Recording: The digital revolution in schools

Descriptive transcript

I'd first like to welcome you all here today. I want to particularly acknowledge the traditional lands upon which all of us are meeting. I know that there will be many and varied different traditional owners from wherever you're joining us, obviously, but I'm on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, which also happens to be the land that UTS is built on. I want to pay a special respect to Elders past and present, particularly as traditional custodians of knowledge for the land on which our university is built.

My name is Verity Firth, I'm the Executive Director of Social Justice at UTS and I head up our Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion. It's my pleasure today to be joined by some very distinguished guests: Minister Sarah Mitchell, Michaela Jade, Lesley Loble and Murray Kitteringham.

Now, to kick us off today, I would really like to welcome Professor Andrew Parfitt. He is the Provost and Senior Vice President here at UTS and he's going to officially welcome us all to this discussion.

Thanks so much, Verity, and let me also just begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we are, noting that we're probably dispersed all over Sydney and beyond at the moment. We pay respect to Elders past and present and those emerging leaders who are going to take us towards a more reconciled future and a future that is perhaps different to what we see at the moment.

Let me also welcome the panellists, in particular Minister Mitchell. Thank you for your time today for this really important conversation. The future of education, the impact of digital and other technologies on education, they've been topics that have been around for a while, but nothing like a good pandemic, actually, to bring them to the front, because I think if we're honest as a university and probably in the schools as well, we've had varied experiences of the use of technology in education. We've learned some positive things. We've done well to adapt quickly to the use of technologies and remote learning.

But I think the best explanation of it, at least for universities that I've heard, is that what we've got at the moment is emergency remote learning and there's still a way to go in terms of building the types of engagement that we need, particularly for a university of technology where we have laboratories and studios and all of that engagement that occurs on our campus that is now being done in different ways. The impact of other tools like artificial intelligence and how that can be used to inform learning and the ways in which that work, really important conversations.

And another parallel conversation with that, which links to it very strongly, is the very timely issue of access and participation to education and progression through schools and again, this is not a new topic. At UTS, we've had a U at Uni programme where we're exploring different ways, pathways from school to higher education, recognising that sometimes attainment in traditional ways is not the best indicator of success in the future. And how do we broaden that out? And in a year where we'll probably have the most disrupted HSC cohort for a generation, that issue is timely again.

How can people be confident they can progress in their lifetime of learning from schools in an environment where we're all learning in one form or another what we do? So welcome to our panellists who are going to explore a range of issues with us today. And thanks to them for their time. And I hope that you all do enjoy the conversation, engage with the conversation and hopefully it'll be thought-provoking as we create a future that will undoubtedly be very different to what it is at the moment.

Thank you very much for that, Andrew. As Andrew so wonderfully introduced in his remarks, the world is in the midst of change. Some of it's brought on by the pandemic and other was change happening anyway. And we're in the middle of a tech revolution and the education sector is too.

Access to digital advancements is changing the way we educate young people, but the unequal distribution of that access has exposed a crushing divide in our education system. The digital divide has particularly come into stark relief during the pandemic.

While just 3 per cent of high income households don't have access to the internet, the rate increases to 33 per cent amongst the lowest income households. And this obviously presents a major barrier and risk for children who are learning remotely.

Unequal distribution of access to and ease of using digital devices is another growing issue that's only getting worse at the moment. So while there's a lot to be excited about in the digital revolution in schools, and there really is, there's an amazing array of interesting and innovative things we can do, there is also a lot to be concerned about.

And we need to ensure that the benefits are experienced equally and that teachers and students are equipped to get the most from technology and retain their full agency. Is it too soon to talk about AI in education when some students still don't have digital devices or internet connectivity?

So to begin today's discussion, it's my absolute pleasure to welcome the Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning, the Honourable Sarah Mitchell.

