[English] Re: The Learning Federation

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

The Hon Julia Gillard, 
Minister for Education
& Deputy Prime Minister 

Dear Teaching Colleagues,

Thanks for such thoughtful, professional comments via the four teacher's 
email-lists to which this request for information regards TLF was posted.

Our governments are, and will, spend scads of money on education matters
for taxpayers (+?) .. and we need to get IT right. Here's what we think:

http://lists.rite.ed.qut.edu.au/pipermail/oz-teachers/2008-June/date.html

http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/english/2008-June/date.html

http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/itapps/2008-June/date.html

http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/yr7-10it/2008-June/date.html


These urls are the four email-list Archives for this important discussion.

To assist important future deliberation on education matters, this email
is being sent to our Minister, TLF, the four lists, and also appropriate
others as important information from teachers+ regarding .au e-education.

By the way just adding my own thoughts, the best teacher-sharing resource
I have seen in years has been the edulists.com.au IT Applications (itapps)
teacher email list. It's for teachers of the Victorian Year12 VCE subject.

98% of 860 or so Teachers of the VCE IT unit are members, including State
Curriculum managers, professional associations, examiners etc etc. A high
quality, instant-answer, whole-course-sharing, warm and chatty community.

The Vic Gov and the relevant professional-association (in this case VITTA)
sponsor edulists.com.au so that free professional it-ed teacher list email
benefits all with wonderful group-self-help-curriculum-advice-and-support.
And if you want all the resource-downloads everyone creates, join VITTA :)

This teacher sharing & support community has worked brilliantly for years
Complex Yr12 IT course requirement tasks etc are developed as a community
when teachers download course items, add to them, and upload them again.

All this, an online-expert warm collegiate community and a treasure-trove
of all-top-quality teacher-shared resources if you join the professional 
association, for 800+ teachers, and many kids, costs maybe $2,000 a year.
(possibly one tenth the apparent cost of one single TLF learning object:-)

Many thanks to Barbara in the Oz-Teachers Archive for her summary thus far.

One thinks we need to examine in close detail all fine collegiate responses

Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Member, Victorian
Institute of Teaching.

Nb: Announced this week we're spending $32 million on online edu-curriculum
http://mediacentre.dewr.gov.au/mediacentre/Gillard/Releases/TeachingfortheD
igitalAge.htm


-- Original Email --

Hi all,

Trying to be as fair as possible, on an important issue.

What are people's thoughts regarding The Le at rning Federation?
  
  http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au

The group was set up in 2001, by all Ed Ministers for, "developing and 
procuring online curriculum content specifically for Australian and New 
Zealand curricula, and delivering it for free distribution to schools .. 
The Initiative has delivered a valuable national asset that will directly 
support the national curriculum and assessment agenda for decades to come."


Hmm .. sounds good. But, their funding runs out next year, by which time I 
believe they were meant to be self-funding. But on their website they have 
a plan for considerably more *government* funding.

Ok, so, a fair question is, what has been achieved? Are they worth it? The
answer to this question is crucial, because with a national curriculum, 
the Learning Federation products may well be mandatory for we teachers (?)

According to my reading of their website they have received  $123 million
over the previous seven years. And, in terms of achievements, they write:

> By 31 December 2007 the project:
>
> • published over 6300 items of digital content ..


Hm, so .. that's $123 million .. divided by 6300 curriculum items.

That's close to $20,000 for each single (eg, Flash) TLF curriculum item. 


> • developed a content repository to facilitate content development 


Hm .. ok, a website .. 


> • maintained extensive consultation networks and collaborative processes 


Hm .. how many colleagues reading this have been extensively consulted?


> • developed national standards and specifications ..


Hm .. there are already many standards eg, Dublin Core. We need another?


> • and systems to manage licensing and intellectual property for content.


Hm .. so the companies etc paid to produce items sign a release document.


Now, in March, the group put together a document "Sustaining supply of 
content for the digital education revolution. This paper details the 
sustainability of the Ministers' Le at rning Federation initiative beyond 
2009 to provide content for the digital education revolution." In here
they put forward a number of options to the government for more funding.
These range from $5 million a year, for not very much at all, to over $16 
million a year for presumably much of the same. 

http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/for_jurisdictions/feasibility_and_p
lanning_reports/phase_three.html

Colleagues. Now would be a great time to let people know your opinions.

Our money, and profession, will be vitally involved  Is this good enough?

Speak up now, or it will assuredly be more of the same. Is it good enough?

Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Member, Victorian
Institute of Teaching. 
--

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