Looking back at our National Welsh Project
As we reflect on a successful 8 years of holding the national contract for digital wales we look back on the impact the platform had in inculcating Microsoft technologies into schools across wales.
Check out the Microsoft blog below & take a look back at the successful project:
- Published in Articles, HWB+, Uncategorized
Ashok Leyland School- Focused pilot led by award winning Microsoft Digital Coordinator
Level: K-12
Usage: 100%
Initiative: Monitoring and measuring learning outcomes
Key Findings…
✓ Enjoyed sharing resources and sending messages via the app. Easy to communicate particularly useful using the announcement and discussion tools.
✓ LP+365 enables student engagement inside and outside of the classroom
✓ LP+365 supports blended learning pedagogical scenarios
✓ LP+365 develops self-paced personalised learning strategies
The Challenge
The Ashok Leyland School in the Hosur region of Tamil Nadu is committed to providing the best possible learning environment for a rapidly changing world. LP+365 is perfectly placed to support Ashok Leyland School’s sustainable and scalable model aiming to achieve a 20% improvement in learning levels of students as well as a 20% reduction in dropout rates and increase in attendance and engagement.
The success criteria for this project centred around being able to measure how far LP+365 helps at least three-quarters of the students are able to integrate technology with their lesson, collaborating and sharing their views and ideas across collaboration tools.
Chandrachoodeshwaran M, Microsoft digital learning coordinator at Ashok Leyland School said:
“The students have really enjoyed integrating digital technology into their pedagogical journey. Using the Office 365 toolset integrated into the LP+365 app makes teaching more time efficient.”
Result…
For teachers, the advantages of the LP+365 learning and collaboration platform are clear. LP+365 enables the school to reach the government set goals to improve not only student learning outcomes but the collaboration tools contribute towards improving attendance and student engagement.
Chandrachoodeshwaran M explained adding the ability to personalise content has had a positive outcome on focused learning:
“The auto-provisioned Class Notebook is a major advantage of the app over using OneNote, improving class collaboration.”
Click here to find out more about LP+365 or Click here to arrange a FREE demo
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The LP+365 Multilingual Feature & Autumn Updates
We are thrilled to announce the new multi-lingual feature on LP+365.
The LP+365 multilingual interface is now available in beta, and allows students and teachers to seamlessly switch between languages in the menu bar. The language options are unlimited and supports multiple scripts, for example Arabic and the Indian languages.
Languages can be selected dynamically by the user and the choice of language is determined by the global administrator. Having the right language drives adoption of the platform and the embedding of LP+ technology into daily use.
The new feature will help students to…
✔ Learn new languages
✔ Improve the fluency of native languages
✔ Be part of the international community
✔ Develop digital skills using their native language
The feature helps teachers to…
✔ Drive usage of the app and improve digital literacy
✔ Improve students adoption of new languages
✔ Help teachers communicate with international students
Check out the multi-lingual promo video to find out more…
As always we’d love to hear from you and your thoughts about the new updates. Contact us on Twitter or Facebook to let us know what you think!
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LP+ Autumn App Updates & Performance Enhancements
The LP+ Tech Team have been busy bug fixing & updating the app to improve it’s performance in the classroom:
✔Students are now able to begin their assignments directly through email hyperlinks
✔Improved links to picture tile thumbnails
✔Optimised performance for retrieval of blog categories
✔Improved Assignment views to meet web accessibility standards
✔Calendar bug fixes and improved views in all browsers
✔Improved provisioning of special characters in Class Notebook
✔Improved ability to export active licence info for user accounts
✔Progressive Web App now includes the analytics feature in the full school app
✔Mobile browser optimisation
✔New Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 optimisation
We’d love to hear from you and your thoughts about the new updates or answer any questions you have about these changes. Contact us on Twitter or Facebook to let us know what you think!
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Problem Solved…by Prof. Stephen Heppell
As a school student (and that was a good few years ago now – think flared trousers and too much hair!) I loved mathematics. We were one of just two pilot schools for the then revolutionary School Mathematics Project. SMP focussed on things such as sets, graphs, Boolean logic, non-Cartesian co-ordinate systems, non-decimal number systems, matrices, vectors and more. It was visual, relevant (I still see the world in Venn diagrams!) and exciting. I did well, but then suddenly along came “A” levels; sadly, there was then no “A” level SMP maths, so I was plunged into a mysterious world of calculus, quadratics and algebra in general. It was like waking up in a foreign country, confused.
Years later, when the I first watched a (huge) supercomputer solving a quadratic equation I remember thinking how handy it would have been to access that kind of helpful power, day to day during my “A” levels. Sadly, that supercomputer’s cost ran into millions of pounds, and filled a room when we installed it in Westminster. Actually, it remains the most expensive and largest computer that I ever purchased.
Today however, thanks to the miracle that is captured in Moore’s Law (where Gordon Moore noted that overall processing power for computers doubled every two years or so), much more power than that huge early supercomputer is in today’s sleek phones, tablets, and laptops. As the hardware has got better, the software has got cheaper too! As a big fan of OneNote, it still amazes me that this simple tool has the power to let you type in, and then watch, as OneNote solves mathematical equations using many mathematical functions.