Minister Mitchell is a passionate believer in education and invested in the public education system both personally and professionally as a graduate of Gunnedah High School and with her children in public schools as well. She is committed to ensuring that every child, no matter where they are from, has access to a top quality education. Since becoming Education Minister in 2019, Sarah has led evidence-based reform with student outcomes at the heart, including introducing mandatory phonics and creating the school success model to bring more transparency into the system to ensure students receive the support they need to succeed. Since entering Parliament in 2011, Sarah has served on numerous committees and as the Parliamentary Secretary for Regional and Rural Health and Western New South Wales. In 2017, she was appointed Minister for Early Childhood Education, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Assistant Minister for Education. In 2019, she was appointed Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning. Over to you, Sarah.

Thank you. Thanks, Verity. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be a part of today's discussion. I'm joining you all at home in Gunnedah, so I'm on beautiful Kamilaroi land and I pay my respects to Elders past and present and emerging. Very timely to be here, I guess, as part of this panel today and talking about the digital revolution in schools.

And I think picking up Andrew's point, while we're in the midst of a pandemic, I think some of these issues have certainly been in the front of mind of many. But obviously, this is something that governments, that education experts have been grappling with for the last couple of decades. And I think the work that we've done in education and in our systems, particularly over the last few years, have meant that we are in a position now where we do have learning from home across the state to be able to use technology.

You know, I often think that if we were doing this pandemic 20 years ago, we wouldn't be doing some of the things that I've seen. Just earlier this morning, I was on a Zoom class with a music group of Year 12 students from Keira High School, looking at how they were using technology and delivering their class remotely in these circumstances.

Many, many schools are using Zoom, Google Classroom, all of the different applications that are available. And of course, complementing that with, I guess, what we call the old fashioned way, books and pens and paper and pack as well.

And I think that's important in this discussion, because obviously sometimes I think there's an assumption that learning from home means learning online. And in some cases, yes. But in others, when you do have those gaps that you mentioned at the beginning, Verity, we've got to be aware of how we can deliver education remotely, knowing that every household is different and every community is different.

So there's a few things that I just wanted to talk about, I guess, in my opening address and really looking forward to hearing from the other panellists, many of them who I know and have worked with, and it's great to be here with them.

So I guess just a couple of things from my perspective. One of the key issues I find really is making sure that we provide that support when it comes to connectivity. And for me, being a rural member of parliament and someone who grew up in regional New South Wales, we do still have that divide between metro and rural. But I really think that the digital processes are going to be the way that help us going forward when it comes to bridging some of that gap.

The first issue is obviously connectivity. And I know that there'll be people joining us from all around the state today. But the reality is that we've had to invest a lot and work quite hard just to bring a lot of our schools in regional communities up to having basic Internet access. There's been hundreds of millions of dollars invested by us to do that. Working with Telstra, we've got our Connected Country Schools program, which is all about Wi-Fi. We've got some schools, mainland schools in New South Wales, that we are moving off satellite onto fibre.

That will all be happening within the next year or so, which is important because we've got to get that basic connectivity right. And I think that's been a real key investment for us. If we don't have that as sort of the minimum standard when it comes to our digital connection, we're not going to have the infrastructure that we need to build on top of that. So I think that's been a really important thing that we focused on. And it's been a challenge, even though it's very much at that basic level, making sure you've got what you need to underpin when it comes to digital infrastructure and technology.

We've also got our school digital strategy again. I'm sure many people involved in this forum today will be aware of that. And it's about how we empower schools in terms of their own digital future and capacity. What are the skills that they need in terms of improving educational outcomes using technology? And I think that's important. We shouldn't be having technology in our classroom just for the sake of it. It's got to have meaning. It's got to be evidence based. It's got to actually lead to better outcomes and make it easier for our teachers and students to engage. And that's a key part of what we want to do through our digital strategy.

Again, there's a big focus on what we're doing in our rural communities. We've got a program rolling out called the Rural Access Gap. The acronym is RAG, which is terrible. We should have probably thought about that before we called it the Rural Access Gap. However, I think the concept behind it is really important.

