The $99 million ultranet, an online portal that was supposed to connect teachers, parents and students at state schools, has been dogged by cost blowouts, technical glitches and opposition from teachers
Group items tagged
Cleavage gives Canberra allure - 0 views
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"NGAMBRI. Now there's a name for Australia's capital city. It has a bit of music in it and means, apparently, ''a woman's cleavage''. It's the name the city should have been graced with all along. Instead, we're saddled with Canberra, a word with all the melodic qualities of a Treasury official poring over tax figures. The thing is, Ngambri and Canberra are - or were - the same word, and they've travelled a long path, as will be revealed."
T is for teaching - 3 views
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"CAMPBELL Walsh was sick of waiting for his NAPLAN test results. ''I wanted to know how I'd done. It had already been about four months and I still hadn't got the results,'' says the year 5 student from Aitken Creek Primary in the outer Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn. "
Gillard Stoush Over Schools Funding Continues - 0 views
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"Victoria is expected to receive a quarter of the additional $6.5 billion a year to be spent on schools under the Gillard government's funding reforms - four times what the Baillieu government is offering in its alternative plan."
Clunky, outdated ultranet faces an uncertain future - 3 views
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The ultranet, promised by the former government before the 2006 state election, was designed to provide a state-wide, secure website that parents, students and teachers at every state school could access.
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the ultranet was a closed space which meant students could not be taught digital citizenship skills in a real environment. ''The whole point of Web 2 was communicating globally - this is completely within a walled garden,''
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"THE future of Victoria's troubled online education network is in doubt, with many schools refusing to use it amid complaints it is clunky and outdated and the security wall does not provide a real-life cyber environment."
Teen app maker hits the jackpot - 7 views
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"I basically begged my parents for six months to get [an Apple] computer," he said of his father, an investment banker, and his mother, a lawyer. "And when I finally got it, instead of using it for just watching videos or browsing the web, I kind of had an interest to create things."
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"I began kind of looking into algorithmic technologies and natural language programming," Nick said. The technology is now integrated into his latest app, formally known as Trimit and now known as Summly.
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He is 16, an Australian living in London and recently scored $US250,000 in investment from a billionaire for a technology that could change the way we read emails, news articles or any other text on our computers.
iPad, therefore I am, and keeping a wired open mind - 3 views
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students submit assignments and tests by email, and each subject has a web portal with homework, lesson plans and applications to download. They create multimedia slideshows, stop-motion animations and cartoons for projects, as well as traditional essays. Parents can track progress online and check the lesson plans, which Mr Cook said created accountability and transparency.
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THE backpacks at Albert Park College look a little small. But then everything at the school, which is entering its second year, is a little different. Students helped design the bags and point out that they do not need many books. Nor any calculators, notebooks, atlases and diaries. Instead each student has what the principal calls an "electronic pencil box": an iPad.
Australians more concerned about privacy than ever before - 1 views
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"Australians are more concerned about their privacy than ever before, quickly abandoning companies they believe abuse their information, a new report shows."
Schools jump online taking parents with them - 5 views
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"Low-tech days in the old school yard are going, going gone as Australian schools collectively embrace online systems automating everything from canteen orders to selling seats at the end of year concert."
Teachers adrift in failed system - 2 views
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The challenge lies not in attracting smart, personable people to teaching, but in retaining them
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Continuity and consistency are as vital for students as for teachers trying to establish relationships with their charges and develop teaching and learning strategies.
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"PRIME Minister Julia Gillard says she wants to eradicate the riff-raff from the teaching profession and entice the best and brightest to join. The challenge lies not in attracting smart, personable people to teaching, but in retaining them."
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Good article that reflects on the conditions faced by many short-term contract teachers that we have in Victoria.
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Reflections by a teacher caught in the sandpit of contract teaching in Victoria.
The Age Education Resource Centre - 5 views
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"So, we now have an elegantly mathematical approach to mowing the lawn. But, alas, that analysis took a while, and it seems to be getting dark. The mowing will just have to wait until next weekend."
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A fascinating and detailed mathematical discussion about how best to cut the front lawn.
Universities told to adapt or die - 3 views
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''Fixing the technology's important, but so is changing the pedagogy,'' Mr Tanner said. ''While we've made great progress in e-learning, there's been an awful lot about 'e' and not much about 'learning'.''
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UNIVERSITIES that fail to embrace new technology will lose students and die, former federal finance minister Lindsay Tanner has warned. Mr Tanner, now a vice-chancellor's fellow at Victoria University, told a Melbourne audience last night that while Australian universities were using the internet to deliver study materials, they were not yet fully exploiting the potential technology offered for new ways of learning.
Why work-life balance is an outdated myth - 1 views
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"The term 'work-life balance' is a myth and sets many people up for failure. They either feel like their lives aren't balanced, or they don't have an understanding of what actually balance is."
Jill Meagher | Trial by Social Media A Worry, Experts Say - 4 views
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With that anger comes responsibility to social media users, who become content publishers when they post. That may require a knowledge of media law.
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I mean social media.
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Is there an current unambiguous social media law?
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Interesting development with social media and the law.
John Hattie in conversation with Maxine McKew - 7 views
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A good interview from a very articulate man on "What really matters in education?". A lot of good sense and seemingly simple advice.
Burnout hits one in four teachers - 1 views
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"More than one in four new teachers are suffering from ''emotional exhaustion'' and almost burnt out soon after starting their careers, according to a Monash University study. The reasons offered include a lack of administrative support, onerous compliance measures and much tougher emotional conditions than they expected to face, particularly in economically depressed areas."