Our Virtual Learning Environment
Our virtual learning environment is hosted and developed in-house by IT Services. It is based on Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 with SharePoint Learning Kit and Sims Learning Gateway integrated.
Prior to Sharepoint being used as our virtual learning environment it was already used as an intranet for collaboration of data and general information. We also used “My Sites” for the students to save their school work and access this from home. We became aware of the parental engagement requirements for September 2010 and as we were already familiar with SharePoint, we bought into Sims Learning Gateway and Sims Lesson Monitor.
In Spring of 2009 we set ourselves the task of creating a one stop shop for all our systems incorporating the following:
- Single Sign-on (One username for all),
- Sims.net (Registration, Student search, Marksheets),
- Email Facilities (Exchange OWA 2010),
- Office 2007,
- Learning Space for all subjects,
- Staff Section for resources and collaboration of information,
- Personal profiles for students and staff.
- Homepage for school website.
We spoke to each subject/department to try and gather as much information about the features and requirements they’d like to see within their subject area. Summer was soon among us and we developed the VLE over the 6 week break. Due to the way Sharepoint is primarily developed for corporate businesses some elements and features were hidden and new elements were added to add an element of teaching to it and make it look and feel friendly, safe but most of all easy to use!
To overcome the lack of teaching aids we used Sharepoint Learning Kit which enables a site to be created with pupils and appropriate teacher to be assigned to that particular site, enabling teachers to assign work which pupils can view within their own profile. Once the task is complete students would be able to submit the work ready to be marked.
We now needed to look at branding Sharepoint to look colourful and interesting to students and anyone viewing the site. To do this we created new masterpages and only showed elements we felt would be useful to staff to keep it an easy place to work.
Nearly two years on and we are continually developing the VLE with new ideas.