So what exactly is Ultranet Beta? In brief, this is the first component of a new and refreshed Ultranet platform suite. The initial focus of the suite is a completely revised Virtual Classroom module. This will be followed in the new year with a revised ePortfolio solution.

For us, this project has been a natural progression in the ongoing evolution of the Ultranet platform. It boils down to three foundational principles that we feel are really important in good software: usability, scalability and extensibility.

In other words:

• It has to be super easy to use;
• It has to cater to the needs of its many varied users;
• It has to work neatly with other related software/devices.

In order to best deliver this, we needed to rebuild and modernise the foundations of the Ultranet platform to make it more flexible and powerful.

We’ve been swirling around sketches and ideas for the new platform for a wee while and it’s been really exciting to see the plans come together, and to be able to start sharing it with a wider audience.

We currently have over a dozen Beta Programme participants testing the new environment, and our development team continues to pump out new components of functionality. In general, Beta software usually remains in that state until it is deemed sufficiently stable and closely matches its final release form. At this stage, we anticipate having three beta phases of work before approaching final release. We hope to have the product out of beta by the end of Term 1, 2013.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peak at how easy it is to work in the new Personal Profile editor.

The teachers at Newlands School in Wellington have focused on creating their virtual classrooms.  Their implementation team meet each week to share progress, encourage and support one another and to make themselves available to assist other teachers.  They are working on ‘one step at a time’ and are very aware they need to work as a team to keep progress at a steady pace.

The Newlands Team work on their virtual classrooms

Brainstorming at Forrest Hill

Forrest Hill School on Auckland’s North Shore set forth with gusto aiming to tackle both virtual classrooms and redevelopment of their website in their first 12 months.  They have ended the year having successfully launched their new website and with vibrant class pages that support the learning happening across the school.

Key elements in their approach that have contributed to their success have been:

• Ensuring the implementation team were confident with the functionality of Ultranet before mentoring others across the school.
• Giving much thought  to ‘mapping’ out the user experience they wanted to create.
• Setting an expectation that all teachers would establish their own virtual classroom and providing differentiated support to enable this to happen.
• Having the implementation team committed to  ’leading by example’, modeling effective use and generating evidence of beneficial outcomes so as to encourage other staff to get on board and use Ultranet as a further platform for learning.

And their recommendations for those travelling this path in 2013 are…

“Choose a group of people who are interested and who get enthusiastic about new things. Have a team (5 people rather than just a couple). Set a specific time every week to share ideas, help each other with problems and have a play  - this is vital! This was also a key factor in the success of wider deployment – there were five of us to help roll it out! In staff meetings we took turns teaching new skills and our morning meetings were designated ‘free time’ so that we weren’t doing anything specific but we could just help everyone from where they were at. The staff liked that aspect.”

- Implementation team at Newlands Primary School.

“In terms of a top tip regarding successful implementation I would say that we worked hard to move together as a staff, so that we were all working on building the same pages/parts of Ultranet, and then using them in our class.  This meant that we were able to share and talk about the same/similar problems, and also successes, which others could learn from and build on themselves.”

- Implementation team at Forrest Hill School.

“Students learning interaction is no longer limited to school hours and class room walls as these Stratford Primary students are keen to demonstrate.”

THE STRATFORD PRESS
ERIKA VENTER | Friday, August 17, 2012

Students’ learning interaction is no longer limited to school hours and class room walls as these Stratford Primary students are keen to demonstrate, and this opens the opportunity for the community to also more closely interact with their schools.

Taranaki schools using the on-line learning platform Ultranet will end September have their first regional meeting, at Stratford Primary School. With schools increasingly embracing the digital age, classroom walls are disappearing into ‘the cloud’ and the Stratford Press spoke to Stratford Primary to catch on to what this means to our community.

Interaction, says Stratford Primary School principal Kelvin Squire. Most parents want to be involved in their children’s lives, but it is not always practical due to circumstances. This offers a window. Ninety per cent of our parents have access to the internet.

The school started their journey ‘into the cloud’ end of last year. They refreshed their website with the new applications and now teachers, students and their parents can access and upload information from anywhere, at any time.

