Taecanet Springboard - "A Wonderful Learning Facility"

T-Learning are very pleased to welcome Carsic Primary School in Nottinghamshire into our teaching and learning community. Although the school have only subscribed recently, they already seem to be reaping the benefits of Taecanet Springboard to help promote personalised learning across the curriculum.

Teacher, Neil Pacheco, commented;

"Thanks for all you have done for our children to enable the whole school to access this wonderful learning facility. I have shown the site to our technician who provides IT support for other schools in Nottingham and he was very impressed and will no doubt pass this on to the other schools".

Many thanks to Neil and his team for their continued support and for implementing their training so quickly. Carsic Primary have raced up to the top of our user stats, becoming T-Learning's 'School Of The Month' for September!

More information on Taecanet Springboard can be found at www.taecanet.com and any email enquiries can be directed to support@taecanet.com

T-Learning Annual School Survey 2010 - Results!

So, the results of T-Learning's annual survey have come in! All schools within our community have been given the opportunity to complete our survey so that we can learn more about trends in usage as well as potential ideas for development.

We received inputs across Primary & Secondary Schools as well as Hospital based education centres who all use Taecanet Springboard to deliver personalised learning resources to pupils from home as well as in school.

A few of the outcomes are noted below, which have been submitted by teachers:

71% of pupils enjoy using Taecanet Springboard.

100% of Primary School teachers agree that Taecanet Springboard has a positive effect on pupil attainment.

64% of teachers think that it is easy to allocate work using Taecanet Springboard and to monitor student progress.

In addition to a number of other uses, 93% of teachers use Taecanet Springboard to deliver homework.

All of these outcomes are very positive and reinforce what we have heard over the years in terms of pupils enjoying and benefiting from the resources. Ease of use for teachers is also at the heart of what we do, which appears to be recognised in this survery which is also encouraging.

What is a little surprising is the significant number of teachers who use Taecanet Springboard to deliver homework.......a staggering 93%. We have heard from teachers that using the service in this way really helps to tidy up and simplify the whole homework process. No more pleas of 'Sorry Miss, the dog ate my homework!' By virtue of the fact that all of the resources have already been created by other teachers, work can be allocated in seconds, and all of the marking is done automatically makes this online tool very homework friendly. In addition, with access to technology (including broadband) becoming more pervasive, it seems this is a real opportunity for schools to work more efficiently by delivering homework online, which will engage students and help to improve attainment.

Many thanks to all of the teachers who took part in the survey. If you would like any more information on the Taecanet Springboard services, please contact chris.davison@t-learning.net or call 0871 288 4580.

Independent Schools And The Personalised Learning Agenda

T-Learning were very pleased to attend the recent Independent Schools Association (ISA) Annual Conference in Oxford. Following our success in working with Independent Schools such as the Claires Court group (mentioned in numerous other articles below) we were able to present our ideas to the attendees. This presentation was chaired by James Wilding, Principal of the CC group, who was able to give the delegates a unique insight into how we have helped their schools to achieve personalised learning across all 3 sites.

The event was an undoubted success and we would like to thank Maggie Turner and her colleagues at ISA for a great few days.

We are working to help Independent Schools to take ownership of the personalised learning agenda, as we feel they have traditionally been thought leaders in personalised learning. By creating a specialised online Independent Schools learning community, we hope to enable this sector to be the leading force in this field, and to take control of shaping their own destiny.

If you wish to know more about the presentation, and our work with ISA, please email ian.nairn@taecanet.com

Help Us To Help You!

Our attempts to quantify whether Taecanet helps to improve student attainment continue. We now have much feedback and case study material attesting to the fact that learning on Taecanet Springboard does help to improve results, as well as helping student motivation levels.

We have recently heard from Ian Fergus, Headteacher at Woodside Primary School in the Forest of Dean (SW England). The school is very small, with only 100 students and Taecanet Springboard was originally implemented in 2006 to help support teaching and learning in Science. Initially, Years 5/6 were the main users, but since then, younger students have begun to use the service across different subject areas as well. They really enjoy using the service and seem to have a real appetite for all things Taecanet, which is great news! Teachers also find the service a great help for class work, in terms of finding and utilising content for whole class sessions.

