In the first update this year, we are happy to offer the possibility of integrating third-party software in itslearning as well as a new data analyst tool that takes associative analytics to a whole new level. We are also introducing two new free games to the App Library.

In addition, we have improved and expanded some of our most popular features. We have updated the grade book, parent dashboard, resource booking, individual learning plans, lesson planner and much more. Read all about the updates below.

• New free educational word quiz games
• Gain new insight with the new data analyst
• Seamless third-party integrations
• Grade book facelift
• Book resources from the calendar
• More information now on the parent dashboard
• Teachers can now read individual learning plans
• Improvements to the test tool
• Early learner tests more practice-oriented
• Copy lessons from the planner to other courses
• New version of the test-mode browser
• Minor changes
• Corrections

New free educational word quiz games

In September 2012, we let all our developers loose for a couple of days and allowed them to make whatever they wanted. The best contributions – two free and educational word quiz games – are now available in our App Library:

• Hangman
• Crossword puzzle

 See how Hangman and Crossword puzzle work:

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Gain new insight with the new data analyst

Powered by QlikView, itslearning’s data analyst tool takes associative analytics to a whole new level, giving you a better view of what’s going on in your organisation. itslearning's data analyst enables administrators and school leaders to explore data, make discoveries and decisions, and solve business problems. The data will help you gain new insight, and spot similarities, differences, overlaps and outliers. Data analyst gathers all the information you need, and presents it in itslearning, so you can analyse, understand and solve the challenges.

There are two standard reports are available for all sites, as well as one that requires a licence. You can also order custom reports if you need specific information:

• Storage distribution report
• Assessment trend report
• Site statistics (add-on report that requires a licence)

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Seamless third-party integrations

We're pleased to introduce modules. Modules enable third-parties to integrate external systems, such as student administrative systems, time-scheduling software or even wiki software, directly into itslearning. You can then decide where the system is visible in itslearning and who can access it - and users can access it without needing a separate log on. Modules are about more than just accessability. The third-party vendor can modify their system to fit with itslearning's look and feel, so a user experiences a seamless transition between the systems.. Read more about modules in the help.

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Grade book facelift

The grade book has had a facelift. It now has a brand new and easy-to-use user interface, and we have made other enhancements to improve performance and user experience. This includes:

• Score-based grading
• The participants list is now easier to read and search.
• The grade book settings have been moved to the course settings page, and are also available from a tab in the grade book.
• A new ‘Average and count’ tab (if average is enabled).
• Enhanced student view.
• Improved custom assessments (previously called ‘manual assessments’).
• Improved ‘Export to Excel’ function.

Read more about the new grade book in the help or watch the video to see how it works:

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Book resources from the calendar

itslearning's resource booking allows you to create resources – such as meeting rooms, cameras, computers, smartboards, and projectors – and let other users book them in the calendar. Since we launched the resource booking feature as an open beta in 2012, we have collected feedback from users, made some improvements and are now officially releasing it.

• Made a better overview of resource availability when booking resources.
• Made it possible to view the status of bookings on the add/edit event page.

Read more about resource booking.

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More information on the parent dashboard

To give parents quick access to information about their children, we have expanded the parent dashboard with a new ‘About my child’ content block that shows a picture of the child as well as basic personal data.

We are also making it possible for you to give parents detailed information about their children's assessments, attendance and behaviour data. In addition, site administrators can now enable detailed reports on these data.

Read more about the parent dashboard.

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Teachers can now read individual learning plans

Previously, it was only possible for mentors to access individual learning plans (ILPs). Now teachers can, too. However, teachers can only asee the ILP columns that have been made visible for teachers in the ILP settings, and they cannot edit the information. The same applies for parents, who get access to any ILP columns that have been made available for them on the parent dashboard.

In addition, the ILP table will no longer reload and reset to the top when you cahnge the content of the table. And, the ‘Add’ links have been replaced by buttons.

Read more about individual learning plans.

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Improvements to the test tool

The test tool has been improved with the following changes:

Improved ‘order questions’

It is now easier to drag and drop elements in order questions without having to scroll.

When the mouse hovers over an element, a new grab handle makes it easier to drag and drop the element – especially if it contains video or other interactive elements.

Improved categories page

The test category page has been updated to make the layout more consistent with the overall itslearning user experience.

New test result page

To give you a better overview of results, we have introduced a ‘Summary’ tab. The new tab gives you an overview of all the questions along with the score, and a red, green or yellow colour to show the status of the answer.

Read more about tests.

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Early learner tests more practice-oriented

To make the early learner test tool more like practice than a test, the default settings for early learner tests are now:

• Without penalty
• Forward navigation only
• Unlimited attempts
• Show feedback on alternatives

In addition, pupils can now access the results of their previous attempts on the test start page.

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Copy lessons from the planner to other courses

In our previous update, we made it possible to activate and deactivate lessons. We have now made it easier to reuse your lessons from the planner by making it possible for you to copy all, or a selection of, your to another course. Some of you will probably want to reuse an existing plan in a new school year, and so we’ve also made it possible to clear the dates connected to a lessons.

Please note that learning objectives connected to lessons in the planner are included when copying lessons, but any resources and activities connected to the elements will not be copied.

It is also now possible to disable default columns, such as Date, Class hours or Learning objectives, from the planner settings.

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New version of the test-mode browser

The test-mode browser has been updated, and all users should install the new version. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to automatically update the browsers, so users need to do this manually. A new version of the MSI-package will be made available after the update.

Currently, itslearning does not check which version of test-mode browser is being used when people take tests to enable students to be able to take tests with the old version of the test-mode browser.

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Minor changes

• The attendance system has been updated with several usability improvements.
• The content blocks for courses and projects are now limited to the 25 first (favourite) projects and courses so that the Dashboard will load faster for users with a lot of favourites.
• Images exceeding the size space available will now be automatically resized in bulletins and rich-text content blocks.
• Supervisors (mentors and headteachers) and administrators of a student can now see who else is supervising the student. This information is displayed at the bottom of the student’s person profile pop-up.

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Corrections

A number of issues have been corrected. Read more about the most important corrections (pdf file).

We like to think that itslearning is easy to use. But any new system needs a little getting used to. So we created the itslearning Quick Start Guide to make the first couple of weeks that little bit easier.

The Quick Start Guide takes you through the six simple steps you need to follow to get started with itslearning, from logging on for the first time to setting up a course and setting your first assignment for your students. There are screenshots and simple descriptions of each step, as well as suggestions of how to go further when you are ready.

Connecting with teachers in Turkey

We think our Quick Start Guide is one of the best resources we’ve produced, and it’s already proven a hit with teachers in Turkey. itslearning Global Trainer Kat Thorne recently took a group of teachers from Gökkuşağı Koleji through a train-the-trainer session.

At the end of the training, the teachers were looking for a way to structure the training for other teachers in their school. The Quick Start Guide proved the perfect resource.

“The next step was for these teachers to go back to the school and teach the rest of the teachers how to use itslearning. Some of the teachers were worried about keeping the training simple, and when I showed them the Quick Start Guide for Teachers they were delighted. They decided to base their training around these steps.”

Start working with the Quick Start Guide today

If you’re a teacher starting with itslearning for the first time, check out the Quick Start Guide today. You can see it online here (where you can also  download a PDF version to have on your desk as you work).

The teachers at Gökkuşağı Koleji show off their itslearning training certificates.

“I would not know how to go back to teaching without it,” said Maria, who teaches English and Swedish to Grades 10 -12 at Växjö Fria gymnasium (VFG) in Sweden.

Maria has not always been such a big fan of online learning. When VFG implemented itslearning in 2003, some time passed before she and her colleagues started using it in their teaching.

“It was a process,” Maria explains. “At first, I didn’t use it as much. I used the notice board feature and used it to email my students. As we got into it we started to use it more.

“I was not much of a computer person before I started using it. But itslearning is very user friendly. I learned quite easily how to use it to improve my teaching.”

itslearning optimal tool for language courses

Today, itslearning is used by all 30 VFG teachers. Maria says itslearning optimizes the learning experience for her students. The learning platform gives her students easy access to spelling and grammar tools and online dictionaries. Maria even got rid of textbooks, opting instead for online resources that allowed her to tailor in-class discussions around current events.

“It’s much better,” says Maria, who has been teaching since 1998. “Teaching with itslearning is more convenient. Plus, everyone gets the same information.”

Maria uses itslearning to email students, post PowerPoint presentations, arrange online discussions and set assignments. She also scans texts and provides links to articles on itslearning.

“I put the articles and texts in the course, and I make different files for different courses. My students hand in all their work on itslearning at the moment,” Maria says.

itslearning also takes over small organizational tasks, making Maria’s day easier. If she needs to change a classroom, she can notify students by posting on the notice board or emailing.

Always logged on

With itslearning, she often does not need a substitute teacher when she is sick. She posts assignments and instructions for students on itslearning, and asks a colleague to check on her students periodically to make sure they are studying.

“I’m using it in my everyday teaching all the time. It’s the first webpage I open on my computer in the morning. And when I’m sitting at my desk, I’m always logged onto itslearning. I find itslearning very useful.”

Maria’s typical day with itslearning:

• First thing in the morning, she opens itslearning to read news from the principal or to find out if colleagues are ill
• She then checks email from students and parents
• Before class, she uploads presentations on itslearning. This allows students to prepare for class beforehand
• During class time, she shows students on a projector how to find resources on itslearning (for example links to articles)
• After class, she opens the itslearning attendance keeping system and registers students who missed class
• She creates assignments (usually essays and other writing assignments) and uploads them onto a course two weeks before the due date
• All Maria’s assessment and marking is completed on itslearning.

This September itslearning will be launched at Newton Public Schools. The school district´s IT department, led by Leo Brahm, is currently busy training teachers and uploading teacher materials to the platform in advance of the fall semester. In this article, Leo talks about why itslearning was the right choice for Newton, his expectations for the platform and how one aspect of itslearning will open up a world of possibilities – literally.

Newton Public Schools, a school district in Massachusetts, USA, has big plans for itslearning. The platform will be rolled out in the school district this September, but a lot of work remains before the launch. Teachers have to be trained, course dashboards created and learning materials uploaded.

The district recently finished training a group of 35 teachers in the platform. In total, between 1,600 and 1,800 district teachers will use the platform, says Leo Brehm, director of information technology and library media at Newton Public Schools. “We have teachers ready to roll out the platform to students,” he says. “We are trying to make the experience for the end user as smooth as possible.”

500% projected growth in user adoption

The district has ambitious targets for itslearning user adoption. Leo expects 1,000 students to log on to itslearning this fall at least two to three times a week. At the end of the year, he expects that number to grow to 3,000. By September 2013, a year after the launch, he expects 500 per cent growth in user adoption compared to September 2012.

Leo and his team are now busy populating the different courses with learning materials. Leo says he sees great potential in making learning resources available on itslearning. Digitizing teacher resources completely revolutionises the traditional way teachers organise their materials, he says. In the past, teachers collected resources in binders.

“These binders were updated three or four times in a five-year period,” Leo explains. “We want to change that so that the renewal process happens more often. The process of reinventing and sharing curriculum will now be captured through itslearning. We hope it will be more organic.”

itslearning creates 'shift in learning' at Newton

Leo counts itslearning´s organization and management capabilities as significant benefits to teachers. itslearning will allow teachers to spend more one-on-one time with their students, because it will free up time teachers otherwise spend on organising their materials.

“This ability to gather this information in one spot will help us build the learning experience,” says Leo. “It will allow the teachers to be coaches or mentors. That´s really a shift in learning. We believe the itslearning learning platform will help teachers becoming the coach and mentor they need to be.”

Leo says teachers are impressed with itslearning.

“So far the comments from teachers have been excellent. They found the system to be very intuitive,” he says. “They are very excited about the opportunity to have their materials and collaboration in one spot. They have been waiting for something like this.”

Leo says he is impressed with a number of itslearning features. In particular, the e-portfolio, individual learning plans, and dashboard interface stood out for him. “I think those are going to bring a lot of success,” he said.

itslearning offers global partnerships

But he is most excited about the potential for global cooperation within itslearning. The itslearning network spans the globe, with users in schools from Holland to Mexico and Norway to USA. Though geography and nationality separate them, the users have itslearning in common.

“itslearning is a global education community,” Leo says. “It connects learning communities from around the world, and allows you to build interpersonal relationships and share curriculum.

“With itslearning, I think we can build relationships that can facilitate advancement in learning that has not been seen in the past, something that goes beyond the boundaries of language and culture.”

'An outstanding opportunity for change'

Over time as Newton teachers become more familiar with itslearning Leo anticipates they will start capitalizing on its full potential. They can graduate on to using Google docs in the platform, the grade book and assessment tools. Eventually, Leo says, maybe even parents can start using itslearning with the parent portal.

“This community is very much ready for something like this,” Leo says. “itslearning represents an outstanding opportunity for change within education in the district.”

Experience shows that daily postings with small assignments inspire students to log in daily to see what’s new. You can use news bulletins to post daily assignments or quizzes, use pages to create a story with a new chapter each day or create a course where a folder filled with fun is made available daily. Another option is giving away one letter each day that students use to create a word and submit the answer in a test. The winner is drawn from the students who answered correctly. Your only limit is your imagination.

One way to create a countdown calendar:

1. Create a course for the countdown calendar and make it available to all students at a school or a class.
2. Create a link to the calendar on the school or course dashboard. This makes it easy for the students to access it.
3. Post the questions, stories or assignments in daily news bulletins.

Tip: itslearning allows you to prepare content in advance, and the system automatically publishes it for the students at a predefined date and time.

Prizes increase interest

Small prizes are guaranteed to increase interest. Some draw the prizes from the users who have logged on to the countdown calendar that day, or from students who have answered a question correctly. Some schools even have reversed calendars where the students win a job and the pay is donated to charity.

Note: Though advent calendars are religious in origin, they should be secular when used in a school context to avoid offending people of different religious groups.

A native of Russia, Larisa holds a Master’s Degree in Economics and Mathematics from Perm State University, in Russia, and works as a test engineer. Mikael earned his Master’s Degree in software engineering from the Swinburne University of Technology, in Melbourne, Australia. Born to Swedish parents, he has lived in Bergen, Norway for most of his life.

Make and break

itslearning’s engineering department
has 24 developers and 12 testers from eight different countries. Larisa and Mikael work at the itslearning headquarters in Bergen, Norway, but the team members are spread across itslearning’s offices in the UK, the Netherlands and Russia. The developers are organised into five teams of five developers and two testers – each responsible for a specific part of itslearning. They have daily meetings and use Skype as a means of communication. While Mikael is responsible for writing the code that eventually becomes itslearning, Larisa plays the devil’s advocate and does her best to break and find errors in everything Mikael produces.

“A good day is a day when I don’t see Larisa, because that means I haven’t done anything wrong,” Mikael says with a smile.

The developers are the assembly line of itslearning. Think of them as carpenters who receive drawings from an architect to build a house. They receive specifications from a group of designers who create new functionality and features based on ideas from users, national guidelines and education trends. After receiving the design, the developers start making the features that are then tested by the testers. When finished, the new functionality is handed over to the operations engineers who ensure the features are updated for the users, as well ensuring itslearning runs smoothly 24 hours a day.

Constant focus on quality

Features are never released to the users without first undergoing rigorous testing. Assuming the role of teachers and students, Larisa tries her best to find errors in itslearning. Every possible scenario is tested and nothing is considered finished before being accepted.

“Although I do my best during testing and I know it’s impossible to find all errors, I feel slightly guilty if a bug escapes out to the users,” Larisa says.

Mikael is quick to admit that both engineers and testers are responsible for the quality of the finished product. However, even if the test results are good, poor coding can cause future problems.

Feels the responsibility

As well as developing and searching for technical errors, both testers and developers approach the designers with ideas for improving the functional areas of itslearning – such as menus or buttons that work well, but could work better if designed differently.

itslearning currently has about two million active users, and last month close to 10 per cent of the Norwegian population logged on to itslearning. But do the developers keep the huge amount of users in mind when developing?

“To a certain degree we do, but such an immense number is difficult to grasp,” Mikael says. “You can get nervous by thinking that one mistake will affect all those people, but at the same time it keeps you on the lookout.”

New early learner test tool

The test tool is now available in the early learner interface. Based on the test tool in the standard version, the early learner test tool has ten question types and a user interface that makes it easy for the junior learners to take test and receive automatic feedback. Take a look at the video to see how it works.

The results are presented with as little details as possible, but still with a clear focus on the two most important aspects – score and result. It is presented in a fun way - giving the pupil drawings and animation to emphasis the result. The star gives the user a visual to the result, that they might not are able to understand. Correct or partly correct answers give them a golden star, empty star means not correct. Read more about the early learner test tool.

Learning objective make over

In this update, the way learning objectives are presented in a new and improved way. When hovering over a learning objective, the description will be shown in a tool tip.

If an element with a learning objective connected to it is moved to another course, it automatically imports the learning objective to the new course. We’ve also made it easier to remove linked learning objectives.

Read more about learning objectives in the help.

Print your registrations

Since its introduction in April, the registration tool has proved popular, but many have asked for a way to print the registrations. A simple click of the mouse now opens a print friendly CSV file with all the registrations. Although the button says View in Excel, the file can be viewed in any other application that can open CSV files.

We’ve also made it possible for participants to edit their choices after they have registered.

Read more about the registrations in the help.

More compact planner

This time we’ve improved the presentation of the table view of the planner. You will now notice a more compact view of the planner, with less white space.

Previously, media objects did not show in the table view of the planner, but now a placeholder is shown that indicate for the learner that the lesson contains multimedia – such as pictures, sound, video or flash. Did you know that it was possible to drag and drop lessons, activities and resources to rearrange them?

Have you accidently deleted a planner lesson? A new trash can tab has been added to the course trash can as a last chance saloon for deleted elements. Deleted elements can either be restored or permanently deleted.

Read more about the planner in the help.

Calendar and lessons

It’s now possible to add lesson from a timetable. When lessons are added to the calendar, you can now use these lessons to set the deadline of an assignment. Not only can the deadline be set with the date picker highlighting the lessons for that course, this deadline is also automatically updated if this lesson is, for example, moved to another day.

Read more about the possibilities of itslearning and iOS 6.

Upload Camera Roll Contents from iOS 6 Devices
iOS 6 devices can now upload content directly from the Camera Roll (the access to the camera’s gallery of images) from the Safari web browser. Read more in the itslearning and iOS 6 article.

