CLEOCumbria and Lancashire Education Online

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

Newsletter Spring 2010

new CLEO service for secondary schools: Mahara e-portfolio

CLEO are pleased to promote the launch of our new service, Mahara e-portfolio for secondary schools, delivered as part of the CLEO subscription.

What is Mahara?Mahara is an open source e-portfolio system, which provides a safe online environment for students to demonstrate their learning, skills and development and record their achievements over time to a selected audience. During their studies, students will create huge quantities of materials: assignments, forum posts, quiz attempts, presentations, papers, reflective journals and blog entries. Capturing, storing and managing these materials are at the heart of Mahara. As Mahara is an Open Source system, like Moodle, CLEO has the ability to modify and adapt the system to suit our schools needs, which has been a key driver for the project.

Key features of Mahara

• Blogs• CV builder• File repository and management• Social networking. Mahara has the ability for the

user to build up a lot of contacts. This can be enabled or disabled by each individual school.

• Portability. Mahara has an export function which allows the user to download their E-portfolio and “take away” with them.

• Integration with Moodle – Mahara is accessed via the school Moodle with single sign on. Through future releases of Moodle a user will also be able to easily transfer content from Moodle to their Mahara E-portfolio, which allows the users forum posts and assignments, for example, to be added to their e-portfolio.

Mahara allows the student to:• Maintain multiple web based resumes and portfolios for work and study• Showcase achievements with all sorts of files, photos, blogs and graphics• Create media rich portfolios to share with friends, employers and teachers• Reflect on their learning experience• Have a personal online space

A training programme on how to use Mahara and how it can be used to meet targets in schools will be available for schools and courses are advertised on the CLEO Moodle (vle.cleo.net.uk).

A Mahara brochure has also been sent out to all secondary schools announcing this new service and since the release of the service in March 2010 nearly 50 schools have requested Mahara.

If you would like any further information about Mahara, or your school would like to request Mahara, please con-tact the CLEO Project Office.

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

CLEO battling on in bad weather Cumbria Floods

During the Autumn floods which hit Cumbria engineers from CLEO’s broadband network providers Lancaster Uni-versity Network Services Ltd (LUNS) continued to work with schools in the Cockermouth and Workington areas to deliver CLEO’s broadband connectivity and services as normal. At the height of the floods many schools in the Workington area lost broadband connectivity as bridges were washed away.

With broadband now vital to the running of schools’ day to day life, the CLEO engineers successfully re‐established broadband connections to all 25 affected schools by lunchtime on the morning of the floods. Six engineers worked tirelessly to connect the schools by wireless radio connections to nearby masts.

In Cockermouth the CLEO connectivity kept running allowing new uses and opportunities for the CLEO broadband service. In the immediate aftermath a few strategically placed cables at Fairfield School allowed support staff and County Council staff to continue working from dry loca-tions.

With schools shut many staff and pupils kept in touch using Moodle, enabling learning to continue over the internet. Teacher Graeme Morley expressed the benefits the service provided, “Just to say a big thank you to everyone at CLEO and LUNS. Moodle has been fantastic for keep-ing parents informed and students working while the school has been closed over the past 11 days. This would not be possible without the excellent service that you provide us with.”

Using secure reconfiguration of the service at Cockermouth School by engineers allowed James Walker, the town’s largest employer, to take up residence and begin trading again over the school’s high speed CLEO connection. James Walker commented, “On the 19th

November, James Walker were one of the many businesses affected by the terrible and unprecedented floods in Cockermouth. Thankfully Cockermouth School allowed us to take up temporary residence at their site. This set-up allowed us to maintain communications with customers and suppliers and function as normally as possible in the circumstances, minimising loss to the business as well as minimising disruption to our customers”.

Heavy snow fall

The CLEO engineering team have also battled on through the heavy snowfall this Winter to provide and maintain connections to schools across Cumbria and Lancashire. Engineers encountered many impassable routes and have had to abandon 4 wheel drive vehicles to walk the last stretch to some of the masts to ensure essential maintenance and repair work was completed. We would like to thank any schools that ex-perienced a disruption in service dur-ing this difficult time for their understanding. A huge thank you also goes out to our all our engineers for their hard work and perseverance during these chal-lenging conditions.

www.cleo.net.ukwww.cleo.net.uk

MIDAS is on its way...Development has now started on the CLEO MIDAS Project, following the successful signing of the contract in early November 2009. Salford Software has been selected as our supplier for this contract, with a bid that demonstrated a positive approach towards working with both schools and CLEO. They met the Local Authorities’ criteria of being a forward thinking company that will work closely with schools and CLEO to develop a flexible and efficient ser-vice that meets the needs of parents, pupils and schools.