So what was the impact on learning?

Results at KS2
06/07 100% L4 Science 35% L5 in a group with 33% SEN
07/08 100% L4 Science 66% L5 much more able group but still exceeded targets.

This seems quite a marked improvement, even taking into account the factors stated. Even the 06/07 stats show Taecanet can be used to help students with varying levels of ability to achieve.

For any schools who wish to know more about improved results and general school feedback, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm or email enquiries@taecanet.com. We are very proud of our contribution at Woodside Primary, as well as all of the other schools we are currently helping.

Thanks to Ian Fergus and his team for their continued support.

Middlesbrough ICT Event

Many thanks to everyone who attended our stand (above) at the Middlesbrough ICT Event at the Riverside Stadium last week. It was a great venue, and a pleasure to see some of our existing customers, as well as some new faces. I have to say that the food was great too!

We have a number of subscribers across Middlesbrough (as well as the rest of the NE), and events like this give us the chance to spend some face to face time with these schools, as well as introducing our service to new parties. Feedback from the event was that local schools think Taecanet Springboard offers an easy-to-use service, which is helping students to learn in a way that suits them. Personalised learning allows students to learn as individuals by working at their own pace. The fact that teachers and students can access the service online means that 24/7 learning can be achieved for students, and planning and preparation is completely flexible for teachers. Students really enjoy the activities and are highly motivated while using it. Teachers can save hours in terms of planning & prep and even marking, by tapping into our teaching and learning community. The service has been created BY teachers FOR teachers, therefore meeting teacher's needs.

Taecanet Springboard has a positive reputation for helping schools to improve results. For more info on this, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm. For a free guest account, or to arrange a visit, please email chris.davison@taecanet.com with your request.

Thanks again and I hope to see you in the coming weeks, if not, next year!

More Schools See Exam Improvements Using Taecanet!

Feedback is key to any service related business, in order to help improve standards. Taecanet is no different and we are now receiving feedback from many different schools. One such school is Blessed Sacrament Junior School in Liverpool, and their feedback on our online elearing service is as follows.

Following an initial familiarisation session, teachers now get together to discuss and set appropriate Units of work for students. Multiple Units are set at one time, usually a mix of subjects.

Their main focus is home use and students who cannot gain access at home are allowed into lunch clubs. They use this technique to reinforce class learning. Parents have reacted very well and like the fact that they can play a role in the education of their child. Some parents have even brought PCs based on how much they are beginning to see the benefits of learning through ICT. This is a very encouraging shift, as it shows the transparency that using ICT in education can provide across both school and home. Teachers report that lessons are more productive when Taecanet work has been completed. Science results were 8% better than LEA guidelines and teachers were very candid in suggesting Level 4 SATs improvements were down to Taecanet! Another example of improved knowledge was when a student in class told the teacher a fact about Henry VIII. The teacher was not aware of this fact and when quizzed about where they learned it, the student suggested it was on Taecanet Springboard. The teachers attest to the fact that students learn even more than they need to on the service, and more than through text books because of the wealth of info contained on Taecanet, which leads to a more rounded learning experience.

Teachers use the teacher centre to track student Reports online from home, so that they have prior knowledge when they return to class the following day. This gives them a distinct advantage over traditional homework. Teachers and parents like the focused nature of the service, meaning increased safety and less distraction for pupils. They even suggested that Taecanet helps to improve the family unit, as there is more shared info across the family as well as more collaborative tasks such as homework. Even though some teachers in the school have limited ICT skills, they are still able to use the service. Even teachers who were initially resistant are now accessing the service, and taking that valuable ‘first step’ into using ICT, thus improving their skills. The school are now interested in booking further training to help staff reach the next level of competency.

The above feedback suggests that Taecanet Springboard is doing what we set out to do! It helps to: engage pupils, improve results, open up access outside of school and help teachers....to name but a few things. We look forward to hearing back from more of our schools in the future.

