Ultranet: Connecting the school community online

At the click of a mouse the Ultranet will allow parents to view information about their child’s learning and progress.

The Ultranet, a new online learning environment, will give parents a vital window into their child’s school. At any time they will be able to access their child’s homework,
attendance record, assessment results and curriculum. The aim of the Ultranet is to enable parents to become full partners in their child’s education. It will provide them with
a new way to participate in the school community and their child’s education.

To learn more about the Ultranet go to
www.education.vic.gov.au/ultranet

Making learning fun and easy for teachers

FUSE is a new internet portal that enables teachers to find new learning materials and resources to make classes more informative and fun for students.

FUSE stands for find, use and share. It gives teachers access to quality education resources and allows them to locate online resources, which have been developed by organisations such as the State Library, Museum Victoria and Scienceworks.

‘I love FUSE because I can turn a good lesson into an engaging one by using an image, video, learning object or other resource from FUSE to grab students’ attention and
challenge their thinking. Using these types of material also helps students develop the digital, visual and information literacy skills they need to thrive in the 21st-century.

‘It’s a win-win because I know I will be able to access quality resources quickly and have my students accessing, learning and creating their own resources to evaluate and explain their new knowledge and understandings’, said Clare Rafferty, eLearning Leader, Ringwood Secondary College.

Harnessing technology to help students’ learn

Teachers and principals in government schools across Victoria are making major changes to the ways students are taught.

They’re working with the latest technology – new computers, the Ultranet, digital cameras, interactive whiteboards and ozens of software programs and online resources for individual subjects – to support their students’ learning. It’s not simply about technology – it’s about what technology can do for students and teachers to make learning deeper, more immediate and more powerful.

Based on the best ideas from international and Australian experts, our teachers are making technology do more to help students learn individually and in groups, to help them know and understand their chosen subjects and interests. That makes it a very exciting time to be learning in a Victorian government school. When asked about what technology meant to him, Rohan, a Year 9 student said, ‘Many forms of technologies are being used to assist students such as myself to bring learning into the 21stcentury. An example of this is the use of blogs, wikis and the use of web apps such as Google Docs. These tools allow students to work together in an online environment and comment on each other’s work.

No longer is learning strictly focused on rote-learning material from a textbook, instead, learning is dynamic and a fun process.’