Western Australia has certainly been the focus of much discussion in the education sector of late since recent decisions to provide broadband telecommunications services for both the Education Department and Catholic systems.

These initiatives have surely made the schools within these systems the envy of other states with the provision of such high-speed Internet access for teachers, students and administrators.

As the recent ECAWA Conference* explored however, ICT outcomes in Education are more than just a matter of providing greater speed! In fact it is a sad truth that in many schools the provision of greater bandwidth leads to an expansion of poor Internet practices rather than leading to a pedagogical shift in teaching methods or a more curriculum focussed utilisation of the Internet by students. It would hardly be argued that high bandwidth has led to demonstrable ICT outcomes if the only obvious result has been the growth in the number of mp3s being downloaded within schools!

To overcome the problem of managing Internet usage within its schools in the new broadband environment, the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia has developed a centrally managed Internet platform using the software and support services of myinternet Limited. Acting as an Internet gateway for the school system, myinternet’s platform will also deliver a range of applications that will bring meaningful use of the Internet to teachers and students.

From myinternet’s perspective this is an exciting development as it provides the first opportunity for our software to be utilized by schools in Western Australia. myinternet applications are currently used by education systems in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania with a total coverage of over 45% of all Australian schools.

Educational networks by their very nature require basic services to support both systemic Duty of Care, as well as enable the implementation of school based Acceptable Internet Use Policies.

These basic services include user accounts, content filtering, cost control tools, disk space management and traffic monitoring/reporting. In addition, controls for anti-virus protection are becoming essential. All of these services are integrated through myinternet’s Internet platform and are provided in an equitable fashion to all schools. The basic administrative tool used to manage these services is the highly successful SINA^® (Schoolsnet Internet Network Administrator) software which provides point and click tools for systemic and school management.

As well as developing software to assist educational systems to manage the Internet usage within schools, myinternet has also leveraged the technological infrastructure to provide a wide range of collaborative tools aimed at assisting with the development of online communities and aiding curriculum delivery.

As an integrated feature of CathEdNet all schools receive the ability to create individual portal accounts giving all users the use of a personal, secure, portable virtual desktop. The myinternet desktop is an XML environment which has the following tools at the disposal of teachers and students-

• Webmail - including school and personal mailing lists, word string and attachment filtering by file type;
• Personal and shared calendars,
• Publication tools
• Class and personal home pages and document storage
• Discussion foyers,
• Moderated forums,
• Portable bookmarks
• Educational resources

This unique portal environment which has been purpose built for K-12 education, can be used to establish both Systemic and School-based Intranets.

As part of CathEdNet myinternet also provides a default web site for every school enhancing their capacity to develop an online presence for its broader community.

There are serious pedagogical issues to consider in the development of online environments. Decision makers are often confronted with a series of competing dichotomies when selecting online services and these can be summarised in the following way-

In considering the delivery of a range of services across school systems, there are also issues of efficiency and total cost of ownership.

The myinternet solution provided as part of the CathEdNet service allows for the flexible configuration of services so that each of these pedagogical issues can be addressed and possibly modified over time. There are many services such as content filtering which can be maintained at a central level for example, but allowance given for devolved list management at the local school level. This flexibility is also maintained within the SINA tools and the myinternet desktop with configurable access rights and privilege settings being an inbuilt feature.

Quality educational networks can be conceived of as layers of service and much like an onion, the core layer is critical to the shape and function of the outer layers. In the CathEdNet service to schools the core layer of access is delivered in spades and has made a tremendous difference to the use of the Internet within schools. myinternet is now assisting the Catholic Education Office with the outer layers of the network, ensuring that appropriate user-friendly applications, interfaces and integrated systems deliver the most value.

As any network expands, further layers need to be considered and the myinternet platform provides the flexible scalability to service the growing needs of classes, schools, regions and Dioceses which form part of the network.

In assessing the extent to which CathEdNet will make a difference to Catholic systemic schools in Western Australia, the focus should be on the activities that will now be possible. Through the tools provided by myinternet, these include the possibility for creating collaborative online environments, the possible targeting of content to groups of users within and across schools, the establishment of walled garden lists for groups of users, the use of traffic reports to inform best practice and to provide safe and cost effective use of the Internet, the provision of web publishing rights for students and teachers, the management of secure Internet access and the provision of centralised virus protection.

It will be these functions and not just the speed of Internet access itself, which will drive curriculum and administrative outcomes across this system of schools and place the Catholic system of schools in Western Australia at the vanguard of technological developments in educational networks.

Bede Ritchie

myinternet Limited

* "The Need For Speed". ECAWA Conference, Mandurah. Sept 13,14, 2002.