Issue 115 - 2024 | Term 4 | Week 6
Our very own AI tool, NSWEduChat, is now available to all staff across the state. NSWEduChat is safe, secure and a free generative, accurate AI tool that is easy to use and can simulate many tasks.
All data in NSWEduChat stays in Australia, is accessible only to the department and incorporates the department’s policies and procedures.
With NSWEduChat, you can:
- automate administrative tasks and generate differentiated classroom resources
- tailor communications to specific needs and audiences
- boost your AI skills and digital literacy.
NSWEduChat has a range of resources including quick reference guides, FAQs and a prompting guide to help you get started.
Update Intune and CDM update
Since 2012 schools have been able to F12 their Windows devices and manage them using Universal Desktop Manager (UDM).
A pilot for a modern cloud-based management of Windows devices has been running using the platform Microsoft Intune and a custom management tool, Cloud Device Manager, or CDM.
Later this term, schools will be given the opportunity to register their interest to begin migrating their devices to Intune and CDM.
Some of the benefits of migrating to this new platform are:
- improved device performance
- improved application delivery to devices
- improved device login times
- greater flexibility in device configuration for schools.
More information to come.
Tip Get your 2025 calendar
Want to pre-fill your Microsoft Outlook calendar, or your Google Calendar with all the school weeks for 2025? It's so handy to know what week of the school term we are in when looking at your online calendar.
Here's a quick and easy way to add all of the school weeks, all the school holidays all the public holidays and all of the important dates for 2025 to your Outlook calendar.
Once added, they'll be shown in your calendar across all your devices - desktops, notebooks, tablets and smartphones! If you need these 2025 school weeks and events in your Google or Apple calendar, there's an ICS file for that too!
So how do you do this? Check out these how-to guides:
NOTE: if you have previously imported items into your calendar for 2025 DO NOT use the files above otherwise you may get duplicate events.
Thank you to Garry Stokes for taking the initiative to begin the process of creating the 2025 calendar for staff to import.
News Administration Marketplace Panel for Schools (AMPS)
We are pleased to welcome new AMPS suppliers School Stream and Schoolzine to the marketplace, expanding the range of options available to schools.
This is a result of the Department’s commitment to schools ensuring the marketplace continues to evolve, stimulating innovation, product enhancements, and encouraging healthy competition among suppliers. This ultimately benefits schools by providing effective products to streamline student administrative processes.
Schools using School Stream or Schoolzine can be confident that their products meet all NSW and Australian data and cyber security standards.
For more information regarding the products offered by School Stream and Schoolzine, please check out their pages on the Administration Marketplace Panel for Schools (AMPS) (nsw.gov.au) website by clicking on the following links:
News End of year with Canva
Info Apple Swift Student Challenge
Update New applications in AssessedIT
Here's a list of recently assessed applications. Refer to AssessedIT for the assessment outcomes if you're interested in using one of these.
For applications marked 'Use with caution', schools need to make their own decision to use the service, but they should review and adhere to the usage conditions for the service. These usage conditions could include things like age limitations, backing up data, not supplying unnecessary personal information or not uploading specific types of content.
Did you know – AssessedIT contains over 443 assessed applications? And it is growing weekly! There are currently 49 reading/comprehension services, 19 STEM and 37 mathematics services listed. Before you request a new product, review AssessedIT to check whether it has already been assessed or if there is something else you can use.
These are some of the applications that have been recently assessed.
- Jira cloud for outlook - Jira management via inbox
- Play.numberhive - Math skills through games and activities
- Jeopardy Labs - Create a Jeopardy quiz board
- Calm - Mental wellbeing
- Powtoon - Animated videos
- Trinket - Coding
- Music Ecademy - Teaching and learning music
- myDRIVESCHOOL - Driving simulator
- Smiling Mind - Mindfulness and meditation exercises
- Risk Assess - Tool to assist risk assessments in science and food
Info Accessibility on Chromebooks
Have you explored Chromebook’s accessibility features to build an inclusive classroom experience?
Check out the Google for Education Accessibility page to learn how to use these features and many more!
Info Polls in Microsoft Outlook
Polls in email could help keep your inbox tidy and save you time. Create instant, real-time polls in seconds within an email message.
Watch the below video for a step-by-step process on how to set polls up in Outlook.
Info Students leaving NSW DoE
When a school marks a student as a ‘Leaver’ in ERN, students currently have 180 days before they lose access to their:
- school email account (Gmail)
- Google Drive contents and any Google Classrooms they belonged to
- Microsoft OneDrive contents
- Microsoft Teams they belonged to
- Adobe Creative Cloud apps.
If your students have finished Year 12, or they are younger and moving to a new school outside of the public system, they can use their DoE account for a limited time. Anything left in their cloud storage after the 180 days will be removed.
Find out more with this handy poster for year 12 student.
PL Access to user accounts when leaving the department
Every staff member at the NSW Department of Education is allocated a user account upon employment.
When this ceases, access to their staff user account is revoked automatically.
Once accounts expire, the full Staff Portal, corporate applications, department email, Microsoft 365 services, Google services and shared drives will all be inaccessible.
For further advice, explore the Leaving the department web page.
There are different terms of access for different types of employment.
Read the QRG for Moving on from the DoE.
Alert Keep your account secure
All staff are reminded to practice good cyber hygiene when using their department email to sign up for online accounts with non-work-related sites.
Staff must abide by the department’s Digital devices, services and information – staff use policy and procedures.
Remember to complete mandatory cyber security training by 6 December 2024 and use four simple steps to improve your cyber hygiene:
Fun ICT thought of the day
Info news.T4L will be back in Week 9!
Information Technology Directorate publishes three issues of news.T4L each term. Remember - share each issue with your staff! And if you aren't receiving an email notification as soon as a new issue of news.T4L drops, then you're missing out! So why not subscribe?
Tell us about your school's great ICT initiatives! Send us an email to T4LNews@det.nsw.edu.au
