a 360-degree video to the active-rich experience provided by user-directed and emotionally connected immersive technology, with users entering an environment where they can interact with, respond to, and solve, stimuli.

The design and implementation of VR units of work linked to the Australian Curriculum has yielded better retention and engagement in students, which has translated to greater levels of deep understanding and eventual assessment success.

Ultimately, fully immersive VR technology creates a multi-sensory experience where the user is autonomous and actively engaged with a sense of “being there,” whilst being firmly grounded in the real world.