Groundbreaking 'education network' puts East Midlands schools at the forefront of personalised learning and e-safety

Over 600,000 pupils from across the East Midlands are now benefitting from a groundbreaking £45m service that is helping to boost learning, whilst protecting their online safety.

The East Midlands Broadband Community (embc), a procurement partnership of 8 local authorities (Derbyshire, Leicester City, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottingham City, Nottinghamshire and Rutland) has teamed up with IT specialist Synetrix to develop one of the most extensive and advanced learning systems in the world.

As well as having safe and secure internet access in over 2000 schools, pupils are able to access and share their schoolwork and teaching online, chat and e-mail to each other and create their own personalised web sites within a secure community of registered users.

Mike Kendall, embc Managing Director, picked up the story:

Following DfES (now DCSF) initiative to improve the IT capabilities of all schools in the UK, we developed a network that provided a 2mb broadband connection for primary schools and a 10mb facility for secondary schools.

We have now moved on to create a personalised and tailored set of online educational software applications. A single user name and password gives learners access to their email, schoolwork and educational websites that have been filtered according to the pupils age and stage of education.

He continued: We also intend to develop further applications for both children and parents to use, such as very high quality video conferencing and a system to let parents learn and monitor their childs progress online.

The approach is to make the technology fit the learner by providing an appropriate look and feel to the software and a single log-in to all applications.

This is excellent news for parents, who would normally be concerned for their childs safety when using the internet, added Mike, who is trained as an ambassador by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOPC).

E-Safety, safeguarding pupils and over-censorship is a continuing debate, but you have to create the balance between protecting pupils yet not restricting websites that may help them with their schoolwork.

Using Synetrix and Microsofts latest technology, we have integrated a users profile and personal website (called a MySite) so it moves with them as they get older, into other areas of the curriculum or even when they change schools - a real long-term investment.

Similar to what you would expect to see on Facebook or Myspace, the MySite page gives pupils and teachers the opportunity to personalise their details, add useful information, store documents and even create mutual interest groups.

Following an official launch event in late June, local authorities and schools will be able to select from a further roadmap of learning applications.

We are entering an era where people and groups are creating their own content and communities online and there is no reason why our students cant do the same. With this technology, children can now set-up online homework clubs or study groups, whilst teachers can post useful links that will help students with their coursework for GCSE exams, explained Mike.

It may even be that you create specialist pages for educational trips or you may want to share information and best practice with other schools.

Synetrixs Andy Hvass added his support: We have a proven track record in the education sector and this experience has allowed us to develop a complex identification system that provides local authorities and schools with valuable learning resources in a safe environment.

Another key feature is the robust nature of the network and other technical infrastructure, which is being developed to be fully backed up at two data centres to minimise the possibility of IT failures.

He concluded: This means that valuable teaching time is not lost, delivering a robust service to effectively support teachers and learners and help alleviate the many pressures of the modern timetable.

There are many possible developments for the East Midlands Broadband Community network and educational services, including developing a similar learning gateway for parents and making educational services accessible to mobile phones and PDAs.