Hollie on 21st Century Learning

Schools are slowly starting to embrace the way students learn, think and process information. The Internet born generation are accustomed to interactive, fun and challenging learning. Also known as Digital Learning.

Virtual environments offer a safe platform for trial and error of student learning and the technology such as Microsoft’s SharePoint platform gives a secure portal hub for students to share information to collaborate. The lessons learned are almost immediate and this is demonstrated with the increasing buzz around sharePoint in schools, and about time too!

Let me tell you a little story - My 13 year old brother Brad who asked me to help him with his IT homework –which may I add was not the easiest of homework! The subject was on email archiving. Brad knew he asked the right person as he heard about my recent email archiving learning at my place of work with our sister company. Brad was on the pc at the time as he normally would be, windows live messenger was minimised, along with facebook and TV quietly on in the background. I have to say I am amazed at my brothers muliti digital tasking skills, almost as good as me! I asked Brad to read out the questions which he did then together we discussed what the question was actually asking and then where we would be able to find this information. Internet was both our answers of course the question was which search engines do we use..
“Google” Brad said – "Yes" I replied and also recommended he use Wikipedia along with another site the Waterford Technologies email archiving website. Reading his way through this mass of information on the Web and filtering the relevant parts via the keywords in order to answer the question is intelligent learning in itself and I encouraged Brad to share this information with his peers online. Using The Great Barr School’s learning gateway id to connect to the sharePoint portal made his homework more interactive, fun and engaging. Bradley got top marks for his homework along with two merits - Well done brother I was quite chuffed about it all actually (maybe that's why I made this post!)

Half of teens create media content online. A third share this content.The web gives students a new form of intelligence the ability to interact with both people and computers is expanding students mental abilities. The literacy Trust says Reading from a screen is just as good as a book. Intelligence is heightened through collaboration with other people and machines. Let's support our students throughout the next generation of learning both at school and at home. Devices such as laptops and iTouch are in my eyes important interactive learning devices helping students engage with tools for learning whilst using something they are familiar with in a safe and secure environment set up and policed by experts inside and outside of school.Our kids are constantly learning both inside the classroom and outside of the classroom and many of them have handheld devices and laptops outside the classroom taking game based learning to another level.

- World of Warcraft. This can have a positive impact on learning. Adapting to an unfamiliar environment, the immense amount of co-ordination, data management, strategy.
-Facebook - The Farmville application, which my boss Dave Ricketts just mentioned to me, is a game based learning initiative which I wasn't familiar with personally but for me to learn what is "Farmville" I made a live Internet facebook post hoping to engage others in my network for a response..


Hollie Matthews anyone here use farm ville? Need some help with it -writing arctial at work..basically what is farm ville?????????????????
24 minutes ago · Comment ·LikeUnlike · View feedback (2)Hide feedback (2)

Kevin Wright
is it a rural french village with a farm attached?
11 minutes ago · Delete

Students hang out when playing games or using the Web interacting socially.

I am not a teacher but I can tell you as a learner of the net generation being a 23 year old of how I think, learn and process information. The internet is key in my learning. Not being dictated to by any one person who feels they are a master in everything. But by being supported with the tools and resources around me.

The Internet is my master teacher.
Searching the information coming to my own conclusions applying it to my learning and day to day productivity. Engaging with the communities drawing up my own conclusions.
The Net Geners growing up in this ditital age of learning are increasingly putting demands on their places of work, beggining to expect the environment around them to accomodate and keep up with the 21st century digital method of communication. I have wireless at home and I expect wireless at work. When I do visit schools and business' I expect to use my iTouch to connect to the wireless to access my work on the move.

-If no Internet/wireless then I want to know why not?
We all get frustrated when we have no internet especially us Net Geners who have become to rely on it for our daily communication with each other and in my case with customers and colleagues.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8&feature=player_embedded
-A good enough reason for a quality wireless solution that works?

Birmingham Technology College Goes Green

Bristnall Hall Technology College (previously Bristnall Hall School) Is a Secondary School with 1000 students and 150 staff located in the heart of Birmingham West Midlands, England. With Collaborative VI form and Technology Status for Design Technology and Maths and Science, it has been awarded "Outstanding" status, only a year after the appointment of Mr Stephen Venross as Head Teacher.

The Ofsted Inspection letter which was sent out to students included;

“We are impressed by your skills in ICT and the way that your teachers use ICT to make lessons more enjoyable”. Currently the College has 600 desktops and 200 laptops, all able to access the centrally held information, secure and protected.

This certainly emphasises the schools mission statement of "Bringing Technology into our Technology College"

An excellent example of a project to help raise the awareness of bringing technology into the college the pupils have set up an Advertising Agency to promote Design and Technology for the college -You can find more details here http://www.bhtc.sandwell.sch.uk/

Data Growth
As you can imagine the growth of the data has been continuous andPhillip Wakeman ICT & Network Support Manager decided it was about time to consolidate and manage the data growth as nightly backups were increasing and with data estimated to grow by 3GB per term this was only going to get worse.

Bristnall Hall Technology College are now able to discover, manage and ultimately reduce the amount of data stored across their primary storage. By using the File Archiving technology, smart stubbing and archive data chunking, it has been possible to reduce the total amount of data that is stored and needs to be backed up by 72%.

Phillip Wakeman reports that “Using File Archiver has allowed me to optimize my storage across the network, reducing the size of the nightly backups and overall storage space used across my file servers. I am saving money not needing additional backup media and equipment"

Aspects of File Archiver examined during decision process
- Ability staff to access files from the archive transparently
-Reduction total data backup on a nightly basis
-Level of reporting
-Search functionality
-Storage Medium agnostic
-Two way movement of stored files
-Automated operation
- Multiple array of archives.

Benefits of using File Archiver-
Free up expensive disk space by capacity optimization
Fully supports Virtual servers
Smart stubs allow applications with linked data to be archived
De duplicates expensive primary storage
Deferral of expensive hardware
Automates a number of IT management tasks
Green software technology,
Reduces energy consumption costs
Archives critical data


James Evans who works at the College as the IT & Network Support Technician / Virtual Learning Platform Developer says "Policies are now set, example you can select for the student coursework to be archived and encrypted securely in case it needs to be retrieved. We are also now compliant with freedom of Information Act requests, if say someone from an outside third party requests any data. We are also saving our school money on energy consumption costs and this is a software with no need to purchase any additional hardware which is always a bonus!"