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Issue 35 - 2018 │T1 │W9

 

Link - access past issues in the archive

2018 T4L Awards now open! News item

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the NSW Department of Education - Stephen Loquet, is pleased to announce the launch of the T4L Awards! These awards will recognise and celebrate leading and innovative practice in the use of technology by a NSW public school or teacher. Leaders in each of the areas will not only be inspiring and leading change in their school community, but will also be leading or participating in online and physical communities of practice that develop the skills of the profession and inspire organisation-wide change. A total of ten different awards reflect the wide variety of ways ICTs are being used to make a difference in schools today in teaching, learning and school administration. The criteria for each award, full details and important dates are at the T4L Awards website. Is there something really special with ICTs happening at your school? Nominate for the awards today!

T4L Awards - click to visit the awards site

New School Website Service News item

New School Website Service (SWS) sites are rolling out each week following the launch of the pioneering Liverpool Girls High School site. This marked the beginning of the state-wide school website transition from the Liferay platform to Adobe Experience Manager. New website builds begin when web authors confirm their place at face-to-face training. Using their new Adobe skills, schools then work closely with the SWS migration team to refine their sites until go-live.

  • Term 1 workshops are in Sydney and Parramatta until Friday 6 April. Book your place by following the process in the invitations from the department, which were emailed to principals and school inboxes on Feb 28 and March 15.
  • Invitations for Term 2 workshops will be sent soon. See the training and migration schedule.

So far, there’s been a broadly favourable response to the new platform, including from Secretary, Mark Scott who called Liverpool Girls High School’s site "elegant and informative" in this tweet. The project team is following feedback closely and will reprioritise development to take into account enhancements that schools are looking for. Connect with us via the School Website Service Support Group on Yammer or via email at swstraining@det.nsw.edu.au.

Claim your school: Google Maps Tip item

Most parents use Google as the first step toward finding a school for their children. Google delivers a quick link to the school’s official website, but as well as that, Google Maps helps them find out exactly how to get there. But Google Maps is much more than just a street directory. It’s a crowd-sourced database of most businesses and places of interest, which also allows for ratings and reviews. But sometimes, the entry for schools contains incorrect information or negative reviews that are left to stand without a response. Did you know that you can “Claim your school” on G-Maps? Once you do that, you’ll have much better control over the data on your school’s entry in Google's database, as well as the ability to manage comments left by visitors. You will need to be signed on using a private GMail account as well as confirming your claim via a phone call.

Click for a larger view

MoCoWs now on the Catalogue! News item

In this term's edition of Technology News for Schools, we excitedly announced the impending release of Mobile Computers
on Wheels - or MoCoWs, for schools and corporate offices. The first of these have started appearing on the DoE Online Catalogue. Just search for mocow at the top.

MoCoWs on DoE Online Catalogue

Aruba iAP 205 end of sale News item

In the Term 4 issue of Technology News for Schools, we announced the release of the new Aruba wireless access points (WAP) - the 300 series. As explained in that article, the latest models are not compatible with the iAP 105 WAPs that are still used in most primary schools. Because of this, in order to extend their existing iAP 105 wireless network, primary schools have been buying the iAP 205s, which are compatible. HP-Aruba have recently announced that they will no longer sell the iAP 205 WAPs after 1 May 2018, although they will continue to support them until 2023. Unlike the 105s though, the 205s are compatible with the 300 series as well. Remember to always contact your local Schools ICT Support Team to get advice on any new wireless installations before purchase.

Minecraft Early Access event Professional Learning item

On Monday 19 March, 120 teachers from schools enrolled in DoE's Minecraft Early Access program attended a great professional learning event at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (the old Powerhouse Museum) at Ultimo. Starting with a welcome from Neal Manegold, the Global Lead for MEE at Microsoft, the day included great Minecraft stories from our participating schools. Two great keynotes from Dr Bron Stuckey and amazing insights from Microsoft's Megan Townes, rounded off an incredible day of inspiration and knowledge sharing. The success of the MEE Early Access is paving the way for some great announcements coming next term!

Teachers in the MEE Early Access Program at the Powerhouse museum

T4L watchLIVE - Adobe Connect Professional Learning item

Remember to join us this Wednesday afternoon for another edition of T4L watchLIVE! This time, we'll be joined by Dr Tim Kitchen from Adobe and the focus will be on effectively using Adobe Connect at school. The T4L team have been regularly using Adobe Connect to present multiple webcasts for schools to participate in, but wouldn't it be great to find out how you can present your own sessions at school? Of course, like all T4L watchLIVE sessions, this event will be recorded and available for playback, but attending live means you can join in the chat and ask questions throughout the session. See you there!

Click to visit the T4L watchLIVE website

New eT4L Apple Caching Servers Information item

For schools planning to procure/install a new Apple Caching Server (ACS), please refer to the currently published advice. However, there are now some updates to this advice. The instructions state that the school is required to separately purchase a MacOS Server licence (cost is around $40) from the Apple MacStore (online). This is required to ensure the ACS being built via eT4L is legally licenced. The Mac Operating System (OS) that the eT4L ACS is built on, called Sierra, does not include a MacOS Server licence, and that is why it needed to be separately purchased. HOWEVER separately purchasing a MacOS Server licence is no longer required following an agreement with Apple. The instructions and the auto-generated email you receive reminding you to buy this licence will soon be removed from the eT4L ACS build process.

ICT Thought of the day Fun item

Hieroglyphs or GIFs - The more we change, the more we stay the same.