We have had kids on holiday that updated their home learning through this. And they drove it themselves, says Paul Elkerton, who is in charge of keeping the school up to date on the technology.

It is meeting the students on a platform they understand.

He says students are now even enthusiastic about home learning on subjects they previously disliked.

Paul says there are a number of programmes available, but that they chose Ultranet as it is very easy to use. Toko and Inglewood primary schools were among the first to use it and Paul says they took aboard their advice and tailored it for their community.

In short, the programme offers a virtual private network where students, parents and teachers can meet to share home learning (home work); information, photos and videos on subjects and projects at school; students’ progress; follow links to websites vetted by the teachers; and safely network. Paul says they had some resistance from parents on the social networking, until explaining that the networking is in a safe, monitored environment and all about learning.

Only teachers and students have access, but parents can access the system through their kids’ log on.

Each class room syndicate designed their ‘home page’ and all students within a syndicate are ‘buddies’ with each other and the teachers.

This way no one is excluded, explains Paul.

He says the conversations are monitored and no bullying is allowed.

Each student has personalised their own page and can update it with relevant information, videos and photos.

The Year 7 and 8 classes were first to be introduced to the programme, in term one this year, followed by Year 5 and 6 term two, Year 3 and 4 this term, and Year 1 and 2 will follow next term.

Once everyone is on board, Paul says they will refine how to affectively use this tool for teaching.

It is not just a gimmick.

It is making teaching ‘smarter’, more interactive.

View original article: The Stratford Press

One such example of this happened just last week at an after school drop-in session at Trentham School. One of the things Fergusson Intermediate showed the group is how they are using a “Common Room” – a virtual classroom available to all staff and students – which includes sections such as Spanish, Te Reo and the Student Council. Creating this widely shared space provides a great platform for school-wide resource sharing and opens opportunities for capturing student voice and facilitating cross-class learning conversations by way of Discussion forums.

Another fantastic, yet simple, idea was shared by Tanya from Burwood School at our last Ultranet User Group Meeting in Christchurch. She explained and showed the group how she has started to use the media gallery to engage her students, which has become so popular it has extended into the home too. By setting up a simple Media Gallery with humorous images of animals, she has created an exciting ‘hook’ for her students to come into their online classroom regularly and is helping them learn how to express their ideas and think up some great captions.

Tanya has also recently started a “What is this?” media gallery, adding in photos of microscopic and obscure objects where the students guess what they think it is… a fantastic way to keep them curious!

If you want to get ideas from other schools, and can’t wait for an Ultranet event in your region, try our online Community Discussion Forum. Use the Subscribe button to ensure updates come direct to you via email. Start a new topic today!

Particularly, the feedback we’ve been getting from User Group Meetings is that the discussion and sharing time is a highlight activity. In fact, it’s quite interesting to note how many schools are experiencing very similar journeys with implementation—whether they are based in a major city centre or a rural school on the other side of the country.

So one consistent question that presents itself to us after these events is: “How do we more easily connect our schools with each other?”

Well, we’ve decided that a virtual, online solution is just the trick. So we’re proud to introduce the Ultranet Community Forum.

The Forums are embedded within our Support portal, so you can use the same account you’d use to log and track support tickets. We’re hoping to see the Forums used for various purposes, such as:

• Sharing ideas and getting feedback on how you are using Ultranet.
• Conversations around Ultranet-related tech (e.g. mobile devices) or school policies (e.g. cyberbullying, parental access, etc).
• Getting advice or input on something you/your class/your school are working on in Ultranet.

Once in the Forums, you can also use the “subscribe” feature to follow discussion topics, or to follow the whole forum.

We’re really excited about the new potentials this offers us to stay in touch with schools, and also for our users to connect with each other. So hopefully you’ll start digging into the Community Forums soon—we look forward to hearing from you and carrying on the various discussions started off across the country!

As you may have heard, the Ministry of Education made a small amount of funding available to assist schools in providing an online portal for parents and students to engage with the school. Learning Management Systems and Parent Portals provide new and effective ways for schools to communicate with parents, and for families to follow student progress and engage with their learning.

As a Ministry-approved and preferred LMS vendor, Ultranet qualifies as such a portal with its seamlessly integrated parent portal, virtual classroom, ePortfolio and school website functionality. Over 200 schools across New Zealand have already taken advantage of this opportunity, giving them a massive head start towards integrating an online learning environment.

