Edval invites QLD schools to timetabling demos
Timetabling specialist Edval is inviting QLD schools interested in learning how the company's software can improve classroom use and save teachers' time, to register for morning and afternoon demonstrations on 22 and 23 March at the Mercure Gold Coast Resort and on 22 March at the Mercure Brisbane.
Edval director Michael Emmanuel said that principals and heads of department asking themselves:
- Why does it take a whole term to get a timetable out?
- Why do we have to settle for these split classes? Is there another way?
- Why do my teachers have to move to a different room so often?
- Why have I got most of my lessons in the first (or second) week of the timetable? Can't they be spread out more evenly?
- It's January! Why don't we have a timetable yet?
will learn how powerful algorithms can be used to construct timetables that make more effective use of classrooms and teachers time, and spread out lessons evenly, while saving costly and unnecessary staff hours.
In a recent cast study, Damian Bottaccio, Deputy Principal of Clairvaux MacKillop College in Upper Mt Gravatt noted: "The software was able to demonstrate a capability to model various different curriculum structures. Clear visibility of impact of changes was able to be shown, including the ability to measure teaching time against the indicative hours purported for each of the Australian Curriculum syllabi. These were measured directly against the timetable and also the school calendar – taking into account holidays, etc.
"A registration report was also able to be produced, showing a range of information related to the measuring of teaching time per year and curriculum ‘pie’ breakdown by period, etc.
"Unlike all previous years, the Edval system has brought a new way of staffing the school. Traditionally a grid would be prepared, and faculty heads required to staff ‘against’ this structure, which artificially restricted staffing options to the grid. The change to the new way has seen staffing preferences expressed independently against each class, without the traditional overhead of a grid structure."