Happy Easter and see you next term!

Won't be long now before the end of term 1. Wishing all our readers a safe and happy Easter and a restful school holidays before we do it all again next term.

Last chance to get to Newcastle! Professional Learning item

We are really wanting to make this great new conference roadshow for schools happen all over NSW. But before we can do that from term 3 onward, we have to ensure that our first event, interactED: Newcastle - is a resounding success! For all of our schools in the Hunter area (and others prepared to travel), it will be a fantastic day of networking and learning, organised into three streams. Click the link above for the complete agenda, outlining the three streams and a link to register your place. The registration fee of only $35 covers morning tea, lunch and event costs. Join the T4L team for an amazing day. Bookings CLOSE this week!

Click to vist the interactED info page

School email name change News item

From the start of Term 2 2018, all NSW Public School email account Display Names will change for the School and Admin shared mailboxes. Whenever you send an email from either of these accounts, the recipient sees the sender's Display Name at the top of the email - for example:

  • Current school display name: School, Bennettrd-p
  • New: Bennett Road Public School
  • Current admin display name: Admin, Alstonvill-h
  • New: Alstonville High School Admin

These changes reflect the official school name and will help to more clearly identify each school in their email correspondence. Also, Display Names in the Global Address List (GAL) will change accordingly. This makes it easier to search for a school to send an email to. NOTE: email addresses will NOT be changing.

Students emailing their teacher Tip item

When a student doesn’t know their teacher’s email address, but wishes to send them an email, they might refer to their Google Classroom. There, they’ll quickly see that their teacher’s Google account is first.lastname@education.nsw.gov.au - so of course, they’ll try using that. But as we all know, that ISN’T the teacher’s email domain. All teacher email is @det.nsw.edu.au. If teachers wish to use email with their students, it’s best to:

  • Send an email to your entire class from your Outlook webmail with these instructions in the body of the email message: “To quickly be able to send me an email in the future, please REPLY to this email, telling me what you like best about school. Doing this will automatically add my email to your Google Contacts. Next time, you can easily email me by typing my last name into the TO box.”

STEMSHARE update News item

Following the brief introduction in our last issue, over the past month, the STEMSHARE team have been working closely with six expert teachers. Together, we are creating a library of STEM- focused learning challenges. These challenges will help teachers and students across the state to make the most of the equipment that will be sent out in the STEMSHARE Kits. On Tuesday 13 March, the STEMSHARE team welcomed some students and their teachers into ITD, to trial a variety of learning challenges and test how they engage and challenge young learners. We captured their feedback in this quick video:

Click to play this video

There are some truly amazing young people and teachers in our schools! In coming weeks we'll be welcoming high school teachers into ITD, who will be assisting in the development of STEMSHARE challenges aimed at their students.

USB Sticks in schools Link item

The unreliability of USB flash drives (or sticks) is well known, yet still there are staff and students who regularly rely on them to transport their important work files between school and home. Some even use them as their primary storage device! The problem is, USB sticks can fail, get lost and also be a transport for malware. Their best consumer role is for file backup and for sporadic use. The obvious alternative is to use your freely provided GSuite Drive or Office 365 OneDrive cloud storage which is easily accessible wherever connection to the internet is available. To help advise staff and students at your school, why not print out some copies of this poster on A3 or A4 and place them in appropriate locations?

USB sticks in schools

Facebook data privacy Information item

Following the world-wide news articles about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, there is no confirmation at this time of specific accounts affected. The Commonwealth Government have released general advice for all Australians to check their personal Facebook and other social media privacy settings. Staff responsible for NSW DoE and school social media accounts, should also be reminded to check the privacy settings of these profiles to ensure only relevant data is shared.

Orange Sanyo data projectors Tip item

It's amazing to think that many schools still have working orange Sanyo data projectors shining in their classrooms. While these projectors are now 8 to 10 years old, their life can be further extended through some regular maintenance and know-how. This 3-page guide, also linked by clicking the image below, will ensure your school gets the most out of these old workhorses. However, eventually there comes a time when there's no option but replacement. Many factors come into play when deciding what to replace them with. Schools have asked this question on Yammer, with many useful answers.

Orange Sanyo projector maintenance advice

Have a Voice - video celebration Professional Learning item

Following great success with public schools in Victoria in 2017, Adobe and the NSW Department of Education are bringing their Have a Voice project to NSW this year! This video-making celebration is open to all public schools, for students in years 4 through 9. The task is to work as a group of students (minimum of two per group) to produce a short, G-rated video story (up to two minutes long) or animation (up to one minute) about a topic or issue that is important to the group. This program provides students with an authentic audience to express their voice and an opportunity to enhance their collaboration, creative problem solving and digital communication skills. Free teacher workshops are available to help you mentor your interested student teams. Click the image below for more details and to register your school's involvement.

Click to find out more and register your student teams today!

New HP Notebooks coming! News item

Following the rapid take-up of new HP notebooks through last year's T4L rollout, increased school discretionary purchases and the NAPLAN readiness test, HP's stocks for education were depleted by early 2018. But new models are now on their way and expected on the DoE Online Catalogue before the end of this term. New base and intermediate models will join the still available advanced model, with all three offering touch capability! Pricing will be provided upon release.

New HP Notebook models coming soon for schools

More news.T4L in Week 3

Information Technology Directorate publishes news.T4L three times each term. Remember to share each issue with your staff!

NSW DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE