Some Good News For SATs Results!

The vast majority of people involved in education have the same goal; to help students learn, improve and achieve as best they can. A key requirement to facilitate this is to provide both students and teachers with a comprehensive tool set, which meets the needs of the parties involved. As teachers are increasingly busy, ICT is now playing a valuable role in helping schools to modernise education, provide teachers with excellent interactive resources, and giving students increased ownership of their own learning. With ICT giving teachers so many options, and by giving students a platform on which they enjoy learning, student motivation is increased and results can be improved.

Taecanet Springboard provides teachers with a live online teaching and learning community, and by sharing best practice, both teachers and students can thrive in the ways described above. Students can benefit from personalised learning, engaging materials and the fact that they can access the service online, 24/7. Teachers can benefit by having access to a pool of resources from hundreds of teachers, as well as time saving features, such as automated marking (making it easy to spot strong/weak areas) and the rapid release of work, meaning that a Unit of work can be released to a class in about 30 seconds!

Year on year, we have received feedback from schools suggesting that Taecanet Springboard has helped to improve results and in some cases, massive improvements have been witnessed. To see case studies relating to this, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm. We have most recently heard from Woodside Primary School in Gloucestershire (http://www.woodside.ik.org/).

In the case of Woodside Primary, not only did they achieve their best ever results for Science (100% Level 4 & 66% Level 5 - against predicted results which were 94% Level 4 and 54% Level 5) but they also for the first time achieved 100% Level 4 for Literacy & Numeracy, with Taecanet making a positive impact on Literacy through improved reading levels.

This is brilliant news, and to this end, we would encourage more schools to get involved to see if we can help in the same way. Please visit www.taecanet.com to apply for a free guest account, or call 0871 288 4580 to speak with the team about how we can help in your school.

We have also previously outlined feedback from Claires Court School in Berkshire, describing how using Taecanet Springboard has helped their students to achieve fantastic results in the new 'SOSCA' online assessments. For more information on this, please see the blog article below this one.

We would like to thank all subscribing schools for their on-going support, and also welcome interest from new schools and other interested parties. We will be detailing other 'good news' stories in the near future and look forward to continuing this trend of improved results next year!

Can E-Learning In Schools Benefit Future Life Skills?

At Taecanet, we like to think that our services transcend traditional educational boundaries, and this is reflected in our nationwide customer base. Taecanet Springboard has been successfully implemented in high & low achieving public sector schools, Independent schools, PRUs (Pupil Referral Units), Home and Hospital Services and more.

We can help schools to improve attainment, to engage pupils and learn in a way that suits them. For more info on how this has been achieved, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm . Taecanet can also offer much more than increased curriculum knowledge, as the online format helps to bring education into the 21st Century, and can therefore help to improve life skills for students (and arguably teachers too).

James Wilding is the Principal of Claires Court Schools in Maidenhead, Berkshire (http://www.clairescourt.com/). Claires Court is made up 5 school divisions on 3 school sites: Co-ed Nursery, single sex boys and girls at junior and secondary level and a co-ed 6th Form. The school has been using Taecanet Springboard for a number of years to deliver cross-curricular elearning. They have also recently taken part in KS3 'SOSCA' assessments, set up by the University of Durham. This assessment takes place on a PC, and James reported a strong correlation between students who use Taecanet Springboard for curriculum work, and students who fared best in the SOSCA tests. James commented;

"Our top end learners are now expected to pass on-screen assessments for Law, for medicine, for entry to Imperial College and post degree for most blue chip schemes – over 15% already for University entry."

"....assessments on screen are really hard to use if you are wedded to paper and pencil problem solving, and we reckon we need to give the boys and girls a lot more practice at working on screen."

"Our SOSCA science performance was stunning…and when spoken to about why, those candidates that performed the science assessment felt that the variety of work that they had completed using springboard was one of the key reasons."

We are obviously delighted to play a role in any sort of school improvement, and we look forward to continuing our successful working relationship with Claires Court, as well as all the rest of our subscribers. For more information on Taecanet's services, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/ or email enquiries@taecanet.com

Content Overload! Help Needed

Many millions of people use the internet every day, and it's potential power as a tool in the educational sphere is unquestionable. Almost any topic is available in milliseconds, but when it comes.....it comes in droves. This brings up somewhat of a quandary for us all. The content is all there.....probably in it's entirety! But do we want to, or do we have the time, to sift through this mass of content to find what we are looking for? The answer is more than likely 'no'.

As a worker in the education field, I typed '1066' into Google as a test, and I got over 50 million hits! If I were a teacher, or even a student, where would I start? If teachers can easily harness the good aspects of the internet, and filter the bad, then it makes the internet a unique and very exploitable tool. That is where Taecanet comes into play, as we have taken the concept of filtering the internet so that educators can benefit. For more information on how Taecanet is helping schools, visit www.taecanet.com

'The Filter' is a service, taking this concept to the entertainment market. Advertising has already adopted this technique to target specific interest groups, and The Filter aims to learn your taste in entertainment and deliver appropriate content directly to you. This is decided by a mathematical approach of probability, based on your designated preferences. Please visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7489345.stm for the article.

As it happens, Peter Gabriel (ex Genesis), is one of the backers, and he commented on web content;

"You feel like you're drowning sometimes - there's just too much stuff, and you really want the good stuff, the stuff that's going to excite and inspire you......filtering is coming in a big way".

It just goes to show that content delivery is getting smarter along with the daily growth of the internet. At best, this tool is an invaluable facility making exciting multi-media content available at the touch of a button. At worst, it is like sifting through a skip to find something you may wish to use. Thankfully, with innovative 'filtering agents' like Taecanet and The Filter, coming to the fore, we can expect more of the former!

Easy Personalised Learning for PRUs

Last week saw the National PRU Conference at Eastwood Hall in Notts (pictured above). The venue and event was a great success, and we would like to thank Neil Finbow for his organisation and assistance. There were a range of suppliers exhibiting, offering educational board games to online learning. Taecanet offered a workshop on Friday detailing how PRUs can improve the provision of personalised learning for students, which seemed to go down very well. For more information on this workshop or for a copy of the presentation slides, please contact david.holden@taecanet.com

We met a number of people from various centres around the country to tell them about Taecanet and how we are helping to connect teachers and provide an easy way of sharing in best practice, saving teachers' time, and offering personalised learning for students. We also saw some existing customers as well, which is always a pleasure.

Taecanet's ethos is simple. We combine the knowledge of hundreds of teachers, so that other teachers can benefit! By doing this, we have created a vast network, which is helping teachers to deliver effective online elearning that can benefit whole class work, as well as individual work plans for students. On this basis, we are attracting sustained interest from PRUs (and groups of PRUs) due to the fact that we can help engage students, and give teachers assistance in setting work for individual pupils in a matter of seconds. If this sounds too good to be true, please call 0871 288 4580 to find out how.

Taecanet offers a range of services designed to meet the needs of mainstream schools, as well as PRUs, and we have a special pricing structure for PRUs which makes 24/7 personalised learning affordable to every PRU in the country. To find out how PRUs are benefiting from Taecanet, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm where you can find a PRU case study at the foot of the page.

Following on from the event, we would like to welcome the Compass Centre PRU, Bolton, into our teaching and learning community, and we look forward to getting the centre up and running early next term.

Please contact chris.davison@taecanet.com for more information on Taecanet's services for PRUs, or for more general information please go to www.taecanet.com