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Index:

Introduction;

Summary of Project Models;

The Literacy Walk;

The Numeracy Companion;

Australian Cultural Forum Model;

Australian Digital Portfolios Model;

Techno-Sleuth Model;

Creative Investigations Design Model;

Aussie NetQuests Model;

Oz-Collections Model;

Online Professional Content Model;

Australian Teachers ThinkTank;

Natcom Hub Model;

Conclusion

Introduction

This document provides a summary of the telecommunications curriculum projects models developed by the 8 Key Learning Area (KLA) associations as part of the Natcom 3 project. Each telecommunications curriculum project referred to in the proposal, makes use of several models for online activities that were defined through the collaborative work of personnel representing the eight KLA associations during Natcom 3. This document provides a summary of the models, so that readers might understand the rationales and terminology in the project descriptions in the proposal document and in Appendix 2.

An outcome of Natcom 3 was to develop some telecommunications curriculum models that could be used to develop online content through telecommunications projects for teachers and their classes. In developing the models, it became obvious that implementation issues and professional development were key themes. It also became apparent that online content and activity had to be developed to encourage teachers to participate, and that strategies to help teachers see the curriculum value of project activity, needed to be devised. Associations in Natcom have separated out these important tasks to describe them, though it is likely implementation and development of professional development strategies would be interwoven into any project implementation that used these models.

The following diagram and listing illustrates that although the Natcom associations identified six curriculum project models, they also identified five models of management and professional activity which would complement each curriculum project model.

There are 6 core telecommunications curriculum project models of activity designed for teachers to use with their students:

Australian Cultural Forum model,

Australian Digital Portfolios model,

Techno-Sleuth model,

Creative and Design Investigations model,

Oz-collections model

Aussie Netquests model.

Complementing these curriculum project models, three professional activity models are embedded: Online Professional Content structure, Australian Teachers' Thinktank and the Natcom Hub. Two lens across all models are significant: a Literacy Walk over projects and content ensures literacy demands are recognised by teachers using online environments; and a Numeracy Companion to remind teachers of numeracy opportunities as projects are designed and implemented.

Summary of project models

The following brief descriptions provide background information from which projects described in Appendix 2 have been conceptualised. Complete descriptions of models will be available as deliverables from Natcom3.

The Literacy walk

In this model a broad definition of literacy emphasises the interconnectedness between the variety of literacy skills that are important to the current and future lives of young Australians. Literacy includes the ability to comprehend and to develop print-based materials, online digital information, other digital information, television and video media, and graphic information generally. It includes the notions of hypertextual as well as linear genres and the use of literacy skills in the development and design processes as well as during analytical processes. It extends far beyond the interaction with linear, text-based products, usually identified as literacy. There are literacy experiences in most things people do and opportunity always exists to emphasise literacy within all curriculum activities. The Literacy Walk seeks to identify and capitalise on literacy activities, plus model a literacy in itself.

"Literacy walk" is a term used metaphorically to capture the spirit of walking through a landscape of activities where the literacy opportunities are pointed out and where the resultant walk is then built for others to follow. Therefore, the process of experiencing or planning a walk, is both a product and a literacy. This model for a literacy walk can be used by everyone, as a tool when planning online activity for students, building online information and processes, and during learning activity for students, parents and the community.

Each association will undertake a literacy walk of their project. This will occur multiple times during project conceptualisation, development and implementation thus ensuring that literacies are embedded in the activity, concept and subject matter of each project. The walk models for project mangers, the process of embedding literacy within activities and highlights the literacy opportunities inherent in telecommunications activity, and in classroom activities which are complemented by online activity. Each walk generates online content for teachers and for students. For teachers it will define literacies and illustrate how to engage students in literacy activities within the context of the new media which are changing the definitions of literacies while complementing existing ones.

Although the literacy walk is a process, the product of such walks can be represented in a web-based environment. New tools enabling new interfaces to online content can be used to capture the spirit of new literacies. These tools can be used by teachers and students to undertake and develop the products of their own walks.

It is important that literacy walks become a tool to explore new genre and processes, especially those developing in online culture and environments. The literacy walk model will define the new skills, important in an information economy and will identify the genres enabled by not-yet invented or understood tools and processes.

