ANNOUNCEMENTS

from the desk of DLTV President Ben Gallagher

Hi all, well, the term is finally drawing to a close. It’s been a long one navigating the return to face-to-face learning: juggling RATs, impacts of staff shortages along with the lack of CRTs. However,it’s been great to be back in the classroom again; reconnecting with our students and colleagues in person.

We know many teachers are missing the networking opportunities face to face events can create.

In Term Two DLTV will be trialling some shortened in-person professional learning. The majority of these sessions will run from 2pm to 4pm on a Thursday, rather than full day workshops. We have chosen this time in the hope that teachers might be able to get to the events despite staff shortages and the lack of CRTs. We will start advertising events in our newsletters and at our website soon. We will also continue to create the occasional webinar.

Hopefully the allocated time and position in the day, will allow for your attendance at sessions relevant to your teaching practise. On 11 May,we will hold our annual general meeting. This is an opportunity for you to consider becoming a member of our committee of management. This will be a virtual event to allow for as many of our members to attend as possible.

More information will be coming out in our Term Two newsletters. As always reach out if we can support you in any way. We are only ever a phone call or an email away

Cheers,

Ben Gallagher

President DLTV and ACCE

(Australian Council for Computers in Education)

TERM TWO: Workshops and webinars

In Term Two, we're reintroducing face-to-face professional learning with several 2-4pm in-person workshops around Melbourne to be announced soon.

In the meantime, there are two events in Term Two that are available for registration now.

Augmented Reality (AR): Looking beyond the Magic

4pm - 5pm, 18 May 2022

Join us for a webinar that explores what AR is and how it can be utilized as a powerful medium for learning across the curriculum.

Paul Hamilton will share how AR is being used in authentic ways in both schools and industry. The webinar will emphasize the importance of the creation process and the associated digital skills that are introduced and consolidated in this emerging space. 

Simple Digital Technologies with Purple Mash

9am - 2:30pm, 25 May 2022

DLTV sponsor 2simple presents a full day workshop for primary teachers.

Looking to cater for all student levels, manage groups and learning activities? Wanting to integrate digital technologies across the F-6 curriculum in an effective way?

Come and spend the day with like-minded educators, hear real classroom experiences and be inspired to cultivate curiosity and creativity with collaborative, engaging, cloud-based digital technology solutions mapped to the curriculum.

SAVE THE DATE: Digital Technologies teachers and school leaders in Geelong

Attention Digital Technologies teachers and school leaders in the Geelong region!

Save the date: 16 June, 2-4pm

DLTV is partnering with The Geelong College to deliver a professional learning opportunity in a mini-conference. Gather together with educators in the Geelong and Surf Coast regions to explore Digi Tech in our schools – the latest technologies, curriculum implementation, and leading technology in schools.

Booking details and flyer coming soon!

NATIONAL EDUCATION SUMMIT: We're a supporting partner

DLTV staff and committee members are presenting at the Digital Teaching Workshop, as part of the National Education Summit, 17-18 June.

To receive 10% discount use code DLTV22 when registering.

Register now: nationaleducationsummit.com.au

DAY OF AI: Launch of a new program running in Australia

You are invited to attend the launch of ‘Day of AI’ Australia - an initiative developed by MIT RAISE and i2 Learning.

Australia’s inaugural Day of AI will take place on 27 July, 2022. In order to mark the launch, MIT RAISE Director, Professor Cynthia Breazeal will provide a keynote address on the importance of understanding AI for future generations. Professor Breazeal is a pioneer of social robotics and human-robot interaction and was recently named the Dean for Digital Learning at MIT.

Educators and those passionate about education will learn about the new program developed by MIT and now running in Australia for the first time and will also have the opportunity to hear a keynote address from Hugh Williams, co-founder of CS in Schools and a former vice president at Google (responsible for developing Google Maps).

Date: 11am, Tuesday 5th April, 2022

Location: Via Zoom Conference

Read the full flyer or register your interest to attend.

VCE WORK OPPORTUNITIES

Whitefriars College is seeking to appoint a talented, enthusiastic and innovative educator, in the area of Applied Computing and/or Software Development.

This is a full time, ongoing position.

There is also available flexibility to work on a part time basis if desired.

For more details please contact Greg Stewart at 9872 8200, gstewart@whitefriars.vic.edu.au or go to whitefriars.vic.edu.au/about/employment/

TSSM is looking for excellent VCE teachers who can join the team for Data Analytics. This opportunity will include:

• Writing VCE Resources
• Proof Read VCE Resources

The position will also offer the Presenting of VCE Exam Revision and Head Start Programs if the successful applicant is interested in presenting.

