We covered three major areas of school operation - school administration, finance, and IT - and packed our agenda full of presentations on trending topics, panel discussions, masterclasses, and an incredible celebrity keynote.
Over 260 delegates representing 119 schools came from five Australian states to share the TASS Journey.
We kicked off the conference by walking our delegates through the latest feature and enhancements to hit the TASS platforms.
We also introduced TASS Cloud Hosting Services - providing schools with the server infrastructure and management required to run their critical school administration system, in a secure AWS environment.
We were then joined by Mr. Chris Ryan, Deputy Principal of St. Joseph's College - Gregory Terrace. The College is over 140 years old and is currently educating over 1500 students from years 5-12 - with a school of this size, there's a significant amount of data being held.
Chris spoke about the major changes they made to incorporate more modern technological concepts into their day-to-day functionality - including a BYOD program, improved service delivery, mobile capability, and a gradual shift from an on-premises operation to the Cloud.
In their ongoing journey, Terrace, with the help of MOQdigital, is fostering and encouraging the evolution and growth of their in-house IT capability.
After lunch, our delegates split into three breakout sessions, to cover our three content streams.
After lunch, Todd Sampson (award winning documentary maker, television presenter and businessman) spoke to us about his journey to adapt and evolve his brain, and some tips and tricks that we can use in our everyday life to be more flexible and agile thinkers.
We had an evening of corporate networking at the stunning Sixteen Antlers rooftop bar, enjoying canapés, drinks, and a panoramic view of Brisbane. Our photographer, Chris Jack Photography, captured the evening for us - view the photos below!
Delegates had a chance to get involved and share their experiences in our interactive panel discussions, working collaboratively to tackle some of the challenges facing Australian schools.
As the conference drew to a close, we turned to the future!
In our second last session, we explored some of the cool projects TASS has in the works, and the direction the company is moving in.
Delegates caught the first glimpse of address validation and geo-mapping in TASS, experimented with a mobile responsive Teacher Kiosk, and explored the new Online Parent Payment Schedules. TASS also announced plans to advance identity management, enhance tours and excursions, and release a sports and music scheduling/management module.
To close off the inaugural TASSCON, we were lucky enough to have John Hamilton, IT Manager at Mt. St. Michael's College speak to attending Queensland schools regarding the recent changes to the Queensland Certificate of Education (QCE).
John's presentation covered his school’s interpretation of the new curriculum, the decision making process, how Mt. St. Michael's tackled the changes and the delivery of timely, accurate, informative and understandable reports.
John walked us through his school’s initial setup in the TASS.web Academic Reporting module and the workflow in Teacher Kiosk to build Internal Assessment and calculate results in the markbook to enable progressive reporting and provisional results.