MIDAS is a new service included in the CLEO subscription, which will provide parental reporting with in-formation from schools’ MIS. It will incorporate Moodle access, school email, Mahara access and paren-tal reporting, all tied together with a single sign on. This means parents, pupils and teachers will be able to access key information from internet browsers, enabling everyone to ac-cess the information they need, when and where they need it.

The development and design processes have started on the project. A phased rollout of the service is planned with the first delivery expected in the second quarter of 2010. This first release is expected to include parental reporting and basic functionality, which will be devel-oped further in the two later releases. The first release will meet the BECTA targets for online parental reporting in secondary schools.

As part of this design process Salford Software have or-ganised a series of workshops, giving school represen-tatives an opportunity to influence the development of MIDAS and ensure it meets the actual needs of schools. These workshops were over-subscribed and have in-cluded sessions on Parental Online Reporting in Novem-ber 2009, the ‘Dashboard’ element of the project in De-

cember 2009 and Administration in January 2010. The feedback from these workshops has been good and we would like to thank all those involved with them. Techni-cal workshops for phase two of the development start after Easter.

A brief introductory presentation has been posted on the MIDAS section of the Cleo Moodle site at http://vle.cleo.net.uk. Further information about MIDAS will be pub-lished via the CLEO Moodle site, MIDAS updates, the CLEO E-newsletter and the Schools Portal.

Noodle in Moodle! As part of the recent Moodle upgrade, CLEO added a new module to all CLEO hosted Moodles – called Noodle.

Noodle is a Moodle module which allows resources pro-duced from the NLN Learning Objects to be added seam-lessly to a Moodle course. As part of the original £156 million, 5 year investment for FE, these resources are now being made available for schools. The National Learn-ing Network (NLN) materials are small, flexible 'bite-sized'

episodes of learning. They are not whole courses but are designed to support a wide range of sub-

ject and topic areas. The materials adopt a range of approaches involving some knowledge acquisition, a chance to practice and ab-sorb, and some form of assess-ment to check that the learning has been understood and the learning outcome(s) achieved. The NLN materials are particu-larly useful in the 14-19 sector and have already been widely used in school in this sector.

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

ArtisanCam 2010: Enhanced Functions: New Content www.artisancam.org.uk

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

please make an offer by e-mail to:office@cleo.net.uk. Please include SMARTBOARD in the subject line of your email; the name of your school and your contact details together with your offer.

worship at Bleasdale House www.cleo.net.uk/resource/diwali Films of two inspiring sessions at Bleasdale House Community Special School, providing examples of the ways in which Collective Worship can be used to sup-port SEN objectives. The resource shows how two cel-ebrations; Diwali (Hinduism) and Shichi-Gosan (Shinto) can provide rich sensory stimulation.The module will soon be extended to include the school’s Easter celebration.

Ed Hussain on Islam and Islamism www.cleo.net.uk/resource/quilliam Video of an important presentation by Ed Husain, co-counder of the Quil-liam Foundation. Husain was formerly an active supporter of the Hizb ut-Tahrir and Jamat-e-Islam organizations in the UK, but has since become a strong critic of extremism and Islamism. His book ‘The Islamist’ was short-listed for the George Orwell Prize for best political writing and he has made frequent appearences on television and radio.In this module, filmed at an event organised by Building Bridges Pendle, Ed

explains his understanding of the radical differences between Islam and Islamism.

new to CLEO religious studies... two modules that illustrate the wide range of CLEO’s work to support the subject.

international vc stars The CLEO Video Conferencing project has been ex-ceedingly busy in the last couple of terms with over 30 different schools in the CLEO area booking nearly 75 separate sessions from September to January. This has been added to by schools from outside the area with Cumbria and Lancashire museums broadcasting to schools from Kent, Essex, Oldham, Cardiff and Glouces-tershire. Some museums have also been taking part in international video conferences. The Beacon Museum in Whitehaven broadcast their session on the Abolition of the British Slave Trade to Bellerive school in St Louis, Missouri, while a school from Green, Ohio watched the video conference on William Wordsworth’s poem “Daf-fodils” from the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage. Meanwhile Tullie House museum in Carlisle have been in touch with two separate schools in Pennsylvania and Madison, Alabama to show them their session on toys.

The sessions have been very popular and several teach-ers have emailed us to say how much they were en-joyed. Our contact at Owens Cross Roads Elementary

School, Madison, Alabama emailed us after saying that they all had a fabulous time, “The kids were in awe, the teachers amazed, and the newspaper from the large city near our rural school came to do a story on the trip. Thank you for teaching our kids so much.” St Louis were equally impressed “Thank you for helping to arrange a powerful learning opportunity for fifth grade students in St. Louis, Missouri. The videoconference on the aboli-tion of the British slave trade was outstanding! We ap-preciate the excellent way you enhanced our learning.”

