2019 T4L Rollout kicks off week 7!

All schools can expect to receive their T4L Rollout notification email via the Principal’s and the School email accounts next week! A two-week window for placing your school's order will then be opened from Monday 9 Sept to Friday 20 Sept. The notification email will include:

the school's allocation of T4L units

links to the equipment available in this year's rollout

how to access the ordering portal and place your order

contact details for your school's local T4L representative

Start planning now! Consider your school’s device requirements, and the ways you might enhance your students' access to the school's technology resources. This year, the T4L Rollout includes devices from Acer, Apple, Dell, HP & Microsoft!

ICT PLUS+ with delegation!

With the T4L Rollout notification due next week, here's a reminder to use ICT PLUS+ to aid in your decision-making. We announced ICT PLUS+ in our previous issue. You'll be pleased to hear that AMU delegation is now available with some temporary restrictions. Right now, if you are delegated access through AMU for more than one school, you’ll only see the first school you were given access to. Soon we will release a school-picker for people who have been delegated access to multiple schools’ ICT PLUS+ sites. Also, relieving principals whose principals are absent will need to log a ticket with EDConnect to gain access. ICT PLUS+ is in a cycle of continuous development. If you’d like to hear about new features and improvements as well as make your own suggestions, join the ICT PLUS+ group on Yammer. NOTE: ICT PLUS+ sources data from multiple existing systems. If you find that an aspect of data in ICT PLUS+ doesn't seem accurate, contact us directly at ictplus-devteam@det.nsw.edu.au and we'll escalate it to the relevant ITD team(s).

Delegate access to ICT PLUS+ via AMU - ICP

User Logon Experience delayed

This scheduled change to implement Single Sign On (SSO) on 19 August was delayed. As a result, the standard logon change requiring all staff to logon using their email address scheduled for 26 August, is also delayed. Information Technology Directorate has decided to delay the release to further enhance the solution. This is in line with our ongoing efforts to improve the delivery of ICT services to all of the department’s staff and students. No change around the User Logon Experience project will occur at this time, with new dates to be announced. If your site posted notices of the changes, please remove those to avoid confusion. A new date for cutover to the User Logon Experience will be advised shortly.

Dropbox security breaches

Historically, many DoE staff in schools and corporate offices used Dropbox as their preferred cloud storage for personal files. This is because Dropbox offered bonus free storage for education users with .edu email addresses. However, in 2015, all DoE users were provided with unlimited cloud storage through Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. While most users moved their content to these supported cloud platforms, some have chosen to continue using Dropbox. The department's Information Security Unit have concerns about staff using Dropbox with their work email address due to a serious security breach in 2016 which leaked millions of usernames and passwords onto the internet. It is advised that all DoE staff cease to use Dropbox with their DoE email account.

School based staff can choose either MS OneDrive / SharePoint or Google Drive / Team Drives

Corporate staff should use OneDrive / SharePoint

Is it OK to use YouTube in class?

Understanding all of the intricacies of copyright can be a minefield for a teacher. One of the most commonly asked questions that the National Copyright Unit (NCU) receives from teachers is - can I use YouTube in the classroom? Specifically, is it OK to:

Stream YouTube videos in class?

Embed YouTube videos in teacher-created content?

Download YouTube videos for offline viewing?

These questions are answered in the NCU's latest newsletter.

Check out Microsoft's Tech Lab!

It's also known as the Universal Surface Bus and soon to embark on a tour visiting NSW public schools. Microsoft will be showing school leaders, teachers and students how to create, code, connect and control - unlocking creativity and productivity. The central and far west of NSW are first up!

ICT Thought of the day

ICT Thought - They said robot vacuums were the next technology breakthrough. Now they are just gathering dust.

What an amazing conference!

On August 16, around 200 DoE staff attended the second CIO's Technology in Schools conference at the Telstra Customer Insight Centre in Sydney. The conference was a showcase and celebration of the amazing ways NSW public schools are using a wide variety of technologies in classrooms from K through 12. As a climax to the exciting T4L Awards process that ran throughout term 2, our winning schools presented ten different workshops, demonstrating their methods of applying technologies, to inspire and motivate participants at the conference. More highlights at this recap on Yammer!

What a great day the 2019 CIO Technology in Schools Conference was. Click for larger view

Then finally, it was time to announce which of our T4L Award winners was chosen for the CIO Award - Digital Lighthouse School! With much excitement, the representatives from Bossley Park High School were called up to receive this great award! ITD would like to thank Telstra for their amazing venue and hospitality, and all of our T4L Award winning schools and other presenters who helped to deliver this fantastic conference! Start planning your school's entry for the 2020 T4L Awards!

EdBuy is now LIVE!

The department’s orange and purple online catalogues are end of life and are due to be switched off. EdBuy is now available under My Essentials on the staff portal and from today, place all new catalogue orders in EdBuy. For those still to be trained in EdBuy, you can still use the SAP ‘purple’ catalogue while training is completed over the coming weeks. You must not raise orders in both EdBuy and SAP catalogues – this will duplicate your catalogue order. Any orders raised by the school prior to EdBuy will be visible in SAP. Take some time to get familiar with EdBuy. It's the department's new way of locating and ordering products from our contracted suppliers. More information about EdBuy is on the department's intranet, where you can find training videos, quick reference guides and FAQs. If you have any specific questions, you can ask in the Procurement Matters group on Yammer, or via email at edbuyproject@det.nsw.edu.au

Real-life collaboration in DoE

Recently, Gosford Public School decided to move to SharePoint Online to host school documents and files.They aimed to also move some of their traditional forms to be processed digitally using Microsoft Flow, rather than on paper. That's where they got stuck. James Gray from Gosford PS is a regular on DoE's Yammer service, and knew that Hubert Lam from Normanhurst Boys High School was using MS Flow for forms management. So James asked for help. "Hubert helped by sharing a Flow with me. We used Microsoft Teams and I shared my desktop with him and he explicitly took me through each step. The Flow now automatically informs multiple people via email, as well as posting a fresh new message to a Teams channel. Using Group Forms and Hubert's Flow, our Business and Management team are now easily notified when a form is completed and can quickly enter further details and actions for the form in an online, collaborative environment". Hubert submitted the following entry for this year's T4L Awards, highlighting the great things happening with automation and administration at his school.

Free Tynker webinar

Tynker Pro accounts are now free for all NSW Education Teachers! You can apply for a licence at the stem.T4L Coding Kit page. Then join us for a free webinar to learn how you can best use the Tynker coding platform in your classroom. Tynker is excited to work directly with NSW DoE for this 'Tynker Essentials training'. We aim to engage teachers from Stages 1 through 5 in the basics of computational thinking, computer science, and coding, and the relevance it has on our students today. The webinar is at 3:45pm THIS Wednesday, 28 August.

Click for more info about the free webinar this Wednesday!

magazine.T4L - The first issue!

You've reached the end of the latest issue of news.T4L, but you don't have to stop here. The first issue of our new digital magazine is now available online! Packed with advice, tips and product road tests, this handy mag features our T4L experts and is heading your way twice each term. The T4L team are working hard to make sure all DoE staff continue to make 2019 their Year of Tech! To get that message through to everyone, we'll keep producing regular content in multiple formats to suit all learning styles. From news.T4L to our T4L TV YouTube channel and face-to-face events like interactED and our PowerUps!, we've got your future ed-tech journey covered. So check our latest publication by clicking the image below and share magazine.T4L with everyone at your site! And why not have a focus on everything T4L at your next staff meeting?

Click to open and read this issue of magazine.T4L