Rich text editing
Our iOS users have experienced some problems when using the rich text editor. We have now redesigned elements that include the rich text editor so that mobile devices will open the editor in a pop-up window, reducing the issues setting focus on the text field.

With this change, the rich text editor becomes available on iOS devices across the entire platform, with the exception of Notes, Surveys, Tests (creating and editing tests) and Dashboard content blocks.

Hyvää Suomi! Türkiye Merhaba! Hola México!

We are happy to introduce two new languages in itslearning. Users can now enjoy Finnish and Turkish user interface language and help. In addition, a new setting for Mexican standards and formats has been added to My settings >> Customise itslearning.

Release webinar

Do you want more in-depth information about the new update? Watch the release webinar

Corrections

A number of issues have been corrected. Read more about the most important corrections (pdf, English only).

The iOS 6 update, which is now available for download, allows itslearning users to upload media directly from mobile devices such as the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone, which was not previously possible.

Direct uploading to itslearning

Apple´s new operating system improves the user experience in itslearning as it makes uploading material to itslearning much easier, says itslearning Market Researcher Morten Fahlvik.

“The user experience is improved a lot. The user will definitely feel that itslearning is better because of new opportunities offered in iOS 6,” Morten says.

In the previous system, moving material from an iOS device involved several steps. Images and videos stored on the Camera Roll had to be moved from a mobile device such as an iPad onto a computer and then onto itslearning. With iOS 6, users can upload directly to itslearning instead.

With iOS 6, users can select images or videos directly from the Camera Roll while working in itslearning. Materials can be uploaded into content blocks and attached to assignments and messages.

Morten says this is good news for itslearning users.

“The improvement for itslearning users is that the Safari browser can access the Camera Roll so that videos and photos can be accessed and uploaded to itslearning,” Morten explains.

“In iOS version 5 and older, we would have to build a native iOS app in order to access the Camera Roll to be able to upload videos and images. This is what Facebook has done. So what Apple has done with iOS 6 is to enhance the Safari App to be able to access the Camera Roll, which is great for itslearning users.”

Screen shots way of sharing work

The process of importing images and video to the Camera Roll remains the same in iOS 6. Apps like the camera or other photo apps export images to the Camera Roll. Users can also take screen shots in apps that cannot export to the Camera Roll by pressing the Hold and Home button simultaneously.

Morten provides a practical example. A student is working with Pages on an iPad and wants some feedback on the page layout. The student takes a screen shot of the page and uploads it from the Camera Roll as an attachment to an assignment or message. The teacher reviews the screen shot and replies with feedback.

Morten encourages all itslearning users to update their Apple mobile device with iOS 6. For more information about updates to Safari in iOS 6, visit http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/#safari.

"The examples in this article demonstrate how the changes in iOS benefit the itslearning users. In addition, future itslearning updates will further improve the user experience for users with iOS devices," Morten says.

In-class scenarios highlight benefits of iOS 6

Here are two practical in-class scenarios where iOS 6 will benefit itslearning users who use Apple mobile devices.

The following video demonstrates how to upload video in iOS 6:

Blended learning can be defined as the mixing of face-to-face teaching and online learning. Students have some choice over where they study (at school, at home or somewhere in between) and when they study (during school hours, in the evening or at weekends). But it is still the teacher who decides the extent of the choice, as well as which elements of the student’s education are completed online and which elements are completed in the class.

With the rise of learning platforms, teachers and students have access to a shared online learning environment that only they can access. This enables the teacher to set up and manage online activities where students can chat, share knowledge, ask questions, access learning resources and complete work online – without the fear of random internet users stumbling across the information.

We have put together a whitepaper that looks at the different models of blended learning, showing examples of how schools are using it to increase student attainment and achievement. It also includes a number of simple techniques using your school's learning platform that you can start with tomorrow.

Downloaded it here: Blended learning and learning platforms: How you can start blended learning tomorrow.

(This version is in English, but translations to Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, French and German will follow soon.)

>> Take a look at the video to see how it works.

Making it easy and inspiring

The results are presented with as little details as possible, but still with a clear focus on the two most important aspects: score and achievement. The questions are presented in a fun and engaging way – and drawings and animations inspire the kids to take the tests again and again. No reading skills are required to take tests as the icons and illustrations will guide the learners through a path from start to end.

You set up the test and create questions. If your learners cannot read yet, you can use images, sound or video to create the questions. If you’ve been using the standard test tool it’s practically the same procedure. You can even use the same test for early learners and learners that use the standard interface – the tools are the same, but the interface is slightly different.

With the recent releases of apps, pages and registrations for the early learner interface, our early learners can now enjoy a much richer environment.

How do I get started with tests for early learners?

1. In order to use the new test tool you have to enable the early learner interface. This is a free module, but it requires a system administrator to enable it. Read how to do it in the help.
2. Create an early learner course (see Adding early learner courses in the help).
3. For teachers, early learner courses look similar to normal courses. Click Add and then Add test to start creating a test. If you need assistance, the help will guide you through the setup.
4. To take the test in the early learner interface you must be associated with a specific profile in itslearning called 'Early learner'. See the help under Early learner profiles to find out how to set it up.

By Elisabeth Engum

(This article was originally published in Norwegian magazine Bedre skole No. 2 2012).

Elisabeth Engum
was one of three winners in the Creative use of a learning platform at the 2011 category at the Share & Use Conference in Sandvika, Norway. She was nominated because of her work with the flipped classroom and itslearning. You can find Elisabeth as @PGelisa on Twitter – and see her videos on her YouTube channel.
“I understand everything when you explain it on the blackboard, teacher, but when I have to work on the assignments at home, then I don’t understand what I have to do!” This is not an isolated expression, but completely normal feedback from my mathematics students through the years. As teachers, we start the learning process in the classroom, but we are rarely nearby when the students are working with more difficult assignments, as the students are at home.

There has been a lot of talk about the flipped classroom the past two years. And, as with all new methods, the flipped classroom has been exposed to myths, misunderstandings and scepticism. In this article, I will attempt to shed light on what the flipped classroom is, what it is not and why it can be a useful way to go.

What the flipped classroom is

In short, teaching that, traditionally, has taken place in the classroom on the blackboard is moved home to the students, while homework is moved to the school. In practice, this means, for my part, that I video record theoretical lessons – which the students are given as homework to watch at home – while we at school get more time in the classroom to work with assignments and, not least, that the students can receive guidance from me as a teacher.

Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams

The term the flipped classroom comes from chemistry teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, who are colleagues at Woodland Park High School in Colorado, USA. In spring 2007, they came across an article about software that made it possible to record a PowerPoint slideshow, together with sound and notations, as video clips that could easily be distributed online. This gave them the idea to video record lessons directly from the classroom and post them online to the students afterwards. Keep in mind that YouTube was launched in 2005, such that online videos were just about to ‘take off’ in 2007. The idea behind this was that the students who, for different reasons, could not attend the lesson (school sports, illness etc.) could keep up by watching the videos at home. The feedback from students was overwhelming – from students who had been absent from periods, but also from those who had attended class. The videos became a good learning resource for them when they were reviewing for tests and exams. Based on the good feedback from the students, Jon and Aaron got the idea to ‘flip the classroom’ and, in the school year 2007/2008, they launched a model where the students had more time freed up in the classroom for more interaction between student and teacher.

Over time, Jon and Aaron received a lot of attention from others – both schools in their own county, but also from other US states and countries and, over the course of 2010, the ‘Flipped Classroom’ became a new buzzword in education-technology trends. I personally came across articles and blog entries about the Flipped Classroom in the winter of 2010/2011, through Roger Markussen and Bjørn Olav Thue at Møglestu secondary school in Lillesand, among others. In March 2011, I initiated a test project where I flipped the classroom in a topic in the subject Mathematics R1. The result was very pleased students.

Khan Academy and the flipped classroom

At the same time Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann started recording their lessons on video, Salman Khan launched his Khan Academy, with the goal of creating high-quality lessons for everyone regardless of where they are. Salman Khan got this idea after helping his cousin with her studies. He posted the instruction videos he made for this purpose publically on YouTube, where they became very popular and, thus, formed the foundation for the resource bank we can find on Khan Academy today.

Many people draw similarities between the Flipped Classroom and Khan Academy and believe they are two sides of the same coin. The similarity is online teaching videos that students can watch where and when they want. But the similarities stop here. The videos are the backbone of Khan Academy, while the classroom activities are the backbone of the flipped classroom. The video resources that are available at Khan Academy can be used as teaching resources for everyone, including for the flipped classroom. The most important element of the flipped classroom is that it is a method for freeing up time in the classroom in order to increase interaction between teacher and student.

Adapted education

The Norwegian Education Act paragraph 1–3 states that education must be adapted to the individual student. In the traditional classroom, almost 50% of teaching time is used on the teacher-managed part of the teaching or blackboard teaching. Everyone who has taught or lectured knows that it is difficult to reach everyone at their level in plenary teaching, which means that only half the time is left for individual guidance or group guidance. By moving plenary teaching out of the classroom, one gets much more time in the classroom to guide all of the students – either individually or in smaller groups – and, in this way, it is possible, to a greater extent, to provide adapted education.

