Mobile Learning Project Underway!

We have now completed the first training session for the T-Learning mobile learning project, which took place at Furze Platt School in Maidenhead.

This school has been handed six Nokia N85 devices and has created a 'team' of 5 students and one teacher. This team was trained yesterday afternoon by Nokia expert Jay Montano, who travelled all the way from Cardiff to help get this project underway. Many thanks to Jay for his help! Jay's blog can be found at http://www.mynokiablog.com

Over the next month, this school team will be using the devices to create valuable educational resources linked to Key Stage 4 Science. The devices will be used to capture and upload content, which will then be used to create 'learning journeys', which can be shared amongst our community of schools. Three other schools will also be partaking in this project, working on different Scientific areas, and I will post updates on progress in due time.

T-Learning are experts in the creation of online learning communities. This project underlines our focus of providing shared user generated content as a way of helping students to engage with education. By helping to share best practice, we also hope to make life a bit easier for teachers.

Further updates will be available through http://www.womworld.com/nokia . For more information on this project please contact chris.davison@t-learning.net

'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.

Technology Savvy School Is Rewarded!

Friday 28th March saw the unveiling of a plaque by Teresa May MP at Holy Trinity Primary School in Cookham, Berks. This was to celebrate the school's completion of the 1,000,000th Learning Journey on Taecanet Springboard, and the day proved quite a success! As you can see by the top picture, the event was celebrated by (from left to right): Arthur Burgin (School Governor), Graeme Aldous (Headteacher), Rt. Hon. Teresa May MP, students, Ian Nairn (Taecanet founder) and Fiona Tattershall (Head of PTA). We were also joined by some local journalists covering the event, and there was press coverage in the Maidenhead Advertiser newspaper and on Time106.6 FM.

As well as the plaque being unveiled, the school also had the opportunity to try out their own Virtual Classroom, which was offered as part of the prize to the school for reaching this milestone. Holy Trinity shared a live online lesson with the Virtual School in Florida. This meant that students on both sides of the Atlantic were able to share a live lesson; a feat that would have been near impossible otherwise. This was extremely successful, and again highlighted just how much ICT can impact education, and can make things happen that were simply not possible before its introduction.

Mr Aldous commented "Today was just the start of expanding our horizons internationally using ICT. The students just loved the experience and the technology is easy to use and exceptionally effective". Glowing praise indeed! We are delighted to be able to help put Holy Trinity on the international map, and will continue to support their activities in the future.

Taecanet's ethos is of collaboration, in order to help spread best practice. Our offering of both synchronous and asynchronous learning tools helps to make the concept of blended learning a reality, meaning that different learning styles are easliy catered for. We make teachers the focal point of our services, so that students (as well as other teachers) in the UK and abroad, can benefit and achieve even more.

Many thanks to all involved for a great day. For more information, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/news.htm where you can read the press release, or contact enquiries@taecanet.com for more information on Taecanet.

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.