Oxley achieves the Microsoft Lighthouse Award
Congratulations, Oxley Community, for achieving the Microsoft Lighthouse Award and thank you all for the vital contributions you have made to make our digital learning program so successful. Without our community commitment, this award would not have been possible.
At Oxley, our 1:1 Digital Learning Program in Senior School has been operating effectively since 2016. Apart from our community support for this program, we know that the MS Surface Pro is a great device for supporting our teaching and learning programs, and one that allows a seamless transition between hybrid learning situations. That is, having such a device allows teaching and resource connections between teacher and student, as well as feedback and assessment to learning. Alongside the Office 365 suite and other software we use, the MS Teams App, MS OneNote, MS Whiteboard and MS Intune provide a remarkable degree of flexibility for onsite and online remote learning environments.
Each Junior School classroom now has a MS Surface Hub installed, allowing great collaboration and shared resource experiences for students and teachers alike. The power of such an arrangement has led the College to plan for the installation of 85” Surface Hubs as a main teaching tool in each classroom of the new Middle Years building. Connected to a student’s Surface Pro, this brings every student to the front of class in either onsite or remote learning. Apart from this, teachers will be able to share classroom events without leaving their room, use augmented reality features, stream events and external lessons into the College, and employ a multi-modal engagement of students with devices that have standardised operating efficiencies. And so much more.
Our College understands that devices are a learning tool. They are not the main game. However, in the light of our move towards their more effective use, Microsoft has seen fit to award Oxley Christian College with their showcase Surface Lighthouse Award, given to only 17 exclusive schools across Australia in 2021. This award recognises that we are using Surface Technology in innovative ways, displaying a truly future-focused commitment to teaching and learning and backing it up with best practice support services.
The main benefits of this Award involve a strengthened relationship between Microsoft and the College. Among other things, it will provide unrivalled access to Microsoft resources and experts, special grants, funded training for our staff, greater access to product roadmaps and status, access to Microsoft events, marketing support, access to Microsoft experts on special school days like Open Day and careers events, and access to newsletters and education reports.
On behalf of our community, we had the pleasure of receiving the Microsoft Surface Lighthouse Award last week. I am grateful to our College staff and Information & Communications Technology Department for embracing MS Surface technology some seven years ago. It has provided a great avenue of teaching and learning for us.
Dr Douglas Peck
Principal