Assessment for learning

Pursuant to the regulation in the Norwegian Education Act paragraph 1–3, the “student…shall actively participate in the assessment of their own work, competence and own academic development.” Self-assessment is also built in in the work with ‘Assessment for learning’, the four-year national effort (2010–2014) under the auspices of the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. Self-assessment is very often carried out where the students assesses the work they have submitted, often work that the teacher will also assess (self-assessment is a final product). As regard self-assessment of academic development, this can be carried out by students writing a log or completing a self-assessment at the end of the lesson and that the teacher reviews these for the next lesson. Very many teachers who have started with the flipped classroom allow their students to fill out a digital self-assessment form connected to the video lesson they watched at home. When they tell the teacher what they learned from the video and what they need help to understand further, the teacher can approach these students directly and guide them at precisely the level where they need help. There is thus a short time from when the student assesses where they are in their learning process to when they receive guidance from the teacher to move forward. If the self-assessment carried out by students is not used in the learning process, this cannot be called assessment for learning.

The teacher role and the flipped classroom

A number of teachers have approached me and said that they fear the flipped classroom will lead, in the long term, to less of a need for teachers in schools, since the lessons are already posted as videos and that the teachers’ role disappears. In reality, the opposite happens. In the flipped classroom, a lot of time is freed up where the teacher, to a larger extent, goes around and guides the students where they are in their learning process. In many ways, the flipped classroom can represent a paradigm shift in teaching.

In the traditional classroom, the teacher often uses time on basic knowledge in the subject. The larger assignments where students have to use several aspects of the competence are often assigned as homework. This means that the teacher is present when the students work at a lower cognitive level, while the students are sitting alone or together with fellow students when they are working with assignments at a higher cognitive level. In the flipped classroom, the students are served basic knowledge via videos at home – at a lower cognitive level – while they are at school when they work at a higher cognitive level, and the teacher can guide every single student where they are. Some will inevitably ask: ‘What about the students who never reach a high cognitive level in the subject/topic?’ There is a simple answer – all students receive guidance by the teacher at their level.

Learning strategies

Some students clearly have very clear understandings about how they learn best: ‘I learn best by reading the book myself’; ‘I learn best by working with more practical assignments’; ‘I learn best by cooperating and talking with other students about the problems’: ‘I learn best when the teacher explains for me’. In accordance with the Norwegian Education Regulations we as teachers shall help the students to develop their own learning strategies, but where the students must develop different strategies for the different subjects and the different teachers and learning approaches they are met with. In the flipped classroom there is greater room for the students to further develop several types of learning strategies in the same classroom. Students who work best on their own can do this, and those who learn best by collaborating can do this. Sometimes, the work form itself is the learning goal and, in this case, there is room for this, nevertheless, to be managed by a teacher.

Instruction videos = the solution for everything?

Today, it is not the case that instruction videos are the solution to all teaching challenges. Poor teaching does not get better if it is recorded on video. On the other hand, all parts of the lesson that are characterised by direct instruction can function just as well on video as if the teacher goes through it on the blackboard. In scientific subjects, it is often easier to find good examples of direct instruction, but there are also several elements of this in other disciplines: teaching grammar rules, introduction to social science models, epochs or ideologies, learning terminology, training in using sources, technique training in practical subjects etc. The instruction videos will, in most cases, be examples of direct instruction and, in this way, you can say that this is almost like a behavioural learning approach. When the students, in connection to these videos, express what they have understood and what they need further help with, we are approaching Von Glasersfeld’s constructivism, where we can work further with the aspects that the students have not understood for further learning. In addition, we have the time in the classroom that can be filled with guidance and cooperation between students, where the socio-cultural perspectives on teaching enter the picture. The flipped classroom thus functions as a synthesis of the dominating learning approaches over the past 60 years.

Technology or pedagogy as a driving force?

When Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams started making teaching videos, it was because the technology allowed them to do so. But it was pedagogical reasons behind their choice to flip the classroom with help from these videos. The technology makes it possible to support a teaching approach that says that the most important component for teaching for the students is interaction between teacher and student, which is supported in John Hattie’s meta-analysis (2009). The technology frees up time in the classroom for this purpose. The technology also has other advantages; the students can play the videos over again several times, they can press pause, rewind or fast-forward, which they cannot do with a teacher in the classroom.

They used the platform to post student documents or to arrange a few online exams. It had not been updated for five years because updating was costly and time consuming. Liceo de Monterrey principal Fransisco Guzman was not impressed.

“We were using it as a repository,” he says. “We realised that a new learning platform could add real value to our teachers and students, so we went looking for a replacement.”

‘itslearning is easy to use, simple and intuitive’

In June, after attending an itslearning launch in Monterrey, Mexico, he chose itslearning as the school’s new learning platform. “We loved the platform when we saw it the first time. The first impression was that it is a good product,” Fransisco says.

“It is easy to use, simple and intuitive, and it enables collaboration in a very smooth way. We saw the platform as a support for the teaching and learning process, not as a substitute for interaction between teachers and students.”

A simple way to share resources among teachers

Fransisco and his teachers identified a problem at his school. His teachers were creating valuable resources but they had no way of sharing them.

“We were struggling to control the process of planning all of our classes. It was a mess, we had no control over it,” he explains. “There was no way of sharing and taking advantage of all of the great material that teachers produced, so our teachers were working in isolation. itslearning should change that.”

At the itslearning demo, Fransisco and a group of teachers were introduced to My Library, a feature in itslearning that allows teachers to share their resources.

“When I saw that, it was clear to me that we needed to do this fast,” Fransisco says. “We realised this tool will help us to standardize the planning process. It enables teachers to share their materials with each other, and enables collaboration between teachers at the school and even at other schools.”

Teachers central in decision-making process

Fransisco says consulting with his teachers to hear what they thought of the platform was a crucial element in the decision to sign with itslearning. He attended three itslearning demo sessions with five of his teachers.
“Their impressions were very positive,” he says. “We took them into account because they are the ones who are actually using the tool.”

The teachers liked that they were able to make multimedia teaching resources available to students and each other via the itslearning platform. This allows them to give their students access to online materials without them having access to inappropriate websites.

“It’s a closed environment. We take control of what students do on the web,” Fransisco says. “You can put them inside the platform, and they don’t need to go anywhere else on the web to get the information they need. That was a very important feature for us.”

Implementing itslearning takes only two months

Liceo de Monterrey plans to start using itslearning for all its secondary courses in August, which means getting the platform fully implemented just two-and-half months after seeing it for the first time.

Liceo de Monterrey, a boys-only private school in Monterrey, has 1,000 students, 70 per cent of which are in Years 1-9 with the remaining students in Years 10-12. In June, Liceo de Monterrey´s sister school, a girls-only private school, also signed a two-year contract with itslearning.

Things move quickly at Flint High School.

About Flint High School
The school, which is located in Flint, Wales, has 750 students in years 7 to 13. It has four feeder primary schools. Flint High School offers the Welsh Baccalaureate, a recently introduced pre-university qualification in Wales. Flint signed a one-year contract with itslearning in June 2012. The school plans to implement itslearning school-wide by September, just four months after activating the platform, says Russ Davies, the school’s curriculum coordinator of design and technology.

“The process is really moving fast,” says Russ, who is also a teacher at the school in Flint, Wales. “The learning platform looks brilliant, very clear. It should be very useful.”

Flint became the first school in Wales to use itslearning when it signed a one-year contract in June.

Head Teacher impressed with platform

The school started considering the platform when Head Teacher Pamela McClean saw a former student using it in January. McClean was impressed with what she saw. Her school needed a new platform because their open-source platform was underwhelming.

“A lot of people thought the old platform was too complex, and too awkward for simple tasks,” says Russ about the school’s experience with the former platform. “A big bulk of our students was frustrated with it.”

Things went quickly after the school chose itslearning. An itslearning trainer visited Flint High School in June, followed by activation and implementation.

The school recently filled out its hierarchy structure in itslearning, which adds students into the platform by grouping them into years and courses. Russ has also created dashboards for some courses and teachers are now posting course-related news and learning resources.

Russ says Flint teachers are impressed with itslearning.

“The feedback has been really positive,” he says. “The teachers like the look of it and they like the idea of the dashboard. The enthusiasm to take it forward is definitely there.”

Students love the personal learning space

Eager to see how students respond to itslearning, Russ ran an itslearning pilot project with his food technology students. His students, who 15 and 16 year-olds in Years 10 and 11, had a few questions about the platform, but they did not run into any obstacles.

“The students were not hitting those hurdles, they were just ploughing through,” Russ says. “They loved to get their own personal area on the learning platform. Everything was a lot more clear and graphical. They loved the colours. They are ready to get stuck into it.”

Students reported that they appreciated being able to add comments when uploading an assignment. This allows them to update their teacher on their progress in real-time. They also liked being able to upload numerous files into one place.

“They really seemed to like the interface – that it was colourful and clean,” Russ says. “They certainly welcomed the chance to move on to something new and different. itslearning will just make the whole process a little bit easier and a little bit more fun.”

Flint teachers already populating courses with content

Hylton Cornish, an itslearning education and training consultant who led the staff training sessions at Flint, says flint teachers are eager to learn how to use the platform.

“By the end of my first training session, all staff had made personal courses and were already creating digital teaching content to use with their students,” Hylton says.

Another teacher told Hylton she went home and created content for her course late into the night after the first day of training.

“The staff were really enthusiastic and positive,” says Hylton. “Hopefully, this is the start of a very long lasting working relationship between Flint and itslearning. We hope this will be the first school of many in Wales.”

All coursework on itslearning

Russ plans to make all of his coursework available online in time for school start in September. He will then use the platform for submitting assignments and facilitating group discussions.

He also plans to use itslearning’s audio recording function when giving feedback on student assignments. With just a few easy clicks, he can embed audio or video recordings when communicating with students. “A lot of feedback and assessment will take place out of class time,” Russ says.

Platform will cut school costs and facilitate student planning, teacher says

itslearning enables teachers to present and organise information digitally, but Russ also views the learning platform as a tool for students to set and achieve goals.

The teachers plan to make good use of itslearning’s individual learning plan (ILP), a simple tool that gives teachers an overview of each student’s learning.

Students can add comments to the ILP to show how they are progressing towards their goals, and teachers and parents can add information, tips and encouragement to help them stay on track.

Russ anticipates that the platform will also help the school cut costs, because making student and teacher resources digital will reduce the need for photocopying.

Janniche says making a good overview in the course is one of the keys to creating a good experience for students. Remove unnecessary content, decoration and navigation. Ask yourself what you want to achieve with the course and whether you are supporting the student's most basic tasks.

Less decoration and more relevance

"Teachers want to achieve different things with a course," Janniche says. "Some want their students to finish tests and assignments while others want to publish weekly lesson plans or use the course to give an overview of homework."

Supporting the students' most basic tasks is also important. A survey of Norwegian Grade 9 students reveals that they want access to homework and information about relevant subjects, as well as timetables and pictures.

"Feel free to use images in your courses, but make sure they are relevant and not merely decoration," Janniche says.

Many teachers rely heavily on the tree structure, but Janniche says moving some of the information from the tree menu to the dashboard can significantly improve a course.

Use My web files
Upload files to ‘My web files' instead of using the file tool in the tree menu. ‘My web files' can be used across courses and even outside itslearning. Use the Link tool if you want to add files to the tree menu. When clicked the links will open directly in itslearning.

"Try hiding the left-hand menu and see whether the students have everything they need without it. The menu should, of course, not be hidden for the students, but navigation is easier if they can find what they need on the dashboard."

Start with the dashboard

A user-friendly course should have a clearly laid out dashboard. Janniche encourages teachers to remove content blocks that are empty, unused or that contain old content.

"Remove resources that are relevant for the whole year from the dashboard. Instead, put them in notes or pages, and link to them from the dashboard. Say you are using a photo album. You can have several photo albums on one page, and when adding new pictures you can link to the page in a bulletin on the dashboard. Remove the bulletin after a while," Janniche says.

Another useful tip is to use different colours for the content blocks to group regular items such as messages and polls. Teach your students that yellow content blocks are bulletins and red blocks are polls.

The most advanced itslearning users use the planner. A planner content block is an important element on the dashboard. Another important element is the ‘Latest changes' content block that gives students an indication of what's happening in the course.

But what should be included on the dashboard, and what should be available in the tree structure in the left-hand menu? Janniche says tests, assignments and other learning tools should go into the tree menu. But the structure has to be relevant, easy to navigate and make content available in a simple way. Read more about organising the tree menu in the itslearning-help.

Assessment record

• When hovering cells in the assessment record teachers can no longer see the basis for assessment comment. It’s still possible to see it in the Excel export, external export and single student view.
• For better consistency and performance, the ‘Not submitted’ and ‘In progress’ statuses have been replaced with ‘Not taken’ in the teacher view.
• In the student view, the basis of assessment for a test now says ‘0 of {max points} score’ instead of ‘0 of 0 points’ when the test contains questions that requires manual assessment by the teacher.
• When enabled, the Excel export now shows the per cent range the assessment falls within.
• In the teacher view, if a student has no permission to an element, it will say ‘-’ instead of ‘Not assessed’.
• In the teacher's view of the assessment record, if a teacher deletes an element connected to the assessment record, and later restores it from trash can, it will show up with the same weight it had before it was removed.
• Editing elements with terms is now similar to editing elements with periods.

Login page

• The school drop-down list on the login page is now sorted based on the language chosen by the user in the language drop-down. If user doesn't have a cookie and hasn't chosen a language actively, the default sorting will be English.

As well as updating itslearning with a number of ‘invisible quality enhancements, we corrected several issues. Read more about the most important corrections (pdf, English only).

Integrating the planner and calendar

Terminology change in calendar
To make terminology more consistent, 'activities' in the calendar have been renamed to 'events'.

Course lessons in the calendar
Many teachers have requested a tighter integration between the calendar and planner, and in this update we are happy to present a solution that makes planner lessons visible in the calendar.

It is now possible to define calendar events as 'Lessons'. When calendar events and planner lessons are connected, the planner content can be accessed from the calendar.

Here's how you do it:

1. Add a calendar event in a course and make sure to tick the box Make this event a lesson on the timetable.
2. Go to the planner and click the lesson to which you want to connect the calendar event.
3. Under Time, select Lesson and click on the calendar icon.
4. Select one of the pre-defined dates (you cannot select dates without events).
5. The lesson now appears in the calendar, and you can click it to view the content.

In upcoming releases we plan to make the lessons available in other places as well – for example as assignment deadlines.

Please note that this feature will be enabled for all sites shortly after the release.

Calendar event descriptions
When adding events in the calendar it's no longer mandatory to enter descriptions.

Add apps to your early learner interface courses

Teachers using the early learner interface can now add apps from the app library. It's also possible to add Pages and Registrations.

Planner content block

Based on feedback after the previous release, we made some changes to the planner content block. The option 'next two weeks' is added to the filter and the option to view all lessons is offered as a separate link.

Hide the unsupported browser message

If you have an outdated browser, you'll get a warning advising you to upgrade. This message can now be hidden, but it will appear again the next time you log in.

'Projects' are now 'communities' for U.S. English users

To make the terminology more appropriate for the Americas, 'project' has been renamed to 'community' for users that have U.S. English as user-interface language.

Corrections

A number of issues have been corrected. Read more about the most important corrections (pdf, English only).

A hot topic in education, blended learning is gaining more and more attention from teachers. As schools adopt learning platforms, teachers want to know how to use them efficiently, and are turning to blended learning approaches for the answer. In this article, itslearning researcher Morten Fahlvik explains blended learning, its benefits and applications. In the end, he says, blended learning is a tool for every teacher.

It’s 7 p.m. and eight-year-old Thomas is about to go to school – virtual school.

He presses play and his math teacher starts explaining arithmetic. He takes notes as the video plays. He has entered a blended learning environment. After watching the video, which only lasts a few short minutes, Thomas takes a quick test to gauge how well he understood the maths.

The next day before class, Thomas’ teacher reviews the tests to see if her students understood the concepts in the video. She sees they are struggling with division and makes a few quick adjustments to her lesson plan in order to spend more time on division.

This process, the combination of the physical and virtual classroom, is a classic example of blended learning, says itslearning education researcher and former teacher Morten Fahlvik.

“Blended learning is performing or conducting your teaching in a combined classroom – the combination of the physical classroom and the virtual classroom. You use the traditional space and then you add something to it,” Morten says.

“Most teachers look at the two elements of blended learning – the physical and virtual classroom – as two separate things. But the value is in the combination, the combined classroom.”

Many benefits

For Morten, blended learning is about time management, but it’s also a tool for getting to know your students better. It allows teachers to decide when and where to teach the curriculum. In short, blended learning gives teachers options.

But blended learning actually offers an extra classroom – the virtual one.

Easier than you may think

Though many theoretical models of blended learning exist, at its core blended learning is incorporating the internet in the teaching and learning process. Morten points out that many teachers already use the internet for communication and organisation, but blended learning allows them to exploit its ‘untapped potential’ by using more advanced tools like online discussion boards and multimedia uploading.

How large a role the internet plays is up to the individual teacher. By simply directing students to a newspaper article by putting a link in the virtual classroom, teachers practice blended learning, Morten points out.

More advanced models of blended learning call for students to study theory as homework (in the form of videos posted on a learning platform, for example) and do assignments in class time. This is the so-called flipped classroom model of blended learning.

Two sides of the same coin

There are many other models covering the spectrum of education delivery, from distance learning schools to primary schools where students use laptops in class time. What all models have in common, however, is that they combine elements of the virtual and physical classroom.

“It’s a holistic thing with aspects that should fit together,” Morten says. “In order to work well it needs to be planned to work well. At the end of the day, blended learning is about getting students prepared for class.”

Combining the physical and virtual

Morten stresses that in order for teachers to get the most out of blended learning they have to merge online learning with classroom learning.

To illustrate this idea, Morten uses the example of an assignment where students post book reports in a discussion forum in a learning platform and make them available for comment from fellow students.

It’s a blended learning approach that modernises the traditional book report, where students present their reports in class. Teachers free up class time by moving the presentations online.

In this example of blended learning, students comment on the reports and teachers moderate the responses. Students who are reluctant to participate in class are often more willing to participate in these kinds of online discussions, Morten adds.

In order for this approach to be successful, teachers must bring the online discussion (or any other online learning activity) back into the classroom.

“The exercise evolves in the online space and then teachers have to bring it to the physical classroom. I think a good blended teacher can do both,” he says, adding that students learn responsible online interaction through teacher-guided online discussions.

Morten uses the example of a vocation school to highlight the importance of combining two learning theatres in a balanced way.

In the case of blended learning, the physical and virtual classrooms are combined. But in the case of students studying car mechanics, they spend part of the week in the classroom learning theory, and then the rest of the week in the auto shop applying their knowledge.

The two education venues go hand in hand – and it’s the same with blended learning approaches.

Finding the perfect blend

Other models of blended learning include scenarios where students rotate between computer stations at school, take an online course to supplement their schooling and distance students who complete the majority of their studies online.

All of these approaches help teachers allocate their time better. By having the additional virtual classroom, teachers can spread some of their and their students’ workload onto the internet.

“With blended learning there should be some element of choosing the time, location and content. The freedom to choose different elements varies a lot,” Morten says.

He adds that modern teaching combines technology, pedagogy and content.

“Most teachers combine content and pedagogy but leave out technology. That’s part of blended learning. You need to blend these three components in a balanced way,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s the teacher who decides whether or not this will be a success.”

A year seven form teacher at a primary school in Trondheim municipality, Kay Ronny Dahl has used the video recording function in itslearning with good results as part of a pilot project where the purpose was testing video in different pedagogical situations. The eager teacher emphasises student involvement in the subjects he teaches, and he has previously used the project function in itslearning in order to increase student participation.

Let the students be the teachers

After he came across the video recording feature he discovered a new teaching method for his mathematics lessons. Kay Ronny sets aside periods in the semester where the students themselves are the teachers. He let the students create a series of short recordings for different math topics as a part of their preparations for the all-day test in mathematics.

"The students say that they learn the material much better now since they actually have to explain the examples themselves," he explains. "An added bonus is that the students are really engaged and they find it entertaining."

Using the video recording function carries other advantages, Kay Ronny says. In a classroom situation the webcam can be used to film the lesson, and the clip can then be uploaded to itslearning.

"In this way, absent students can keep track of what happened in school that day, and students that require extra repetition can watch the video over again. There are many possibilities," he says.

How do we get started?

Tips
When recording work on paper it is important to ensure there is good contrast between what is being written and the paper. Use dark ink and write on white paper. The same applies when filming work on the blackboard. Good contrast is important. When filming objects you should zoom in tight in order to capture the details. Ensure there are good lighting conditions. Morten Fahlvik, teacher and market researcher at itslearning, says he believes it's positive that students are active and engaged in the teaching.

"Most school researchers and educators point out that student involvement has a positive effect on students’ learning," Morten says. "The result is that students have to work with the thematic structure in a different way, compared with passive blackboard teaching where the teacher sketches and explains. Enthusiasm and ownership hang together. We want enthusiastic students, and we can achieve this if the students are given the opportunity to be productive."

But how can the recording function be utilised in the best possible way? Video clips can be placed everywhere in itslearning, but Morten says it may be wise to allow the students to place the videos in a discussion in a course. This way ensures that everyone can access the videos, and setting up a discussion will be less work for a teacher since all students, in principal, are able to read the discussions and respond in writing.

Some teachers may find the video recorder in itslearning too simple and therefore wish to utilise more advanced solutions. Making the video recorder easy to use is a conscious strategy, according to Fahlvik.

"Using the itslearning video recorder does not require any previous knowledge of producing video for the web or how files are uploaded or embedded into text," he says. "We have implemented pilot projects that show how useful a low threshold video recording function is. But we have also made it possible for teachers with high ICT competence to use more advanced tools. These tools can record video with other tools, and use the ‘embed’ function to upload the video clips in the context of a subject in itslearning."

Good camera equipment important

Most webcams are either built-in to the laptop monitor or can be attached to the screen with a clip. For many this makes it difficult to film anything other than the people working on the computer. Kay Ronny uses Hue’s HD webcam, which is a flexible ‘plug and play’ camera with a built-in microphone. The twistable head makes it possible to film objects on a table, film a method on paper or film a work process, for example, how to make bread dough.

Better video quality from April 2012

Based on feedback from users, we have now improved video quality in itslearning with, among other things, better resolution that results in a sharper picture. Now everything is in place in order for you to create good resources in itslearning. Read more about how to record sound and video by visiting the online help.

Teachers are too busy for technology.

They want to use it but then ‘life gets in the way’ and they fall back on old habits, says Stephanie Hamilton, senior manager of strategic education solutions at Apple Inc.

‘The problem is teachers don’t know what it looks like,’ says Hamilton. ‘Teachers have to be able to see and know, ‘how do I use this technology and where does it go?’”

Hamilton was addressing 400 teachers and administrators from schools across Norway as a keynote speaker at itslearning’s annual user conference on April 23.

She spoke generally about education technology, broaching topics like mobile devices in the classroom and the changing role of teachers in the digital age.

Hamilton, a teacher for 19 years, says teachers are hesitant to embrace technology, partly because teaching is a ‘risk adverse’ occupation. Though her lecture pointed to the challenges teachers have with technology, she also highlighted the benefits of the virtual classroom.

Technology in the classroom equips students with 21st century skills, increases achievement, personalizes education and differentiates learning. Using online textbooks, students can highlight important passages and write notes in the margins, which is not possible with paper textbooks.

Technology is changing the face of teaching. In schools of the past, teachers viewed their students as blank slates and their task was to fill their heads with information. In today’s classroom, students can use their mobile devices to search for the latest information in class.

“Information doubles three times every time you walk into a class,” Hamilton said.

“Teachers can’t be content experts. Teachers have to be the providers of context. We teach stuff but we don’t teach the meaning of stuff.

“It’s not about memorizing and teaching it, it’s about putting information into context. You have to have the contextual significance.”

For example, instead of teaching from a textbook about the rule of law, she said teachers could have mined the Internet for information about the Arab Spring to teach about the rule of despots.

She added teachers need to transition from being ‘master teachers to master learners’ who establish ‘two-way partnerships’ with students.

“What do teachers have too little of? And what do students have too much of? Time,” she said. “Use what the students know.”

Hamilton said that the emergence of mobile devices in the classroom reverted the education sector back to the 16th century when all students had personal teachers.

“Technology allows for individual learning,” she said.

“Saying no to students about technology is like trying to hold back a tsunami with your hand.

“If we don’t have more creativity and innovation in schools, we will have all these people preparing for a world that doesn’t exist.”

Suggested reading from Stephanie Hamilton

• Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson and Michael B. Horn: Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.
• Chuck Schwahn and Bea McGarvey: Inevitable: mass customized learning.
• Daniel H. Pink: Drive.
• Chip Heath: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.

To use a keyboard shortcut, for example CTRL + Z to undo what you last wrote in the itslearning rich-text editor, press the CTRL key, hold it in and then press the Z key.

Note that the shortcuts below are based on an English keyboard, and the shortcuts may differ in keyboards for other languages.

Windows

Keyboard shortcuts in the itslearning rich-text editor:

• CTRL + Z: Undo.
• CTRL + Y: Redo.
• CTRL + B: Highlighted text will be put in boldface .
• CTRL + I: Highlighted text will be put in italics.
• CTRL + U: Highlighted text will be underscored.
• CTRL + L: Opens the Link dialogue.

As well as working in itslearning, all of the above shortcuts (except for CTRL + L) work in many other applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on.

General Windows shortcuts:

• CTRL + Shift + T: Opens the last tab you closed.
• Alt + Print Screen (PrtScn): Copy a screenshot of your current window to the clipboard.
• Windows + plus sign (+) or Windows + minus sign (-): Zoom in and out. Use CTRL + 0 (zero) to reset to original size.
• Alt + Tab: Switches between top-level windows without using the mouse.

Mac

Keyboard shortcuts in the itslearning rich-text editor:

• Cmd + Z: Undo.
• Cmd + Y: Redo.
• Cmd + B: Highlighted text will be put in boldface.
• Cmd + I: Highlighted text will be put in italics.
• Cmd + U: Highlighted text will be underscored.
• Cmd + L: Opens the Link dialogue.

General Mac shortcuts:

• Cmd + Shift + T: Open the last tab you closed.
• Shift + Cmd + 3: Copy a screenshot of your current window to the clipboard.
• Cmd + plus sign (+) or Cmd + minus sign (-): Zoom in and out. Use Cmd + 0 (zero) to reset to original size.
• F9: Show all open windows.

One More Story is an online library of over 60 illustrated children’s books set to music and read aloud by professional story-tellers – and is an ideal teaching aid for English language teachers or teachers of early learners.

Developed by Sesame Street producer Carl Teitelbaum and his late sister Rona Roth, it encourages a love of reading, as well as helping students learn new words, pronunciation and fluency. Books range from ‘first books’ with three word sentences to books with more mature content and more sophisticated vocabulary.

Reading, pronunciation and much more

As well as listening to the stories, your students can also mute the soundtrack so they can read alone, hear passages repeated until they’ve mastered the pronunciation and play listening games. The teachers also have access to a report card, where they can see which books each student has read, as well as detailed reports on students game results.

One week’s free trial with itslearning

One More Story now comes as a simple app in itslearning – and you can try it for one week for free.

1. Click Add on you course dashboard tree menu. The select Browse app library.
2. Click Include this app under One more Story Free Week.
3. One More Story will now be available on your course add page. Simply click Add on the course tree menu and select One More Story from the list of activities.

