Our Journey

The Gardens School


Staff from the Department of Education travelled to New Zealand with a Social Ventures Australia (SVA) school tour where they saw the use of Hero at The Gardens School in Auckland.

Software Customisation Session

Glenys Williams, the Chief Operating Officer from Hero, was invited to run a software customisation session for representatives of our schools. We were highly motivated to engage with this software further.

Why Hero?

We decided to trial the Hero software to support our i See Learning project as it is able to facilitate our five project strategies: visible learning, community engagement, sustainability, student reflective practices and student agency.

Digital Learning Portfolio

Over time, students will post evidence of learning, annotate evidence and tag current learning goals.

Student Agency

Students are empowered to select the evidence they share, discuss their learning and self-select new learning goals to work on.

Real-Time Reporting

The regular assessment data and learning goal updates from teachers can drive ongoing live reporting to families.

Visible Learning

Regular evidence sharing, the learning goal functions and capability to host feedback to drive learning forward.

Community Engagement

Consistent messages to the community as well as facilitating rich family engagement with learning.

Streamlining Work

The platform hosts internal information, assessment data, student evidence of learning, learning goals, feedback and real-time reporting and automatically analyses many aspects.

Building the NSW Version

As Hero is a New Zealand based tool, our i See Learning project facilitator needed to work closely between in-school coordinators from the schools and the Hero team to build our NSW package. This involved reflecting and refining current school processes and systems to create:

  1. Internal pages and related tags

Internal pages included:

  • Behaviour

  • Wellbeing

  • Learning Support

  • Medical Incidents

  • Parent Contact

These pages are private to staff only and the tags that represented our diverse contexts also prompt automatic analysis in the system. Each page could then be customised further by individual schools to meet their school needs.

2. Assessments

The assessments that were created include:

  • Running records (2 versions)

  • Educheck: letter sounds and phonemic skills

  • L3: Vocabulary and Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words

  • Jolly Phonics: sounds and tricky words

  • Letters and Sounds program tracking tool

  • LIPI 1 & 2

  • Phonics Hero program tracking tool

  • Phonological Awareness Diagnostic

  • South Australian Spelling Test

  • Sutherland Phonological Awareness Test

  • PAT

  • SENA 1, 2, 3 & 4

  • NAPLAN

  • NCCD

3. Learning goals

We received permission from ACARA to use Version 3 of the Literacy and Numeracy Progressions as learning goals which were aligned with syllabus expectations and tracked against a five point scale in six month milestones. Literacy and Numeracy experts from each school collaboratively reworded the 'teacher speak' in the learning goals into student and parent friendly language. This is making learning accessible to all stakeholders.

4. Digital badges

For the areas of the Literacy and Numeracy Progressions that we were monitoring during the trial, we decided to create digital badges for the site. These would be awarded to students as recognition for the time and effort they utilised to complete a set of learning goals within a level of learning.

Some schools chose to also create a set of digital badges to represent their learner dispositions/qualities, in preparation for creating a set of levelled learning goals for these skills.

Customising Software

After developing the 'NSW Version' of the software, schools were supported to customise their individual sites through:

  • Individual weekly check-ins

  • Weekly professional learning sessions, recorded for staff unable to attend

Starting the Trial

Strategic Planning

In-school coordinators and school leaders collaboratively engaged in strategic planning for the trial of the Hero software in their schools. This day involved:

  1. Engaging with school leaders in New Zealand and a representative from Hero

  2. Reflecting on survey results

  3. Time to plan within school groups

  4. Time to provide feedback and reflect across school groups

Professional Learning

Staff across the CoS engaged with regular professional learning opportunities to build understanding of Hero and establish a community of practice across our network, including:

  • Principal conferences.

  • Individual school check in sessions.

  • Co-ordinator days to personalise generic professional learning packages.

  • Initial trial teacher training sessions, followed up by ongoing support through Spirals of Inquiry and coaching sessions.

  • Strategic planning days and collaboration days across CoS.

  • Optional live & pre-recorded professional learning sessions, run by the project facilitator, Hero representative or staff from New Zealand.

  • Networking opportunities for Aboriginal Education & Learning and Support teams.

  • 'CoS Connect' collaborative and networking monthly sessions for co-ordinators & principals.

  • Newsletters with updates and links to professional learning.

Due to restrictions from Covid, most professional learning was run remotely through Zoom. There were some initial delays during the trial in 2020 as we awaited for safety and security checks so we could get permission to transfer student profile information into the software. This was eventually granted in October, with a process of informed consent approved.