However, this is not about just solving those equations, it is about understanding those solutions and OneNote will helpfully step you through all the stages of a solution. You can repeat, review, vary and solve as often as you like. Repeat until understood. Brilliant!
This all matters of course, because in a world of big data and of algorithms, good mathematicians are scarce. Kids dreaming of a career as a Games designer need good maths. A career in health needs good maths, practically every senior career post, including in schools, needs good mathematics. Now, if I can just build a time machine and take wonderful OneNote back to my “A” level maths paper…
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Support Centre and App Updates
We are thrilled to finally be able to announce the exciting changes we have made to our App…
The Support Centre
The team have been working hard creating our new Support Centre.
✔ Packed with support and feature guides, how-to videos, case-studies and tips and tricks to get the most out of your App!
✔ Our Stephen Heppell feature page including blogs and articles written by the world renound Prof. Stephen Heppell
✔ We’ve moved the Support Centre from the side menu to the Global Navigation bar to make it more accessible, navigate to the Centre by clicking on the Support Centre icon!
How-To Support Videos
✔ We have created quick support videos demonstrating the main features of the App and how these can be utilised from a teacher and student perspective
✔ The videos can be accessed via the support centre or by selecting the video icon on each of the main features within the app
✔ The in-app video icons are off by default but can be toggled on from ‘Manage App Settings’ by an Admin User.
Announcements Update
✔ The Announcements tile in class/subject dashboard now allows html content to be added through a rich text editor
✔ You can format text and add in hyperlinks which will appear in the tile or the pop up window
New Pilot Programme
✔ We have decomissioned our preview App and removed this from the Microsoft Store to make way for our new pilot programme
✔ Sign up for the free pilot of LP+365 to see how the App can transform the way you use Office 365!
As always we’d love to hear from you and your thoughts about the new updates. Contact us on Twitter or Facebook to let us know what you think.
- Published in Articles, Uncategorized
Future Learning by Prof. Stephen Heppell
Back in 2014, I was asked by the then ministers for schools – Michael Gove, for universities – David Willetts and for Industry – Matthew Hancock, to look forward at technology in learning by 2025 and to offer them some policy recommendations that would enable innovation, whilst deepening and accelerating learning. They also insisted that this should all be “fun”.
With a wonderful team in our Educational Technology Action Group, we were able to fairly clearly define that world of Future Learning. Today in 2018 it is apparent just how accurate were with our predictions and it is interesting to consider the implication of these future directions today.
Firstly, we suggested that even by 2020 we would know a lot more about the little details of better learning. Taking a cue perhaps from Olympic and elite sports, it is the aggregation of those little marginal gains that build remarkable progress. In Education, this means attention to every detail from behaviour protocols to the temperature, light, CO2 and sound levels in our learning environments. For example, small mobile devices have enabled children to monitor their own noise levels. In a London school, this means an old tablet running a decibel meter app on a stand with two children watching it and successfully nagging their peers to keep volumes down. In a Sydney school, it means BYOP (Bring Your Own Plant) as children bring their own plants in to boost oxygen and minimise CO2 levels. Just as with health, as we know more about how to improve things, it is the children who take action to make their learning better. In a world of cloud data and the internet of things, they are increasingly well armed to do precisely this.
Secondly, we could see that learning was going global. With great video linking tools like Skype and some powerful real-time translation technologies doing the hard world in global activity, the challenge is now helping children to understand the difference between doing project work with other students on the same line of longitude (and with school day times that are roughly aligned) or with other students on the same line on latitude (who can carry on working whilst our student sleep). The only way to do this is through online collaboration and the opportunities for that have never been better with online platforms and tools like our own LP+365.
Finally, it was already clear in 2014 that emerging technologies are becoming ever more personal, with phones and watches offering remarkable power already and folk watching bespoke TV channels or contributing their own.
These three trends put children themselves (and indeed all learners) very much at the heart of future learning’s progress. If learning going more personal is not to become a solitary lonely world, then schools and others need to work hard at collaboration and collegiality. Doing things together matters. As the PISA tests so beloved by politicians evolve it is no surprise today to see collaborative problem-solving at the heart of the new capabilities that PIS seeks to use to rank nations.
So, future learning is already very much with us. We know more about better learning and need to apply it, learning is going global and needs strategies, whilst our learners need voice and vote in making their own learning better. This all sounds like to most exciting future for us all as of course, the pace of change is remarkable. 2025 will be here, as we promised in ETAG, by 2020!
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Learning Possibilities have been Selected to Deliver Cloud Services as part of the G-Cloud 10 Framework
The G-Cloud Framework is an agreement to tender for or to be approached for government digital delivery. The services LP provide are broken down into two categories, Cloud Software and Cloud Support.