Note: Whereas in the past we updated all sites simultaneously, we will now start updating groups of sites. The update starts on 26 April and all sites should be updated the following week.

New course tool: Registrations

Whether you need an overview of participants and activities on a sports day or who has volunteered to do what in the school play, registrations provide the perfect tool. Teachers can create a list of options for which participants can register. After participants register, the teacher gets a list with information about what they have registered for, when they registered and why they registered for that particular option (optional).

See how it works:

Read more about registrations in the help.

Plan more efficiently

A key aspect of effective teaching is having a plan for each lesson. As well as deciding which lessons to make visible to participants, teachers can now select multiple lessons for quick deletion, activation or deactivation. While the content block on the dashboard is limited to current lessons and lessons that will be activated in the near future, participants will benefit from a table view with filtering options when clicking Planner in the tree menu.

See how it works:

Read more about what's new in the planner in the help.

Better video quality

The video recorder is frequently used by both teachers and learners. Teachers can record lessons and tutorials and learners can submit homework assignments and practice their oral skills. The quality of recorded videos has now been improved. Note that video files are slightly larger as a result of the quality improvement.

See the difference!

Old version

New version

Read more about using video and sound in the help.

Easier to find apps

Creating content is easier using some of the current itslearning apps. Browse the app library today to find just the tool you need. As the number of apps grows, we've added search functionality to make locating the app you're looking for easier.

Better participant management in courses

The course participants' page has been improved with a checkbox feature that makes removing and selecting participants easier when sending messages and emails. A new 'Action' column makes it possible to remove and edit the role of participants manually added to a course, as well as giving the teacher instant access to the participant's assessment record and attendance page.

Updated colour pickers

To provide users with a coherent experience when selecting colours, the colour picker has now been updated throughout itslearning to replicate that of the dashboard.

Parent dashboard

It's now possible to have the parent dashboard as a landing page when logging in (if the parent has more than one child, the first child's dashboard is selected). Administrators can edit this setting in the Profile or Policy (select 'Parent dashboard' as the 'Default dashboard').

Updates to resource booking

In the previous release we introduced resource booking. We've now corrected some inconsistencies:

• If the user loses permissions to a booked resource, he will retain the booked resources but will not be able to book the resource for new activities.
• If the organisation of the resources has been changed, the user will lose booked resources.
• If a user who has booked resources is deleted, the resource bookings he made are removed.
• If an organisation is deleted, all resources and related bookings are removed.
• Resources can no longer be connected to a hierarchy, only to an organisation.

Users who have access to resource booking can now see which resources they or the course teachers booked in the calendar:

• Day view: resource icon + label with list of resources on activities that have bookings.
• Week and month views: resource icon + tooltip with list of resources on activities that have bookings.
• Search tab: an additional column in the results grid with a list of resources for activities that have bookings.

Forwarding internal messages

The Forward internal messages to e-mail setting for Site profiles has been reintroduced at the request of customers who are heavy users of the email system and want to ensure that all internal messages are delivered to their users' email accounts. This profile setting can be enabled or disabled. This change, which only applies to newly-created users, will not affect existing users.

Setting for hierarchy structure visibility

Previously all users could see a site's hierarchy structure. A new setting under Global settings >> Features and security allows administrators to set visibility restrictions for hierarchies based on user schools. A setting for course synchronisation with all/course-organisation-only hierarchies was also added.

Changes to IMS Enterprise

Some customers have a need for frequent re-synchronisation in the IMS import system. To solve this, a new option has been added that enables automatic resynchronisation. Filtering protection has been preserved – causing import stop when % level of changes is exceeded.

The IMS-E import processes have been extended to allow XSLT to be applied to the whole import file. This means that XSLT can be applied on element sets across the whole import as opposed to single elements on import. This can be turned on and off.

Changes to the assessment record

The assessment record has been improved with several enhancements and changes.

Automatic calculation of final grades

Final assessments connected to a term can now get grades automatically through the new 'Calculate average' button under Final assessments.

Other changes to the assessment record

• The sum of weights are now shown on the 'Weighting' page
• The participant view has changed slightly when using average.
• When a term is deleted (hidden) all corresponding assessments for the term are also hidden. This includes:
  • the filter option in the assessment record
  • the final assessment in the assessment record
  • the personal assessment report
• If a term is restored, any final assessments in the assessment records will also be restored.
• Changes made while a term is being deleted will replace the existing data (for example, assigning an element to a term will replace the old term assignment). When a term is restored, only the untouched data will be restored.

Internet Explorer 7 no longer supported

To speed up development, enhance security and improve the user experience we plan to begin phasing out support of Internet Explorer 7.0 in April 2012. Read more

Minor changes

• The link for Show all bulletins was moved below the header on project start-pages.
• The Test-Mode Browser is now officially out of beta.
• When a user receives an email generated by itslearning, it will be clear from which site the email was generated.
• It's now possible to keep attendance from the person profile.
• Tests: the progress bar that shows a participant's result compared to other participants has been removed.

Corrections

We have also addressed many other issues. Read the details (pdf)

Bærum municipality, Norway's fifth largest municipality by number of inhabitants, has 43 schools, 1,500 staff and about 16,000 pupils. While performing among the best in the national tests, the Bærum schools had a huge potential for improving in ICT, says Frank Baklid, project leader for development of digital skills in Bærum municipality.

Based on this, the politicians in Bærum agreed on an action plan in March 2010 where one of the goals was meeting the Knowledge Promotion Reform's¹ requirements for developing digital skills for increased learning outcomes in all subjects. One of the measures was switching to itslearning.

Frank is quick to admit that Bærum was lagging behind other municipalities’ ICT efforts. The main problem was low usage of the existing learning platform, Fronter.

"Fronter was not being used, mostly because teachers found the system too complicated," says Frank. "Where the lower secondary schools had a low usage, the primary schools didn't use it at all."

Getting everyone on board

Four primary schools and two secondary schools were chosen as pilot schools for the itslearning implementation. The pilot schools tested itslearning during the school year and received extra follow up from the municipality. They were offered training from four ICT coordinators who functioned as resource people in relation to training and supporting the schools. All other schools were offered training from two ICT coordinators.

Although the municipality gave the schools free rein during the implementation, certain guidelines were established, for example, that all assessment in itslearning should be digital.

"The most important thing was getting all schools started with itslearning. How each individual school chose to use it was less important,” Frank explains. “We knew our staff wanted to achieve good results, and the teachers even taught themselves how to use itslearning on their own time."

Clear success criteria

All schools are now using itslearning, and Frank has identified four success criteria that contributed to successful implementation: digital resource groups, lots of training, leader involvement and financial resources.

"Early on, all schools were instructed to establish a digital resource group of ICT coordinators and school administrators whose task was to support the rest of the staff with advice and guidance during implementation. They were supported by the project group and those responsible for pedagogical use of ICT in the school. The central resource group assisted the schools with competence raising, but the responsibility for this lies with the individual schools."

The municipality started a huge training project with a focus on administration and pedagogical use. An important distinction was made between the roles of the technical system administrators responsible for the day-to-day operation of itslearning and teachers who concentrated on the pedagogical use.

A solid leader focus was an important success factor, and Frank concedes that the school leaders should have been involved at an earlier stage. To begin with Frank's team focused on training administrators and teachers, but the school leaders were also interested in finding out what itslearning was.

"It's important to involve the principals early on," says Frank. "You can’t underestimate the effect of principals sharing knowledge, inspiring each other and driving development forward."

While it was crucial that the municipality allocated financial resources to the important implementation phase, the need for these resources will eventually decrease and turn into running expenses connected to maintenance.

Many examples of good use

Frank has already identified several excellent and creative examples of using itslearning among teachers and pupils.

"One teacher uses the test tool to motivate his English class," Frank explains. "He regularly posts assignments that his pupils receive automatic feedback on. The feedback motivates the pupils, who refer to it many times in order to prepare for the test. Because the pupils practice more beforehand, the results on the end of week tests improved. The same applies to pupils who record reading homework assignments with the itslearning's inbuilt sound recorder: they read it several times in order to perfect themselves.

The methods are simple but effective. Frank says another teacher takes screenshots of Word documents, opens the images in Microsoft Paint and removes all the commas. He then uses the itslearning test tool to create click assignments where the pupils insert the commas in the correct spots.

Frank, who wants to see "everything" in itslearning, hopes to see about 90% of all users become active users on itslearning during spring 2013. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, Bærum municipality wants to incorporate week schedules, assignments and assessment into itslearning.

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The Alliance for Education is a cross-industry group formed by some of the world’s leading IT companies – including Intel, Microsoft and itslearning – as well as a number of digital content providers and German states.

Since it was formed in January 2012, the Alliance has been working towards a simple but ambitious goal: to design a single IT architecture that will allow all educational institutions in Germany to share data and resources with each other – and so improve the educational experience for all 11 million students and 900,000 teachers in Germany.

Aligning IT for the good of education

“Like most countries, educational IT in Germany is a bit hit-and-miss right now,” explains Christian Grune of itslearning Germany, one of the founding members of the Alliance for Education. “Each institution or state has created its own infrastructure. While many of these are good, they aren’t integrated. As a result, when a student moves schools their data can’t usually be transferred and a lot of valuable information is lost. It also makes it very difficult to share resources across schools or colleges.”