So there's about a thousand rural and regional schools that will be getting upgrades through that. We started with a pilot out in Dubbo, learnt some really good lessons by doing that. And it just opens up a world for our teachers in terms of being able to access each other, even if they are working remotely, online lesson delivery. I was at a school in Dubbo, Orana Heights Public, they were doing Zoom lessons with Taronga Zoo in Sydney because they couldn't get the kids there. But it means that they don't miss out on those opportunities. And I think that's really important as well.

If we can use our digital technology to bridge that gap that exists between metro and regional, we know we're going to have better outcomes for our students overall. So I'm really excited about that RAG program. A thousand schools are going to benefit over the next 18 months. It's extra devices, it's better connectivity, and it's also moving a lot of our things online. And again, that's something that all schools will benefit from and parents. Things like being able to do the school enrolment forms online rather than having to fill out those paper forms. It's easier for families. It's much easier for our very hardworking school admin staff who don't have to spend literally hours, you know, data entry to put those forms in. Digitising what we can in terms of our paperwork is also really important and part of the work that we want to do in that space.

I guess the last point that I would make too, and again, I think we've certainly noticed during the pandemic, again, picking up on what you said, Verity, is that there is inconsistencies. I'm very cognisant of the issues in rural communities. I think the current lockdown in Sydney and south-western Sydney and the impacts on those communities as well. I've been meeting regularly with our principals from that area of Sydney and that digital capacity, the ability of students to access what's available to them. I think these are the sort of issues that are really coming to the forefront during the pandemic.

I would also say, too, one of the things that we've found is the ability to use digital options for things like assessing students. And many of our teaching staff would be aware of checking assessments that we brought in last year when students returned to the classroom. They were easy to use. Within two days, we had results back to teachers so they knew how their children were tracking in the classroom. That real-time technology has helped in many ways in terms of teaching and learning and assessment practice as well. So lots of exciting things, few challenges we've got to work through, but a good opportunity. And I'm just very grateful to be asked to be part of today's discussion. And I'm looking forward to hearing from others on the panel as well. So thank you very much.

Thanks, Sarah. That was wonderful. All right, now my job is to introduce our panellists and we're now going to open it up to a panel discussion. And as I said before, there is also an opportunity to place your questions in the Q&A box.

So our panellists: Michaela Jade, Lesley Loble and Murray Kitteringham. Michaela Jade is the founder and CEO of the award-winning company Indigital, Australia's first Indigenous edutech company. Michaela has a background in environmental biology with a degree from UTS, as well as a Master of Applied Cybernetics from ANU. She spent most of her career as a National Parks Ranger. Her company, Indigital, delivers Indigenous-designed digital skills training for primary and high school students as part of their work. It enables Indigenous and non-Indigenous kids to connect with and learn from Indigenous elders about cultural history, cultural knowledge, history and language, while learning digital skills in cutting-edge technologies. Welcome, Michaela.

Lesley Loble is a very newly appointed industry professor at UTS. She's here, funded by the Ramsey Foundation, and she's examining how education can more effectively develop and apply artificial intelligence-based technology to lift achievement and outcomes, and use those insights to identify better how to systemically overcome disadvantage. Lesley is a recognised national leader of public purpose reform and innovation in Australia and the US. Lesley previously headed major divisions for 20 years in the NSW Department of Education, working across schooling, early childhood and tertiary education in Australia's largest and most diverse education sector. Lesley's been appointed by Australian governments and public purpose organisations to some 20 major governing boards and advisory committees. In the US, she served in top-level roles for five years in the Clinton administration. Welcome, Lesley.

