Australasian Association of Distance Education Schools

(AADES)

Principals and Leaders Forum 2008

27 – 29 August 2008

Darwin Convention Centre

G O T R O P P O i n D a r w i n

Teachers Reflecting On Pedagogy Practice and Outcomes

Innovative ideas to enhance Flexible Learning

Hosted by:

Northern Territory Distance Learning Service (NTDLS)

Welcome… The Northern Territory Distance Learning Service (NTDLS) is delighted to host the 2008 AADES Principals and Leaders Forum here in Darwin. The newly created NTDLS was launched in January 2007. It is comprised of three schools of distance education and a Materials and ICT Innovation Unit. We service students in urban, regional and remote locations across the Northern Territory.

Alice Springs School of the Air It is the ‘biggest classroom’ in the world, 1.3 million square kilometres. It caters for children living in isolated areas within Central Australia and travellers away from the Territory. The Alice Springs School of the Air (ASSOA) was the first of its type, officially opening in 1951. The change

from radio to IDL has really given children the opportunity to interact with their teacher and class in real time while putting a face to the teacher. With four ‘In School’ gatherings and Home Patrols during the year it gives students and teachers the opportunity to meet and learn in both town and outback environments. ASSOA prides itself on its innovative IDL lessons and personal contact with a dedicated teacher. While some paper based set work is still being used, there has been a shift over the last few years to the development and use of online units of work thus ensuring that the educational service available to isolated Central Australian children is the best possible.

Katherine School of the Air Situated on the banks of the Katherine River, Katherine School of the Air (KSA) is one of three distance education schools in the Northern Territory, operating under the Northern Territory Distance Learning Service within the

Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training. The school has been in operation since 1966 and aims to promote educational outcomes for students through the provision of quality distance education programs that recognise individual student learning needs, abilities and contexts. The school caters for an average of 250 students, from preschool to Year 9, who live on cattle stations, in Aboriginal communities or are travelling throughout Australia and overseas. It covers a total physical area of 800 000 square kilometres and the total distance travelled by staff, either by road or plane, averages 120 000 kilometres per year. Teachers are allocated to combined peer levels in one of three designated geographical regions and deliver lessons through Interactive Distance Learning, e-learning, and correspondence materials. KSA is a client focused school recognised for its effective, innovative communication methods, excellence of service delivery, individualised student programs and outstanding work/learning environment for students and staff.

NT Open Education Centre NT Open Education Centre (NTOEC) commenced in 1980

and provides a comprehensive range of secondary education programs. Traditionally our students are isolated due to geographic, social or medical circumstances; second chance and mature age learners, including military personnel; local students under special provision and dual enrolments from schools where students need extended curriculum choices. Currently over 50% of our students are from remote Indigenous communities and we also provide a range of support services for many teachers and tutors in those communities. In 2007 we began to implement a new organisational structure as part of the establishment of the Northern Territory Distance Learning Service (NTDLS) and we are now transitioning to become a senior school (Years 10 – 12). This allows us to focus on delivering courses and services to ensure senior students have opportunities to access programs leading to satisfactory completion of a Northern Territory Certificate of Education. We work closely with the NTDLS Materials and ICT Innovation Unit who assist us in online course development, the acquisition of resources for use with our students and provision of writing positions for major projects. Originally paper based, our teaching is far more blended now and incorporates the innovative use of e-space for communication and learning, and Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) for delivery of lessons to students and professional support for teachers and tutors. In addition we offer VET courses, work placements and School Based New Apprenticeships. Always a highlight, residential schools and camps provide additional opportunities for our students to come together face to face with each other and their teachers.

Darwin Convention Centre Courtesy of Darwin Convention Centre

Thank you to AADES Training for sponsoring delegates to attend this year’s Principals & Leaders Forum and for providing support for our Keynote Speaker.

Day 1 - Wednesday, 27 August

9.00 - 1.00 AADES Executive meeting at Darwin Convention Centre Meeting Room 3 (Lunch at Stokes Hill Wharf) 6.00 - 7.30 Welcome Function – Darwin Convention Centre Ground Floor Promenade 7.00 2008 AADES Awards - Project/Teacher and Gold Awards

Dinner At delegates’ leisure from any of a variety of restaurants

along Mitchell Street in Darwin

All delegates are invited to meet at the Darwin Convention

Centre for welcome drinks & nibbles, kindly being sponsored by Wooldridge’s A & M

Day 2 - Thursday 28 August 8.30 - 9.00 Registration & Coffee & Tea

Ground Floor Pre-function Area 9.00 - 9.15 Meeting Room 3

Welcome to Country – Larrakeyah Nation Official Conference Opening - Ms Margaret Banks Chief Executive Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET)

9.15 - 10.30 Keynote Address - Mr William (Bill) Wade, Lecturer Multimedia and Communication Design, Charles Darwin University, NT

Authentic Innovation: Moving Beyond the Next Best Toy

10.30 - 11.00 Morning Tea

Concurrent Session 1

11.00 - 12.00 Meeting Room 3 School: Open High School, NSW Presenter: Stephen Murray Target audience: Primary and Secondary Presentation overview: This presentation outlines a project commenced in 2008 to address the issue of low retention rates for Stage 5 students studying a language through Open HS. The project focuses on the production of engaging and rich visual stimuli to provide greater interest and appeal in learning a language. The presentation examines the pedagogical rationale, school and ICT management and professional learning needs identified from the project. 11.00 - 12.00 Meeting Room 4 School: Sydney Distance Education High School. Presenters: Julie Kennedy, Christine Lazaris, Mark Piddington, Alan Wright Target audience: Secondary Presentation overview: Teacher professional learning for development of e-learning opportunities within the NSW Quality Teaching Framework is based on profiling individual teacher's ICT competencies using the NSW Connected Learning Advisory Service (CLAS) and our school's technology for learning position using an e-

learning readiness tool. Benchmarking how over 50 courses across 8 key learning areas and Middle School are currently delivered (e.g. paper based, e-learning, CD, DVD) is used to establish 6 and 12 month targets. The NSW Interactive Classrooms Project with interactive whiteboards and videoconferencing facilities in all schools over the next 4 years is supporting teachers as they share e-learning strategies for the future.

Concurrent Session 2 12.00 - 1.00 Meeting Room 3 School: NT Open Education Centre Presenters: Josie Roberts & Bev Wilson Target audience: Secondary

Presentation overview: This presentation will focus on identifying the elements that combine to make it possible to deliver innovative and effective numeracy and mathematics programs for Indigenous senior secondary students in remote Northern Territory locations. Program delivery usually faces the challenges of distance, isolation, lack of teacher expertise in mathematics education, low student literacy and numeracy levels and limited access to resources. The NTOEC teachers work with the teachers in the communities to develop programs that focus on mathematics language development, Essential Learnings, explicit teaching of concepts and on creating opportunities for practical applications of understandings in meaningful contexts. Teaching and assessment strategies are modelled and supported through IDL, contact visits and through the provision of a range of resources. 12.00 - 1.00 Meeting Room 4 School: Alice Springs School of the Air Presenter: Ann Fleming Target audience: Primary Presentation overview: Engaging remote primary aged Indigenous students with no formal schooling through cultural and language partnerships. This presentation will focus on the development of a partnership between Alice Springs School of the Air and an Indigenous community’s outstation. It will look at how a learning commitment from the community was developed and steps that both the community and ASSOA have made so far on the learning journey. Until March 2008 the children, aged between four and ten, had no formal schooling. By highlighting the development of classroom structures, explicit programming, professional development and mentoring that has been established with the children and their home tutors, this presentation will examine the challenges and opportunities faced by both the community and the school. It analyses one possibility for a way forward with Indigenous students who have limited contact with education. This presentation will highlight how effective schooling in the distance context can be, and the flow-on effects for community wellbeing.

1.00 - 1.40 Lunch

Concurrent Session 3 1.40 - 2.40 Meeting Room 3 School: Brisbane School of Distance Education Presenters: Stacie Abraham & Eileen Furlonger Target audience: Primary Presentation overview: Designing online programs in the Early Years. Schools of Distance Education across the nation are harnessing the connectivity afforded by information and communications technologies (ICT) to design and develop online learning experiences which facilitate the notion of continuous and collaborative learning. In this environment, distance learners in the early years have unique needs which require careful and considered design considerations. This presentation will examine how the seven Queensland schools of distance education are attempting to cater for these needs when designing online courses for students in the early years across seven different sites. During the presentation a number of online courses for the early years will be showcased. The presentation will also highlight the Professional Development needs of teachers so they may re-consider and in some cases re-conceptualise their pedagogical beliefs about early years teaching in the light of the impact of ICT. Please bring your mobile phones to this session (on mute) so we can brainstorm the conditions that contribute to effective on-line design in the early years. 1.40 - 2.40 Meeting Room 4 School: WestOne Services/SIDE WA Presenters: Julie Bettenay, Darren Entwistle, Jonathan Bromage Target audience: Secondary Presentation overview: WestOne Services in Western Australia is currently creating online resources for 18 Senior Secondary Courses. This presentation outlines our approach to resource development to ensure high quality resources are developed which are both accountable to WA Senior Secondary Courses and model exemplary teaching and learning principles. The presentation will highlight effective online design pedagogy and the use of self-assessment as a learning tool. Examples of learning activities and their application with students from the School of Isolated and Distance Education will be presented.

Concurrent Session 4 2.40 - 3.40 Meeting Room 3 School: Brisbane School of Distance Education (BSDE) Presenters: Vanessa Adamson and BSDE Staff Members Target audience: Middle School & Secondary Presentation overview: Learning Place Blackboard tools allow students to collaboratively work through course content to promote interaction between isolated students. By taking the isolated learner from a static learning mode with paper base material to a digital mode the students feel safe to communicate, collaborate and learn more effectively. We will present the journey the students and staff have taken through this mode of delivery. Students engage in the Geography course through the Blackboard course because they are able to create, investigate, participate and communicate. By showing the before and after engagement in Blackboard we have learnt to collaboratively create a non-threatening environment where the learner has the opportunity to discuss and talk through the Learning Place Blackboard tools to elaborate on their learning by engaging in a self learning process. 2.40 - 3.40 Meeting Room 4 School: WestOne Services/SIDE Presenters: Darren Entwistle & Julie Bettenay Target audience: Primary Presentation overview: This presentation outlines WA’s outcomes approach to teaching, learning and assessment in the middle primary years. The presentation will highlight effective online design including the use of digital interactions and learning objects and provide practical classroom examples and their application. 3.40 Afternoon Tea – Close of the day 6.00 - 9.30 Conference Dinner

Mindil Beach Sunset Markets

Day 3 – Friday 29 August

8.00 - 8.15 Coffee & Tea 8.15- 8.30 AADES AGM & Elections Meeting Room 3 8.30 - 10.00 Session 5 NT SHOWCASE

Meeting Room 3

A series of brief presentations around the communication tools used by Northern Territory teachers when delivering to students by distance… Session A REACT Presenters: Michael Wilson/Suzanne Wilson - M & S

Consultants Pty Ltd Target audience: Primary and Secondary Presentation overview: A picture is worth a thousand words. The presentation will introduce the software REACT – Remote Education And Conferencing Tool as used in the NT Distance Education Schools for the delivery of Interactive Distance Learning (IDL) lessons and by DEET Corporate for video-conferencing. REACT is a synchronous learning tool and this presentation will provide a demonstration of its capabilities including high quality audio and video and collaborative and interactive tools. As ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ we will ‘visit’ a School of the Air live to see REACT in action. In addition, the presentation will highlight not only the educational benefits but also the sociological benefits to students, parents and teachers in using REACT as a synchronous learning tool. Session B Katherine School of the Air Presenters: Sally Mackander & Tracey Phillipps-Lewis Target audience: Primary and Secondary Presentation overview: Interactive Distance Learning and Return Path Video. Return Path Video (RPV) is a huge step in distance education which gives teachers another tool to enable them to teach more effectively. The benefits of having return video for us is that as teachers we have for the first time the non-verbal cues that a classroom teacher takes for granted. This priceless tool will break down yet another barrier to effective teaching and learning in geographical isolation. This presentation will focus on the 10 week trial that Katherine School of the Air has undertaken using Return Path Video. It will provide insights into the difficulties and successes the trial has encountered and information on where it hopes to go next…

Session C NT Virtual Schooling Presenter: John Bennett - NT Distance Learning Service Target audience: Primary and Secondary Presentation overview: Today’s youth are immersed in the Internet Technologies. Generally their preferences are to be ‘connected and mobile’. Their interfaces are built on ‘personalisation’. Their online environments are ‘interactive and collaborative’. They are active in building ‘networks of similar interests’. To accommodate interactive, collaborative and personalised learning environments systems need to be dynamically assembled. The demands of the 21st Century ‘Knowledge Society’ require students to be successful users of virtual worlds and active participants in social networks. Virtual Schools can provide frameworks where students become active and engaged learners with contemporary and leading edge online communication technologies. In 2008 the Virtual School Program has became a viable school option for NT senior students. The Northern Territory Virtual School is an emergent learning model. The question is ‘Will Virtual Schooling re-invent how teaching and learning occurs in the Northern Territory?’

10.00 – 10.30 Morning Tea

Concurrent Session 5 10.30 – 11.30 Meeting Room 3 School: Open Access College Presenter: Erica Womersley Target audience: Primary Presentation overview: Learning to Love Learning … has no boundaries Many of us remember the one or two adults who were influential teachers for us in our lives. They were not always teachers in our classroom, but rather the significant adult who took time to appreciate our interests, who listened and came with us on a journey of discovery. Learning Assistance Programmes (LAP) in distance education with the help of online technologies can connect students with volunteers anywhere. Finding the right match in a face to face setting can sometimes be challenging, but by using online environments the world is our oyster. This is a presentation focuses on the following.

WHY the LAP programme is both effective and worthwhile for distance education students and volunteers.

HOW the LAP programme has been established at OAC - School of the Air.

WHAT students love about participating in LAP and their relationships with their volunteer.

10.30 – 11.30 Meeting Room 4 School: Open Access College Presenter: Jean Schocroft Target audience: Primary and Secondary Presentation overview: Lead IT – how to develop, extend and challenge e-teaching and e-learning. We reached that point where some of us were really extending the use of e-learning and others were buried in sand. This session will look at: • what issues were stopping teacher involvement • strategies and structures used to bridge the growing divide between

teachers • what students, teachers and the Lead IT team say about the strategy • discussion about what happens in our schools to move e-learning forward.

Concurrent Session 6 11.30 – 12.30 Meeting Room 3 School: Distance Education Tasmania Presenter: Scott Shelton Target audience: Primary & Secondary Presentation overview: Formative assessment that provides meaningful and immediate feedback to students learning at a distance is a big challenge. However, the research continues to show how vital such feedback is to student achievement. Using the work of UK based Professor Dylan Wilam as a lens, This presentation will share how the open source Learning Management System, Moodle, has enabled Distance Education Tasmania to begin to dramatically improve student engagement and feedback processes… and more. After using Moodle for two terms, its efficiency and productivity as a delivery mechanism was tested through a student, parent and staff survey. 11.30 – 12.30 Meeting Room 4 School: Katherine School of the Air Presenter: Kate Dixon Target audience: Middle Years Presentation overview: Highlights successes of the Middle Years program at Katherine School of the Air since its introduction in 2007, focussing on our unique approach to personal learning in a distance education setting. This presentation explains how our residential program, online technologies, the five R’s and paper based units work benefit the development of student wellbeing, pathways, exposure to the world of work and the successful teaching and learning of the Essential Learnings.

12.30 – 1.15 Lunch Concurrent Session 7

1.15 – 2.15 Meeting Room 3 School: Distance Education Centre Victoria Presenters: Mark Kent, Malcolm McIver & Darrell Reid Target audience: Primary & Secondary Presentation overview: Mark Kent will detail the experience of working with teams across a P – 12 school and provide a broad overview of our Online P – 12 Best Practice Compendium, Primary ePortfolios and Individual Learning Plans as well as showcase some of our students’ achievements using ICT. Malcolm McIver will present an overview of the Values Education Project involving collaboration between the Distance Education Centre Victoria (DECV) and the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) to develop an online asynchronous environment that opens up possibilities for further collaboration between distance education schools across Australia. Darrell Reid will discuss learning program team leadership at the DECV with reference to the learning and teaching model developed and utilised by teams building and delivering learning programs in middle and later years. 1.15 – 2.15 Meeting Room 4 School: Distance Education Centre Victoria

Presenters: Jenny Ward, Sue Adamidis & Antoine Toniolo Target audience: Secondary Presentation overview: Engaging students, managing students and improving student outcomes at secondary level. Modern schools are a challenging environment. Demands such as low literacy and numeracy, class sizes, and low student motivation are even more heightened in a distance education context. In this session three Secondary School Year Level Coordinators from the Distance Education Centre of Victoria will share their experiences with engaging and managing students while improving their outcomes. Commitment, vision and due diligence have been central to their journey. Their presentation unpacks both the art and science of developing formulas for success. 2.15 - 2.30 Stretch your legs, recharge your batteries for our

final session. 2.30 - 3.15 Meeting Room 3

Wrap Up Session with Bill Wade.

3.15 Conference Close by Stacie Abraham, AADES President.