To find out more, please visit www.taecanet.com where you can apply for a free guest account. Please contact enquiries@taecanet.com if you have any questions.

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!

Collaborative Learning - Sharing Knowledge Through Teacher Networks

Some would say collaboration in education is the best way of efficiently sharing best practice in order to help raise standards. By sharing techniques and resources, schools can improve efficiency and the quality of output. This thinking underpins the Taecanet model, and with hundreds of teachers acting to collaborate, the rest of the teaching population can significantly benefit. After all, why should teachers continually re-invent the wheel?

We see ourselves as integral to the dissemination of this 'knowledge share' to which teachers, themselves, actively contribute. Teacher's expertise for teaching is matched by our expertise to build their input into educationally valuable digital objects, and distribute them online. In this way, easy access is achieved, and so far, millions of Learning Journeys have been completed. In many cases, results have also improved accordingly. To find out more about how Taecanet are helping schools, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm

As a result of this successful collaboration between education and industry, Taecanet are now undertaking more specialist projects. A collaborative project is now underway involving Taecanet and the Youth Sports Trust. This project was initiated by Tony Downey, Headteacher at Blessed Robert Sutton Catholic Sports College (http://www.robertsutton.staffs.sch.uk/), who saw Taecanet as a valuable partner to help facilitate shared knowledge across a number of schools. Mr Downey commented;

"I very much liked the process of collaboration between schools and industry, and I think Taecanet are undertaking work that I have not seen from anybody else".

"What I liked about the service, was how receptive I was as a learner. The user is invited to learn and improve, and then undertake assessment. The mixture of engagement and interactivity, which make up the learning process, is the closest thing that I have witnessed to a real life school scenario."

"I have been impressed with the output of materials so far, and I look forward to the finished product and it's release in the future".

Other schools, such as Charters School, Cavendish and Kingdown Schools have now joined forces in order to create KS4 G.C.S.E and BTEC P.E. modules, which will be distributed through the Taecanet Springboard service. There will be an Autumn Term trialling process involving 20 schools, before the results are presented to the Sports Colleges Conference 2008. A significant proportion of the work has been completed by the teachers involved, and Taecanet are delighted to be involved in this innovative and exciting project. Please click here for the full article from the Youth Sports Trust website.

If you would like any more information on this project, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/contact.htm and type 'P.E.' before entering your query. More general information on Taecanet's services can be found by visiting www.taecanet.com

'Learning Within A Digital Community' - East Riding ICT Exhibition 2008

We are very much looking forward to attending the East Riding ICT Exhibition on the 19th June 2008, especially as it was such a success last year. The title of the event, 'Learning Within A Digital Community', fits in perfectly with our approach to elearning, as our national 'knowledge share' fits the bill exactly.

We will be able to show delegates just how easy it is to get involved with a live teacher network, and just how much they can benefit. By tapping into our online community of teachers, schools can save a huge amount of time and money in locating, and effectively using valuable teaching and learning content. We would welcome schools and LEAs looking to roll out their VLEs in the future to come and see us to find out how we can help.

This event will be taking place at the Ramada Jarvis Hotel in Willerby on the 19th June 2008. Please contact chris.davison@taecanet.com if you wish to book a time to come and see us.

SEN thumbs up for Taecanet!

Over the years, we have gained much experience in the world of ICT in education. Taecanet Springboard has been successfully implemented in hundreds of schools, and we are now seeing an increased awareness and interest from centres outside of the 'mainstream schools' market. PRUs (Pupils Referral Units) and Home and Hospital Services still have a responsibility to provide valid educational experiences for students under their care. In some cases, the plan is to return these students to mainstream education in the future, and therefore, maintaining curriculum links is vital. Even if the students have been permanently excluded, their education provision should not suffer. In fact, it should be used as a focus to facilitate achievement and motivation.

We have recently received feedback from Rob Davies at The Summit Centre PRU in Wigan. The staff were recently trained in using the service, and the centre has seen a good take up of Taecanet Springboard to date. It seems that the students are really keen too! Rob commented;

"Its going really well. Sometimes we have a problem getting the young people off Taecanet to start normal lessons!". I hope the second sentence is somewhat tongue in cheek, as we don't want to partake in starting a student mutiny!

