Costello Technology College (SC)From ICT Register Wiki
Costello Technology CollegeSchool Description and strengths [ICT Register Entry http://www.ict-register.net/schooldetails.php?id=135]
The work the college is doing in developing and supporting relationships with parents and carers through the use of their parent portal in addition to the use of new emerging technologies to support KS2/3 transition. Costello Technology College has recently launched their parent portal that is aimed at supporting and enhancing learning. All parents have a unique log on to access the system, which gives them access to MIS data held within SIM's, already meeting the 2010 online reporting targets and allows them to engage in online activities with the college, from discussion forums shared with our neighbourhood PCSO to accessing home learning assignments that have been set for their children. It is quickly becoming the one stop shop for parents, where they can pick up all college information, newsletters and receive support so they too can support their children with learning at home. In addition the college gave all Y6 students in primary feeders (Summer 2009) log-ons to our VLE to access our transition portal. An online community set up to aid KS2/3 transition where students could get lots of information about the students, watch a video created by our Y7 students, access a discussion forum that allowed them to interact with our current students and ask them all the questions that were worrying them about moving to secondary school. The portal was also used to host a live web chat between Y6 students (whilst in their IT suite in their own school) and a member of SLT at Costello. Details of the developments that the college is making with parental engagement and ELearning can be found on Dominic Tester's blog for the college. The team at Costello have done a fantastic job with the transitional portal. Our Year 6 children can use it whilst they are here and question staff at Costello about any issues or concerns they may have prior to attending there. The College has really pushed transition arrangements for Year 6 transfer and held link sessions regularly within the feeder schools creating a positive bridge between two key stages. This has impacted upon communication between parties and re-assured students of their next stage of learning. Through such liaison and the transition portal established to familiarise students with the College many fears have been dissipated. We'd like to nominate Costello Technology College for the use of their learning platform to engage the whole school community in teaching and learning. In particular their use of the Parental Engagement Portal. Costello have used this to take engagement with parents to the next level by providing an online environment that is a one stop shop for parents to engage in their childs education. Costello Technology College's SubmissionOur schools innovative use of ICT and how it supports learning and teaching. The publication of the Becta toolkit in August 2008 prompted the college to really unpick how technologies can be used to support parents and engage them in the education of their children ahead of the online reporting targets of 2010. Costello Technology College recognises the potential of new and emerging technologies to support learning and teaching, the college's E-Learning solution coming online in January 2009 has focused strategic thinking and innovation on how the potential of this technology can be explored. The college is gaining national recognition for the innovative approach taken -Parent Portal- by not purely focusing on addressing the needs of 2010 online reporting targets but by adding additional value that leads to true parental engagement. Our Parent Portal provides online reporting but more importantly supports learning. It ensures that parents have access to work set via the learning platform (FROG), are able to access all the resources, have assignment grades reported back to them, engage in hosted support materials, allows contact with teachers and allows parent to become part of a growing online college community. The Parent Portal also provides the means for the governors, examinations officer and PTA to engage with parents in a way that is sustainable through distributed leadership and management. KS2/3 transition is an area of expertise that has developed at the college, with the work of the college being recognised nationally through the DCSF "What works Well" initiative (found on the standards web site). After such a success in implementing our learning platform in January 2008 we rapidly saw the potential of the technology to support the fantastic transition work that was already taking place across the college and our primary feeder schools. The college quickly formulated a vision that saw the development of the learning platform to support transition. Recognising the potential of the technology and how youngsters of today have embedded technology as part of their day to day living meant that we very quickly got excited about what a transition portal would offer. What did we set out to achieve with the transition portal? This is easily summarised, we wanted an online environment for our Y6 students to immerse themselves, where they could engage with our current Y7 students to find out about the college, engage with each other (across different feeder schools) about the move to Costello, settle any pre-transition fears or concerns that they may have, generate useful information to support learning on transfer (learning skills survey and transition activities) and to embed an expectation of the importance that technology play in their education upon transfer to Costello. We believe that the achievements we have made are worthy of recognition, especially when the college is a relative newcomer to E-Learning - having had our E-Learning platform since January 2009. Please take the time to watch the video's and listen to the podcasts we are submitting as these provide a much more detailed insight into the work we have undertaken.
