Students and teachers in NSW now have access to world-leading digital learning resources following a historic partnership between the education department and an international technology company.

The NSW Department of Education and Training has extended its links with Intel to integrate skoool – a suite of web-based educational resources – into the department’s Teaching and Learning exchange (TaLe).

The Centre for Learning Innovation (CLI) initiated the partnership with Intel that led to the agreement – a first for Australia.

The deal means NSW public schools become the first education system in Australia to have access to more than 200 multimedia mathematics and science learning resources aligned to NSW syllabus outcomes by CLI.

CLI chief learning design officer Roisin O’Reilly said the resources would give students in Stages 2 to 6 the opportunity to learn through online simulations.

One resource activity allows students to “resuscitate” a human, while in another task students plot and create two- and three dimensional geometrical shapes from images their teachers upload.

Ms O’Reilly said about 40 per cent of the resources can be used in conjunction with interactive whiteboards to support collaborative learning.

“These resources support experimentation and reinforce group work, prediction testing and hypothesis testing,” she said.

Ms O’Reilly said staff from CLI had worked with Intel to customise the resources, which have won international awards for excellence.

“We worked to fit the resources to the Australian context, substituting some content to reflect [the] southern hemisphere and Australian flora and fauna,” she said.

The launch of the resource late last year followed a trial among Stage 3 and Stage 4 students in 13 NSW public schools.

Clemton Park Public School, one of the trial schools, hosted the resource launch where teams of Year 6 students gave a demonstration using a skoool simulation to create circuits online before building models incorporating batteries, lights and switches.

Clemton Park Public School principal Angelica Lapi said the resources had “been of great benefit” to the school community and “support everyday teaching and learning”.

The Minister for Education and Training, John Della Bosca, was shown how to manoeuvre iron spheres through a maze using virtual magnets on an interactive whiteboard.

Mr Della Bosca, who launched skoool, said access to the online resources by NSW public school teachers was “the envy of other schools right across the country”.

He said the resources would cater for all students, providing challenges and appropriate support.

“It’s important that as providers of public education, we find ways to make it interesting for those who need some help to understand maths and science,” Mr Della Bosca said.

The director of business operations at Intel’s IT innovation centre, Joseph Hegarty, thanked CLI staff for their work on skoool, which he said “has become part of the education DNA in many countries around the world”.

“Only by opening the door of opportunity for all can we help illuminate maths and science education in new, compelling and innovative ways to our scientists, professors and researchers of the future,” he said.

CLI’s Ms O’Reilly said a professional learning resource for teachers with lesson plans and sequences from the trial schools would be available this term on the TaLe website (www.tale.edu.au).