Uniservity

BETTer together

Teachers, educationalists and industry leaders get together on stand J15

The UniServity Connected Learning Community (cLc) is helping teachers at schools around the world to develop innovative and collaborative approaches to teaching and learning that, in many cases, are producing deep and powerful learning outcomes.

On stand J15, the UniServity team and teachers from schools that use the UniServity CLC, will be on hand to offer a learner and teacher support service to all visitors. This support service enables visitors to ask questions, see demonstrations, share ideas and gain advice from their peers on how learning platforms can make an impact back in the classroom.

Visitors to the stand will see how the UniServity CLC enables students to work autonomously; discuss their own ideas with each other as well as teachers; develop online portfolios either individually or collaboratively with other students and support enquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning. They will see how it helps teachers to remove the traditional classroom walls and boundaries, as well as expose their students to new experts for learning and new audiences for their work. School leaders can see how the CLC can also be a significant tool for school development and planning.

Alan Wood, managing director, UniServity says: "One of the challenges facing teachers and curriculum leaders today is ensuring that effective learning is taking place alongside good teaching. The CLC empowers students to become active, responsible and collaborative learners with the teacher’s support – crucially without leaving the teacher feeling not in control or even left behind! The results can often be what is commonly referred to as high leverage – for example; low (teacher) inputs with the ability to produce high (educational value) outputs."

Towards the Olympics – 2008/2012
This three year school project which aims to promote and accelerate the relationships between learners in the UK, China and Hong Kong through project based learning is a first worldwide.

Using the UniServity CLC, schoolchildren will collaborate on lifestyle and school projects to gain a greater knowledge and understanding about the impact of sport on the lives of young people and different cultures.

The project will also develop a wide range of electronic learning resources for 14-19 year-olds which will be available in both Chinese and English. These learning resources will also enable students to work on plans for the London Olympics in 2012.

New features for BETT 2007

Showcasing for the very first time in 2007 will be the new UniServity SCORM Runtime environment (fully supporting SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004). These latest tools that provide support for QT1v 1.2 enable schools to deliver rich and comprehensive self-marking tests. Additional features: metadata which includes eGMS and Curriculum Online, teaching tools for discussion forums and new resource creation tools and enhanced MIS integration with SIMS, Serco, RM Integris and Pearson Phoenix e1.

Becta Framework Agreement
Whilst many teachers know about the current funding allocated by the Government for Learning Platforms, many are concerned about how to choose the right learning platform provider. In light of this new funding and the key issues surrounding it, Becta has constructed a learning framework for schools. UniServity, an agreed framework provider, will be able to offer advice to any teachers about procurement and implementation in line with the Becta Framework Agreement.

Alan Wood explained: "With the new Becta Framework in place, teachers can now feel assured that the procurement decisions they are making under the framework agreement are the right ones for their school."