SWANSEA EDUNET
SWANSEA‟S LEARNING PLATFORM
STRATEGY AND PLANS
2009-2012
E-LEARNING STRATEGY AND PLANS 2009 – 2012
Swansea Edunet – Project Documentation
Date: 1st September 2009
Version: 1.0
Owner: Education Department - Learning Portal Team
Authors: Kieran Costello and James Dix
eMail: kieran.costello@swansea.gov.uk
james.dix@swansea-edunet.gov.uk
Telephone: 01792 637141
Revision History
Date of this revision: 1st September 2009
Date of next revision: -
Revision Previous Summary of Changes Changes
date revision date marked
1 September First issue
2010
1 March 2010 Revision; minor amendments for clarification
Approvals
Name Signature Title Date of Issue Version
Distribution
Name Title Date of Issue Version
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E-LEARNING STRATEGY AND PLANS 2009 – 2012
Contents
Contents .....................................................................................................3
1.0 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................4
1.1 Some Evidence of Impact ....................................................................5
1.2 Swansea Edunet Structure ...................................................................5
2.0 PRODUCTS AND SERVICES .....................................................................7
3.0 ACHIEVEMENTS .....................................................................................9
4.0 BENEFITS ............................................................................................ 10
5.0 LEARNING PLATFORM PLANS ............................................................... 16
Deliverables to September 2009 .............................................................. 16
Academic Year 2009 - 2010 ..................................................................... 17
Academic Year 2010 -2011 ...................................................................... 19
2011 and beyond .................................................................................... 20
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1.0 INTRODUCTION
This strategy paper provides detailed information on what is Swansea Education
Directorate‟s e-Learning strategy for the next three years. It should be read in
conjunction with the report: Landscaping the ICT and e-Learning Service for
Swansea Schools: 2009-2012 which encompasses the whole service strategy.
This e-Learning strategy is delivered principally through the concept of a learning
platform with attendant cross-Authority support to facilitate.
The term learning platform describes a broad range of ICT systems used to
deliver and support learning. Through a learning platform, hardware, software
and supporting services are brought together to enable more effective ways of
working within and outside the classroom. At the heart of any learning platform
is the concept of a personalized online learning space for the pupil. This space
should offer teachers and pupils access to stored work, e-learning resources,
communication and collaboration with peers, and the facility to track progress
(DCSF Making IT Personal leaflet, March 2006).
1) More specifically the key benefits can be:
Improved leadership and management of the school on account of data
and curriculum being integrated, and so better visibility of teaching and
learning with improved diagnostics.
Access from any location so more flexible use of curriculum resources &
data, and not time bound by the school‟s opening hours.
Single sign in so all services are available from one dashboard with ease
of use and workflow built in.
Allows for sharing learning and so creates a community based on
teachers, pupils and parents working collaboratively to benefit children‟s
learning (extended learning now possible in a very secure and managed
environment).
Overall, is an additional tool to raise standards and so has great potential
to drive school improvement.
Provide for a more dynamic repository for Adult and Community learning
and which has the potential to deliver to more learners than currently
through the provision of online courses.
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1.1 Some Evidence of Learning Platform Impact
One West Midlands’ secondary school’s experience
Since George Salter Collegiate Academy was taken over by Shireland (Collegiate
Academy) five years ago, the proportion of students achieving five or more
GCSEs at grades A* - C has improved from 14% to 85%. … the Senior
Management Team attribute a large proportion of this improvement to the way
that the Learning Gateway (their name for their learning platform) has been
implemented at the school.
http://www.shirelandlearning.co.uk
An English primary school experience
We can deliver online homework assignments for whole year groups. The work is
marked and the results can be distributed to children, parents and staff. It saves
hours and hours of valuable time.”
http://www.iqmedia.co.uk/iqeducation/633262252259062500/6332639434071
1.2 Swansea Edunet Structure
The following diagram illustrates a structural overview of Swansea Edunet, the
brand for services. The learning platform is not a replacement for MOODLE,
which still exists, but the VLE now forms but a part of a much more extensive set
of deliverables.
It has a development timeframe of at least three years, from September 2009 to
September 2012.
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2.0 PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
The Education Directorate will provide a single, authority-wide learning platform
through Microsoft SharePoint portal technology.
The name of the platform will be Swansea Edunet (swansea-edunet.gov.uk; the
second level will be a school portal with a domain name, for example, swansea-
edunet.gov.uk/en/schools/schoolname/). However, this can be redirected so
schools can continue to use their existing public web address to promote their
school.
