Ben Franklin has seen and used the future of educational software and he likes it. An advanced skills teacher at Charles Lucas comprehensive, an 11-16 school in Colchester, Franklin has been pioneering a software program specially developed for one of the Government’s education pilot projects. His school used MathsAlive! software developed by RM and its subsidiary 3T Productions, and his verdict is simple: “It’s the best thing to happen in maths teaching for a long time - Jand I’ve been teaching more than 15 years.”

Reactions like this, show the potential of the new forms of software that DFES pilot projects have generated, but their development also raises many issues including will the Government provide further funding so that the programs become available to many schools? Will students need an Internet connection at home to get the most out of it? The growth of the Internet and digital TV has led the Government to fund the development of educational materials for these media. The Department For Education and Skills (DFES) has already announced plans to develop a Curriculum Online and sees it as a means of strengthening the link between home and school learning.

Last year the Government funded a project involving the BBC, Result (an alliance between Granada Learning and IBM) and Anglia Multimedia (now part of Granada). The aim was to develop a variety of materials for both digital TV and the Internet, covering core subjects like maths and science. But, as Nigel Ward, managing director of Granada Learning, points out: “The provision of online materials distributed through a community educational portal is not a new idea. We have assisted projects such as the North West Regional Broadband consortium and South Yorkshire E-Learning Partnership. LearnWise, Granada Learning’s virtual learning environment underpins these portals enabling the delivery of educational materials and the sharing of best practice across the projects’ LEAs for their schools, teachers, pupils and parents. Curriculum Online is a vision for a future that leading educational publishers are already creating today.”

Companies involved in the project had to develop tomorrow’s software to run on today’s technology. “The key was to run the software on existing technology,” says Frank Flynn, BBC’s controller of children’s education. “We were keen to develop courses that provided a mix of support for the teacher and exciting content for the pupils.”

The BBC’s materials were divided into 22 “rooms” representing half a term’s work, with each room providing six to eight components, such as a video, a test or a worksheet. Derek Butler, executive editor of BBC Children’s Education, says: “We’ve always provided resources for schools such as video or interactivity, and the objective was to bring them together.”

As a result of this project, the DFES announced last April that it would be funding a pound;42 million project for producing digital course materials in six GCSE subjects (English, French, science, history and geography), developed by Granada Learning and the BBC (subject to government approval). The first two courses, which will be available online and via digital TV services, will be launched in September 2002, with the remaining courses due in September 2003.

The DFES also funded a pound;5m million project involving 60 schools, which saw the development of technology-based courses for Year 7 in three subject areas, Maths (developed by RM and 3T Productions), Latin (Granada Learning) and Japanese (BBC). Sixty schools were involved in the project, which ran from late 2000 to the end of last summer term. RM’s MathsAlive! materials were developed by the company’s in-house team, plus practising teachers under the guidance of the Multimedia Centre at University College Chichester.

Steve Bolingbroke, managing director of RM Learning, says: “We set out to approach it from the point of view of the teacher - Jwhat do teachers need to help them teach better? We believe it’s a combination of tools and exciting content for kids. Teachers want help with preparing lessons and assessment.”

MathsAlive! uses an interactive whiteboard, software, printable worksheets, games and activities that can be done in small or large groups. Students can join the teacher to work at the whiteboard together, with the algebraic formula generator for example. Its main use is as a whole class teaching resource. “A lot of software is designed for the student to use alone, but we think that pre-16 software should be about helping teachers put things across,” says Bolingbroke.

Anecdotal evidence suggests these new resources have much to offer schools, but will they become commercially available? Currently, the DFES is saying little on this matter. It has commissioned a report to assess the impact of the pilot projects, which is being written by Tony Fisher and Tim Denning from Nottingham University and Keele University educational departments repectively. The report is due to be passed to the DFES before the end of the year and it is hoped that the DFES will publish its findings.

One concern is that the Government will try to use ICT to help solve the teacher shortage, especially in areas such as maths and language, but all the teachers TES Online spoke to were adamant that this is not possible:

“You need to be confident about your subject before using materials like these,” says Franklin.

Another problem is that many of the new materials require schools to have broadband or high-speed connections to the Internet. But as Gavin Richards, head of ICT at Sedgefield Community College, which took part in the GCSE digital resource pilot (see next story), points out: “We don’t have a broadband connection and many schools in this region are in rural areas with no cable access.” Getting the infrastructure in place for Curriculum Online will not be easy.

An online system also requires students to have access to the Internet outside of normal school hours. Many schools already run lunchtime and after-school computer clubs, and while these do a great job in increasing Internet access, there is no substitute for having an online connection at home. Last March, the DFES launched its Wired Up Communities programme, which involves installing computers in 12,000 homes (as well as some schools) in areas of high deprivation. As the DFES noted, almost nine million households have Web access, but professional households are three times more likely to have used the Internet than semi-skilled and unskilled households. The Government also aims to have 6,000 UK online centres in deprived areas by next March, and says that by the end of 2002, all of the UK’s 4,300 libraries will be online.

But the potential of universal online access will only be fulfilled if schools also have access to good content. The various pilot projects have shown that the UK software industry can create content that is imaginative and engaging, and which can motivate students and help teachers do their job even better. The question is whether the Government will provide the funding for the software to become widespread in schools. Although the pilots have ended, RM continues to fund schools using MathsAlive! (RM also plans to launch it commercially next year) and the BBC has continued to offer its Japanese resources online. But schools should not have to depend on charity and goodwill to access the software of tomorrow.

George Cole is a freelance journalist and a former teacher

THE SCHOOLS’ EXPERIENCE

Sedgefield Community College was one of the 10 schools that used the BBC’s materials. The BBC provided the college with a server, which stored all the materials, and was connected to the school’s network. The set-up was used like a simulated online link and a digital TV service. It also had an ISDN digital telephone link back to the BBC’s external server, which stored tracking information. Teachers could log on to the server to find out information, while pupils sat in front of a computer screen and wore headphones as they navigated through the programs.

Gavin Richards, the college’s head of ICT, says it made a lot of use of the chemistry units: “The students were provided with high-quality full-screen video and they could pause, stop or rewind it at will. What I also liked was that the software was targeted at GCSE chemistry rather than being a generic science package.” Richards adds that students found the content motivating and stimulating.

Isebrook special school in Kettering is an 11-16 school with 85 pupils. It used maths and science modules developed by Result for eight weeks. “The materials were written to tight objectives and teachers could select materials that were appropriate,” says headteacher Kevin McHenry. “You could take the bits that made sense to our youngsters and ignore the difficult parts.” The teacher could use an infra-red keyboard and control the computer displaying the material from the back of the room. Resources included video clips and activities, and games (one used a snooker table animation to demonstrate angles).

Queen Mary’s High School in Walsall used the BBC’s Japanese materials with two groups of 24 students. The materials were available on the BBC website and offered a dozen modules the students could work through at their own pace. The children were guided by a cartoon character, Tobu, who also introduced them to Japanese culture. “We used the materials with Years 7 and 8, as well as some GCSE beginners,” explains Jane Rutherford, a teacher of Japanese who also helped develop some of the scripts for the modules. “We tended to use it as a carousel activity, with students using the resource for part of the lesson.”

For the MathsAlive! material, Charles Lucas School was provided with a data projector, SMARTBoard, three PCs, a printer and a laptop. Ken Franklin is an enthusiastic MathsAlive! user. “It’s more dynamic and more interesting and kids can get involved with the SMARTBoard. The graphics let you display graphs axes, grids, thermometer readings, clocks, all of which can be controlled by the pupil. The kids were gobsmacked by it.”

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