Project summary

Objective

Advancements in technology have seen the advent of smart homes and buildings become the norm rather than the exception, so what about the application of the concept and tools in the classroom and corporate offices?

The Technology 4 Learning Team in conjunction with other specialised teams from across the department are determined to explore the concept and work to determine its viability as well as its affordances to make both classrooms and corporate offices more accessible to all users.

The project aims to explore the affordances of smart home technology to empower a number of scenarios. With respect to the Disability Implementation Action plan a number of these are relevant:

• Accessibility in and to the classroom / corporate office
  • Smart access
  • Smart furniture
  • Smart beacons / guidance systems
• Routines to decrease task physicality in the classroom / corporate office
  • Environmental monitoring and automated routines (e.g. increased temperature >> blinds down and aircon on)
  • Smart routines (end of day / start of day / holiday periods)
  • Classroom routines
  • Smart infrastructure (lighting / blinds / sound / air systems)
• Learning opportunities delivered through smart classrooms and increased awareness of universal design principles
• Individualised classroom support
• Coding and computational thinking opportunities

Benefits

What will success look like?

Once completed the project team will:

• Provide a written report to the Disability Implementation Action Group
• Release possible implementation models in the form of a feature article in Magazine.T4L and also provide advice to teams from Schools Infrastructure for incorporation in to new and refurbishment projects for both corporate and school sites
• Work with procurement to ensure the inclusion of these tools on EdBuy (STEM Tools)
• Deliver a discussion of the project with key industry stakeholders on the Virtual Staffroom Podcast
• Facilitate online and in person professional learning sessions to groups as required

How will success be measured?

As outlined above the projects success factors are largely qualitative and will be derived from both focus groups and surveys completed during the pilot stage.

These pilots will cover the multitude of scenarios and span both corporate and school sites.

Additionally, the teaching and learning aspects will be assessed by curriculum specialists from the Disability and Inclusion team.

Key project milestones

The project will proceed in a number of stages, with the administrative aspects large project dependencies and as a consequence early gates to the project. Classroom and corporate scenarios, implementations models and tools will be engaged early (to enable the administrative aspects to be explored) and developed further based on the success of the administrative aspects of the project: