education.au

High technology in the sandpit - and all for the educators

Tech-savvy educators have a new innovation to help hone their skills – a sandpit.

27 November 2006 

Education Network Australia (edna), the online resource with over 10,000 registered users, now includes a dedicated area where they can test-drive new and emerging technologies even before they are formally incorporated into the site.

The development is one component of a major technical and content revamp of the successful site that allows educators to learn and hone their skills the way students do.

Also included are podcasting, interactive web forums incorporating instant messaging, and the provision of syndicated content and services to thousands of third party portals.

That means school teachers, TAFE and university lecturers can engage in professional development via their mobile phone or personal digital organiser.

“A sandpit is where you play and try new things so we thought it was an appropriate name even if the playing will be a bit more advanced,” said Gerry White, CEO of education.au limited.

“It will give users a taste of what’s around and serve as an R&D platform for us.”

The sandpit goes live on edna (at sandpit.edna.edu.au) this week. It is the final phase of a year-long upgrading of the site, which was launched in 1996 to provide an extensive, free source of professional information and news for all educators.

“edna gets 150,000 page views a month, over 2500 other portals, websites and RSS aggregators use its content and services and, according to a recent government survey, it returns $10 of value for every dollar invested in it through time and infrastructure savings – so it was already doing its job,” Mr White said."

“But we knew it needed some changes to incorporate the latest applications and make it more user friendly."

“We had a major consultation process across all states and territories, ran focus groups, worked with Vision Australia to ensure we were across accessibility issues, then completely re-engineered it."

“The new edna has better information architecture, leading-edge interactive and collaborative features, syndicated RSS feeds and web service APIs – not to mention a new look.”

Two important developments are:

• Increased personalisation, including portal entries for five education areas – early childhood, school, vocational and technical training, adult and community, and higher education

• Sophisticated information management and search providing access to multiple federated resource repositories

• Enhanced capabilities for networking groups, including web forums, blogs, wikis, shared calendars, discussion lists and instant messaging.

 
“edna is very much now an interactive resource, with involvement in groups growing by 160% over the past 12 months,” Mr White said.

“There are now over 10,000 people participating in 840 online communities and 77,000 subscribers to 720 email discussion lists."

“But it’s not just numbers. edna is allowing teachers in even small country towns to participate in discussions with peers and access the very latest educational ideas and technology."

“We are a portal to more than 2 million educational resources around the world.”

Both edna and Adelaide-based education.au limited are joint initiatives of the federal, state and territory governments and are funded through their education departments.

edna sites 

www.edna.edu.au
www.groups.edna.edu.au
www.lists.edna.edu.au
sandpit.edna.edu.au

Technical information about edna

edna can be accessed via assistive technologies – 'Skip to Content' links, Accesskey  navigation, alternate text, and small page sizes for users that have limited bandwidth (eg rural users).  The edna site complies with W3C Priority 1 accessibility checkpoints and most of Priority 2.

Utilities

Single login identity, URL shortening service, improved RSS feed creation

Integrated edna applications

All open source and proprietary applications were selected through a rigorous evaluation process.

• Jahia “collaborative source” content management system

• DSpace open source repository management – custom integration with CMS

• Verity enterprise search

• Open source “federated search” enabling searching of multiple disparate resource collections (developed by education.au)

• Moodle open source collaborative workspace and learning management system, customised features and single login integration

• Lyris email list management, with custom web (xml/SOAP) custom interface

• Web services rss feeds and APIs

• Open source “feed2js” RSS converter

Standards and interoperability

Industry standards – internet (eg web services, RSS, XHTML), metadata (eg DC, AGLS), accessibility (W3C), application standards (eg J2EE, PHP) digital rights management (eg Creative Commons).

Educational standards – learning resources and objects (eg LOM, IMS, SCORM, thesauri), search (eg Z39.50), harvesting (eg OAI-PMH), identity management (e.g. CAS).

More information

Mr Gerry White, CEO
education.au limited

182 Fullarton Road
Dulwich SA 5065
www.education.edu.au
Phone: 08 8334 3210
Email: inform@educationau.edu.au

About education.au limited

education.au is a not-for-profit information and communications technology company owned by Australia's Ministers for Education and Training. education.au collaborates with numerous stakeholders in education and training communities working across the early childhood, schooling, vocational education and training, adult and community education, and university sectors. Its business is to develop and manage online services that are of benefit to the education and training sector and are national in scope.