This morning I had a chance to see some of the latest technology being deployed by schools across the UK to bring together pupils, teachers and parents in 1 web based environment. There was some impressive technology on show – the majority of it home grown.

The basic premise is that by April 2008, all pupils should “have access” to a virtual learning environment where they can upload & download homework assignments, collaborate with other pupils, share learning and enable teachers to work anytime and anyplace to mark coursework in a standardized and efficient manner etc.. whilst enabling the parents to see what progress the children are making within their school.

The children can also communicate with each other in a safe (ring-fenced) environment with avatars and 3D worlds in so cases. The parents get access to real-time information on progress / attendance etc.. The teachers get a standardised easy to use interface which can be updated in real-time and doesn’t require countless hours of work in the evenings / weekends before the term school report is required (yes I married a teacher and can appreciate these things )

All good goals but the words “have access” are the important ones here. The initiative doesn’t really have to have children on the systems until 2010. So why make the schools decide which software they want now if they don’t have to use them for another 2 years? Well obviously it takes time to implement something like this across the whole of the UK.

I think these types of solutions have a great future if properly thought through and implemented in an efficient and effective way – so that resources and best practice can be shared thereby freeing up funds to be spent on other areas of the child’s education.

Here are a couple of links on whats available:-
StudyWiz
RM Kaleidos

Regards

Dean

Bookmark to:

This entry was posted by Dean on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 3:24 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category Innovation & the net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.