Supporting Catholic Education in the Northern Territory
COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the educational needs of Catholic Education Northern Territory and in preparation for the likelihood of schools closures, the NT team commenced the redesigning of delivery of their curriculum and communication with their teachers and school leaders. As part of this process, Catholic Education Northern Territory (CENT) requested support from CEnet in their COVID-19 continuity response.
Specifically, CENT requested assistance from CEnet with Zoom video conferencing for teachers and staff in the CENT CEO office and the supporting Identity and Access Management foundation services to provide a reliable platform to enable communications with schools.
The CEnet Board recently approved the request from CENT and last week, CEnet completed the project to deliver Zoom and Identity and Access Management services. A number of CEnet personnel were involved in the project including:
- Project Sponsor: Vicki Anderson
- Project Manager: Phil Egan
- Enterprise Architect: Ian Gregory
- Video Conference Subject Matter Experts: David Jenkins and Michael Ivkosic
- Identity Management Subject Matter Experts: Jarryd Keir, Josh Kofod and Josh Obst
- Access Management Subject Matter Experts: Ryan Callinan and Troy Mackay
CENT was a founding Member of CEnet but when a range of services were made available through the Northern Territory Government, it made sense to take advantage of the offer, meaning that ongoing membership of CEnet would have been a duplication of services. CENT is now re-investigating the best way to receive services and the request for assistance is part of the Diocese of Darwin's process of considering CEnet membership, and this project may be followed by a subsequent piece of work to provide a Diocesan on boarding process.
|
|
Continuity of Service Delivery
Like all organisations, CEnet has adjusted the way it operates during the current challenging times. CEnet personnel have been working remotely in virtual teams now for two months and have continued to deliver services to support Member Dioceses.
CEnet has engaged in a number of strategies to support staff during this time, with one of these making use of a tool adopted by a number of Member Dioceses to inform decision making through the use of data collection.
CEnet has enlisted the assistance of Qualtrics to commence regular "pulse surveys" that focused on remote working. These surveys are designed to actively listen to employee needs and to assist in identifying potential areas of improvement, so that action can be taken to ensure CEnet staff have the clarity and support they need to adapt to the changing workplace experience when working from home.
Pulse surveys have become a valuable tool during the last eight weeks allowing CEnet leadership to trend results and focus on any areas of concern. What started out as a work from home readiness survey tool has quickly become our platform of choice for regular pulse checks and a peer nomination program. The team at Qualtrics has been proactive in assisting through the provision of resources to assist and these are also freely available to Member Dioceses.
|
|
CeSIS Roll-out
One of the activities that CEnet and Member Dioceses have continued to progress in recent times, is the roll-out of the CeSIS service.
|
|
|
|
Various elements of CeSIS are now being used in 519 schools within CEnet Member Dioceses. The CeSIS initiative is delivering a solution across New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory and is the result of the CEnet Board's vision to deliver an enterprise solution to support the needs of students, teachers, parents and administrators across the diverse membership.
|
|
Group Procurement
CEnet conducts a number of group procurement activities at the request of Member Dioceses. The first of these, which commenced in 2014, was for SketchUp Pro 3D modelling software.
CEnet Member Dioceses found that when planning the move from a free version of the software, which was no longer supported, they were facing a significant expense as the quoted cost was over $20 per user license.
At the request of Member Dioceses, CEnet explored the options by engaging with the parent company in the United States with the result being an annual license that provides participating dioceses with access to the software at a fixed cost of less than 20c per student covering all students in the diocese.
The SketchUp Pro license was renewed in April, with details distributed to participating dioceses and it is pleasing to note that the annual cost has not increased since commencement in 2014.
|
|
Member Collaboration - Professional Learning
The CEnet eLearning working group has been developing projects to celebrate the excellence and innovation occurring within the membership and to share the benefits of that expertise with others.
An example of this was the recent Catholic Learning Online Summit. An emerging initiative is a series of webcasts to designed to highlight the innovative work that is being done by teachers within CEnet Member Dioceses.
Commencing in Term 2, a series of short webcasts featuring interviews with Catholic school teachers sharing inspiring ideas and examples of how they use technology for effective teaching and learning will be released.
The webcasts will focus on good pedagogy and inspiring lesson ideas to engage students, from teachers with great classroom stories to share. Given the broadly based use of G Suite, episodes will also have a brief update on new features to keep teachers well informed of the latest changes.
This project to share the best of what is happening in schools within Member Dioceses will grow and evolve over time under the guidance of the eLearning Working Group.
|
|
Bulletin Archive
In case you missed it, the earlier editions of the CEnet Member Bulletin, the archived documents are available here.
|
|
ONCE News
In case you missed it, the latest edition of ONCE News has been released.
Inside this edition
- CeSIS/CeFMS project update
- Zooming into remote learning
- CEnet moves to remote working
- Data Trustees Meeting
- Recognising the contribution of Gary Brown
|
|
|
Login now to access all of your CEnet applications.
|
|
|
|
|