LP are excited to continue to be listed in the G-Cloud 10 Framework to deliver their LP+365 App to the public sector. LP+365 is the latest development from LP, a learning and collaboration platform built using all the major features of Office 365 along with communication and collaboration tools built on one simple and easy to use dashboard.
With previous opportunities from G-Cloud 9, LP are excited for the continued business ventures moving forward on G-Cloud 10 to provide digital cloud services.
About Learning Possibilities
Learning Possibilities has a Global Alliance with Microsoft and is a Gold certified Partner implementing e-learning solutions with expertise in cloud computing for education and government customers. Our mission at Learning Possibilities is to enhance teaching and learning to help students achieve more. Learning Possibilities’ LP+365 App is developed in partnership with Microsoft, built on our award winning ADOPT Framework and using all major features of Office 365 the App provides the easiest learning and collaboration platform to adopt Microsoft technologies. Find out more at https://niladri.uk/website_e4e760aa/
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LP+365 Updates
We’ve made some changes to the LP+365 App…
✔ We’ve enhanced the Office 365 toolset accessible from the App menu bar to include: Forms, Videos, Stream & Sway
Support YouTube Videos
✔ We’re adding support YouTube videos to our app to ensure you’re utilising all the tools available on LP+365
✔ The videos will popup on the class dashboard and can be managed in the new admin area
The Admin Menu
✔ The new tools & features can be managed in our admin menu “Manage app settings” in “App settings”
✔ You can use the sliders to decide which tools are available to users
Additional Changes
✔ We’ve updated the Grading criteria and Student Centre icons to improve the look and feel of the app
✔ The side menu bar remains highlighted to show which class you’re working in
Connect with us on Twitter @tweetlpplus to tell us what you think of the new changes!
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Learning Possibilities & aamra announce exciting new partnership
Learning Possibilities, a Microsoft Global Alliance Partner and aamra, a pioneer in the information and communication technology industry of Bangladesh, will together deliver the LP+365 App to educational establishments throughout Bangladesh.
Learning Possibilities are thrilled to have signed a partnership with aamra, winner of the 2017 Microsoft Country Partner of the year award, to revolutionise learning for students across Bangladesh. aamra are unrivalled in their understanding of the needs of their clients providing them with technology solutions to maximise product satisfaction. aamra pride themselves on providing the appropriate technology to help organisations thrive delivering only the highest quality products and services. Learning Possibilities and aamra’s new partnership will deliver the LP+365 solution aiming to improve digital literacy, drive Office 365 usage and provide users with the toolset needed to boost communication, collaboration and creativity in the classroom.
What is LP+365?
LP+365 is the latest learning and collaboration platform by Microsoft Global Partner, Learning Possibilities. Integrated with the latest Microsoft technology on one simple but engaging dashboard the App brings LP+ technology to Office365, providing schools with all the tools they need to share resources, communicate, collaborate and manage assignments. The App encompasses technology enhanced learning complementing flexible pedagogies where teachers and students can explore flipped learning.
The App uses every major Office 365 tool and requires merely 20 minutes of initial teacher training. Improving digital literacy and driving the usage of Microsoft technologies the App enhances digital skills essential for employment. With over 15 years of experience and over 1 million users already benefitting from LP+ technology in the UK, LP are experts in driving the adoption of Office 365 in the classroom to help educators inculcate digital skills in learners through their award winning LP+ Platform.
Contact
UK
Victoria Flint
Victoria.Flint@lpplus.com
Bangladesh
Abdur Rahman Siddique
rahman.siddique@aamra.com.bd
About Learning Possibilities
Learning Possibilities are a Gold Certified Microsoft Partner implementing e-learning solutions with expertise in cloud computing for education and government customers. The Learning Possibilities’ LP+ platform built on Microsoft technologies is currently available to over 1 million users across the UK. In 2015 the company’s contract to supply the Hwb+ National learning platform (based on the award-winning LP+4 learning platform) to the Welsh Government was extended to 2018. An independent research done by Lancaster University in 2009 shows that the LP+ learning platform drives educational outcomes. Learning Possibilities has also published the LP+ Adopt e-maturity framework for schools, selected by Becta (UK Department of Education) as the National Learning Platform Adoption Model for England. See more on https://niladri.uk/website_e4e760aa
About aamra
aamra is an amalgamation of businesses which are focused towards catalysing the modernization of Bangladesh by providing technology driven solutions to their clients in various market segments. aamra’s Strategic Business Units (SBUs) serve their customers with wide range of IT and ITES solutions, i.e. Internet Solutions, International Internet Gateway (IIG), Video Surveillance, Video Conferencing, Payment & FSI Solutions, Enterprise Solutions, Cloud & IOT. aamra is unrivalled in their understanding of the needs of their clients providing them with today’s technology to maximise product satisfaction and pride themselves on providing the appropriate technology to help organisations thrive. Delivering only the highest quality products and services. https://www.aamra.com.bd/
Press Contact:
Learning Possibilities
Olivia Belchier
olivia.belchier@lpplus.com
020 8236 1033
- Published in Articles, HWB+, Uncategorized