Your article "Indigenous students' gap 'scary': expert" (December 27, p10) highlights that ACT learning institutions are indeed failing their Aboriginal students.
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Emeritus Professor John Lester is reported as saying quality teaching and personalised learning plans were key to improving outcomes for Indigenous students. This statement is beyond creditable dispute. However, explicit, directed education strategies are delivered in a context. When students are exposed to the big picture of Aboriginal history, experience, achievement and contribution they are given opportunities for understanding, inspiration, encouragement and motivation.
A family member is researching Canberra education choices for their child. They are looking for schools that have an embedded reconciliation action plan in their programs, explicitly value Aboriginal contribution to Australian life, and focus on an understanding of colonial history and its continuing impact on Aboriginal lives.
Few schools could demonstrate how they effectively addressed these priorities in practice. A quick review of ACT November school newsletters revealed scant reports of appropriate, edifying school NAIDOC celebrations. Some schools with minimal Aboriginal enrolments couldn't see how their possible inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives were relevant. Another school had a "Reconciliation Courtyard" overrun with weeds and featuring a neglected borer-infected tree. Experience with national institutions were varied. One explainer, when speaking to a group of pre-schoolers this year, referred to the Ngunnawal peoples as having once lived in Canberra in the long-ago past.
Everyone misses out when Aboriginal perspectives are neglected and ignorance is allowed to perpetuate.
Gail Webb, Lyneham
Govt sites need usability audits
As the Sunday Canberra Times editorialised last week, the ACT government's COVID-19 website needs to have good accessibility and usability ("COVID website flaws must be fixed", December 27, p14).
Every year, students in the software engineering course I teach at the Australian National University are asked to critique a website as one of their homework exercises. Coincidentally, this year the ACT government's COVID-19 site was chosen.
One issue is that modern web frameworks make it easy to "pollute" websites with notices and advertising. At the time that students were completing their homework, the header of the COVID-19 site was marred by two banners. One banner advertised the (irrelevant) information that the ACT government was then in caretaker mode. The second advertised the (assumed) information that there was a COVID-19 "public health emergency".
These usability errors were just the beginning, and students discovered many more. In my opinion, several of these usability errors have since been rectified although the "public health emergency" banner is still there.
In general, what is needed is for people with training in usability to audit government websites. Audits should be done before content is published or substantially revised, and on a regular basis for the complete time that content is visible.
Henry Gardner, Turner
Ordinary people should be testers
Your Sunday editorial illustrates my main grouch against using websites to do any work. They are designed by experts for people like me to use. Programmers might not find errors of much importance because they are knowledgeable enough to navigate the problem, but us lesser mortals are not. Once a program is designed it should be tested by ordinary people to see if it has any glitches before it is inflicted us.
Barbara Fisher, Cook
Nature can be found close to home
It is not only nature parks that Canberrans have used this year ("Walk in the park: How COVID-19 led us to reconnect with nature", December 28, p8). The refurbished Red Hill school oval with its new playing field and bike path attracts many visitors. This usage shows the short-sightedness of the previous decision to downgrade it. Facilities close to home are particularly valuable for small children and older residents.
Sue Tongue, Narrabundah
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