Murray Kitteringham is the principal of Sir Joseph Banks High School in south-west Sydney, a low socioeconomic status high school where 82% of students are from language backgrounds other than English. Murray has lead-managed the school for six years and has overseen some key changes, including ensuring the school's vision of excellence, opportunity, innovation and success reflect the aspirations of the community, and replacing the school rules with values, think, respect, learn, to teach the behaviours we want to see. Sir Joseph Banks High School is among the highest-growth high schools in the state, and over the last seven years, 100% of students have been on an ATAR pattern of study, with 60% of Year 12 having attained university placement. Welcome, Murray.

So, I'm going to kick it off with you, Murray. You get the first question. And I want you to talk a bit about your experience, obviously, as principal of a low-SES high school, and what role technology is currently playing in teaching lessons and providing feedback to students.

Yeah, well, Verity, just a little bit of context. Our school's in Bankstown, so we're one of the lockdown LGAs. And I guess the journey that we've been on over the last four years, it's not been something that just happened recently, has been one that was partly fortuitous when COVID first lockdown came around. I guess I just wanted to include the broader audience, because I wanted to come at it from a slightly from an infrastructure point of view to start with, you know, when you're beginning from ground zero, you're in a low-SES community, and you want to get the devices in the hands of every single student, obviously, that costs a lot of money, and it can't happen overnight. So what we decided to do was to adopt a growth strategy and start with year seven first. And it was not only growth of the devices, but it was growth of our teachers' professional learning, that we could make mistakes in a smaller capacity before we expanded them right across the school, and really get a handle on how we were going to actually use these devices. We decided to go with Chromebooks because they didn't have a large hard drive on them, and as soon as you open them, they work straightaway, so you don't have time lagging and logging on. And we gave every single student a laptop and tied it into their voluntary fee. So the voluntary fee, if you pay your voluntary fee, then you're paying off your laptop. And that's how we sort of financed BYOD in a low-SES community. And what we found pretty quickly was that the kids were turning up with devices, and the teachers weren't able to actually plan overnight every single lesson online. And that's where we had that divide between we've got the devices here, they're walking through the door with those devices, what are we going to do to make sure that we can give our staff that professional learning and bring everyone on the journey together? And I guess the challenges that we face in all schools is that we've got digital natives walking through the doors with these devices in their hands. And we've also got digital dinosaurs, and I would include I'm a Gen X person. You know, it's taken a lot of learning for me to understand how we can actually learn together. And as a school, I was really proud of the fact that our staff were uncomfortable, but they were willing to take on the challenge and could see the value in that. And it did come with quite a few complications about developing that capacity across our staff. But what we did do was roll out the professional learning. And each year as we went by, we found ourselves at the start of lockdown last year with half of our school year 7, 8, 9 with devices, people were using them better and better as the years went by, and then COVID hit. And if we've got, I guess, the silver lining in the dark cloud that is COVID, and we're always looking for, you know, some positive and opportunity that's come out of something that's such a negative for so many, is that this has really launched so many schools into the next level that they otherwise wouldn't have without COVID happening. All of a sudden, you know, we were given very short notice, all schools were