Education

Internet for education: Schools, universities and colleges are ever evolving and taking advantage of the opportunities presented by technology. Our world class diverse fibre network allows technology to be used confidently to enrich curriculum and the online experience of teachers, students and school administrators.

Some of the innovative ways our network is currently being used in educational institutions:

• Providing fast access to media rich content
• Sharing knowledge and resources with experts and classrooms around the world through simultaneous video conferencing sessions
• Interactive lessons and simulated experiences through high quality virtual reality experiences being created by museums and creative organisations around the world
• Sharing large files
• Online real time collaboration and documentation
• Robotics, 3D printing and data analytics
• Cloud hosted student and other management systems
• Improving business processes and the student, parent, school management experience
• World class online professional development resources for teachers.

The above is simply not possible with a megabit solution. Your school’s curriculum and technology ambitions have no bandwidth limits with SABRENet.

See our brochures for more information on how SABRENet benefits schools and higher education/RTOs.

Pedare Christian College is an R-12 Coeducational Anglican and Uniting Church School at Golden Grove, South Australia. Academically focussed, Pedare also has many other strengths, such as their netball and robotics programs. The school provides a responsive environment to all students so they can develop skills to be internationally minded, technologically adept and ready to become future leaders within their local and global community.

One way all these skills and ideas are brought together, is through their robotics program. Innovative in the way it integrates mathematics and physics into the curriculum, it is supported by modules from world leader, Vex Robotics. The program encourages creativity, teamwork, leadership, and problem solving among groups, beginning with young students and moving through to seniors. Extra curricular opportunities are offered from year 3, with aspects such as programming and code writing beginning from year 6. By senior year, students look at real world challenges and how technology and lateral thinking can create solutions. Pedare provides many opportunities and links with tertiary institutions and companies to offer inspiration, context, mentoring and employment opportunities.

With such a comprehensive program and technology-led initiatives, it was imperative for Pedare to have a reliable, consistent and high performing internet service. “Traditional internet offerings provide a layer 3 option, which takes away some opportunities. With SABRENet’s Layer 1 offering, we had more choice, creating greater resilience for Pedare and we also have the flexibility to upgrade whenever we desire,” says Peter Cheel, former ICT Manager.

Pedare’s robotics program has created much interest and passion across the school and is a drawcard to prospective students as well as offering more STEM opportunities for girls. Recently a team from Pedare’s Middle School competed in the Vex Robotics IQ world championship. They qualified through local, state, and national tournaments, resulting in being one of only two schools to compete on the world stage in Dallas, US, using a robot of their own design.

The program’s success is in large part due to the confidence and skills of Pedare’s teaching staff. Peter Cheel is adamant that “the fast speed and reliability of our internet plays a crucial role in both students’ and teachers’ confidence and our ability to attract teachers with technology expertise.

A feature of the SABRENet offering is that once the infrastructure is established, there are no extra costs. “It is far more affordable to operate than any other provider,” says Peter. “The quality and reliability of SABRENet’s infrastructure means that the technology blends into the background, our staff’s experience is a smooth one and that we have the tools to be able to do our job”.

This has never been more important than during NAPLAN national testing and SACE exams, both of which necessitate a specific day and time for testing online. Students only have one opportunity to sit their SACE exams, so if there are any problems with the internet connection, they could miss this crucial opportunity. Pedare has also been involved with NAPLAN for 9 years, assisting with BETA testing of the system. This has required a stable environment and it has been critical that this activity has been able to take place whilst not affecting the rest of the school and curriculum.

Being education focussed and innovative, SABRENet fits with Pedare’s future plans. Peter says, “The reliability, consistency and high performance of the SABRENet connection is a basis from which so much can grow. At Pedare we believe the role of schools in society is to nurture the people who are going to drive the future.”

Flinders University’s City Campus is the first of its kind in South Australia. Situated in Adelaide’s One Festival Tower, this vertical campus features all services and facilities over 8 levels within a single state-of-the-art building, fostering collaboration and empowering learning opportunities.

“The presence at One Festival Tower was a game-changer in terms of the Flinders University prominence in the centre of Adelaide. We had outgrown our previous presence on the corner of Victoria Square and Flinders Street which included a lobby and five floors of a much smaller size,” says Jarrod Sayers, Senior IDS Network Services Specialist.

Cutting-edge technology informs every part of the campus offering flexible learning experiences. With access-all-areas WIFI, areas to connect individual students’ devices, and classrooms equipped with technology, this enables hybrid and remote learning.

This level of connection requires a reliable and fast internet connection as well as a bespoke solution. “We knew we would need high-speed and redundant connectivity into the City Campus and by leveraging our existing relationship with SABRENet we were able to do so without fuss,” says Jarrod.

The planning process for their involvement in the Flinders’ City Campus project began around 2020. At that time they were already a long-term customer of SABRENet, utilising the dark fibre services to seamlessly connect a number of metropolitan campuses to the Flinders University network without the added complications of third-party carrier equipment.

“Aside from the ease of provisioning services, the availability and support we receive from the SABRENet team, utilising dark-fibre services enables Flinders University to effortlessly upgrade or change a sites network connectivity to better serve our students. We have also been able to seamlessly upgrade a number of sites from 10G to 40G or 100G without any interruption of service,” says Jarrod.

Flinders University City Campus features an innovative, collaborative learning model, providing real world experience, affording students the opportunity to work with real businesses. As a vibrant and connected cultural hub, students study alongside and connect with key arts, business, government, sports, health and tech organisations. The innovative partnerships extends to the relationship with SABRENet. Jarrod says,“Having worked with SABRENet since its inception, I have always found them to be professional, accommodating and provide services which are cost-effective and simple to activate and manage. Their local teams understand the higher education sector and the challenges and timing pressures we face.”

A requisite to support Finders University’s state-of-the-art facilities is speed and latency; extremely important to the students to enable efficient data access from Flinders’ internal systems or the Internet. “This allows the students to spend less time waiting and more time doing,” says Jarrod. “The increased network speeds we have been able to achieve between sites also enables researchers to collaborate and share data much quicker.”

Flinders University also operates a number of data centres and uses SABRENet services to provide high-throughput and low-latency connectivity to its metropolitan campuses and remote sites, and also to the Internet.

Flinders University’s Factory of the Future, is currently being constructed at Tonsley Innovation District and will bring innovation, Industry 4.0 technologies, research and training together to advance manufacturing and strengthen the nation’s economy.

This new building will be connected via SABRENet.

Jarrod says, ”SABRENet dark-fibre connections have become the defacto standard for Flinders University when connecting metropolitan campuses.”