The Learning Eye

Simplicity, Control and Collaboration

The Learning Eye has been in existance since the beginning of the academic year 2003-04. Swanlea School in London's Tower Hamlets was the first to adopt the system with two more embracing it since then and there are others interested in joining. We are also about to add two school related organisations/projects: Tower Hamlets City Learning Centre and the Greenwich Youth Project.

The information below gives a basic outline of how schools and other organisations can, through the collaboration of their staff and pupils, build an exciting, contemporary and effective learning community that reaches out and enriches not only their school but others beyond.

BASIC POINTS TO NOTE

• The Learning Eye is a web based system, so teachers and pupils can access (and where permitted edit) and interact with its applications and resources from home as well as from school.
• The Learning Eye is constantly liaising with the schools and organisations using its system to learn how better to serve the needs of a particular school, their staff and their pupils because what assists one, generally helps all.
• The Learning Eye is committed to assisting schools in collaborating with one another to share resources and good practice.
• Its basic simplicity means staff can quickly learn to contribute to and control an effective cross curricular, learning community.
• The Learning Eye can provide an interactive forum for teachers to share good practice such as teaching strategies, lesson plans and resources.
• The Learning Eye is designed to enable schools to have a professionally designed website which then builds to exciting and contemporary learning resource created by teachers simply deciding to 'publish' pages to the web on a page-by-page basis.
• The Learning Eye is designed to allow every pupil and member of staff in a school to contribute.
• The Learning Eye is designed to give staff ‘fingertip control' of their school's online learning resources.
• The Learning Eye charges an annual academic year fee (reduced where schools organisations join later in the year) which includes installation, basic training, support and upgrades.

Easy, intuitive

The Learning Eye gives teachers the opportunity to realise the potential of the internet through a simple and intuitive interface that is run entirely though a web browser, allowing for the first time, every teacher, whatever their level of ICT competence to utilise the school's web site as an aid to teaching. With some basic training any teacher can start using their Learning Eye straight away, enabling them to focus on the pupils, the lesson and the benefits ICT can bring to learning.

The Learning Community

The learning Eye is an inclusive community. It is designed to give staff and students direct access to a community where all contributions are valued. Students who interact effectively and in an approved manner with the site and indeed within the school itself are rewarded by being able to expand the number of options open to them. Those who are ill or excluded from school but able to get access the internet can still log on to this community to continue their learning.

Sharing Good Practice

The Learning Eye helps schools provide teachers with a way to share best practice across many existing boundaries including - department, school, borough and even international borders. It can enable parents to help support the learning process within the home and school.

THE BASICS

A school can:

• Create full pupil and staff membership.
• create subject areas and pages open to the public, the school, staff only or open to the wider Learning Eye community
• It can create unlimited pages and which they can elect to be open to:
  
  - The general public
  - Pupils and staff – becomes an intranet
  - Staff only – becomes a specifically targeted intranet
  - Other Learning Eye Schools – creates a wider learning community
  - Upload a wide variety of resources, documents and images
• Access the pages of other Learning Eye schools accessing designated content that would not be otherwise visible/downloadable
• Access the pages of Learning eye community organisations such as City Learning Centres - once again gaining special access rights

Users

The Learning Eye allows a school to create an unlimited number of members that can access and add content to their school learning community dependant upon the editing rights they are given*.

*Users, depending upon the permissions they have been granted, can add an unlimited number of documents, pages, graphics text and links. Staff and teachers decide to add pupils work, lesson plans, revision resources or whatever resources they wish.

Once logged in pupils and staff have an ever growing resource which they tap into and interact with. There are a number of interactive features we included in the system.