Zoom: Connecting Teachers and Remote Learners
CEnet’s Zoom Video Conferencing service continues to support the online education and collaboration needs of the membership.
During the 3-month period March-May 2020 the service enabled:
- 373,841 Zoom meetings
- 96,744,736 meeting minutes
- 4,356,800 meeting participants
Zoom use peaked during the early weeks of Term 2 as schools embraced technology to connect teachers with students learning from home. A maximum of 5.3 million daily Zoom VC minutes was reached on Wednesday April 29.
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International Connections
CEnet was reminded again this week that we are truly active participants in a global community, when the Google for Education team in India made contact through the Google Australia Education team to explore making connections between Australia and India.
The Google for Education Team in India has started working with the Western Region Catholic Foundation in India where there are over 400 Catholic schools and being aware of CEnet, thought this might provide a great opportunity to share.
The Google India introduction is the most recent of a number of opportunities to engage in international activities that have come through the relationship with Google, and each has provided a great opportunity to share and learn. In June 2019, CEnet met with delegates from the Tokyo Board of Education in Sydney and through a translator, discussed innovation across K-12 through the use of information and communications technologies.
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Huge Growth in eBook Usage during Learning from Home
The CEnet ACEN CELib Overdrive working group met on June 4 by Zoom Video. The participants met with Liz Tousey and Tracy Egan from Overdrive in the US to discuss the consortium eBook library. Traci and Liz provided a range rich data which will assist the group with efficiently managing resources. The data highlighted the growth in users and eBook checkouts during the recent learn from home period.
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Participants provided insights about recent eBook usage growth.
- Armidale noted that use increased dramatically during the COVID-19 period, despite many families having internet access issues due to their rural and remote locations. It was pleasing to see reading for pleasure promoted as part of the curriculum and to have an excellent solution available with Sora. Many schools were first time users and indicated how impressed they were with the range of titles available.
- Canberra-Goulburn reported a 40% increase in Sora checkouts during April/May.
- Cairns reported a significant increase in usage with many schools accessing the eBook library for the first time.
- Lismore reported a doubling of borrowings between February and March.
- Maitland-Newcastle reported quite a few new schools accessing Sora for the first time and noticed the time spent on audio books was much greater than the time spent on ebooks.
- Parramatta noted that access became quite critical during the COVID-19 period, as students did not have access to any sort of physical libraries. Teachers were requesting more simultaneous use titles as they wanted certainty around using titles and not having the wait for a title. In particular there was a lot of need for students who required access to support their diverse learning needs and in many cases parents approached our teachers to help troubleshoot. So many parents were quite engaged in making sure their child could access. The schools who had already spent time in giving their students instruction on how to access saw huge growth in use.
- Rockhampton reported a 165% increase in Overdrive usage for the same period last year. Some schools were really responsive to the value of this resource and this showed in user statistics.
- Sydney saw an immediate double in checkouts and holds, and the trend is continuing, with read aloud books being very popular with parents and always available titles very popular.
- Tasmania noted that going live with Sora has given students greater access for continued learning throughout the COVID-19 period.
- Wollongong noted that there has been greater access for infant students with parents requesting CEnet username and passwords to borrow using Sora.
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Bulletin Archive
In case you missed it, the earlier editions of the CEnet Member Bulletin, the archived documents are available here.
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