The Numeracy Companion

In line with emerging thinking in Australian education, the view of numeracy in Natcom is that it is the competence and confidence to make effective use of mathematics to meet the demands of life in education, at work and in civic and personal life. In the context of Natcom curriculum projects, the demands are those which are inherent across the curriculum. They include but go beyond facility with number, data, graphs, shapes and measurements and the like, to include mathematical problem solving skills, understanding mathematical ideas embedded in text and the socio-cultural processes of using (and abusing) data. The importance of the numeracy companion in Natcom projects is based on the belief that to learn or do geography (or art, or science or whatever) includes learning or doing the numeracy of the curriculum area.

"Numeracy companion" is a term used to metaphorically capture the notion of a companion who reminds teachers and students constantly of the significance of applying numeracy skills and taking numeracy-informed orientations to any situation or process, as appropriate. Another way of viewing it, is as a numeracy conscience.

This model involves personnel from various associations working within the Natcom framework to identify the numeracy demands and opportunities that are explicit or implicit in curriculum project ideas. They will consider and develop the strategies which might be embedded into project designs and activities. For example, in projects where students are designing and creating, a numeracy companion could remind students of alternative orientations of the work. In projects where students are engaged in analysis and synthesis of data, strategies which model effective numeracy behaviours can be highlighted and implemented. The result of work between KLA associations will be a smorgasbord of activities in numeracy from which teachers can choose plus a heightened awareness of numeracy orientations and processes in the context of problem solving, analysis, design and creation across the curriculum. The enlightened project designs, descriptions of activities and information about the numeracy companion model will create content which ensures numeracy has a stronger place in Australian curricula

A significant attribute of the Numeracy Companion activity model, is to model strategies to display the online content which emerges when a companion helps an association understand the numeracy potential of their project. The interface model for content needs to reflect the process and resulting ideas and provide access to the professional communities whose input is at the heart of the activity.

Australian Cultural Forum Model

In order to participate in a future modern society and to help progress Australia's leading information industry position, students need to develop the skills of debating Australia's identity and understanding the cultural, social, industrial, technical and information issues confronting the emerging new structures. Connectivity between people is not a neutral cultural development. There is now a range of new issues to be considered and existing issues need to be redressed through a new lens. Embedded in all curriculum documents is the need to develop skills for informed debate, to have a broader awareness of the views of stakeholders and to think "outside of the box". Such processes are integral to the attributes for modern citizenry where capitalising on the new communications systems and new media is core. This model provides teachers with strategies to enable students to participate in online debates though the medium which is shaping the issues, and to confront issues which have gained significance because Australia is building its information economy within the global context. This model therefore has potential to redefine the curriculum of many key learning areas.

This model for online activity, provides opportunity for repeatable episodes where teachers can offer to encourage online dialogue about contemporary issues in a variety of ways which would be contextualised by the nature of the curriculum project using this model. The project model provides the audience for debate and the online environment to host such debate. The curriculum activity in classrooms designed by informed, creative teachers adds value to student dialogue, provides the curriculum fit and thus determines the worth of the activity. Project designs which use the Australian Cultural Forum model, can scaffold and model teacher activity to provide quality outcomes. The infrastructure for this model, enables leading-edge teachers to build and implement creative project designs.

The project model includes a calendar mechanism to schedule activities, a registration process to provide an audience for student debate and teacher support, opportunities to draw online guests and subject matter experts into discussion, opportunity to record debates and chances to publish the results of student project work for use as resource for other students. The project model enables teachers to use online communities to share ideas and strategies, seek online help and provide support to peers. The teacher resources, recorded conversations, shared curriculum designs and the student products provide additional online content for other teachers and students immersing in the topic or seeking professional development content.

This model enables teachers to insert in different curriculum models to the discussion process; for example, the social investigations approach, information literacy approach and various problem solving approaches. The model encourages constructivist approaches, problem solving, project work and student-centred learning approaches to be built into curriculum activities. It enables teachers to try different communication and discussion strategies and to explore different ways of integrating online activity into learning experiences. It also provides a chance for project designers to try different approaches to enticing teachers to participate with their classes. Further the open-ended nature of the model, from which specific events and projects will be built, enables exploration of different technologies such as text, voice and video chat, bulletin boards, email lists and conferencing systems. The model's flexibility then enables different subject areas to make use of this model while implementing their particular curriculum models and subject matter .

