Stratford upon Avon based education company, ePace, shortlisted for prestigious national award!

Published by Livewire for Livewire Public Relations in Education

The ePace team from Stratford upon Avon is celebrating this week having announced that its ePace online learner profiling and assessment tool has been shortlisted for Best ICT Tool for Teaching and Learning at the BETT Awards - the education industry’s most prestigious accolade which recognises and rewards the top providers in the UK. Winners will be announced at the BETT Awards ceremony in London Hilton Park Lane on 11 January 2011.

ePace was developed in conjunction with cognitive psychologist Professor Rod Nicolson at the University of Sheffield and requires students to participate in a fun and easy-to-complete 45-minute online assessment which delves deep into how they process, retain and recall information. The assessment tool complies with proposed new Ofsted measures that will require teachers to spend more time in the classroom and emphasise a continued drive on raising standards, especially in reading. It enables teachers to identify areas, such as reading, that a child may be struggling with and support their learning more effectively by helping them to tailor their teaching methods.

Used at Shipston on Stour primary school in Warwickshire, ePace is helping teachers to tailor lessons to enable every pupil to achieve their potential, evaluating a child’s strengths and weaknesses in 11 critical areas of learning, including auditory memory, visual memory, listening skills, emotional control, decision making, focus, hand/eye coordination, mental speed, timing, literacy and impulsivity. It delves deep into how a child processes, retains and recalls information. Providing a complete toolkit to support teachers in a mixed learning environment, ePace also incorporates a reporting suite, practical resources and strategies to enable more informed engagement with parents and carers.

Christian Hilton, Head of Stour Federation, comments: “The reports produced using ePace provide our teachers with a clear profile of how each child learns, giving them a real opportunity to practise personalised learning in the classroom and reach every pupil. Understanding the learning profile of the whole class, with the facility to organise groups with similar skills accordingly, greatly enhances opportunities to teach effectively.  For example, if a high percentage of students in a class have poor auditory memory, the teacher can adapt their teaching style appropriately, or supply handouts to accompany the lesson.”

Mary Blake, ex-teacher of 30 years and co-ordinator of ePace’s development, comments: “We are proud and delighted to be shortlisted for the BETT 2012 ICT Tools for Teaching and Learning. ePace is an ICT tool designed to improve learning potential and we want pupils to become ‘partners in their own learning’. In addition, we believe it is crucial to support teachers to help them maximise opportunities for all pupils.

“To reach the final for this highly prestigious award is a great honour for the development team, who always place the pupils at the heart of all they do.”

To find out more about how your school could benefit from ePace, please visit: www.epaceonline.com, tel: 0333 123 1810 or e-mail: info@epaceonline.com. ePace will be on stand V15 at BETT 2011 in Olympia, London.