Interactive Whiteboards, Projectors and Interactive Classrooms Support Site

A new site has been set up to support Sydney Region Schools to:

• understand the hardware required for Interactive Whiteboards and Projectors.
• select the required equipment for discretionary purchases by schools of Interactive Whiteboards and Projectors.
• Understand the hardware available as part of the Connected Classroom Project.

The site is available on the DET Intranet only and is found at:

http://sitwww.det.nsw.edu.au/sr/ConnectedClassroom/index.htm

The Internet is an amazing educational resource that is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Our students are using it on a daily basis both to assist their learning as well as for their own social networking. In many cases, the technology is beyond the understanding of parents.  While they realise the Internet is a useful asset for their children's education, many parents do not understand the dangers associated with providing their children with unsupervised access to the Internet.

The School Transition Enterprise Management System (STEMS) has been designed to provide individual schools, entire school Regions and statewide education departments with valuable information about their students and in particular those progressing from Primary school (year 6) to High school (year 7).

With 152 K-6 schools in Sydney Region and 45 high schools taking Year 7 students, it can be a logistical nightmare to ensure relevant transition data is transferred from each K-6 school to the correct high schools. Most schools in NSW manage this with a massive paper shuffle which is both inefficient and ineffective. Since 2002, the former St George District of schools and since 2005, the whole Sydney Region have been using the STEMS program to manage this entire process and provide a powerful tools that high schools can use to best analyse transition data for their new cohort of year 7 students - BEFORE they arrive. At the end of 2006, the transition details for no less than 5,651 year 6 students was electronically received and automatically sorted and distributed to our high schools.

STEMS was wholly designed and developed by one of our Regional Technology Advisers, Stuart Hasic and complete details are available at his website - http://stuhasic.com/stems - STEMS was also reviewed positively in the Eltis review, "Time to Teach, Time to Learn". STEMS is available to other interested Regions in NSW. Please contact Stuart Hasic for further details.