SIF Association AU Annual Meeting Wrap up

During the week of 28 November 2011 the SIF Association AU held it’s inaugural Annual Meeting in Melbourne, alongside the !dea11 Conference. The week’s activities highlighted the growth of the SIF Association AU Community with a host of formal and informal meetings including the AU Management Board and Data Standards Working Group (Tech Board), SIF Association AU Annual General Meeting, technical developer training workshops, Connect-a-thon, conference presentations, and networking opportunities with international experts, leading educators, policy makers, Government investors and solution providers. Highlights included:

SIF Association AU AGM

Presented by SIFAAMB Chair Adam Todhunter, the AGM was well attended by over 50 end users and vendors. Updates of activities within the Community were provided by speakers including SIF Association CEO Dr Larry Fruth II, DSWG Chair Trevor Hill, SBP Group Chair Paul O’Sullivan and Global Data Dictionary Project Group Co-Chair Linda Marshall. SIF Members were able to put names to faces and to introduce and open discussions between Members.

SIS Baseline Profile Connect-a-thon

Vendors and end users came together for two and half days to participate in a SIS Baseline Profile Connect-a-thon.

• Human Edge published data from their student information system to the SIMON Schools timetabling product and Visual Software
• Insight4 (TAS) published data from their Forefront Identity Manager agent to Editure’s MyDX provisioning tool.
• Both Holross and Eclipse have made significant progress towards SBP support in their products.

The Connect-a-thon enabled participants to successfully demonstrate the application of the AU SIS Baseline Profile to link applications from different providers. The Connect-a-thon has generated practical feedback and suggestions to improve the SIS Baseline Profile and the SBP Framework into 2012.

Learning Impact Awards – Double Success for the Tri-Border Attendance Strategy Project

The IMS Learning Impact awards are designed “to recognise the most impactful use of technology worldwide in support of learning”. The Australian awards were held during the !dea11 conference and were a success for the SIF Association AU Community seeing  three of the entries involved in the competition utilising SIF within their projects. These were the Tri-Border Attendance Strategy, Ultranet and Simon Schools.

Congratulations to the Tri-Border Project Attendance Strategy who won both first prize and the People’s Choice Award.

#ideaevent Twitter archive available – Thanks @leogaggl

I went to create an archive of all the tweets for #ideaevent at twapperkeeper and found that our good friend Leo had already done so.  Thanks Leo – I hope you and others found them useful.

The archive is available here.

Congratulations to Australian IMS Learning Impact Awards Winners

The IDEA11 conference played host to the Australian IMS Learning Impact Awards.  From the IMS website:

The Learning Impact Awards are designed to recognise the most impactful use of technology worldwide in support of learning.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the winners of this year’s regional awards:

1. Department of Education WA tri-borders attendance strategy
2. University of Technology Sydney Re-View
3. Makebook Campus

Each of these entrants will be invited to compete in the 2012 Global IMS Learning Impact Awards in Toronto, Canada in May 2012 and will receive some funding support towards their costs for attending.  Australian entrants in the past have performed particularly well at the global level and we look forward to hearing similar stories of success from these three outstanding entrants.

 

Linking Learning in Schools Forum

@ !dea11: Thursday 1 December 11am

Facilitator: Katrina Reynen

Teacher – Anne Mirtschin, Hawkesdale P-12

School Principal – Ben Johnstone-McCloud, Crusoe 7-10 Secondary College

Chief Information Officer – Dave O’Hagan, QLD, DOE

Data expert  - Greg Curtis, TAS

Vendor  - Paul O’Sullivan, Eclipse

Panel members each have 6-7 minutes to present from their professional perspective responses to the following questions:

• How would education improve if things were better connected?
• What things need to be better connected?
• What needs to be done to make the connections?

Get involved and have your say: leave a reply below with your responses to the above questions. We will include theses result in a tally board of potential benefits, targets, obstacles and solutions to which the panel will be asked to briefly respond.

Larry Johnson @!dea11: Wed 30th November 4:15pm

Laurence F. Johnson, Ph.D. is Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium (NMC), an international not-for-profit consortium dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. Larry founded and has lead the NMC publication the Horizon Report. jackcwest provides a humorous and insightful summary of the key predictions of the 2011 Horizon report Horizon Report for K12 – Meet Elroy JetsonLarry is an acknowledged expert on emerging technology and its impacts on society and education, and the topics of creativity, innovation, and how to think about the future.Larry will be speaking at !dea11 4:15pm Wednesday 30 November 2011.

Personalising learning possibilities – new research from Telstra

Personalisation in learning is often talked about, and thoughtful use of technology offers some real potential here. The !DEA conference is very fortunate that experts in this area from Telstra have chosen to launch new research into this area at the conference.
Susi Steigler-Peters, from Telstra Enterprise and Government will be launching and discussing  “a ‘quick hit’ qualitative research project tasked to record real stories about how the education landscape is changing and to ask three key questions:

• In what ways are educational needs changing in Australia?
• How might Telstra play a role in developing the preferred future for education?
• What might be fruitful areas for the Roundtable to engage in collaborative work near term? 

Telstra conducted in-depth interviews with representatives of Australia’s public, independent and Catholic schools, TAFEs, universities, education agencies, ACARA and DEEWR, and were privileged to hear some remarkable stories about the innovative work occurring in the education space. This report is a summary of the specific insights gained through those interviews and amplified by secondary research.

While there were wide-ranging views and opinions offered on the future of education, a common thread running through our interviews was a universal “call for change”. As often repeated, the industrial age model of education has outlived its purpose. For those who must now complete in a new global knowledge economy, the current educational model is not meeting the needs of today’s students. The question is in what ways do we change this century-old model? Our respondents were clear. It starts with the learner and their changing expectations.”

Susi’s research will be one of the keynote presentations on day 1 of the conference and will help set the scene for the rest of the conference.

IDEA Program Committee

The following people have been helping shape IDEA11
Prof. Shirley Alexander Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Teaching, Learning & Equity) University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
Michelle Forbes Project Support Officer Education Services Australia (ESA)
Jerry Leeson Project Manager Education Services Australia (ESA)
Dennis Macnamara Principal/Consultant Unlocking Learning
Ann Muller Director Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)
Bruce Rigby Program Lead/Stakeholder Relations National Schools Interoperability Program (NSIP)
Kristi Sheldon Manager – Conferences & Events National Curriculum Services (NCS)
Rodney Spark / Kristena Gladman Executive Director / Manager Technology Solutions eWorks
Dr. Nick Tate Director – Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI) Project The University of Queensland (UQ)
Ross Treadwell Director Capital Programs & Asset Services Department of Education and Children’s Service (DECS) – Schools Sector
Heather Watson Program Director Learning Services Education Services Australia (ESA)