The Faculty of Education at Charles Sturt University (CSU) will upgrade facilities to prepare teachers for the 21st century following receipt of $2.9 million from the recent Federal Government grant of $14 million to the CSU Teaching and Learning Infrastructure Funds.

 

The Dean of the Faculty of Education, Professor Toni Downes, said the successful internal application for funds for the Faculty will focus on improving the quality of teacher education programs and graduates’ ability to use digital technologies to improve teaching and learning in schools.

 

“We proposed plans to build or refurbish, equip and connect one or two special purpose, flexible, hi-tech classrooms on CSU’s Bathurst and Wagga Wagga campuses that have direct broadband connections to one or two schools in western NSW and the Riverina,” Professor Downes said.

 

“These classrooms and technologies could be used, among other things, to explore, develop and undertake real-time interactions with teachers demonstrating and reflecting on their teaching.

 

“They could assist the observation and analysis of peer collaboratively-planned and taught lessons, CSU student-teachers teaching individual small groups of students in various schools online, or cross-campus student-teacher collaboration on projects. 

 

“All of these activities could have two dimensions; synchronous activities for on-campus students, and captured observations and interactions packed with commentary for our part-time distance education students,” Professor Downes said.

 

Associate Professor Barney Dalgarno from the School of Education at Wagga Wagga and Associate Professor Jane Mitchell from the School of Teacher Education at Bathurst will lead this project through the planning and implementation phase.

 

Following early discussions with the NSW Department of Education about probable Centres of Excellence, the initial emphasis will be on connecting with secondary schools. The technologies and facilities may be able to be used for all teacher education courses.