26 May 2010

cLc to roll out to every public school

26 May 2010 | johnboy

[First filed: May 25, 2010 @ 14:34]

Andrew Barr has announced that the “Connected Learning Community” (cLc), currently being trialled at eight schools (Hawker College, Lake Tuggeranong College, Stromlo High School, Alfred Deakin High School, Campbell High School, Weetangera Primary School, Ngunnawal Primary School and Wanniassa Hills Primary School) is going live to the rest of the public school system next year.

“The cLc is revolutionising teaching in ACT schools,” Minister for Education and Training Andrew Barr said today. “It will allow students to replay a lesson by podcast at home, use video links to practice speaking a language with a student at another school and have the option of completing their maths homework online. They will also be able to log in from home to double check their homework requirements and create online portfolios of work. Students will be able to learn anywhere, any time.”

The potential for parents to see for themselves what homework has been set is revolutionary enough.

The thought of every lesson being podcast is intriguing though.

Bad enough for a new teacher to lose control of a class. How much worse to have every student, those student’s friends, and families, be able to re-live the magic moments?

Any readers been involved in the trials? Want to share the experience?

UPDATE: Andrew Barr’s office has clarified that podcasting will be at the teacher’s discretion:

It’s up to the teacher what is recorded and stored The system could be useful for studetns when they’re away sick or when a lesson deals with concepts that are hard to grasp – the replay can help students better understand without having to go back to the teacher.

Cunning parents can now track teacher performance by the number of lessons published one supposes.

FURTHER UPDATE: Well we’ve had one piece of student feedback on the system which warrants front page attention:

#1
ash.wello
19:53, 25 May 10
i’m a current student at hawker college in year 12, today i watched mr barr in my library give a report on the new Connected Learning Community. i can tell you right now. nobody is interested.. about 50 percent of students at my school actually use the computers and the other half have never logged onto my classes the whole time they have been here, we just don’t care really. i’m sure parents will begin caring once it is annouced in newsletters that they can start keeping track of their children’s homework. but how many will? and what about the small percentage of people who still don’t even have a computer at home. i think we are too dependant on technology, and the minutes my fellow students and i have spent watching our teachers struggle to use the smartboards and seen machines play up have actually eaten into our learning time. don’t get me wrong, the whole catching up when your sick thing is great, but its just the same as coming back to school and collecting the worksheets you missed out on. classes before us graduated without this help so i really don’t think its needed.

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vg8:16 pm 26 Sep 10

What ever happened to teachers teaching shit at schools?

All the great minds that designed this never saw the need for it during their schooling. Leave your kids alone to so this stuff online at home and you’ll walk back into the room with them on Facebook or chatting online to another ‘cute 16yo girl’ who’s actually an overweight, middle-aged man in the UK

Velianth4:20 pm 26 Sep 10

Even though this was put up a while back, I just thought I’d throw my two cents in.
The website is completely useless.

There are links for “To-do” and “Tasks” which in my mind are the same thing, yet to get to your classes, you need to go via “Show my Community Groups” which is a link at the very bottom of the pannel. You can go in via the “Faculties” page; though handilly when you log in, you’re not automatically redirected to the college homepage where you can find that link, you’re shown “Welcome to the ACT DET Connected Learning Community” and a bunch of links.

When my IT teacher tried to upload some cisco journals for us to access at home if we needed them, semesters one, two and three went in fine. Semester four not only wasn’t uploaded, but it was deleted from the student common drive so we couldn’t even access them at school. This is as opposed to something like MyClasses, where in six years of using it, I haven’t seen or heard of my teachers encounting such a failure.

The website is very, very poorly designed. My Yr. 10 Website Design class had higher standards than this site exhibits. CLC was waste of time to design and roll out, and will be a bigger waste of time to fix.

James-T-Kirk5:32 pm 01 Jun 10

Just so you know – *now* marks the time when the old, snide JTK is back.

What Rubbish!

James-T-Kirk5:32 pm 01 Jun 10

Wow – This looks like a really good thing, and a really bad thing at the same time.

Firstly, those who have known me for a long time may be surprised – this is a serious post… I am JTK, not an impostor, really!

there are so many facets!

Firstly, transferring a University based online system where all of the content is online is amazing — When a teacher leaves, the IP that they have created for the class will continue to be online – Normally, when a teacher leaves, all of their class notes go with them, so the course is re-created by whatever new teacher appears. As this progresses, once the course has been created properly, we won’t need the actual teachers to expend effort to make classes. Evidently, the BSSS won’t allow podcasts, but that may change. Some teachers will love this, others will hate this.

WHOOT – a move from ‘school based curriculum’ where the teachers design a class based on their interpretation of the BSSS guidelines, to something more standard.

This leads to a significant positive, the class is able to be reviewed independently – that way, we can identify under performing teachers and provide them with assistance to fix whatever their problems are.

Now – there are a couple of interesting artifacts;

Given the recent changes to the school leaving age from 15 to 17, under the Learn or Earn initiative, the traditional role of year 11 and 12 has changed. 1) There is a child care role just like in High School where kids are expected to be physically at school, and 2) there is the education role, where kids are expected to learn stuff.

Previously, Year 11 and 12 was simply about learning, and those kids who didn’t want to be there were off at the mall, or down the coast, starting their budging careers.

How can this program provide benefit to kids when there is a *need* for them to be in class, or they are marked as absent. Remember – too many absences converts to a v-grade. And under the Earn or Learn initiative even if a kid has V-graded, they have to have their bum on a seat….. I would love to see an environment that fosters flexibility, so that the kid can do the check out job, as well as learn, flexibily – Like the CIT allows. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Another interesting issue, will be the transition from class being at school from 8 – 3 pm (or whatever the local timings are) to an environment where school is 8-3 and online time is an additional 5 hours on top of that? Again, the BSSS has stipulated that there is an amount of time that is required to be expended, in exchange for a credit point. In the face to face model, it is something like 90% of 200 hours. This was important to ensure that a kid couldn’t simply load themselves up and get Year 11 and 12 over with in a year.

As we transition to an online model, the kids are still expected to be face to face for the 90% of 200 hours, *and* they are expected to expend work online – Again – that could be really great, but in the hands of an inappropriate teacher, it could turn a class into 20 hours of face to face, and 200 hours of online time – Remember school based curriculum, means that the individual teacher creates the classes – NOT THE DEPARTMENT, so there is no standardisation, just BSSS Guidelines and moderation.

Then there is the issue of the natural transition from working face to face with the kids – to working face to face and online – I hope that the teachers don’t end up in an environment where they do the face to face work during school hours, and the online work at home… That could comfortably change a working day from 8 hours to 16 hours.

Finally, there is the standard issue of what happens when a teacher is particularly enthusiastic about the technology, and a child does not have access to the required technology to access the system at home at 9pm on a Sunday night. We here on this forum are particularly literate, and can’t fathom a world where people don’t have IT. What measures are being put in place to protect the disadvantaged kids? In this instance, JTK would normally say “Use a public library”, but as we transition from a world where kids could work on an assignment the night before it was due, using a pen and paper (We have all done that – admit it), to a world where the kid *has* to use a computer, then equality issues become important.

In all – it will be a very interesting transition, and I hope that it is a positive one.

Gerry-Built10:00 pm 26 May 10

dvaey said :

A friends kids, aged 10 and 12 recently came home talking about how theyd setup a facebook account through school ‘to keep up with their homework and their teachers’.

Highly unlikely. Facebook is blocked in schools (even for staff), and MyClasses would provide that functionality (though parental access to MyClasses is problematic at best). DET has made it very, very clear that teachers are not to “friend” students on FB (under any circumstances).

It is possible that students have used a proxy server to access FB at school, but highly unlikely that it was a teacher that asked them to (and in clear breach of both the student and teacher Computer Use Agreements they would have signed). You can be reassured that this is not widespread (if indeed, it is happening at all).

Gerry-Built9:40 pm 26 May 10

cLc is just another tool. It will be almost entirely up to the teacher how much they chose to put on their class pages. Some teachers use the current MyClasses a lot, others simply put their subject outlines up (and sometimes that is all the subject needs up).

dvaey6:42 pm 26 May 10

Gerry-Built said :

p1 said :

ash.wello said :

…and what about the small percentage of people who still don’t even have a computer at home…..[?]

That’s OK, isn’t the government providing a laptop for every student?

In the ACT (if the system ever actually works out) the laptops (notebook-type) will be provided to schools for use in classes… at least that’s what I heard…

I thought I heard that basically parents can buy their child a laptop and claim it back 100% as a tax deduction, so not quite free laptop, but you get reimbursed for the purchase.

J Dawg5:02 pm 26 May 10

amarooresident3 said :

As far as I can tell students will still have to attend class.

They’ve always been required to attend class, but go for a walk around any of the town centres during the school day and you’ll find plenty of students who are supposed to be in class (and yes – plenty who don’t have class and are allowed to roam around).

My point still stands, why give them an extra reason to wag?

Jim Jones4:06 pm 26 May 10

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Let me guess – you were wearing warm slippers when you wrote that…?

I’ve told twice now that if you want to watch me you have to subscribe to my webcam. No more through-the-curtains freebies.

http://www.crankyoldmanyellingatthosedamnkids.com

A Noisy Noise Annoys An Oyster3:44 pm 26 May 10

Didn’t they try this once before, letting kids write blogs on the school’s website? And they had to shut it down because of cyberbullying and defamation concerns. What makes Andrew Barr think it won’t happen again this time around?

dvaey1:13 pm 26 May 10

While this comment might seem slightly off-topic for this discussion, I figure its worth throwing out there. A friends kids, aged 10 and 12 recently came home talking about how theyd setup a facebook account through school ‘to keep up with their homework and their teachers’.

Now, this raises a couple of interesting questions. Firstly, who in their right mind allows 10 and 12 year-olds unfettered access to the internet (and facebook) at school. Most organisations dont even allow their staff to access these sites, but apparently schools think its appropriate to not only allow students access to these sites, but to (apparently) enter false information to get around the minimum age limit of 13 imposed by these sites. The parents of these children are hardly computer or internet savvy, so when the kids came home and told mum n dad the school setup facebook so they can do homework at home, the parents were worried but trusted in what the school had done (until I explained the issues to said parents). The parents are trying to stop their children associating with problem children from their schools and just general other nonsense that happens on facebook, but while they can control their kids access at home, they have no control over the kids use at school, which is fairly extensive.

Who within our ACT education system decided it was a good idea to get kids as young as 10, signed up to facebook, underage and without informing or even gaining parental consent. While this might be a different issue to the clc topic discussed above, I can see a link when kids get access to internet-connected computers at school for whatever reason, things like this will start to happen. How long until an ACT child is the target of a child/bestiality predator, through their school-supplied facebook profile?

The school involved in this case, is a fairly large south-canberra public school, but the kids inform us that ‘everyone is doing it’, meaning every school, not just every kid in the school.

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