Integral to this project model design is to make use of existing resources. Resources such as the Discovering Democracy materials contain information, teaching strategies and examples of approaches which will help engage students in the subject matter and processes of social curriculum. This model will enable project leaders to identify core project materials available in Australian schools and enrich their potential by building online activities around them through use of the connecting communities of Australian teachers.

The infrastructure for this project model includes human coordinators and subject matter experts as well as the technical infrastructure. The design of this project model and use the infrastructure for this model are practiced in the Global Youth Forums of oz-TeacherNet and in parts of the IEARN project. This model draws a blueprint for the Natcom team to build on and improve the processes used by various online community stakeholders working in this project model.

Australian Digital Portfolios Model.

Making use of the new media to provide audiences for student work is a natural follow on from using online environments to seek information and expertise. It will be significant educationally though, to provide authentic audiences for student work and not assume the audience in the sky is real audience publishing. Moreover, the significance of sharing student work must be embedded into the new online culture where building online presence is essential infrastructure in promoting talent and worth, sharing information and seeking community. Such ideas apply to individuals, groups of individuals, corporations and groups, and to government and industry. It is significant too that any online content (presence) contributes to the lives of others and that they make use of the information and expertise the technology has enabled them to access. Communications technology also provides a link between the creator and consumer, a factor not easily attainable with print-based and video products where a number of players elongate the delivery process. Digital publications are thus not only instruments that provide a presence for the creator, designer and publisher, they provide a service to the consumer of their information, and collectively may alter community uses of online networks.

Digital portfolios provide new mediums for expression, creativity and a capacity to perform for a new audience in multiple media and in multiple languages. Collectively, galleries of portfolios or works from portfolios, and e-zines as collections of student work create further audience for student constructions, a new culture and opportunity to build new community amongst people who are exploring new media and enjoying online connectivity. The medium enables creators to tell and share multiple perspectives of a story in multiple ways, thus recording the process of creation and development in a variety of genre and languages, linking these perspectives together in unique ways. The medium is also a new stimulus for creativity, dialogue and expression and develops new contexts for all of our lives, which can in turn be the stimulus for new stories and new expression. The Digital portfolios model thus represents a way for teachers and their students to explore new ways to share creative work, significant designs, information and ideas, that are leading the next evolvement of online publishing.

The project model includes a calendar mechanism to schedule exhibitions and gallery openings, schedule e-zine publication dates, seek partners to collectively build galleries and activities, and promote school ideas. The project model also encourages dialogue during construction and/or creation and negotiation with the audience of the portfolios as part of the development process. This might include working with remote partners to plan and implement a gallery, negotiate themes and their interpretation, and share reflection of the construction process. This model enables project designers using this model to involve online guests, critical panels, volunteer supportive friends, and to build a professional community within a student community surrounding online galleries.

The project includes building online community amongst teachers participating in this project and developing a structure to share online content about teaching ideas and technical and other help required by teachers exploring this new medium. These conversations and resources are part of a professional development strategy for participating teachers and those teachers who lurk online to seek new ideas.

This model enables teachers/groups from different curriculum areas to take advantage of a project infrastructure and professional community to host their own digital portfolio project. Digital portfolios could be used as the strategy to create audience for children learning about and using foreign languages, for students engaged in development of online portfolios in computer studies and business studies, for students in dance, drama and arts, for students in design and technology and wherever student project work can be enhanced by authentic audience.

The openness of the project design enables teachers to capitalise of existing curriculum processes, but within a new context and one which will do much to integrate the use of learning technology into curriculum processes in a meaningful and purposeful way. The model enables creative processes, information literacy approaches, publication processes, performance processes and in particular caters for reflection on the development process and metacognition about expression and communication, as well as opportunity to use the publications of students as online content.

The infrastructure for this project model includes human coordinators, editors and curators and subject matter experts as well as the technical infrastructure. Because there are few examples upon which to draw, projects arising from this model may need some new conceptualisation and invention.