given very short notice to go into remote learning. We were in a position where half the school had devices, but as you mentioned in your introduction, 30% of the community, you know, half our school didn't have devices, but 30% of the community is an accurate reflection of people not having internet at home. So what we did was we beg, borrowed, stole, perhaps a little less of the stealing, but ABCN, the universities have come in, businesses had donated and we used our equity funding and we got the devices in the hands of the rest of the school. And that way we were able to go 100% online and focus on what those structures looked like. I guess with the teaching and learning, that was the biggest challenge, is how do we bring our whole staff onto Google Classroom that, you know, were typing with two fingers like me, and how do we bring them into that, the fold of this is what technology, digital learning, online learning looks like in a very short period of time. I think that we, and I'm just being very open and honest, I think that all schools really struggled with that. You know, we're much better at it this time around, but we did get to the point where we were delivering lessons through the Google Classroom predominantly, but we also used Microsoft Teams to a lesser degree. There were some people that were more confident in that area. And we got that learning online and running pretty well. And this is where the real gains were made, though. Once we came back from lockdown, we decided we weren't going to look back. We decided that we've gone to all of this trouble to move online. Yes, we fumbled. Yes, we learned how to do screencasts. We learned how to embed things into the Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams so kids didn't have to print off things. You know, if you're printing things off and then taking photographs and uploading things, it's very clunky and it doesn't really work. But we learned how to do that as a school, and then we continued face-to-face. So when the kids came back, we said, you know what, we're not going back. We're not going to go back to textbooks and worksheets. We're going to do online learning face-to-face. And that's where we were able to use, you know, the time in between last lockdown and this to really build upon the structures that we had. Our Year 7 started with a connected curriculum. 18 of our one-hour periods per 50-period cycle were with Year 7 using Microsoft Teams every single lesson, and all of their learning was online. And we learned a lot more about how to embed learning into that platform. I guess if you're looking for a pathway forward, though, and from what we've learned from this, Google Classroom is a great place. It's got many features, but it operates like a feed, like a Facebook feed, where the learning can drop down. It's terrific for people like myself that can get on and navigate their way fairly quickly. But Microsoft Teams absolutely is, I believe, and our staff feedback has been that the potential for using OneNote, and it operates more like a book where you can turn the pages and you can bookmark things, the features on Microsoft Teams are that much more powerful once you become more comfortable with that platform. So, look, lots of opportunities there for differentiation. The teachers are putting screencasts, embedding screencasts into their lessons, and that frees them up when they're face-to-face to be able to let their kids go on independently, learn asynchronously in the classroom, and then they can go around and move across other students and give the attention to where that's needed when we're face-to-face. But it's an authentic flipping of the classroom. And that also operates right now when we're in remote learning online. We've set up a whole infrastructure, our whole school is online. We would prefer to be face-to-face, but we can operate as a school because of the advances we've made, I guess, in that downtime to building that platform, creating the website, and linking that learning into a broader platform. We're about to bring SharePoint on. I know many schools have gone down that pathway, but that's our next step in the adventure. So that's where we're at.

