Learning Possibilities
Learning Possibilities

Learning Possibilities

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Professor Stephen Heppell Celebrates Half a Decade of National Provision in Wales.

by OliviaB367 / Wednesday, 03 October 2018 / Published in Blog, Case Studies, HWB, Prof Stephen Heppell, Research

Our six year contract with the Welsh government has now reached its conclusion; following the three year extension after an independent review confirming its “value for money”. Time to look back, and forwards!

Our conversations with the government began in 2012 and rightly there was a complex and competitive procurement route to follow from there. Nevertheless, everyone wanted to get started as quickly as possible; a year would seem a very long wait for a five year old! Hwb+ began quickly, and grew even quicker. We launched the project with Leighton Andrews, the then Education Minister in 3 months, Andrews referred to the project as a “world-class system for those aged 3 to 19” (Source: BBC, 2012). At Learning Possibilities we are proud of the scale and impact of our work in Wales with 540,0000 active accounts and 87% of schools logging in in 2017 (Read More) and being referred to by Microsoft as “one of the largest deployments of its type” (Larry Nelson, Worldwide Managing Director).

The last decade has seen so many new technology developments: satnav on your phone, Snapchat, Instagram, üBer, 4G networking, properly smart watches, the Hadron Collider, Siri with Alexa and friends, and so much more. Our project began on a very fast moving conveyor belt of global innovation and we felt that all our design work had to be “future aware”. Even our six years with the Welsh government have proved to be a long time in technology-years. As the contract’s years passed, we added everything from Skype conferencing to big data analytics, but also pragmatic things like off-line working and many more terabytes of storage. Not everything needed to evolve; our initial certainty about the importance of user privacy might have seemed a bit obsessive at the outset, but has proved to be prescient as recent scandals about data privacy have shown. Welsh students’ data safely housed in the UK now looks very clearly the right call. What evolved in this case was others’ understanding of online danger.

Perhaps most interestingly, where Hwb+ had begun perhaps as a shared learning platform, it became the cement in a community of learners and one with a designed future-proofing, because we knew, and know, the emerging and changing needs of learners.

One key lesson from Finland’s much lauded education system is of the importance of collaboration and exchange between schools going forwards. As the OECD put it: “Children entering school in 2018…  Will need to be responsible and empowered, placing collaboration above division, and sustainability above short-term gain” (Read more here). That OECD vision of collegiality and collaboration needs more than a tool to support blogs, chats, homework and content. It needs accessible and visual data that allows the individual to model and compare their efforts, and for teams to see who has done what, for whom.

The Welsh government were prescient back in 2012 to commission the very tool that would allow their users to build national collaboration. What started as a platform finished looking very much like a conduit for community.

And now, as we move forward it is perhaps no surprise to the see the level of interest from other nations as they too seek to make their learning better and to build the sense of togetherness that is looking more and more important as a slightly unstable world moves forward.

We were hugely proud of what we did in wales, but even more excited to see what we can do for other nations as they realise the power of collaborative spaces for learners and professionals alike, on-line and face to face. One important dimension in that collaboration is the role of language and of course our Welsh project was properly bi-lingual with Welsh and English to the fore. Technology is only just starting to hint at its ability to allow collaboration across cultures, but surely nothing is more important socially? Technology might eventually bring us something akin to Douglas Adam’s Babelfish, but without evolving the habit of equitable cross cultural collaboration, such wonderful technologies will be wasted.

Six years of progress? Well yes, but for us it was also 6 years of clarity in our understanding of what learners and teachers need, worldwide. Can’t wait to see what the next 6 years bring…

Tagged under: National_Platforms

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Learning Possibilities Limited

Suite 11, Building 6, Croxley Business Park, Watford, WD18 8YH, UK Company Registration No: 6256264

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020-8236-1010

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info@lpplus.com

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Learning Possibilities, LP+ Mark and Logo are registered trademarks of Learning Possibilities Limited.
© 2020 Learning Possibilities Limited - Company Registered in England and Wales.

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Learning Possibilities Limited

Suite 11, Building 6, Croxley Business Park, Watford, WD18 8YH, UK Company Registration No: 6256264

Contact

020-8236-1010
info@lpplus.com

Social

Learning Possibilities, LP+ Mark and Logo are registered trademarks of Learning Possibilities Limited.
© 2020 Learning Possibilities Limited - Company Registered in England and Wales.