However, we are now down to less than 20 funded spaces. And they will expire.

Although schools can defer implementation to as late as Term 4 2012, funded places themselves will expire on 10 June 2012. Following this date, schools who wish to adopt Ultranet with the 12-month Implementation Plan and 6-month fee waiver included will be out of luck.

If your school is eligible and keen to secure a place, download the Information Pack now or contact us at Ultranet if you have any questions. You don’t want to miss out on this!

Download Information Pack

Following our inaugural meeting in Christchurch last year, our first event this year was in Palmerston North for the 26 schools in Manawatu-Wanganui using Ultranet. It was fantastic to have 40 people from 20 of those schools join us for an afternoon at Newbury School.

Attendees found it very valuable to hear other schools talk about how they use Ultranet. Kerry & Nina from Newbury School explained how Ultranet is a central platform for their school and a key part of their communication strategy. Amanda and her colleagues from College Street Normal School gave the group an insight into the school vision and plan for ePortfolios and showed how they are translating this into action at each level. Claire showed the group how she and her team at Hataitai School used Ultranet as a powerful home-school communication tool at junior level. A combination of these snapshots and the opportunity to mingle with others teaching at the same level enabled everyone to gain new ideas and insights, which made for a very successful afternoon.

We were also excited to be able to preview the next version of Ultranet which we have been working on for quite some time. It was a great opportunity to gain some valuable feedback to feed into the development process. Next term will see the release of our first mobile app which will deliver notifications, messaging and the ability to upload media to uSpace. If your school would be keen to use this as soon as it’s available, register your interest and we’ll let you know once it’s ready.

Next on the community agenda… Auckland and Tauranga!

As you start reflecting on your school’s use of Ultranet in 2011, you should firstly be able to identify whether you feel it has been a successful year or not. Whether your answer be positive or negative, it’s never too late to go back to basics and re-identify the benefits of using an LMS and how it fits with your vision for eLearning and wider school initiatives.

To help with your reflection, we’ve put together a few questions to guide you in your thinking and hope that this exercise will provide you with a clearer picture of what changes need to be made in order for 2012 to be your best year yet. Depending on how you feel this year has gone, we’ve provided two sets of reflective questions:

If you’ve had a good year…

• What is happening across the school in current classroom practice regarding the use of Ultranet?
• How many positive outcomes achieved through the use of Ultranet can you identify?
• Does the school have a shared vision for eLearning which supports and underpins the use of Ultranet?
• To what extent is Ultranet becoming a core resource within the school? How will this look next year?
• What needs to be continued; what needs to be done differently to embed the system more deeply?

And not such a good year…

• What are the links between the school’s strategic objectives for the year and the use of Ultranet?
• What are the challenges you need to address next year in order to make progress?
• Have you been able to establish models of effective practice within the school?
• How can you implement a variety of ongoing different support strategies that suit your staff?
• Is there accountability for making steady progress towards the achievement of the agreed objectives?

Wherever you are in your LMS implementation journey, remember that it is a continuum and will take time to get to transformative practice. Take forward steps that are right for your school and set about bringing the whole school community together in this online space.

One aspect of the Media Gallery that we get a lot of questions about is the use of videos, especially in terms of optimising them for the web. Although Ultranet’s Media Gallery does have a file compression/conversion processor built in to it, it obviously can only work if the source video was compact enough to get uploaded in the first place!

So to help with this commonly asked question, we’ve written up a new FAQ article in our Online Support Portal.

It covers the basics in terms of what software might be good to use for optimising your videos, and also some general tips on what key aspects of a video influence its overall file-size.

Go have a read, and see if it helps you out!

Here are the snippet outlines of what we’ll be presenting:

As you can see, we’ve aimed to include topics that will interest those unfamiliar with Ultranet, whilst adding in extra value for those wishing to extend their Ultranet further.

For those that would like a timetable of the presentation roster, a downloadable version is available here.

We look forward to seeing you all there. Don’t forget that we’re happy to take any questions or just catch up for a chat whilst we’re down in Rotorua, so don’t be shy—come by and say ‘Hi’!