the kraal
ICT IN THE EDUCATION COMMUNITY
St. Pauls Catholic College
Contact: Michael Thompson
St Paul’s Catholic College is recognised in the local community for its leading edge in technology and ‘e-learning’.
The college is a mixed 11-18 college using MOSS 2007 as the basis of its ‘Gateway’. Over 700 students have been issued with laptops,
enabling them to access Gateway. There are also areas available for Staff, Parents and Governors.
Each curriculum department has its own workspace which is accessible to all users. Teachers are able to make subject specific announcements to students and parents as well as share web links. These areas also serve as the primary access to our Virtual Learning Environment materials. Staff members are encouraged to add elements themselves, such as the discussion board students can contribute to in the example below
The top navigation bar is customised for Students, Staff and Parents. The screen shot above shows the staff navigation which contains links to timetables, registers, marksheets and student information. It also provides quick links to workgroups they are responsible for in addition to commonly used areas.
Students can access their ‘Independent Learning Tasks’, attendance and assessment details, and timetable. These all make use of the Capita Learning Gateway webparts, working in a similar way to that of the Blatchington Mill School Portal. Members of staff are able to make general college announcements to the whole student population or specify which year group(s) a notice is relevant to.
A calendar of events is centrally administered and a summary view of upcoming events is displayed under the ‘Calendar’ tab. Likewise, during exam season students can view scheduled exams over the next 5 days.
The Student top navigation bar features quick links to the Capita Learning Gateway webpart pages for when they are not on this home page and links to each of the curriculum workspaces as previously discussed. The Parents home page provides similar functionality to the student’s home page. Notices for parents along with pdf copies of recent letters sent home are displayed. The calendar and scheduled exams elements also remain.
Parents have access to the same timetable, attendance and assessment details as students and they can view ‘Independent Learning Tasks’ assigned to their children. Uniform policies, staff contact details and parents’ forum information is all freely available. There is also provision for parents to book onto ICT training sessions and leave feedback about their gateway experiences.
The parents top navigation bar provides links to many of the areas under the ‘Features’ heading so they don’t have to continually return to the home page to find their way to this information.In addition to each curriculum departments’ public workspace there is also a private office area for that subject’s teachers and members of the College Leadership Team.
Like the student and parent home pages, upcoming events, exams and notices are displayed as well as the days cover list (this screen grab was take on a day that happened to have no cover required!) and any visitors who will be onsite.
Staff can make department specific notices, log tasks to be completed, store learning materials to be shared between the department and set up a personal storage area.
In addition to what is shown, many of the day to day college administration tasks are performed through gateway. Such as: staff training requests, ordering photocopies/booklet binding etc, submitting administration tasks, publicising events through in college plasma screens/school website/local media, viewing staff briefings and minutes.
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