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.

Furze Platt School - Mobile Revolution Continues

We have been working with Furze Platt School in Maidenhead (www.furzeplatt.com), as part of a mobile learning project. By enabling students to use Nokia devices to create and share valuable learning resources, we hope it will engage and motivate students, as well as producing some great content that others can use to help with their teaching and learning.

Furze Platt Science teacher, Jill Heales, had this to say about the familiarisation session with Nokia expert Jay Montano, as well as the project in general;

"The session with Jay motivated the pupils, and gave them a good idea of what they need to do to capture and upload content. The project is going great but the only thing holding back our progress is a lack of time to meet regularly and agree how to move forward, as school life is so busy. That being said, all of the students are really enjoying what they are doing".

We are really pleased that everything is going well, and we really look forward to seeing what intersting content the schools come up with later this month.

Jay Montano's blog can be found at http://mynokiablog.com . For any further information on this project, please contact chris.davison@t-learning.net

Mobile Project Gathers Pace!

Students from Furze Platt School in Maidenhead are now officially underway. There are definative plans afoot for content creation, and the students are really engaging with the Nokia N85 handsets, which are being used for the project to create valuable Science resources.

One of the students from Furze Platt commented;

"I'll be making a video of a reaction, probably cutting it and slowing it down in Final Cut. I continue to be amazed by the phone; with it's WinZip compatability, the FM transmitter and the WiFi".

We are so pleased to be working with such motivated individuals, and we look forward to the final results in a few weeks!

Keep up the good work, I say!

Hackney School Rewarded After Completing Online PE Homework!

T-Learning will be presenting a prize at Hackney Free & Parochial School in London on Thursday 17th December. This is to commemorate the fact that a student within this school completed the 3,000,000th Taecanet Springboard learning journey on 8th November 2009 at 9.56pm.

The school will receive a financial donation from T-Learning and the pupil in question will also receive enough iTunes vouchers to keep them occupied for the next few weeks!

This caps a great first year, following the release of our PE elearning resources, which over 60 schools are now using. The first year has proven a great success, with 80% of Sports Colleges partaking in the project, reporting improvements in GCSE PE results.

T-Learning have teamed up with Youth Sport Trust and 4 Specialist Sports Colleges in order to produce interactive learning resources for GCSE & BTEC PE. For more information on the collaborative project, please visit www.taecanet.com/yst/index.php or contact chris.davison@t-learning.net

Internet Implications For The 'Have Nots'

I have found an excellent article on how technology is helping to keep homeless people connected to the 'real world'. Even with limited resources, this shows how anyone can keep connected with news, local events and useful forums online. After all, equal opportunity is one of the things that drives the internet forward and this proves that money does not have to be a critical factor.

A fascinating read http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB124363359881267523.html

Need Help With PE Theory Revision? Talk To T-Learning!

Many thanks to everyone who managed to attend the T-Learning stand at the Sports Colleges Conference in Telford last week (pictured above). I'm pleased to say it was a huge success with over 100 schools visiting the stand over the two days, which certainly kept us on our toes!

Thanks also to Ian Cawley and his team from Youth Sport Trust (YST) for their invitation to the exhibition and for their excellent support in making our collaborative project a success to date. We are delighted to be part of this collaborative network made up of 4 Specialist Sports Colleges, YST and T-Learning, in order to distribute best practice and deliver effective teaching and learning resources for KS4 PE. With revision high on the school agenda at the current time, it could not be a better time to get involved with this project.

So far, feedback from schools has been extremely positive. Scott Cordon form Chasetown Sports College described Taecanet Springboard as "absolutely fantastic" and he "could not speak highly enough of it students love it and staff like the service too, because Units are easy to set up and teachers get instant feedback of student progress”. At present, with revision occupying much school time, this instant feedback through Reports is key to guiding teachers on targeted revision activities for whole classes as well as individual students. For a full copy of the case study, please visit http://www.taecanet.com/yst/casestudy.htm

Following on from the show, we would like to welcome Wood Green High School in Sandwell, Lammas School and Sports College in Waltham Forest and Cumberland School in Plaistow, London, into our teaching and learning community. We very much look forward to getting you started in the coming days to help with your immediate revision needs.

Visitors to our stand will have all the info needed to get involved. However, should you like further information please visit www.taecanet.com and follow the YST link at the foot of the page. Otherwise, please email ian.nairn@taecanet.com with any specific requests.

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!

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

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

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.