A crucial element of the project will be the learning environment that we use, or should I say learning platform …that seems to be the appropriate jargon word at the moment. We want the pupils to have a secure environment where they can access learning objects and where they can communicate with teachers and mentors.
The learning platform technology seems to be developing all the time. I have just had an opportunity of looking at CMIS and was impressed by its functionality and the ways in which it is moving towards providing not only the traditional services of pupil attendance, timetable, assessment and financial management but is also providing calendars, notice boards and other objects that can support the teachers day to day activities. These latter functions where firmly placed within the sphere of the pupil type of virtual environment which was created to support anywhere anytime learning and one which teachers could manage. These could also be used to support teacher planning by acting as a repository for planning and teacher resources. My narrow experience of these focuses on the MyInternet product which we in Birmingham call BGfL PLUS. It is this environment that the project will use, mainly because of its availability. All the schools have access to it.
PLUS is a strange product! It seems to have been built with little or no help from designers. I would describe it as a ‘clunky’ product but for all that it has incredible functionality. The chunkiness is in some ways appealing. I have always been concerned that ICT things just moves to fast. It took five years for the Internet to become part of our lives. There is now the expectation that virtual learning environments and all that it encompasses should follow even faster. This would be OK if there was a need for them and there might be if there was not a digital divide. A VLE becomes an important tool when the teachers know that all their pupils can interact with it at anytime and anywhere. There are some secondary schools where we know this is possible, for example the teachers in the grammar schools in Birmingham could make assumptions about Internet access. For those who do not have access pupils could be directed to the local libraries. It is probably fairer to make the assumption that AAL is not possible and if this is the case then why use a VLE?
For this project we can say that all pupils have access to the Internet from home and therefore a VLE can be a valuable tool. So what sort of tool is it? What can it do?
You can give the pupils, notice boards, calendars, file boxes, email addresses and discussion areas (even live chat). You can also prepare virtual learning resources for the pupils where they can access web links, pictures, videos, recordings to support the quest that you might have set them. You can set cut-off dates for submission and allow then to submit online. Another powerful tool is the sharing facility. The teacher can decide who to share a resource with. It could be with a group of children in the host school and maybe a couple of children in one of the other project schools. When this happens only those children will be able to see and access the resource. This gives opportunities for individual learning packages to be created. In addition there is one of those things called e-learning folio’s where the pupils can store their work and teachers can comment on it. So it has all of the items that could possibly make such an environment possible.
Enough rambling. Its been useful – for me. I’m now eager to have a trial of my subtractive bilingualism ideas so I hopefully be reporting on that in the next couple of weeks.