This is excellent news, and further proves that Taecanet Springboard can engage students from a diverse range of ability levels and educational extremities, ranging from high level achievers in traditional mainstream to SEN (Special Educational Needs). Along with effective teaching, ICT can unite and invigorate learners and in some ways, level the educational playing field. By providing flexible and motivational materials, teachers can decide what work to set, and how to deliver it, based on the individual needs of students. Inexpensive, shared valuable teaching resources will work to benefit everybody; not just the privileged few. This is where Taecanet's role is so vital.

For more information on how Taecanet Springboard can help SEN centres, including PRUs, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm where you can also read case studies from mainstream schools. To arrange a demonstration or for more information, please contact enquiries@taecanet.com

Taecanet @ NAHT - Continuing To Share Best Practice in Education

I am very pleased to announce that the NAHT Conference 2008 was a great success for Taecanet. The Echo Arena was a stunning venue for this event, and proved to be a great draw, with around 600 school leaders in attendance. The complimentary wine was welcomed by all on the Friday night following the opening, but there was still serious business to attend to over the Bank Holiday weekend. As a local company, it was great to see some local schools visit the stand (pictured above), and we have made some very useful contacts for the future.

Every person who visited the stand was entitled to a free guest account, which will be sent out imminently. You can also apply for an account via our website at www.taecanet.com so please feel free to have a go and see how other schools are benefiting! We are helping to improve results and positively impact the use of cross-curricular ICT in hundreds of schools across the country. To get an insight into how schools are benefiting from using Taecanet Springboard, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/casestudies.htm where you can choose from a range of Primary, Secondary and SEN related case studies.

Many thanks to Michael O'Hanlon from St Francis Xavier School in Liverpool, who was on-hand to show interested parties how students use the service, which was a great help. He also managed to rub shoulders with Dame Kelly Holmes, double Olympic Gold medalist who was speaking at the event! See above picture.

I'm sure Dame Kelly would approve of the projects which Taecanet have initiated in her field. As we have done with many other subjects across the curriculum, we are working to share best practice in P.E. by pooling excellent teachers' contributions from a number of schools. I certainly hope we can spur on some stars of the future as well. For more info on this project or on Taecanet in general, please visit our website or email enquiries@taecanet.com

Avoiding a new digital divide

The Digital Divide was once considered to refer to the separation of people with access to technology and those without. But, as the machinery and technologies have developed at a rapid pace, so has the meaning of this term.

As the opportunities to join in the technology driven twenty first century increases continually, new hurdles spring up which threaten to keep a digital divide firmly in place.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has described that in the past “we just tried to keep up, with new technologies often simply bolted onto traditional curriculum practices. However, today, with three decades of digital experience under our belt, the time is ripe to begin instituting true change”. To visit the article, please click here

This means that the role of student and teacher is dramatically readjusting. Whilst students often embrace these new ways of learning, teachers can be hesitant of new technologies.

K. Bechtel highlighted how “students in the low technology use classrooms are not seeing the benefits of technology, the opportunities created with technology, or improving their own skills at using technology. …..Two classes next door to each other could be providing their students vastly different educational opportunities depending solely on the level of technology experience knowledge of the teachers. Thus the divide continues”. Full article can be found here

Therefore if a student is inadvertently shown how fear can be associated with technology, they will in turn learn to be weary of it. Whereas if they observe their teacher demonstrating limitless learning opportunities with enthusiasm and excitement, they will be excited by it, and see it as a key tool in their life.

This leaves the teachers with a big responsibility. If less confident teachers can overcome their concerns, they can begin to shatter the digital divide and join in the exciting transformation that sees the face of learning change forever.

In order to make this transition into the world of online learning, teachers can be guided with assistance of companies like Taecanet. (www.taecanet.com). Taecanet offers a quality, e-learning service which places teachers in control of what their students learn and when they learn. But it does so by ensuring it is simple to operate, and offers continual guidance and assistance so that the teacher’s first step into the digital world of e-learning is a seamless one.

Do Teachers Make Effective Use of ICT?

I have come across an interesting article suggesting that a third of the teachers still struggle to make good use of technology in their teaching. To add to this issue, the research also suggests that 62% of teachers think that ICT improves student attainment. What a quandary!

This research was conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), in which 1000 teachers were quizzed. A major reason for the lack of ICT usage in schools was due to lack of resources and poor reliability. In my opinion, the only way to improve this is through strong leadership and to make time available to teachers to improve skill levels. This was also reflected in the research where teachers suggested that ICT Leadership needs to be improved, and a poor 44% of teachers consider their schools use of technology to be 'innovative'. For the full article, please click here

Given the possibilities that ICT affords many schools, this does paint a stark picture. Although technology in schools has been well funded in recent years (to the tune of £3 billion) by the Labour Government, you have to ask whether this funding has been spent effectively. This research suggests not. Although much hardware is in place, questions must be asked on whether training and implementation have met the needs of teachers. What good is a PC if you don't know where the 'On' button is!?

Would suggesting that teachers are incapable be accurate? Or is it more that a lack of leadership and strategy has let them down? Another article taken from Times online promotes even more stark figures by suggesting that 80% of schools are failing to make good use of ICT (for the full article please click here) This would suggest that leadership does need to be improved, and negative attitudes surrounding ICT altered, so that the massive investment to date can reap the rewards that we know ICT can provide.

Taecanet Springboard (www.taecanet.com) offers an extremely easy to use, easy to access service, which is proven to raise attainment levels. We, at Taecanet, hope to play a part in improving and sustaining the use of technology in education, so that teachers can see the true value of blended learning.

Slow internet - fast students!

It can indeed be a problem for some schools, trying to offer effective online elearning to pupils, while having to deal with limited bandwidth. However, this does not necessarily mean that such learning has to stop, as there are a multitude of ways to make the most of current provisions. From my personal experience, here are some such options when using Taecanet Springboard for teaching:

Whiteboard activities - It is easy to use Taecanet Springboard on an interactive whiteboard. Teachers can guide students through Learning Journeys on the board in order to help weaker readers, or simply to increase class participation. Students can be invited up to control the board, and press the buttons in order to go through the Journeys. By doing this, students can be polled for correct answers and whole class participation is acheived extremely easily. This will be motivational for students as they are learning in a new and exciting way, and at the same time, teachers can benefit from the integrated content that is easily accessible through the service. As there is only one PC being used at a time, the internet connection should be fast and efficient.

To facilitate such activities, all teachers are provided with 'student' usernames, so that they can guide their class through work on the whiteboard, or simply gain confidence with the system in their own time. Another way to promote this usage would be to access the 'Help' file as a teacher. Within there, teachers can access all of the content within the service, in isolation. By using the 'Unit Explorer', ALL available content can be accessed in seconds, without the need to use the pre-prepared Journeys. This section gives teachers increased ownership on how they would like to use the materials, and it will provide an excellent starting point for personalised research. No longer do teachers have to sought through millions of web hits through search engines, because we have already paid teachers to do this legwork! Save hours in terms of planning and preperation and take advantage! If you are doing a topic next week, see what you can find in the Unit Explorer!

Homework - As Taecanet Springboard is an online resource, teachers can easily allocate work for students to complete at home. With more and more households being equipped with broadband, this will increasingly be an option for schools. For those students who cannot gain access at home, teachers can set a longer timescale and perhaps create 'homework clubs' where students can get online in at lunch or before/after school. This has been especially effective in a number of schools that I have visited. This technique will reduce the need for large bandwidth by staggering student's use of PC's, while retaining your delivery of essential personalised learning. Some will complete their work at home, some may come in at lunch, some after school.....and so on. This will ease the impact on your school systems, and give students increased ownership over their work. Win win.

These are just a few basic ideas that I can point to through my experiences of working with classes. Please comment below this article if you know of any more!