PARENT PORTAL A very structured approach to the implementation of the Parent Portal was put in place. The process started from the outset by putting parents at the centre of the process. The college put together a Parent Portal development group whose membership was solely parents and representation from SLT. All parents in the college were sent a text invited them to be part of this group and we had a large number of replies via email expressing an interest. We then selected parental representation to ensure that the group represented the cross section of the college community. This group of parents subsequently met (2/12/2008) so that the college could develop an understanding of what types of interactions parents would like to make via a Parent Portal. Parents held very clear views about what they wanted to see. It was very encouraging to see that much of what they wanted was focused on teaching and learning, with access to specific data not necessarily being at the top of everyone’s list. Parents also completed a questionnaire which had been sent to us from FROG, our learning platform provider as they wanted to shape ideas about their forthcoming parent portal product. Outcomes of this meeting were then fed back to SLT who discussed findings at length; the information fed back underpinned the vision of the Parent Portal that SLT shaped. The college worked closely with FROG, our learning platform provider to shape some of the MIS functionality that would be needed, which has developed into their Parent Portal product. We worked very closely with them for the next 6 months on their beta test programme to secure the core functionality that was required. During this period the college designed and wrote the core elements of the parent portal, putting together the web presence as well as putting other protocols in place to ensure MIS data integrity. A small scale trial of the Parent Portal was opened up to some of our parents (including a parent governor) in May 2009 to ensure that the technology was working and to give advice, support and feedback on the layout and functionality of the portal. By the end of the summer term we were in a position to roll-out the portal to parents. Prior to launch the college developed a specific AUP for the parent portal – all parents have to agree to this when signing in to the portal for the first time. An online database keeps a record of the time and date that parents agreed to this. Any subsequent changes to the AUP are easily made – parents have to re-sign online. The college made a conscious decision not to rush the roll-out of the portal at the end of the academic year (June/July 2009) as we felt that it would gain best impact launching at the beginning of an academic year. A considerable amount of careful planning went into the launch of the Parent Portal. Distribution of usernames and passwords were an important consideration as there are very clear guidelines on how these should go out to parents. The college decided that the best way to launch the portal would be a phased implementation, a year group at a time. We started in the first half the 2009 autumn term by launching to year 7 parents. Letters to the year group went out inviting them to a Parent Portal launch event. Within the letter they were asked to bring proof of address so that they could collect in person a sealed letter which had their logon credentials. The launch event was in 2 parts – collection of logon credentials, followed be a presentation to parents by the college on the Parent Portal. Parents received a live demonstration and tour of the portal and it was an excellent opportunity for the college to communicate the vision as to how the parent portal should be used so that parents are more engaged in the education of their children. These launch events were then repeated for Y10, Y8/9 and Y11. An initial discussion forum for parents has been set up so that they can feed back on the portal – the college is keen to take on board constructive points from the outset and develop the portal. The more ownership parents take of the portal, the more successful and embedded it will become. All college staff have been shown the Parent Portal at a session on the recent INSET Day (A day devoted to the development of E-Learning). TRANSITION PORTAL Implementation of the Transition Portal saw a number of discrete phases being put in place. The college already has very close links with feeder schools that are secured through our transition teacher, Matthew Frape. A locally aligned INSET day (Feb. 2009) saw the college meeting with all Primary Heads to discuss use of the potential of the portal as well as many other important peripheral issues, including: E-Safety, moderation of forums, security management, securing clearly defined outcomes and success criteria. Through the work of our transition teacher stakeholders (Y6 students) were involved in discussions that saw the shape of the portal develop. Their input was crucial in developing a portal that would get used and meet their needs. Once discussions had taken place and portal format/content was finalised, Matthew Frape worked hard with our current Y7 students to develop content to sit on the portal, whilst the portal architecture was designed in house by Dominic Tester (Assistant Headteacher). After initial in house beta testing requests for student information (UPN, Firstname, Surname) were made to all the primary feeders, who returned the data in CSV format. This data was then used to generate unique user accounts for each student. These were then sent back to primaries for distribution. Provision training and an overview/demonstration of the portal was given to staff in the primaries and our transition teacher showcased the portal to all the Y6 students in our feeder schools The college rolled out the Transition Portal in the summer term to pilot various aspects and then for them to use it. Times for the live webchat between primaries and a member of SLT at Costello were mutually agreed and planned in advance. An online evaluation for the Y6 students was built in to the portal to ensure that the college had feedback to enhance the portals provision for the following year. Additionally, the impact of the portal has been reviewed by our transition teacher with the primary headteachers.
PARENT PORTAL • Developing stronger learning partnerships between home and school – more supportive parents, enhanced communication between teachers and parents (formal/informal). • More support given to parents so that they are empowered to support their children at home – positive impact on learning. Parents able to access staff via discussion forums/email, online support materials will also be available. • Parents are more aware of activities at school (attendance/behaviour/attainment) as they have access to data – but this is put into context (information) – positive impact on learning through positive support from parents/carers. • Parents can see when assignments are set and access the work and all support materials directly. No longer have to decipher 3 words in a HW diary! – Positive impact on learning. • Parents able to catch up on missed information. For example, how do we cater for the parent who does not attend the Y9 options evening due to shift work? Answer – host rich media presentations on the portal (slides and narrative). • Signposting parents to extended/support services. • Greater engagement in school events – better marketing and publicity (improved organisational efficiency through services such as EventElephant. • Key examination information disseminated to parents through portal -positive impact on organisation of exams. • Positive impact on attendance. Attendance statistics for this term are the best for a number of years. This could be attributable to parents being able to see attendance data visually through the portal. Positive impact on learning continuum.
