Rural and Distance Education David McLeod Leader, Rural & Distance Education Programs

our focus curriculum access, peer interaction & connectedness

Tibooburra Bourke Casino Ballina Port Macquarie Broken Hill Hay Queanbeyan/ Karabar Dubbo Walgett Primary Distance Education Centres Secondary Education Centres Distance Education Pre–School Distance Education Centres and Schools in NSW Camden Haven Sydney DEPS Sydney DEHS Open High School DESU

Background The Distance Education review identified a need to improve digital technologies that supported the development of blended learning programs for contemporary distance learning pedagogy High School leaders have supported the concept of sharing through the Camden Haven Declaration

The Main Aim Collegial networks Symposium

The Role of Equella The Equella trial demonstrated the capacity of the system to meet the need to store, classify, access, adapt and share teaching and learning materials in Distance Education in New South Wales The repository will provide management of content so that it can be: – used in multiple output and distribution formats (LMS, print, portable media) – adapted and cloned to meet individual student learning needs – easily discovered by end users

Key Goals provide a platform for Distance Education schools and staff to share and update resources in an efficient manner Protect valuable DEC resources replace the disparate and disconnected thumb drives, portable hard disks, local storage and other solutions

Equella Servers Equella is implemented on servers administered by the Information Technology Directorate with full disaster recovery protocols. This implementation matches the system implemented as part of the Virtual Learning Environment of TAFE NSW.

Collections Teaching materials Non-teaching materials Image Collection

Support Level 1 Rural and Distance Education Unit Network Organisers Distance Education – NODES (see section 3.3) School based technology staff Collegial Networks Level 2Rural and Distance Education, Distance & Rural Technologies Support Unit Level 2ITD Support Operations Level 3ITD Infrastructure Services, Information Services, Network Operations Level 3The Learning Edge International

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

DE Teachers – Delivered by the Rural and Distance Education Unit – (Kym Knight, Greg Alchin and Suzie New) – Curriculum considerations – blended learning, universal learning for design – Using Equella – contributing an item, sharing an item, searching, publishing items – Copyright considerations – Technical – Moodle integration Content Administrators – Specific role for a limited number of staff in each school with additional ability to access/remove/archive material. Principals and Deputy Principals will automatically be members of this group.

ONGOING TRAINING AND SUPPORT

Equella Bites – how to videos – Search – Contribute-Single/bundle – Quality Control-Favourites/review – Moodle LMS integration – Making a favourite – How to share Online User Guide FAQs Online quick reference guide Equella VC Meetings – Once per term available to all staff via video conference Equella User Reference Group – Once per term user group meetings of key school staff via video conference

Considerations DE Symposium Professional learning through targeted writing Purchased resources Primary music material curr/schoollib/pdf/hbkcopyright.pdf

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