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Virtual Reality

New Year, New Tech!

Technology is constantly evolving, and there are new products added to the market almost every hour. How are you to know what is the best out there to suit your School’s needs?

It can take some time and lots of research to seperate the cream from the crop and envision the practical use for the digial classroom and beyond. It is important to ensure that what you are looking to implement will integrate and complement your current ICT infrastructure and needs.

James Leckie, co-founder and director of Schoolbox, a learning and engagement tool, said that “the most significant ed-tech challenges and hindrances for principals in 2018 have been around the ability to connect, transfer and enable data to flow between various systems.”

β€œThis year, we have seen an explosion in tools used to capture learner experiences, wellbeing, and academic results. In addition, there is an increasing amount of content being created that is valuable to students. All of this data, however, is being built in separate silos with no way to join it all together,” he continues.

But never fear, it is possible to pull all of this information together giving you and your executive team, and even teachers, real-time actionable data to work with.

CyberHound integrates with the SEQTA platform to provide a number of tools for teachers, students and welfare staff. Teaching staff can view student web activity and manage Internet access using Classroom Control within SEQTA TEACH while students can access specific content using the SEQTA ENGAGE portal.  In addition, welfare officers are able to view important student data to assist in identifying at risk students and inappropriate Internet activities.

You could look at engaging a company that provides a Managed Service, taking all the day to day grind out of systems management and provided polished reporting.

In addition to your regular ICT requirements for your school, what about the ‘fun’ stuff? The AI and virtual reality? How can you make these work at your school?

CyberHound customer school and Microsoft Showcase School, Ormiston College in Brisbane, is utilising ‘mixed reality’ technology in the classroom to create exciting curriculum that allows students to put virtual objects into the real world.

With all this new and exciting technology, it is important to remember that it is connecting to your network and collecting data. We are collecting and storing, more data than ever before, and schools can potentially hold large amounts of extremely private information such as health records, banking information, contact info, even passports.

So with this in mind, it is integral that schools have a regular overhaul of stored data and are aware of the repercussions of a possible and seriously damaging data leak.

To assist schools to navigate last year’s introduction of the Notifiable Data Breaches Act, CyberHound commissioned global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright to develop a suite of education-specific resources. These include simple checklists and user-friendly guides for schools to help prevent, and prepare for, a data breach. Download the first resource in the suite for free here.

For more information on our full Managed Services, our integration with Schoolbox and other learning management systems, or to get the full suite of Data Breach Resources, please contact us today.