Sports Colleges Conference 2010 - Summary

Today was the final day of the Sports Colleges Conference in Telford, which was a great success for all involved. Many thanks to Ian Cawley, and team, from Youth Sport Trust for his great support, and for putting on a good event. You can see our stand (730) pictured left.

T-Learning have been working with YST for a number of years now, and we were at the show to help spread the word about our collaborative project. We have worked together, along with four Specialist Sports Colleges, to produce interactive resources for GCSE & BTEC PE Theory. These are now being used on over 60 schools to help students engage with PE Theory in a new and innovative way, while improving standards both in delivery by teachers, and in attainment for students. By offering access to shared, community generated resources, it seems that all parties are benefiting. If you would like more info on the project, and would like to see the impact that Taecanet Springboard for PE has had on GCSE results, please follow this link http://www.taecanet.com/yst/conference.htm

We had a lot of interested parties visit the stand, and as revision is vital at this time of year, this was the focus of many discussions and demonstrations. Surprisingly, quite a few teachers wanted to explore the other resources we offer (such as Science, History, Geography, RE & Citizenship) as they were so engaged with the offering across PE.

Our community based PE learning network was also represented at one of the 'Sharing The Challenge' sessions where supporters; Tony Downey (Blessed Robert Sutton School), Mick Tizard (The Cavendish School) & Kirstie Hartwell (Charters School) were on-hand to describe the project to interested parties. These teachers have experience of the project, ranging from strategic organisation to building the actual content used within the network. All of these perspectives were valuable when informing teachers about the community and the impact it has had on PE Theory education so far.

Many thanks to everyone who was able to visit the stand. We hope to see you all again very soon and I would encourage any interested parties to contact chris.davison@t-learning.net

Nokia/Ovi Announcement - Free Nav!

Nokia's worldwide unveiling is now over and the major announcement for Nokia/Ovi is that they are now offering free mapping/navigation services through their devices!

This will be a big blow to external sat nav providers and gives further proof of the inevitable convergence of disparate services onto mobile devices. For more info on this, you can visit the official Nokia site at http://events.nokia.com/ovimaps/index.html

For more informal information and opinion on this release, please visit http://www.womworld.com/nokia

This seems a fitting time for T-Learning to be running our mobile elearning project. By enabling students to capture and share valuable learning resources through mobile devices we hope we can add real value to education by utilising technologies, which are prolific throughout the younger population. Mapping and navigation could be a valuable assest here.

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

Calling All 'ISA Affiliated' Independent Schools

This is a call to arms!

T-Learning are working with the Independent Schools Association (ISA) and a number of it's member schools to help create an Independent Schools learning community designed to share resources and distribute best practice. T-Learning are experts in the creation of community learning initiatives, with an existing state sector project involving hundreds of schools. Thus far six subjects have been created in this space at KS1-KS4 through teacher generated content, providing over 5,000 Learning Journeys for students or teachers to access immediately helping to save teachers time and to improve school standards.

We would encourage any ISA school to join this community as it will provide an invaluable resource to help teachers improve standards, and to deliver personalised learning to students.

To help teachers join in, there is an online social network which is live today! This is a free provision, currently available to all ISA members. For an invitation, please contact ian.nairn@t-learning.net or James Wilding head@clairescourt.co.uk with your email address and school details.

James is the Principal of the Claires Court group (http://www.clairescourt.com/) and one of the founder members of the ISANet community. All new members will be given a warm welcome and have the opportunity to network immediately with existing members. Already, blogs, videos, photos and more are being shared. There are also different groups being created all the time, so ANY subject specialist should be able to find like minded colleagues to converse with.

Come on down!