Techno sleuth model

Open-ended problem solving encompasses many skills now required by individuals living and working in a globalising community. It is significant that young Australians discover the value of understanding the open-ended nature of some problems, of ferreting out significant information, interpreting information in the context of problems, reflecting on multiple solutions and the pathways to solutions and considering the global implications of problems and their solutions. Further, being able to solve problems within a distributed team environment is a significant new skill. The online environment creates a context for new problem solving processes and provides a place to share solutions, review solutions and engage in metacognition about problem solving processes. This project model is concerned with using online environments to develop problem-solving processes and to provide an authentic audience (not only construed as the teacher) for description of the problem solving process and solutions.

The project model involves a number of problems being able to be posed by teachers, project managers, students or experts in their fields for students to solve in a regular calendar of events. Students and teachers would register to participate in a problem solving activity, and agree to be part of the community of expertise for everyone to share their ideas, pose questions and test solutions. Students would engage in problem solving processes, recording their thought processes while participating in classroom or in distributed teams. During the process of solving the problem, they would make use of the online community or other experts to pose questions, test solutions and seek information. Interaction with selected experts is a key feature of this model. In order to develop expertise on problem solving, experts in the problem domains would provide models and support as children develop complex skills and use complex language structures to describe their progress. Students would publish their processes and solutions for critique by the expert and online community. Students would then engage in reflection of solutions and metacognition about problem solving processes, sharing their new ideas back into the community. A special tool would need to be developed to capture and organise these ideas which will be shared in text, graphic or voice form. Throughout, there will be explicit efforts to model appropriate forms of critique and discourse (about content, learning, values etc) for students to help them learn appropriate norms.

The project model includes building online community amongst teachers participating in this project and developing a structure to share online content about suitable problems which engage the students in thinking processes, teaching ideas and technical and other help required by teachers exploring this new medium to verbalise problem solving process and metacognition. These conversations and resources are part of a professional development strategy for participating teachers and those teachers who lurk online to seek new ideas and new ways of interpreting their curriculum.

The project model enables a range of problem solving strategies to be a focus and enables a number of problem types within curriculum areas to be posed. It also enables a scaffolding of problems for different ability children and especially provides extension and enrichment work for highly talented students. It also provides opportunity for students to participate in educational activities outside of the school context and to team up with other students to do so. In particular, the project models constructivist learning interaction, a goal embedded with many curriculum approaches and one which relies on expression of ideas and process to understand and learn better process.

Professional development models are embedded into the design of this project model. The project changes the role of the teacher in the classroom. In this model teachers and students are side-by-side working on strategies to solve problems which have not been posed by the teacher, nor will be judged by them. Teachers are thus encouraged to practise being facilitators of open-ended activities; pedagogical experiences which will transfer to other situations. The collection and students solutions and discussions would become important content for teachers seeking ideas for problems and strategies to solve them as well as teaching approaches to facilitate open-ended problem solving. Online communities surrounding this project model will provide an important source of online content as teachers mature in their curriculum ideas and classroom management strategies.

The infrastructure for this project model includes human coordinators, online experts, cognitive thinking experts as well as the technical infrastructure. Because there are few examples upon which to draw, projects arising from this model may need some new conceptualisation and invention.

Creative investigations design model

Designing technical processes encourages students to engage in a number of high level processes and skills which harness their curiosity, creativity and complex project management skills. The context of connectivity provides opportunity to pose new problems, undertake different investigations, share investigation designs and publish solutions. People in online communities develop an appreciation for the importance of creative inventiveness in the new services industries becoming prevalent as globalisation of industry and services increases momentum. Design skills are an important element in new service industries and are significant to Australia's future information economy.

This context could shape how teachers adopt open-ended strategies in curriculum areas which rely on design and investigation processes; for instance in science, technology, and health and physical education. Enabling students to build designs is a significant step and one teacher's find difficult. Posing significant and interesting problems is one issue. Designing classroom activities which facilitate design processes is another. Enabling students to share designs and design processes across and between teams is a further step. This telecommunications curriculum project model facilitates sharing of project designs, and embeds use of learning technology into the investigative design processes undertaken by students. Further the context of connectivity provides opportunity to investigate different problems and pose new kinds of solutions. It also provides opportunity to engage in critique and reflections on designs where for example ethical and social consequences, health and safety issues and global consequences can be discussed to an audience of stakeholders including designers and their subjects. Thus this project model provides a professional development focus to renew the profession as it struggles to find ways to build these new approaches into teaching.

