From January onwards, all primary, secondary, P-12 and specialist government schools in Victoria will have access to premium Australian educational video platform ClickView.
The announcement was made by Victorian Education Minister, James Merlino, who said the platform would provide “the latest digital content to students – at no extra cost – to make learning more interactive and engaging for students”.
Up until recently, over half of all Victorian secondary, P-12 and specialist government schools subscribed to ClickView independently, in addition to a smaller percentage of primary schools.
ClickView, which is used in over 3,400 Australian schools, as well as most TAFE institutes and around one-third of Australian universities, includes thousands of high-quality videos, interactive tools and teaching resources that are explicitly mapped to the Victorian Curriculum and the Australian Curriculum.
As well as curriculum-based content, the resources also offer content in other important areas, such as social media, wellbeing, and transitioning to secondary school.
Research has found that utilising video with students, particularly before a lesson, creates more productive time for teachers to spend working with students as groups or individually.
Edward Filetti, ClickView’s CEO, said the announcement is a “very important” development for Victorian public school principals.
“It enables them to provide their staff, students and school parents with best-in-class, Australian educational resources, with true longevity,” Filetti told The Educator.
“This means that they can rest assured that these resources will be there for them year after year”.
In turn, Filetti says, this provides teachers more time to work with students in the classroom, and opportunities to collaborate with their peers and ClickView, as all teachers are now sharing the same collection of resources.
“The flow on effect is that, by and large, Victorian school students will be taught with consistent supporting resources, that are of the highest quality,” he said.
“We’re seeing more and more of this consolidated approach at a state and diocese level, with numerous Catholic dioceses, state TAFE networks and clusters of schools coming together to subscribe to ClickView as a ‘group’ for terms of 3 years or more”.
In regard to the university sector, Filetti said ClickView’s client base has continued to grow.
“We will be further supporting this in 2020, by giving access to ClickView’s primary and secondary platform and content to Australian universities that offer teaching degrees, to support university students throughout Australia who are currently studying to become teachers,” he said.