Open standards are the key

The Alliance is now working to change this. The idea is to create a blueprint for all educational IT in Germany that would mean that any institution, regardless of which systems or providers they used, could always share information – and this means using open standards.

“Open standards is a key mantra,” explains Christian. “The goal is to ensure that every system can share data. This way, it won’t matter what Management Information System or learning platform an institution uses, they will always be able to share data with each other.”

Entering the cloud

To achieve this, the Alliance is going to use a cloud-based architecture. In essence, cloud systems are hosted on the internet, so IT managers they don’t have to install or update software on local machines. The system provider ensures the system runs smoothly, securely hosts the data and can easily roll out any upgrades to match changes in architecture.

“Cloud systems vastly reduce set-up and running costs for institutions,” says Christian. “But they also make it much easier to create a unified architecture. Because pretty much anyone can integrate their system into a cloud structure, it will enable us to create a completely open architecture that any company or publisher can work with.”

Easing the decision-making process for ICT managers

This will also make it simpler for IT managers to select systems and design IT infrastructure for their institution – which can be a daunting and time-consuming task.

Christian explains: “We want to put a framework in place that any institution can follow. The framework will include all the systems an institution needs – from management information systems to handle student data to pedagogical learning platforms and content distribution systems from publishers – and will make it much easier for an IT manager to choose their IT systems.”

Building for the future in Germany and Europe

The Alliance for Education hopes to create its first designs after the summer which they can pilot in the autumn. And, if the project proves successful in Germany, the Alliance is hoping to spread the project further afield, possibly to create a single IT infrastructure for all education in Europe.

For Christian, it’s an exciting and challenging time. “This is a huge project and there are a lot of companies and institutions with different focuses and needs,” he explains. “But we’re committed to working together for a common goal: to improve education in Germany – and possibly Europe – through IT.”

But how do you flip a classroom? The method is simple: students prepare for class by watching video lectures prepared by the teacher using itslearning at home. They then spend their classroom time working with assignments. Using this technique, she has found more time to spend with individuals and small groups of students in class, guiding them through assignments and dealing with any individual gaps in understanding.

More time for individual students

Anne Cathrine Gotaas
was one of two winners in the Best use of itslearning 2011 awards. She won based on the work with flipped classroom in itslearning. The other iMac and camera went to Dee Kerwick-Chrisp from the UK for extremely creative use of the individual learning plan (ILP). Both winners demonstrated extremely good uses of itslearning that are showing to have a positive effect on students’ education.Anne Cathrine has found that students learn better if the theoretical videos are included in practical tests and explaining sequences in itslearning. "While the explaining sequences are used to guide the students through a learning path, the tests provide instant feedback on the answers and let the students assess their own level of knowledge," she explains.

Although she never assesses the tests herself or gives a mark, she uses the results to see where students have struggled with the theory. She can then plan her classroom time more effectively to deal with gaps in her students’ understanding.

To make it easier for the students to find the videos later, they are also available in a folder structure in itslearning.

Inspired by distant teaching course

Anne Cathrine first learned about the flipped classroom concept when attending an online further education course at a university way back in 2005. Back then her teachers published learning videos in itslearning where they outlined the theory on a whiteboard. If the students didn't understand what was taught the first time, they could go back and watch it again.

"I discovered that this method was helpful," she says. "The fact that I could see the theory several times helped me immensely. I probably wouldn’t have managed to pass if I’d had to rely on books alone."

Helping weaker students

Two years later, Anne Cathrine taught a class in which 3–4 students were in danger of not passing. As an extra support for them, she recorded videos of her lectures for them to study in itslearning. "I got really positive response from the students, but for me the most important was that all students passed," she says.

Anne Cathrine’s first videos were of her solving calculations on paper, which she videoed with a webcam. But she now uses the free version of Screencast-O-Matic for recording screen video. Today, she has videos of all the topics in the courses she teaches, but they aren’t all self-made.

"There are so many good videos readily available on the internet, so I don't have to make everything myself," she says. "I find quality videos on, for example, YouTube or khanacademy.org, and simply insert them into itslearning."

Efficient, but demanding

Anne Cathrine finds itslearning a helpful tool for tracking who's been watching the videos. After one vacation, for example, she discovered that only 2 out of 17 students had logged on to itslearning to see the videos – so she decided to let her students watch the videos in class.

So, is the flipped classroom better than traditional classroom models?

"Whereas classroom teaching requires the entire class' attention, a video can be watched again and again. But it won't make life easier of the teacher because it's more demanding to guide students through assignments in class then it is to teach."

Still, some argue that the unmotivated students aren't disciplined enough to watch videos at home in their own time and so it's better that the teacher makes sure they get the theory in class. Anne Cathrine disagrees. In order for everyone to understand them, she makes the videos as basic as possible.

"Some students benefit little from classroom teaching, and I don't think students that don't bother seeing the videos at home would have done other homework anyway. With flipped classroom they can at least return to itslearning to see the videos at school."

But if the videos are basic, how are the brightest students stimulated?

"I often use level differentiated groups in which students at the same level work together and test themselves against each other," she explains. "Another advantage is that the brightest students don't have to listen to me going through simple things for the entire class – they can simply fast forward and spend their time on more advanced assignments."

Listen to Anne Cathrine explain about her approach to flipped classroom:

From left to right: Jennie Newman, Head of Assessment & Monitoring, Bedford Borough; David Cartledge, Network Manager at Greys; Brian Glover, Assistant Director Bedford Borough (Chief Education Officer); Chris Hilliard, Executive Director Bedford Borough (Children, Schools and Families); Dylan Jones, Managing Director, itslearning UK; Eugenie Amartey, Elearning Coordinator at Greys; and Terry Ashmore, Headteacher at Greys.

As an award winner, Dee won a shiny new Apple iMac and a Canon LEGRIA HF G10 video camera for her school – Greys Education Centre in the UK. The prize was presented to Greys in February 2012 by Dylan Jones Managing Director of itslearning UK and Alastair Cameron, itslearning Senior Learning Strategist.

Greys Education Centre has responsibility for the education of all Bedford Borough pupils that other schools deem too hard to teach, such as pupils who cannot attend regular school due to exclusion, long-term illness or other reasons. Many of these students have behaviour issues – and this makes Dee’s use of itslearning even more important for the children under the school’s care.

Using ILPs to encourage better behaviour

The teachers at Greys use itslearning to a great extent in their teaching, but they were awarded their prize for the extremely creative use of the individual learning plan (ILP). Once a week, every student meets with a teacher to set their behaviour goals, which are then added to the student’s ILP in itslearning. Then, at the end of each lesson, the class teacher refers to the student’s ILP before assigning the student a behaviour grade. (Dee is keen to point out that the 1–5 scale only reflects good behaviour.)

Any student with an average score above 3.2 for the week can enjoy a free lesson – and the student with the best score gets a certificate. This reward system has proven extremely successful, with students competing with each other to get the best score. The student’s weekly behaviour report is also printed out and sent to their parents – and the reports are sometimes used as evidence that students are adhering to court orders.

Praise to the staff

Since Dee has left Greys Education Centre since winning the competition, the award was accepted by Eugenie Amartey who worked closely with Dee on the particular project. In his address, Dylan praised all the staff at Greys, without whom the students would have little chance of success in their educational life, and emphasised that the prizes were for everyone to use.

Alastair Cameron comments: "I have nothing but admiration for the staff here. They are all completely committed to making a difference to the life of the children here. And it was especially rewarding to see that itslearning is helping the staff motivate and engage with the students and their parents."

Great work by all entries

There were two winners of the Best use of itslearning awards 2011. The other iMac and camera went to Anne Cathrine Gotaas from Norway for her use of itslearning in a flipped classroom model. Both winners demonstrated extremely good uses of itslearning that are showing to have a positive effect on students’ education.

But, as one of the four judges in the competition, Alastair admits the decision wasn't easy. "Being a judge on 'The best use of itslearning' competition proved incredibly difficult. There were so many innovative methods and all of them can easily be picked up and used by other educators, I have to say that selecting the winner was really tough."

You can see the full 12-person shortlist here.

About Horten Further Education College
A Norwegian national demonstration school in the use of IT in education, Horten Further Education College has around 220 teachers and more than 1200 students. It has two teaching sites in close proximity and students can follow a wide range of subjects, from biology to hairdressing.
Maths teacher Kjetil Idås is responsible for ensuring that Horten Further Education College in Norway makes the most of its IT resources – and he was the person behind the itslearning survey in 2009. Following the survey, the College has changed how it uses the program, and today every teacher in the College uses itslearning to communicate and share resources with students. So, how did the College manage to get adoption rates up to 100%?

1. Make sure every teacher uses at least the basic itslearning functions

Not every teacher is computer savvy – and most schools find that some teachers just don’t adapt to a new learning platform. The College’s answer was to set up a simple set of ‘basic user requirements’ that every teacher must comply with:

• News on the Bulletin Board
• Files containing individual lesson plans and six-month learning plans
• Details of homework assignments and tests
• Email communication with individual students

2. Give all teachers the same simple structure

Most students study with a number of teachers, and it can get confusing if teachers organise information in itslearning differently. So, the College has created a simple structure for files, news and calendar events that every teacher can – and must – follow. Some teachers may choose to add more files, links and information, but they should still stick to the basic format.

3. