The Ultranet

Yesterday every government school in Victoria had a pupil-free day in order to launch the Ultranet to staff and teach them how to use it. I am one of the Ultranet trainers at my school. Although we are currently using the features of Google Apps heavily in our school and are quite happy with the capabilities, we wanted to train our staff yesterday in the ultranet so that we can have a detailed discussion about how we might use it. The phase two rollout of the Ultranet will have student tracking and assessment capabilities that are potentially more advanced than what we are using now, so we wanted the staff to be Ultranet literate by the time this next rollout occurs. At JMSS we are in the lucky position that most staff are highly computer literate and our daily work includes heavy ICT use. The students all have tablet computers that allow them to access any online resources and lesson plans wherever they are and much of our curriculum and staff and student collaboration occurs online.
Unfortunately, as most of us predicted, the system fell over at around 9am when most of the teachers in the state attempted to log in. Although this was a much-needed capacity test for the system, around the state many a "plan B" was unveiled and rolled out to fill the Ultranet gap. In my 'plan B' I had decided to show a couple of the Common Craft videos on Social Networking and Social media, and then discuss what Twitter is and how we could use it as a professional networking tool and to communicate and interact with students.
This session was a big success. The staff were not asked to join twitter, I merely discussed how I use it and what I think it is good for, however as I was talking, most of the staff in the room joined up and starting contributing to the discussion. In fact, JMSS now has such a twitter presence that I think I have created a monster!
Throughout the day I had been following twitter discussions around the Ultranet as I find that twitter is often very useful as a news source and generally quicker than most other communication channels. The beauty of the discussion around the ultranet yesterday on Twitter is that it put me in touch with a whole lot of Victorian educators - something that will help expand my professional online network. For me this was a big plus because part of the way I use twitter is as a way of keeping up with what is going on in education, however it is not easy to find good teachers to follow. I feel like that has been the biggest gift that yesterday gave me.
The other upside for this day was the chance to do some collaborating as a group. Any school who did not have a plan B that was technology and pedagogy focussed really missed an opportunity to get some serious thinking and planning done around what the Ultranet means for Victorian schools and how technology can be better used to enhance teaching and learning. For many schools who have not had the access or the know-how to access technology in their teaching, the Ultranet means big changes and more options. That is something that the media have failed to acknowledge in their reports today about the failure of yesterday's training day. They have also failed to acknowledge the hard work that went in to many school programs for the day, and the learning that came out of it.