Swansea Edunet will eventually provide a set of common templates in both the
Welsh and English languages which provide for a personal and customisable set
of e-Learning set of services and products for each individual holding an account.
The main templates are:
a. Education Directorate portal template(s) allowing for more effective web site
creation by staff in their work with schools
b. School portal template which schools may use to easily create their own
public facing web site
c. Teacher template
d. Pupil template
e. Parent template
f. Governor template
g. Collaborative learning spaces to provide for online communities to cover
curriculum, projects or the development of initiatives
h. Resources area.
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The main products and services can be:
a. Learning content, resources and applications for pupils
b. E-Portfolio functionality through a Learning Locker™ concept. This application
within Swansea Edunet provides for personalised learning spaces accessible
from home or school (see section below)
c. Integration of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) with SIMS Learning
Gateway MIS system and all within Swansea Edunet
d. On-line assessment capability
e. Secure personal email for staff and students
f. Video Conferencing, other communication tools, and applications for creating
and managing learning content.
Personalised Learning
We can facilitate personalised learning pathways as a key deliverable through the
Swansea Edunet by potentially offering:
a. A personal online learning space for pupils to store their learning and
achievements, course resources, assignments, and research (A Learning
Locker™ concept, indicated above)
b. Advice and support accessible from home, school and other places
c. Flexible learning; e.g. taster courses and resources
d. More flexible study; providing a choice of where, when, what and how
children and young people study
e. More subject and course provision, particularly through online partnerships
between schools and school/colleges
f. Ability for student to attend more than one provider within a coherent
managed learning environment
g. CPD development for all school staff, including personalization of training
needs and development
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h. Development of e-Assessment using the technology to provide for online
assessment and continuous assessment
i. Development of MIS and applications to support 14-19 and Transition issues
(e.g. Swansea Guarantee).
3.0 ACHIEVEMENTS
Since inception in July 2008 we have:
a. Been instrumental in persuading Microsoft to develop, free of cost to the
user, a Welsh language pack for SharePoint so any SharePoint driven learning
platform in Wales can be available bilingually
b. On Microsoft‟s panel of Education Authorities in England and Wales using
SharePoint-driven learning platforms
c. Swansea Edunet is regarded by Capita, Microsoft and the two key Education
Microsoft Gold partner education consultancies as being at the forefront of
development in terms of concept, management, functionality and future
planning
d. Development completely in-house and with a modicum of resources; so very
cost effective.
Innovative Features
a. Framework for design and architecture makes it very usable, scaleable and
robust; gone further in developing out of the box SharePoint and SIMS than
most Authorities to create a single dashboard look and feel to access multiple
products and services.
b. Linking SharePoint and MOODLE to provide a single sign on access to a
teacher or student‟s courses within a learning platform environment.
c. Potential to link SIMS and MOODLE to provide read/write access to data so a
pupil‟s assessment data can be transferred directly from MOODLE to SIMS;
this will be a significant contribution to the Assessment for Learning agenda.
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d. Programmed SIMS web parts and created bespoke web parts to provide a
more efficient service and workflow for the user: e.g. providing a user‟s
calendar for the day.
e. News update tool for schools (and potentially the Education Directorate) to
post news direct to teachers‟ and students‟ home portal pages.
f. Created a model template and content management tool so LEA and school
staff can create an easily editable and dynamic intranet or web site.
g. Collaborative working with Swansea University School of Education to provide
research and support.
h. Collaborative working with NPT and Pembrokeshire LEAs to undertake
common architecture development and share experience.
4.0 BENEFITS
The tables indicate specific exemplars or changes expected to be seen in
Swansea schools by 2012 as a consequence of using a learning platform. At its
heart 35,000 children and young people, in addition to teachers, parents &
carers, and governors will have their own personal web space for learning1. This
links to the Directorate vision to identify step improvements and changes
between now and 2012 in support of education.
1
It will have the capacity to manage similar functionality for adult and community learning but
this will be scoped separately.
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Agendas
Help schools work together in 14-19 and in Transition
A pupil has the possibility of one account, one portfolio and one assessment
system even if they attend two schools or a school and a college. Better
sharing of data and portfolios in transfer between primary and secondary
school.
Business Continuity
The creation of a virtual school allows for teaching and learning to continue if,
for some reason, the school has to close.
Better use of teacher time
Evidence that once set up there are efficiency gains in workflow time for
teachers, especially assessment, reporting and integration between learning
tasks and their assessment.
Personalised learning
Because content, activities and assessment is held in one structure with
seamless access, the time restriction to complete tasks, potential additional
online support for learners and better immersion to complete a learning
activity can be extended and the pupil achieve a higher standard.
A variety of approaches to assessment can be provided giving the opportunity
to offer different learning styles to understand a concept.
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Agendas
Supply teacher effectiveness
Richer set of approaches for cover lessons. The class teacher‟s full
complement of resources and approaches can be used by a supply teacher.
Cross-institution working
A user from one institution can share and communicate with another
institution. This could provide for learning resource production in subjects
without Education Directorate support, for example.
Pupil inclusion
As with supply teacher experience, a child excluded from school, for
example, can be taught remotely gaining a better quality of learning
experience than currently. Better integration of assessment and curriculum
between host school/PRU/hospital provision.
Preparing for life
The ability to use sophisticated web technologies enhances life skills for the
workplace of the future.
Use of technologies which pupils like and are familiar with
Pupils now have a relevant learning experience with which to use their
skills.
Cost savings
Provides an opportunity to create a “paperless” school with cost savings on
printing. Opportunity for Education Directorate to have post free
communication with stakeholders.
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Communities
Parents or carers sent Parents have constant access to
intermittent reports; diagnostics data for attendance and marks;
and assessment of variable diagnostics and assessment are
quality and after the event – end in real time and up to date.
of term, end of year.
Parents or carers engagement in Dynamic, triangular approach
child‟s learning can be sporadic. with teacher/support staff, pupil
and parent in real time dialogue
using SIMS, access to VLE for
homework, collaboration and
communication tools.
Schools sharing good practise Online communities sharing the
and resources challenging to development of curriculum
organise. development thus gearing up
production, better quality
assurance through peer review
and cost effective to realise.
How curriculum and data accessed
Multiple systems and products, Dashboard with one interface to
each having their own front page get to all your systems. The entry
to log in for email, data, pages for each product stripped
curriculum material etc. out so it looks like one product to
the user.
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How curriculum and data accessed
The systems have no integration Products broken up and re-
so you have to undertake a organised to create seamless
multiple set of actions to workflow and so improving
undertake workflow. teachers‟ and learners‟ efficiency.
Sharing problematic. Access to resources is centralised
so makes common sharing much
easier.
Multiple user name and Single sign with one user name
passwords so the user forgets, and password to get at
makes the use problematic and everything; easy to remember so
user gives up. encourages take up.
Communication linear and Communication immediate and
hierarchical e.g. an email trail dynamic and “pushed” so a
goes from LEA to headteacher message goes straight from the
who passes to staff, or school provider to each user‟s own
issues from head to staff, personal page.
parents, pupils.
Blogs, Wikis provide collaboration
Information gets lost or doesn‟t to centrally held information
reach everyone. which can be seen by all
participants in real time.
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Products and Services
Current products: New products:
- Email - SIMS Learning Gateway which
gives access parents and
- MOODLE VLE teachers access to pupil data in
- Own drive with personal files more fluid ways.
- Shared drive in school - Content creation and
collaborative tools for e-learning.
- SIMS modules available on
specific machines only - Content management systems
for holding e-resources.
Based on html and static; read Based on Web 2.0 and dynamic;
only. read and write.
Pupils create their own learning
content on their own personal,
yet secure, website, for example.
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5.0 LEARNING PLATFORM PLANS
The following plans for portal products and services outline of what we have
achieved to September 2009 and what we are aiming to achieve for the next
three academic years. The plans assume the portal team will have three full time
posts as opposed to the two current established posts from September 2009.
Additionally, plans to support in schools require developing.
Deliverables to September 2009
1. Components in place for delivering an effective Learning Platform.
2. A staffing structure implemented.
3. A three-year development plan established.
4. A teacher portal for each secondary school teacher with seamless SIMS
Learning Gateway, VLE (MOODLE open source), news updates, access to files
and folders/email under one single dashboard.
5. A model collaboration environment for VLE course development (known as
the 14-19 Federation MOODLE) with a number of GCSE courses created
(bilingually in Welsh and English) in Mathematics, French, History, Geography
and Art; and in English only for Science.
6. Teachers‟ skills for using MOODLE learning environments is developing in
each and every secondary school.
7. Installed and configured a Moodle for Employment Training.
8. Completed an exemplar LEA intranet module for School Data and
Information.
9. Created a public facing website content management system for the primary
pilot, Dylan Thomas and Pentrehafod secondary schools.
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Deliverables: Academic Year 2009 - 2010
1. Continue developing the School Data and Information portal. This will allow
for documents to be sent from and more importantly be returned to
Education Directorate Data and Information Officer, all via the platform.
2. Launch the Curriculum Collaboration area to a select number of subject areas
and wider initiatives for testing.
3. Create a school SMT portal, this links in with the School Data and Information
portal so confidential data is seen by senior staff only.
4. Create a news tool with the ability to embed images and searchable tags with
a tag cloud.
5. Provide the ability for documents which get uploaded to the curriculum
collaboration area to be easily tagged and given a brief description/abstract.
6. Redevelopment of Secondary school Moodle – move to Moodle 2.0 (subject to
development by MOODLE group) and new look and feel in line with portal.
7. Redevelopment of Swansea Edunet home page to focus on current service
provision, including an improved news tool.
8. Linking assessment data from the VLE back into SIMS, helping to address the
assessment for learning agenda. This will require successful deployment of
the Capita SIMS developer‟s license (agreed and provided).
9. Enable users to communicate and collaborating with one another across the
Authority by development of toolkits for Blogs and Wikis. Pupils‟ access
provided through monitored functionality in VLE.
10. Develop a primary age VLE.
11. Rollout of public and teacher portals including online Sims to at least 10
primary & special schools.
12. Create a working pupil portal for secondary schools – personal files & folders,
and links to MOODLE with basic SIMS if required.
13. Research on portfolio facility for pupils.
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14. Curriculum collaboration area – once all primary school teachers are onboard
(with user accounts), bring in more subjects/areas together with transition
and cluster groups.
15. Plan and implement a centralised resources area.
16. Gear up the marketing of the platform and potential use in a cross-authority
context.
17. Address server infrastructure. The learning platform is currently only being
run via one front end server. We need to ensure two front end servers is to
provide load balancing and allow us to make use of the SharePoint search
functionality.
18. Address the fact that the SharePoint servers are not covered by any anti-virus
protection. This is not a major concern at the moment, but something to to
address as we make greater use of document handling.
19. Training programme scoped to schools on a continuous basis to ensure they
are making effective use of the facility from curriculum and data perspectives.
20. Establish with each school a learning platform contact, ideally a member of
the SMT, ensuring the learning portal is given every chance of successful
adoption and integration within schools. We will then be in a position to
identify particular training needs with in a school, monitor learning portal
uptake and importantly receive feedback for future developments.
21. Implementing a Welsh language version of at least the public facing pages.
22. Address the online value proposition (OVP) of the learning platform. The
platform should be a one stop shop for a teacher‟s tools and resources. At the
moment the teacher portal is being viewed as a backup option if the SIMS
client should fail.
23. Ensure that admin users can have a single sign on for the portal. At the
moment the single sign-on/consolidation process is only available to users on
the curriculum network.
24. Assess setting up a Swansea E-Learning Centre of Excellence.
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The Swansea learning portal is currently within a group of Microsoft „leading
light‟ Authorities in England and Wales. In just over a year we have gained a
great deal of knowledge and experience of learning platforms within schools
as a whole.
The E-Learning Centre of Excellence could become an opportunity for
Swansea to become a good practise authority in e-Learning, providing advice
on creating and using e-Learning toolkits and contents. Additionally, we could
offer areas for collaboration/discussion with other authorities across Consortia
in Wales and potentially other parts of the UK.
It could also provide the opportunity to forge stronger links with the Swansea
University School of Education and the computer/multimedia departments at
the Metropolitan and Swansea Universites for adapting innovative
technologies and research into our programme.
Academic Year 2010 -2011
1. Rollout public facing and teacher portals including online SIMS to at least 40
additional primary & special schools.
2. Rollout the finalised primary age VLE to all schools and their pupils.
3. Rollout the finalised secondary school pupil portal to all secondary schools
and their pupils.
4. Development of on-line tools, possibly Google Apps. This would provide a
word processor, spreadsheet and paint program in the “cloud” allowing any
user with a internet enabled device to create documents regardless of the
software they have on their computer.
5. Plan, develop and rollout a parent or “family” and governor portal.
6. Resources being available, provide a Welsh Language version of secure areas
of the portal.
7. Begin the planning and development of an e-portfolio system for pupils.
8. Begin exploring the opportunities made available through using mobile
technologies.
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E-LEARNING STRATEGY AND PLANS 2009 – 2012
2011 and beyond
1. Create the professional development and significantly expand the portals and
services we can provide to the Education Department as a whole.
2. Greater and more meaningful links with other authorities. Look at ways of
getting teachers from other counties, even countries working together;
likewise pupils.
Kieran Costello
Swansea Education Directorate ICT Strategy Manager
James Dix
Swansea Education Directorate Learning Portal Co-ordinator
1 September 2009
Revised 12 March 2010
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