Praise has rained in from closer to home as well with St Helen’s Primary School in Glouces-tershire comment-ing on the poetry session with Paul Cookson from the National Football Museum at Pres-ton. “The children loved him! He re-ally brought poetry to life and since then they have found we have some of his poetry at school and it has become a lot more meaningful to them. We wanted to make this link as part of our Po-etry Week at school and it was a fantastic ‘grand finale’.”

If you are interested in booking a video conferencing session for your class please visit the CLEO website. A full list of available sessions and details of how to book are available at www.cleo.net.uk/resource/vcproject.

www.cleo.net.uk www.cleo.net.uk

In January 2010 the two Local Authorities forming CLEO confirmed the successful extension of the fu-ture support arrangements for the CLEO Network with Lancaster University Network Services for an-other 12-18 months. We are delighted to ensure the continued support for the network and services.

In the future support of the CLEO network and services will come under new support arrangements. Over the next few months CLEO will be involved in reviewing how schools in both counties could continue to receive their

update on the CLEO network support arrangementsbroadband support. Initially this will include the pos-sibility of a new Strategic Partner currently being ne-gotiated by Lancashire County Council. Of the three companies, BT Global Services, Cap Gemini and IBM, shortlisted in the procurement only BT Global Services and IBM remain. A final decision on this is not expected to be made until the autumn, when other options may be considered if appropriate. Considerable effort, from both authorities, is being put into the planning necessary to ensure a smooth transition of broadband connectiv-ity and services to an alternative provider in the future.

CLEO will be sending out invoices and pro-cessing Journal Transfers for their Broad-band charges early in the Summer Term. As agreed by the Schools’ Forums in each county the charges for the coming year will include a small increase for the first time to reflect the increases in charges for circuits. The charge will be based on a recurrent charge per school of £820, plus an additional per pupil charge of £3.12 per pupil. The per pupil element will be based on the January 2010 census figures as provided by the local authorities.

Your CLEO subscription charge continues to provide excellent value for money and includes the provision of all CLEO services at no additional cost to school.

These services currently include:

• Broadband connectivity

• Moodle

• Video conferencing

• Remote access

• Mahara e-portfolio (for secondary schools)

• Full training and support for all of the above services

• Coming in 2010 - MIDAS Parental Online Reporting

CLEO broadband charging 2010-2011

CLEO has a small SmartBoard™ 640 Interac-tive Whiteboard which is now surplus to re-quirements (size: diagonal: 121.9cm (48”)). If you would like further details or if you are inter-ested in acquiring this SmartBoard for your school

spare interactive whiteboard

for all headteachers, school staff and governors

email office@cleo.net.uk tel 01524 592800 fax 01524 593515

www.cleo.net.uk

fault reporting• Internet Connection

• Cache Box not working

• Remote Access Set Up

• Video Conferencing Set-up

• Moodle

Please contact your relevant CLEO technical support desk:

Cumbria ICT Helpdesk 01228 221225

Lancashire Westfield Centre 01772 623222

CLEO equipment

Please remember ‘DO NOT TURN OFF’ your CLEO equipment.

If you need to switch off the power for essential main-tenance or you have a power cut then please advise the CLEO office on 01524 592800, fax on 01524 593515 or e-mail office@cleo.net.uk

If you need to move the location of your CLEO con-nection in school please contact the CLEO Office with as much notice as possible to ensure no loss of service. See the CLEO website for further information, www.cleo.net.uk

The annual Espresso subsription renewal process is un-derway for 2010-2011. The standard subscription pro-vides access in-school and Teacher at Home access. For the first time this year, Espresso is offering CLEO schools and pupils access from home to the full Es-presso service. This includes a new Home Learning service, which Espresso has created, containing over 500 creative Learning Paths, which are ideal for chil-dren to explore at home, to work through to reinforce concepts taught in school and to involve parents in their child’s education and development. The home access service is provided on a whole-school basis and is scheduled to be available from April 1st 2010. (Please note - a broadband connection and mini

mum specification of PC at home are required in order for pupils to access the service.) As with the normal sub-scription, the cost is dependent on the percentage of CLEO primary and nursery schools opting to subscribe to the service. Espresso have maintained their pricing from last year and as over 70% schools have re-sub-scribed, the cost for the standard in-school and teacher at home serv-ice has remained at £2.08 per pupil, with an additional charge of £0.60 per pupil for those schools opting to subscribe to the new Pupil at Home Espresso service for the coming year.

new for 2010 - espresso pupil at home access

ICT enables pupils to listen to, and interact with music with-in virtual historical, social and cultural contexts through the written and spoken word, images and sound. Although at present the focus is on music in the curriculum, it is hoped that other arts areas will be addressed in the near future.

tuned-in

Tuned-in is a not for profit subscription service for UK schools produced by Cumbria County Council and subscribed to by CLEO to allow schools through-out Lancashire & Cumbria to access these resources. Tuned-in is an exciting new venture aimed at maximis-ing the potential of the internet to promote Music and the Arts in schools in imaginative and practical ways.