We would like to invite teachers, school leaders, LA Officers, ICT Consultants and other representatives of end-users to tell us your views on the programme so far... do you support its aims? Do we explain it clearly enough for a non-technical audience? What are your hopes and priorities for the work?
Please feel free to leave any comment - however brief or detailed - it will all help us to understand your views and how we might improve the process.
We will also start a number of more focussed dicsussions in the coming days, based on the emerging challenges and points of contention following our consultation with industry stakeholders. It would be helpful if you could take part in those dicsussions also, and do feel free to start your own!
I am a Year 6 Primary School teacher in Buckinghamshire. We have been developingour VLE (using Moodle) over the past four years with the support of our LEA E-Learning co-ordinator and teacher support groups throughout the county. Initially we started using our VLE on a small scale with courses being aimed at gifted and talented children.
Over the years, through periods of staff training, we now have around 100 courses for children to access from Foundation through to Year 6. Most of our courses have been created by staff within school, tailoring it to meet the needs of the curriculum. As a county, we also share courses with other schools.
Having read about your project and watched some of related videos, I believe that the project is a positive step forward that will support our emerging technologies and the personalisation agenda. I fully support the aims stated, especially with regards to developing open and fair standards through your consultation process. Although our school VLE is now well established, a lot of our issues still come down to teachers having time available to create such courses. The other challenge is providing courses which will not be a bolt-on to children's learning but be able to enhance their learning. From what I understand, your proposals will allow for data to be stored from the children's work. This will also support teacher's assessments.
As far as being able to understand the technical issues you have outlined, I think that these are quite complex but easy to grasp with your use of clear videos, including related diagrams.
Some of the technical issues *are* complex - and these are of course for commercial companies and technicians to sort out, not teachers. But it is really useful to get feedback from teachers to check that in our aim, we are at least pointing in the right direction.
You are right that the storing of data from children's work is something we are trying to push forwards. At first we are just talking about scores and "state" (or bookmarking) data, but in time we will aim to include e.g. what the students have produced, perhaps returning this to the VLE for marking or for sharing or for showcasing in a portfolio.
I think you highlight a key issue with the amount of time that teachers have (or do not have) to create courses. What is provided by commercial publishers is very often not *quite* what any particular teacher wants - while creating content from scratch proves, in practice, to be a huge commitment. How do you think we can square this circle?
Also interested in your point about "bolt-on" versus what really enhances a child's learning - I guess what people are referring to as truly "blended" learning. I'd be interested to know what you thought were the key features that commercial products needed to provide to ensure that digital learning really gets integrated into mainstream learning.
Many thanks for your contribution - it is very useful.