Privacy policy | EULA | Contact

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About Learning Possibilities

1. Team

Learning Possibilities has built a world class team that has over 100 years edtech experience. The team is Chaired by the Prof of Learning and Innovation – Stephen Heppell, and led by Dr Mehool Sanghrajka, who led significant education businesses at two FTSE250 companies prior to founding Learning Possibilities. Other key members include Mandeep Dhillon, formerly of Close Brothers, where he led transformation and delivery; and Vishaal Shah who has a decade of finance and investment experience.
For details see: Teams

2. Pedagogy

Our LP+ Learning and Collaboration platform was created in 2005 in partnership with Microsoft, Dell and Intel. It has pedagogy at its heart, and from the outset was designed to drive transformation and create new models of education. In 2010, Learning Possibilities published its pedagogical framework – ADOPT – which was selected as the UK’s National Learning Platform Adoption Model, by the UK Department for Education.
For details, see: The Adopt Framework

3. Innovation

The LP+365 has been at the forefront of innovation in driving online teaching and learning, and has been recognised through several awards including the prestigious BETT Award, 2 Education Investor Awards, and 2 Microsoft Global Partner of the Year Runner-Up  (Education) Awards.  We have also Microsoft’s Global Partner in Education.
For details, see: Awards

4. Scale

The LP+365 platform was designed for School Districts and Governments, and built to securely scale through both private and public clouds. The platform has been used by over 600,000 learners in Wales for over six years ( https://lpplus.com/wales-showcase/ ), where the Minister of Education called LP+ a ‘world class platform’. In developing country examples, Learning Possibilities is currently working on a 25m learner project in the Philippines. ( https://lpplus.com/philippines-showcase/ ).
For details, see: Wales Showcase

5. Impact

Learning Possibilities is a ‘social enterprise’ focused on the impact of its work. We publish details of our major studies, including Prof. Don Passey’s (Lancaster University) independent evaluation of the LP+ platform, and the Welsh Government’s report of Learning in Digital Wales.
For details, see: Research

About Learning Possibilities

About Learning Possibilities

1. Team
Learning Possibilities has built a world class team that has over 100 years edtech experience. The team is Chaired by the Prof of Learning and Innovation – Stephen Heppell, and led by Dr Mehool Sanghrajka, who led significant education businesses at two FTSE250 companies prior to founding Learning Possibilities. Other key members include Mandeep Dhillon, formerly of Close Brothers, where he led transformation and delivery; and Vishaal Shah who has a decade of finance and investment experience.
For details see: Team

2. Pedagogy
Our LP+ Learning and Collaboration platform was created in 2005 in partnership with Microsoft, Dell and Intel. It has pedagogy at its heart, and from the outset was designed to drive transformation and create new models of education. In 2010, Learning Possibilities published its pedagogical framework – ADOPT – which was selected as the UK’s National Learning Platform Adoption Model, by the UK Department for Education.
For details, see: https://lpplus.com/the-adopt-framework/ Adopt Framework

3. Innovation
The LP+365 has been at the forefront of innovation in driving online teaching and learning, and has been recognised through several awards including the prestigious BETT Award, 2 Education Investor Awards, and 2 Microsoft Global Partner of the Year Runner-Up  (Education) Awards.  We have also Microsoft’s Global Partner in Education.
For details, see: https://lpplus.com/about/awards/

4. Scale
The LP+365 platform was designed for School Districts and Governments, and built to securely scale through both private and public clouds. The platform has been used by over 600,000 learners in Wales for over six years ( https://lpplus.com/wales-showcase/ ), where the Minister of Education called LP+ a ‘world class platform’. In developing country examples, Learning Possibilities is currently working on a 25m learner project in the Philippines. ( https://lpplus.com/philippines-showcase/ ).
For details, see https://lpplus.com/wales-showcase/

5. Impact
Learning Possibilities is a ‘social enterprise’ focused on the impact of its work. We publish details of our major studies, including Prof. Don Passey’s (Lancaster University) independent evaluation of the LP+ platform, and the Welsh Government’s report of Learning in Digital Wales.
For details, see: https://lpplus.com/education/research/