NEWSLETTER | Issue 32 5
News from the Australian Community
Overview : EduTECH Conference 2016
by Georgina Johnston , NSIP
NSIP was one of over 200 exhibitors at the EduTECH conference in Brisbane on the 30 th and 31 st May . The conference was a great opportunity for NSIP to promote SIF , the Access 4 Learning Community and work NSIP is doing in privacy , data standards , integration support and data mobility to over 6500 attendees representing all aspects of the education industry – educators , school leaders , technology directors , policy makers and solution providers .
Presentations : NSIP sponsored two presentations during the conference . The first was by NSIP Staff member Matt Farmer ( Program Lead – Products and Market Engagement ) launching the Learning Services Architecture to the K- 12 IT Managers stream . The Learning Services Architecture ( LSA ) is an agreed national approach to making information systems that need to share data about learners in schools work together , effectively and safely . The benefits of the LSA to schools include a unified view of information about a learner , reduced administrative burden for teachers , and procurement flexibility and choice . The benefits for school systems include consistent , wellmanaged school data , enabling rich decision-support and analytics , and consistent approaches to managing information privacy and duty-of-care risks . The benefits to education solution providers include a nationally consistent integration interface , market choice by schools , and nationally agreed school business use cases – common ways of doing core school processes that use student data . Judging by the number of attendees that come to the NSIP stand after the presentation to ask for further information , Matt ’ s presentation , and the LSA were well received .
The second presentation was a panel discussion on the topic of “ Making a Difference with Data ”. With the growing focus on individualised learning , the increasing use of online learning and assessment , and the demand for evidence based decision making , school leaders need integrated information systems that support learners , empower teachers and optimise parent communication . Most importantly these systems need to help teachers and parents avoid drowning in the deluge of education data and make changes that lead to improved student outcomes . The panel which was led by Mark Huxley , CIO of the Australian Capital Territory Education and Training Directorate included Andrew Blair and Tim O ’ Leary from Wesley College , Adam Kuss , Director of Student Achievement Year 7 & 8 at Cavendish Road High School in Brisbane , Warren Armitage , CIO at Brisbane Catholic Education , and Matt Farmer from NSIP . The panel discussed a range of strategies to harness data and analytical tools to make a difference in the classroom .
NSIP Interoperability Challenge & Tour : NSIP held the annual Interoperability Challenge in the lead up to the conference . The challenge asked vendors to identity a problem their product set out to solve , how they knew it was a problem , how their product solves the problem and how their product works with other products to ensure that learners , teachers , parents and decision makers always have access to the information they need .
The ‘ prize ’ was a four minute pitch to all the CIOs of the states and territories and other key stakeholders in the education industry . This year there were thirteen successful vendors . The vendors and products were :
� Annikken Pte Ltd – Annikken Andee � Behavioural Reading – Behavioural
Reading
� Be Social . Be Smart – Social Media Education Initiatives - Positive Posting Programs
� Campion Education – Campion Digital Access Solutions � CloudeNotes - CloudeNotes � Datacom Education - Literatu � Google – Google for Education � Internet Safe Training ( iness ) –
Internet Safe Training � Sentral Education – Sentral School and Student Management Software � SEQTA – SEQTA Suite � Texthelp – The Read & Write Suite � uTeachMe - uEducateUs � Yellow Edge / Rosetta Stone – Rosetta Stone Language Learning Solutions
Vendors Forum Breakfast : Over 40 vendors attended the vendor ’ s forum breakfast on the second day of the conference . The purpose of the forum was for vendors to share stories of their experiences in the market place , hear from some of the CIOs about what ’ s happening in their jurisdictions and be updated on what NSIP is working on and how they can support these initiatives and benefit from them .