2011 June
Creative Education Solutions, in partnership with its sister company ED Bellwether, has been chosen as implementation partner, hosting provider and service contract supplier for the deployment of learning network platforms at the Spanish school network in Morocco.
CES will pilot the first VLE platform at the Rabat centre (Colegio Español de Rabat). This school, administered directly by the Spanish Ministry of Education, provides the Spanish curriculum for over 750 students of levels from infants to sixth form. The platform will be built, deployed and maintained by CES, who will also design and deliver a 2-year staff development plan for the rollout and use of the platform. The Rabat centre will serve as a pilot production environment and create a model for best practices, with intended scaled rollout at 11 other centres throughout Morocco.
The Director at the Rabat centre commented: “This is a wonderful opportunity for our school to lead the way in enriching the student experience and creating a truly 21st-century blended learning environment at our centres here in Morocco. We are delighted to be the one leading the way in strengthening our staff skills set, improving content delivery and overall student achievements. This is all about striving for excellence and a learning network platform of the scope and complexity that has been offered to us by CES Ltd is a central factor for any education provider aiming to achieve all these things.”
The learning network will be rolled out in September 2011, and staff training and adoption strategies will continue for the rest of the academic year.
From 1 November 2008 to 31 October 2010 JISC invited tenders for projects related to its Transforming Curriuclum Delivery Through Technology programme. JISC summarized the objectives of this programme by saying:
… institutions are no longer expected to simply prepare graduates for a world of work, but to continuously support the learning and professional development of working people. It is therefore important for institutions to develop more flexible and creative models of delivery in order to support the development of autonomous, lifelong learners who are skilled in reflecting on their learning (both formal and informal) and planning for their personal, educational and professional development. This programme aims to stimulate change, working towards this vision.
As a mini-guide that summarizes the headline benefits of technology in curriculum delivery and reports on the 15 projects that made up the programme, JISC has published Transforming curriculum delivery through technology: Stories of challenge, benefit and change. This is available from www.jisc.ac.uk/curriculumdeliveryguide
To accompany this guide, a series of radio programmes called JISC on Air has also been produced. The most recent of these, “Efficiencies , enhancements and transformation: how technology can deliver”, contains interviews with members from two of the projects that were funded as a part of the programme. You can listen to this and other broadcasts in the series here.
Project bids are currently invited on a related area, Assessment and Feedback, which is a large funding stream composed of three strands. More details here. CES’s own Asset software fits firmly within both these initiatives and funding programmes.