Clarence High School Visit - Observations

The school receives around $80,000 per year IT Grant from the Tasmanian Department of Education (this figure is enrolment based). The Government supplies a laptop to each teacher. Teachers can access their own H drives and the school’s G drive from home.

There are no computing subjects in years 7 & 8. Instead ICDL courses (costing around $3,300 per year) are run in English and Maths courses in these years. There are a number of Computing electives offered to years 9 & 10 students, some with a significant programming focus.

The school runs an NSS (ie Net Support School - $60.00 per computer start up and then $16.00 per computer per year for upgrades) management system to support student use of computers in the labs in a well controlled way. It also runs a web based meeting room booking system through Source forge.net for the computer labs/library resource center etc. The web based system can be accessed both at home and at school. It even sends an email reminder to users.

The school employs a full time Network support officer (NSO) (Sam Leung) and a .6 trainee person. The Department funds a .4 NSO position in a school this size and the school is able to purchase the extra time allocation for the positions.

Clarence HS runs a school intranet through Microsoft Share Point Services. The intranet provides all sorts of help and advice for teachers using ICT and other services at the school. The intranet also supports a range of services that we would use Myclasses for in our schools in the ACT. There is a digital portfolio link from the student intranet. Digital portfolios were introduced to support the assessment of the Tasmanian Essential Learnings. This has proved to be problematic for the school however as there are server issues and a high need for staff PD.

Our team spent quite a bit of time looking at the specific programs offered in the Computing strand for years 9 & 10 students. There appears to be considerable scope for personalizing the learning of students in this area. We were struck by the emphasis on “Gamemaker” and the presentations of the articulate members of the Robocop team preparing for the state championships in Launceston in early August. Neil showed us his computer museum, a small wooden box containing intruiging artifacts from his long history working with computers from the early 1970s onwards.

Angélique Bowe angelique.bowe@education.tas.gov.au explained the Senior (Years 9 & 10) Enquiries Program to our team. The year 9 program is a Futures Enquiry and the Year 10 program is a Global Enquiry. The program comes from a desire to rebuild SOSE to incorporate the Enquiry Essential Learning area in the new (2005) Tasmanian Curriculum Framework. The Enquiries program is linked to Pathways Planning, Information Literacy, Communication Skills, Community Based Learning goals and supports the transition to years 11-12. It is an attempt to change the pedagogy to a more student centred approach.

The year 9 unit incorporates a Learning to Learn unit on the Brain. The program also gives students an opportunity to participate in the Australian National History Challenge, Ethics based units and Civics. In year 10 students focus on global issues eg poverty issues in Africa. The school’s Reporting software (SARIS and REPORTZ) is being developed to support the demands of assessing and reporting on these transdisciplinary units. We were very interested in their Employability Skills report (attached). The school has developed this Reporting format based on learnings from the Dusseldorp Forum.