The successful candidates will become an integral member of the TSSM team. The role will be ongoing casual and will complement your role at school and can also suit teachers who are on leave.

The successful teacher/s must:

• Be an excellent VCE teacher or a recent VCE teacher
• Be interested and able to complete tasks effectively and efficiently
• Be willing to work and help VCE students
• Have excellent communication skills
• Be a qualified VCE teacher in Victoria with ample VCE experience
• Have an interest in writing VCE resources

If you are interested in this availability and are able to help, then please send your CV to admin@tssm.com.au. You will be personally contacted to arrange a meeting time.

Opportunity: Come and help design Digital Ethics resources

Project Rockit, the Young & Resilient Research Centre and Office for eSafety are seeking a group of educators to meet online for a 1.5 - 2 hour workshop that to answer some questions, and help brainstorm and design some options for digital ethics resources. Further to that, we are interested in having a teacher advisory group who could help inform and guide the process – so we don’t just have a single touchpoint, but we can keep checking if we are on the right path and validating the work. This could involve a FB group, emails, phone chats etc.

What is in it for you?

Initially, we can offer a $100 gift voucher for the two hours. But, if we can continue to build a relationship I would be seeking to compensate people for their experience and time financially, and hope that the experience of seeing educational resource development and production at this level would be of interest to you. I’ve been doing this for a long time – and there is a lack of quality educators involved in creating resources that are meaningful and useful for teachers, and engaging for students.

For more details:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n1kbnh6hpwv0wdd/%5BIRL%5D%20Seeking%20Teachers.pdf

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT: Saasyan

With technology now a core enabler of learning and education for students in Kindergarten through to Year 12 (K-12), the market is exploding with EdTech solutions from large incumbents as well as new innovative start-ups. 

And though there are many benefits to Edtech, we know new technologies sometimes also introduce unintended challenges and risks.

This is certainly the case when it comes to student safety, given the social, mental and emotional impact of students being mostly online when in and out of the classroom is a new frontier.

Just ask any educational professional and they'll tell you how complex their world has become when it comes to actually knowing what the students are up to, ensuring engagement and being aware of students who are emotionally struggling or getting bullied.

Keeping one step ahead

As the provider of a comprehensive Ai-Powered Online Student Safety solution, Saasyan enables schools with:

• Flexible Cybersecurity Controls for K-12 Classrooms
• Advanced Alerting of Cyberbullying and Self-Harm
• Easy Reporting of Student Online Activities

The Saasyan solution is powered by applied intelligence to help schools keep 'one step ahead' of students.

Here are 5 applications of our 'applied intelligence' in the Saasyan solution:

1. Crowd-sourced 'word & phrases' dictionary. Saasyan's 600+ school customers who among them are responsible for 400,000 students have the option to share (crowd-source) the trending and emerging words and phrases they wish to monitor and report.
2. Fuzzy logic & near-term analysis for misspelt words. We acknowledge kids are smart. Our 'fuzzy logic and near-term' AI function looks for words that have been purposely or accidentally misspelt. This means schools don't have to take on the burden of precisely defining every misspelling of every word and phrase that needs to tracked.
3. Natural Language Processing to pick up context. It always comes down to context. Our Natural Language Processing AI function ensures we don't report a 'false positive' when a student posts "I killed the switch" but does raise an alert when one kid writes to another "You're not funny, stop posting".
4. Cohort analysis to identify outliers. By comparing individual activities to those of their cohort, the Saasyan solution is able to identify true outliers for alerting and reporting. For example, it knows to not raise an alert when the entire Year 9 Science class is searching for 'drugs' on Wednesday during Period 3 but does raise an alert when one student is searching 'how long will I be imprisoned for selling drugs' on Thursday right after school.
5. Recurrence analysis to detect alarming patterns. Students' online activities, when analysed can reveal 'intent' and 'state of mind'. The 'Recurrence Analysis' function in the Saasyan solution creates a 'high priority' alert when it detects alarming patterns. For example a student has visited the 'suicide hotline website' 5 times in the past 4 hours.

Want to see our AI in action? Sign up here for an on-demand demo of the Saasyan AI-Powered Student Safety Solution for K-12 schools.

HOLIDAY VIEWING: Webinar recordings

Did you miss any of our Term One webinars? 

Recordings are freely available at our YouTube channel. Term One webinars included:

• Code testing, tracing and debugging (#1 of our VCE topical series)
• The challenge of adding a GUI in Python (#2 in our VCE topical series)
• Supporting students with the Innovative Project (#3 in our VCE topical series)
• Introducing Adobe Creative Cloud Express
• AI and teaching Digital Technologies

You may also want to check out DLTV's other online PL resources.