• Students feeling confident about starting their new school – positive start with focus on learning • Educating students about E-Safety and E-Citizenship • Students knowing much more about the college before they arrive – engaging more quickly in extra-curricular activities as they know what is available, for example • Exposing Y6 students to E-Learning technologies, raising expectations pre-transition • Students settling into Costello more quickly – maximising time for learning (evident this year) • Having the students looking at their learning styles ahead of time, means that we have access to this information which forms the basis of the learning styles unit within our PSHE curriculum • Teachers being able to plan/personalise teaching as information on student learning styles are made available to them • Enabled us to embed the College’s ethos and supportive learning environment issues, so that the arriving students know precisely what our expectations are of them. There does seem to be a very settled feel about the students than had hitherto been the case, with no major attitude/behaviour issues surfacing thus far • Potential for college staff to set transition assignments • More effective pastoral care – students this year will be uploading powerpoint presentations about themselves which will then be available to their new tutors pre-transition
PARENT PORTAL The college has recently appointed a FROG administrator for our learning platform to ensure that developments can be sustained well into the future. This role is crucial in ensuring that the portal remains dynamic with lots of fresh content going up all the time and that it grows with the needs of supporting our parents. There are many more developments planned for the parent portal in the short term, all of which will add value to ensure that it becomes embedded into the culture of learning at the college: 1. Incorporate facilities so that parents can pay for events online (ParentPay). 2. Develop discussion forums for all subjects so that parents can engage directly with subject staff. We need to be in a position to support parents who are maybe finding it difficult to support their children – where do they get support from? 3. Each department to have their own ‘web presence’ within the parent portal (managed by the department) – used to communicate important information to parents as well as course information 4. Development of reporting systems – Assessment data reporting will be available from Jan/Feb. 2010. The college wants parents to be able to pull information when they want it and not be tied to traditional reporting cycles that schools currently have. 5. Online courses for parents to enrol on - these may be adult learning or support courses. 6. Specific questions on the Parent Portal will be included in the annual parent survey to ensure that the benefits will be sustained and that it continues to meet the needs of the parents. 7. Continue to engage with parents through the Parent Portal development group to evaluate effectiveness. 8. Incorporate the new social networking technologies found within FROG3.0 to support parents and learners. 9. Roll-out school hosted email to all parents so that teachers can access them easily - developing stronger learning partnerships. 10. Development of a cashless catering system that integrates with the parent portal. Under banner of 'healthy schools' parents will be able to see what is being eaten by their children and get overview of how healthy it is. 11. Online booking for parent consultation events. TRANSITION PORTAL The coming year will see the consolidation of last year’s efforts – improving the look, increasing the amount of information available through the students’ work – giving current students more ownership with an aim in the portal becoming a fundamental part of transition work to Costello. We will seek to expand the contact to the Year 6’s through inter-departmental activities which can be posted onto the portal – thus engaging more Costello staff in transition. These activities will allow greater transition information to flow between primary and secondary and help the college make more informed decisions on setting. Yearly feedback from Year 6 students will be an important part of the process to ensure that the benefits of the portal are sustained, the college will also be developing the transition portal for parents, so that both students and parents are born into a more 'technology immersed' education upon transfer to Costello - setting expectations early.
PARENT PORTAL The develops we have made with our Parent Portal have been shared on a variety of scales. Dominic Tester's E-Learning blog has provided an open forum for educationalists to see the work we have had undertaken and is followed by an ever growing community. Developments have been showcases via twitter which have led to direct messages from interested teachers from across the country/world. The college is actively promoting parental engagement through our ICT Register entry and is undertaking much work outside of it to showcase the achievements made to date. Costello presented at the FROG National Learning Platforms Conference 9/6/2009, we are also presenting at the SSaT Future Schools conference in December 2009. Our developments have been shared at the SSaT (S) Regional Headteachers Steering Group and to those schools that have attended a FROG Awareness day hosted at the college earlier in this autumn term. TRANSITION PORTAL As a result of the pilot, we shared our findings at the SSaT Regional (SC) conference, which led to other schools being interested in the provision. We have discussed the project with two schools thus far (visits have been made to Costello), who have taken a keen interest in the machinations behind the initiative – set-up, consolidation and impact. We have also been able to take the transition portal to other non-designated ‘feeder’ schools for those students coming to Costello for them to use. Other secondary schools in Basingstoke have also expressed an interest in the innovative work we have been undertaking with our transition process. Our designated primary feeder schools are: Rucstall, Great Binfields, Fairfields, St. Mary’s, Four Lanes. It will form part of our annual report to National Strategies, for their ‘Partnerships in Transition and Transfer’ case study. It is envisaged that this will create further discussions with other schools.
Video overview of our Parent Portal November Edition of the College Newsletter Costello E-Learning Blog - Parental Engagement Posts Costello E-LEarning Blog - Parent Portal Posts Transition Portal Flyer - Distributed to delegates at the SSaT Regional Conference (SC) Summer 2009 Audio Podcast - Monica Barker (Head of Rucstall Primary) talking about the transition portal Audio Podcast - Matthew Frape, Transition teacher at Costello Overview of the live webchat with SLT via the transition portal |