That's great. I love what you said about sort of continuing the online environment even once school returned, and which presumably made this second round of lockdown so much easier in terms of the quality that was able to be delivered to the students.

Yeah, we're really able to expand upon what we'd first achieved and refine our practices and our processes and work together. And look, the technology, it's just a tool. It can be a doorstop. You know, it doesn't really actually do anything. What I'd like to, I guess, the biggest message is it's the people that are driving that Teams approach. It's the opportunity to collaborate online. I can operate my whole school through my mobile phone now. You know, all of those apps are available on my phone. The email is, you know, we're connecting in this platform. Everything's available in an app on your phone. I don't think I could have said that only a few years ago.

Yeah. Now, Michaela, the Indigital Schools program that you run is designed to be delivered in class by teachers, often in remote communities. And what steps do you take to ensure educators are equipped to be able to run that program? And tell us a little bit about your program so people understand.

Yeah, well, I mean, Verity, thank you for having me. And Murray, congrats on the progress you've made in your school. It's really inspiring. We're a social impact education technology company. And we, with our skills, knowledge, networks and devices, are investing in the future. And we're doing that by investing in educators. So not just teachers, but elders in our community, community knowledge holders and the kids. And I think what's really exciting is the role that the private sector can play in closing the digital divide. And it's something that we strive to do every single day in digital. We started our work looking at how could we democratise access to the spatial web and the suite of spatial web technologies for First Nations people. I started my company in remote Kakadu. So I have lived 21 years in remote communities and really understand the technology challenges. And also understand as a Dharug woman that these same challenges are faced in Western Sydney in my own community. So we make sure that we work with teachers and communities to understand a really key question, which is what is the digital divide you're closing? Everybody is at a different stage of their technological journey across Australia and internationally. But our ethos is do what you have where you are with the knowledge and skills you have access to in and around your community. And we work with schools to help them understand where they're at on their journey and what technology we can offer them or show them to help inspire future leaders in the spatial web. So we work primarily in mixed and augmented reality. The way that we democratise this technology is to create an AI-based platform that's web-based because augmented reality technologies to produce are around $50,000 to $150,000 per application. So we thought that is absolutely ridiculous. How can we make a solution that allows even little kids to create their own augmented reality? Because they're going to grow into a world where everything has a spatially aware digital twin. And if they can't see that, they can't understand how they fit into that story. So that's what we do. And that's how we do it. We've also got a platform. So we use Microsoft Teams as our platform. And we have Microsoft Community Training as our learning management system. And they're integrated. So teachers only need to go into one environment to go through our lessons. And they're supported by lesson plans, by videos and other resources inside that one environment. So we're not asking teachers to like run around. But I think the really great thing that we've designed is because we're the private sector, we can do this. We've been able to bring 200 teachers together from all around Australia so they can help each other on this journey too. So the dialogues that we're having by bringing teachers from Yukala to Bruny Island to communities in remote Western Australia to New South Wales, is they're having these conversations for the first time around spatial web technologies. And the tricks and tips they're using in their own classrooms to explore how this can be used as educational material and tools.

I love that. That's the real upside of connectivity, isn't it? That reaching out across the country. Minister Mitchell, talking about reaching out across the country, you're currently in Gunnedah. And you have been a vocal advocate for ensuring that regional and remote students obviously have access to the best education. What do we need to do to make sure equal access in a rural and regional sense, but possibly also having listened to Murray in terms of Western and Southwestern Sydney, to make sure that equal access to the education benefits of digital devices and applications happens?

Yeah, look, I think that's probably the million dollar question, Verity. And I think certainly from a regional perspective, probably what I spoke about earlier in terms of some of those programs that we're investing in terms of digital infrastructure. They're not small amounts. The upgrades to connectivity are 300 odd million dollars. The rural access gap is 365 million. So it's significant money. And really that, I guess, is about trying to bring the regional students up to a level playing field as much as we can when it comes to just access to the very core basics of the infrastructure. But I think the second part then is what do we do with it? And I think one of the things that we've found, particularly over this period of time and picking up Murray's point about having to provide devices to students, I think between last year and this year, there's been something like an extra 20,000 devices that the department has given to schools to give out to students, about 13,000 dongles. So we are doing what we can to get that access and connectivity up there. But it does pose a question in terms of, well, what can students access at school? What do they access at home? What are some of the benefits that we need to make sure is available to everybody, regardless of what happens when they walk outside the school gate? But I think one of the most inspiring things that I've seen, and it's in a regional context, but I think there's capacity to do more with this, is many of you would be familiar with our Aurora College model, which Adrian Piccoli started when he was the education minister, which for rural students has given them the opportunity to access subjects online that they wouldn't normally be able to access. We've used that in the last year or two to bring in opportunity classes for year five and six students in schools that don't currently have that on offer. So it's just given an opportunity to some of our rural kids that didn't exist before we had those platforms. And I met a student last year who's at school up in Guyra who wants to be a doctor. Guyra Central School doesn't have enough of a school cohort to do physics and chemistry, but she's doing it through Aurora and wants to go back and be a GP in a regional community. Like that's the sort of stuff that for me makes my heart sing because to be able to support someone like that particular student is what we should be doing. And that's how we've got to use the technology for the greater good. And I think if there's opportunities to look at our digital platforms, look at how we can expand that, take the lessons from COVID. And I think Murray raised an excellent point in terms of his school, using it online, but using it in the classroom as well. I think that we have some good opportunities going forward in terms of what can we expand? How do we deliver this? Yes, the devices and the infrastructure has to be number one, but then how do we think a bit outside the square and what more can we do? So I try to be glass half full and think how do we turn this into a positive experience for our students in time?

Yeah, I think there's definitely true to say that the pandemic has actually forced all of our focus on th