Teachers will be required to register their students for episodes that use this project model, so that an audience for student dialogue is available and students are engaged in similar processes at the same time. For students, the project model includes making use of telecommunications within three phases of a project. A pre-design activity will stimulate debate which leads to understanding the problems being set, locate significant information and expertise which might influence designs, and establish common ground and differences between designers. Students would engage in dialogue and consult expertise within the design process within and outside of the project community and then publish their designs to share with other designers. Students would then engage in dialogue about the design attributes, and consider the consequences of their designs from a number of perspectives. Students may then be able to develop their designs and report of the implementation to the participating community.

A significant aspect of this model is that its design and conduct is a professional development model for teachers. Further the problems and experimental and other designs are sources of ideas for teachers to use in their classrooms. In this model students are helping to develop the online content that shapes curriculum and curriculum implementation for teachers and other students.

A key element of this project model is that it makes use of existing resources and events during the design process as the domain in which designs might occur. For example, significant resources exist in Health and Physical Education and events like National Science Week and the myriad of design competitions, many of which are not used or practiced in a connected environment. The technology enriches the use of these resources and events and provides a greater audience for them.

The infrastructure for this project model includes human coordinators, online experts, as well as the technical infrastructure. Online tools for collecting and organising student work need to be developed to support implementation of projects using this model.

Aussie NetQuests Model

Information skills are at the heart of the new information economy. In schools attention is often given to skills which involve locating and extracting data. Teachers overwhelmed by the volume of online content, concentrate on developing strategies to help students sift through, organise and assess the quality of information. Some early adopters have begun exploring the notion that highest-level information skills are linked to thinking and communication skills and that construction of knowledge is inclusive of all lower levels of information skills. Early attempts to implement these sophisticated activities and help students progress through stages of cognition, reinforced that scaffolding students experiences from simple to increasingly complex was a useful strategy. For future citizens to develop complex information skills, decision making and creative skills in an information context, teachers need to develop strategies which help student develop their skills gradually through the stages of cognition.

WebQuests, a process developed by Tom March and Bernie Dodge, enable teachers to help students develop and extend high level thinking skills by working with existing information to construct new knowledge. Usually students express their newly shaped ideas in a hypertextual medium. The process involves scaffolding students information experiences until they are able to participate in complex activities and engage in high level synthesis of information and construction of knowledge. Information experiences range from very simple techniques for locating and extracting information to complex questioning and problem solving experiences which encourage students to immerse in information as a pathway to constructing their own meaning for information. This project model will extend webquests concepts to consider the variety of tools and media now available online.

In educational settings, immersion in online information is usually an anonymous act. Teachers and students work in isolation from others while using information and constructing new information. Usually they do not connect with the owners of information sources or talk to stakeholders involved in the issue under investigation. Although online environments provide the capability to connect with owners of information, first hand sources of data, people's interpretations of information and stakeholders in the issues, little of this has been achieved in web-based learning activities. New web-based tools are linking people and information and adding new dimensions to the source, context and truth of information. A pivotal point has been reached. Potential exists in this model for Aussie NetQuests, to extend web-based learning to make greater use of the connectivity between humans and to personal the sources and audiences of information. Further NetQuests can provide unique opportunities for Australian students to develop Australian content for use by educational groups and the community.

In this model, teachers interested in developing NetQuests around a theme or issue would be invited to begin an Aussie NetQuest. A calendar of activities would provide teachers with NetQuests to join and enable them to register their interest. In each quest, learning teams, led by the initiating school, would be developed between the schools considering the theme, so students have an audience for their questions and investigations as well as an audience for their products. Participating teachers would also form a support network and use their network as a help-desk, sharing device and an organisational structure. The initiating teacher could take a leadership role in the project organising access to online guests and experts, developing a circular ring model for communication between pairs of schools and using this structure to organise a web-ring of published quests. The completed NetQuest ring could be entered into an Aussie NetQuest exhibition which acts as a professional development resource and a source of Australian content for students and teachers.

The infrastructure for this project model includes human coordinators, online experts, as well as the technical infrastructure. Models for collecting and organising web rings and communication networks in this model might need to be developed.

Oz-Collections Model

The online community provides unique opportunity to collect Australian data and provide access to it. Such collections might contain annual data or multiple perspectives of an event or point in time. There are opportunities to collect snapshots of the Australian community, store data which tells the story of changing Australian lifestyles, and use data to contribute to community understanding of Australian environmental and demographic issues. Connectivity enables students to be involved in significant data collection and to contribute to the recording of contemporary information. Further, online collections of data provide authentic sources of information for studies in all curriculum areas.

River-watch and stream-watch projects are recognised types of projects which have involved students in identifying data sources, monitoring data and collecting it. The project organisation provides a mechanism for students to share their data and the project also provides a real audience for the students' collections. Since such activities and the results are valued by teachers, extending these activities into online environments is a natural next step.

Advances in technology enable students to easily collect, store and manipulate sound, images and video as well as organise, set up and collect streamed data. It is likely that students could use web cams and data sensing devices to record and organise data from say a wildlife corridor and share the data live to other schools and community interests. Such collection projects provide unique opportunities for community groups and schools to form partnerships and for projects to gain national attention for their efforts. The extensions in technology which enable unsophisticated technical environments to collect accurate data, also enable students to capture and organise combinations of data sets about a theme. For example, it is possible to capture images, short interviews, and statistical data about the crowds at football match and use the network between schools to organise simultaneous collections across the country and thus capture a moment in the history of Australian culture. Such information banks are rich sources of data in many curriculum investigations.

Collecting data for its own sake may be considered by many teachers to be an exercise without context and educational worth. Others would value opportunity to make use of ICT for data collection, analysis and publishing and claim it is a significant process within the context of their curriculum. Consequently, this model for online curriculum activity is likely to be included as part of online curriculum projects in Australia. It is useful to consider the model separately because it requires organisational processes and tools to involve Australian schools in data collection, publishing and application.

This model would involve teachers registering that they are seeking to involve multiple schools in a data gathering exercise. Hosting schools would need to share their rationales and purposes for collections and provide ideas to participating schools about the logistics for the data collection exercise including defining data to collect, providing technical advice where necessary, giving instructions on how to share the data and organising time lines. Interested schools would need to register for each episode and participate in dialogue to ensure they understood their responsibilities and were confident of their capacity to participate. Students might engage in reflection about the value and accurateness or authenticity of the collected data and share their ideas back to the circle of participating schools. Students could also engage in analysing the collection of data and telling the story that emerges from the national collection which may not have been obvious from the data in one site. Such discussion could be initiated by the host school as questions or reflections that are challenged by other students. Many variations on the model could be incorporated within the context of the projects that incorporate this model into activity.

The infrastructure for this project model includes human coordinators, as well as the technical infrastructure. As project partners explore various models for different types of data collection a range of online tools might help collect data, organise data and provide access to it.

Online Professional Content model

Within all curriculum projects and online communities where teachers are exploring the educational applications for online activity, there is a breath of expertise. Those educators comfortable in the space and comfortable with constantly changing and new ideas need little stimulus to sense the educational value of online activity and immediately can imagine how to apply and implement online activity within their classrooms. Others with little previous experience on which to draw, need scaffolded ideas, so they might gradually adopt these new ways of working. Early adopters will spin off each other and contribute constantly-evolving ideas into the community to share with others. Professional associations have a responsibility to collect this expertise, enable risk-takers to lead in their community and help novice computer-using teachers become more confident. Online communities and content can reach more educators than when professional information is stored in other media. Online communities have a dynamic nature about them that is altering how educators are beginning to work and it is timely to foster these changes now. Associations want to generate online content from their community throughout all projects they build, collectively and independently.

The Online Professional Content model provides associations and groups with a list of online content to collect, build and share and provides a strategy for organising the content. It is an activity which all associations want to begin and involves drawing together the important collections of content and adding value to the collections through expert commentary within the web spaces of each association. Novice teachers can peer through this window to gain an understanding of the ideas behind the ideas, and over time multiple views might be developed. In this model associations will also provide a lens over the work of other associations and projects. They will add expert commentary though web spaces and communities, thus enriching the cross-curricula view teachers see.

The following briefly describes the activity and organisation of online content proposed in this model.

Web-based general curriculum information

Information for teachers about using learning technology, online curriculum projects and telecommunications projects in the KLA.

Collections of online projects and ideas suitable for use the KLA

Curriculum project ideas available outside of Natcom with advice on how to participate in them along with resources for these projects.

Scaffolded information problems which exemplify use of online information and develop curriculum skills in the KLA.

The specific KLA lens on curriculum projects available throughout the Natcom suite.

Natcom events for the KLA

Specific KLA activities being hosted in the range of umbrella projects being managed in the Natcom suite. This includes descriptions of the umbrella curriculum projects of specific interest to association members and episodes of activities within projects of interest to members.

Professional Development information

Information about online communities to join, online events calendar and sources of professional information which help teachers learn.

Online Professional Development events

Online courses and workshops hosted by an association or number of Natcom associations.

Supporting other associations

Providing the KLA lens over work of other associations, particularly curriculum projects managed by other associations.

The project model requires human resources plus the development of a web-based tool to organise information.

A model for an Australian Teachers Thinktank

The Strategic Framework for the Information Economy describes that networks of people will work collaboratively through technology in new business strategies. This and other commentaries (NBEET 1998, Kelly 1998 and Tanner 1998) define the information services industry as an integral part of every industry and activity as well as an industry in itself, and that connected workplaces, homes and consumers are integral to the future of Australia's networked information economy. Teachers in disconnected and information-poor workplaces have little opportunity to immerse in the interactions which are driving this trend. They neither know about it nor understand the thinking and strategies which are driving Australia's future. Yet they are charged with the responsibility to help children learn to operate in and take advantage of such a context. This context is changing curriculum goals and changing the context in which curriculum in interpreted. Teachers who do not understand it, will omit it from the frames, through which they teach children.

This project model is about helping teachers understand Australia's Goals for an Information Economy, so they might have an experiential basis in which to make decisions about new curriculum approaches and content. It is about putting teachers first and recognising that supporting forward-thinking teachers is essential in this collection of project models. It is about connecting teachers to the best thinkers in the world and in doing so, building new communications processes, so that teachers can push the boundaries of existing genres and communications processes.

The project models involves building a Thinktank for Australian teachers, cultural technologists, global corporate managers and thinkers in Governments. The project involves building a calendar of themes, around which three things will occur. A Guest will interact with teachers and invite them to do some "out-of-the-box" thinking. A portfolio of articles commentaries and annotations about web sites will be collected by the guest, project manager and teachers to support the dialogue. Teachers will be invited to write with the guest to construct an Online magazine. The magazine will use the qualities of hypertext environments to collect opinions and commentary about key points and locate them near the published point. Readers in turn will have multiple pathways through the magazine and be able to explore community arguments surrounding points.

Groups who choose to participate in their project model could use audio and video streaming, chat and text-based interactions as alternatives and could also explore various genre for developing a dynamic product which captures the pathway through the argument as well as record completed argument.

This project would involve human resources, as well as development of online tools to foster this new style of communication.

A model for a Natcom Hub

The strengths of the collection of project models and projects derive from the collaborative and developmental nature of the ideas that emerged from the Natcom process. Natcom is a professional development process which builds a network between professional associations stakeholders that harnesses the expertise and contacts within the groups. Natcom episodes 1 and 2 demonstrated that the development of creative thought in the network is exponential and challenges existing boundaries and practices constantly. During implementation of telecommunications curriculum projects in Natcom 4, continuing this collaboration will be vital.

There is considerable opportunity to develop economies of scale during development of projects that use the Natcom models. Similar tools can be developed by modifying prototypes as they are developed.. Some tools required in these projects have not yet been invented and collaboration in their development and testing will secure some significant wisdom about their use. Technical development requires a team approach to meet challenges and enhance tools.

The Natcom hub requires continued support to bring people together through face-to-face and online events, to share experiences and continue developing ideas. The knowledge accrued in Natcom needs to be shared with groups who are undertaking similar project development and who are pioneering new uses of online environments.

The Natcom Hub is therefore a project to support the project officers in national professional associations as they work together to develop and implement projects. The hub project requires resources for project officers to meet regularly, share expertise and collaboratively plan tools and procedures.

Conclusion