What's included?
The Skillspace Learning Platform package contains a website and an intranet, inbuilt communications and collaboration tools, plus content creation and reporting.
Repository
The Skillspace Learning Platform repository stores online learning materials that can be accessed whenever they are needed by staff or students.
Lesson planning becomes simple when ready-prepared, curriculum specific materials are available through a searchable central store. Staff can share and re-use schemes of work, lesson content and links.
___________________________________________________________
Intranet
Share information within school. Make documents secure but available to authorised users.
The intranet lets schools share information and good practice because users can access relevant and up-to-date documents that are specific to their roles. Secure log-ins can be given to some groups such as parents, governors or pupils to allow individual users to see the things schools want them to see.
___________________________________________________________
Website
Share information with the school community. Target messages to specific groups.
Using the learning platform as a website means schools can share anything with the community. School news and information can be announced through the public-facing pages. The website lets a school present a professional and positive face to the community.
___________________________________________________________
Authoring tools
Create online lessons simply. Turn old-style teaching materials into engaging and effective tools.
Skillspace’s range of authoring tools means that every teacher can create new learning materials quickly, whether from existing resources or new sources. Once drawn up they can be stored and shared with others if necessary.
___________________________________________________________
Communication tools
Keep everyone up to date. Target messages to individuals or groups.
The inbuilt noticeboard means that information can be passed on quickly and effectively to all users as soon as it is issued. Discussion groups can be used by any set of users to exchange views and information. Online questionnaires can gather feedback from users in or outside school.
___________________________________________________________
Digital Locker
The Digital Locker is the ideal place for your students to upload and store files in their own, personal online learning space, in line with the Government’s Harnessing Technology strategy. The Digital Locker is an extremely sophisticated file store component that has the look and feel of Windows ‘File Explorer’, this reduces the need for training as everyone already knows how to use it.
The digital locker also replaces the gallery, collaborative file areas and the ‘my files’ functionality from the earlier version of the Learning Platform allowing users to add documents and other resources to, for example, learning spaces, blogs and web pages.
___________________________________________________________
Learning Spaces
Learning Space functionality allows staff to easily create and share rich learning resources. Learning spaces are created with very easy to use simple drag and drop functionality and can include a range of resources including e-Learning materials, documents, pages, images, discussion forums, blogs, text conference rooms, surveys, lesson plans, links to websites and more.
Teachers can share the creation of these with other teachers and can share the finalised Learning Space with any other group of selected colleagues and learners. User’s can also be provided with their own ‘My Learning Space’ and shortcuts can be made to users Learning Spaces. In a Community environment, where the Serco Learning Platform is used by a number of schools, Learning Spaces can additionally be shared between schools. Any communication features, for example discussion groups, used in such a shared Learning Space work across schools enabling cross school communication between teachers and learners.
___________________________________________________________
Blogs
With the introduction of Blogs users can create blogs, search for other users’ blogs and comment on blog posts. Users can create any number of Blogs and within them any number of topics to structure their posts. This provides the perfect opportunity for students to demonstrate what they have learnt and comment on how they learnt, sharing the experiences with their peers.
The entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order. Users can select from themes that they can assign to their individual Blogs and with a couple of clicks attach video files, multimedia presentations and more into the blog and mix it up with text and static resources. These resources can be added directly from your digital locker or computer.
___________________________________________________________
Forbidden words filtering
For those parts of the Learning Platform that allow content to be entered such as discussion forums, chat rooms, page content and our web based email client, further checks are made on the text against a list of ‘forbidden words’. If the rules used (which are under the control of the school) detect a match then the words are automatically removed and an email sent to a nominated teacher with details. In the case of our web based email client these checks and process are also used for email that is received. This approach provides protection when the Learning Platform is used at home where a school would not be able to benefit from filtering regimes installed within their own infrastructure.
___________________________________________________________
User Personalisation
Each user can customise the look and feel of the learning platform by selecting the icons used, font size and colour scheme and layout of information panels. This allows the user to create a unique learning environment that reflects their personal style. Each user also has the ability to create a ‘My page’ that is visible to other users and can be set as their own Home page when they log in. The degree of personalisation is governed by the school using the new ‘Global Customisation’features of the Learning Platform that control allowed personalisation and default values.
___________________________________________________________
Parental Access
Parents can now be provided a wealth of relevant school information as well as up to the minute details on their child via the ‘My children’ feature in the Serco Learning Platform allowing them to better support their children when they are learning from home. This may be supervising nightly homework or helping to their child to keep up with their peers should they be unable to attend school for an extended period of time.
___________________________________________________________
Additional Admin Support Tools
Each school is now able to set specific contact information when there are problems with logging in including name, email and telephone information enabling users to get the assistance that they need. The administrator can also unlock pages and accounts when issues arise reducing the need to contact Serco support.
___________________________________________________________
Community Sites Enhancements
Access to community site can now be restricted in three ways; all users, staff only users or community groups. The groups are populated by the individual member sites. This will enable communities to quickly be established and administered for groups such as governors or subject specialists. Each user can also customise the display of the ‘My Communities’ information, displaying only those communities that they have an interest in.
___________________________________________________________
Online Help
There is extensive context based help created specifically for learners to assist them when using the new components. With one click users can get help on the part of the system they are currently using.
___________________________________________________________
More information |
You are here: Home > Schools Home > Products & Services > Learning Platform > What's included? 
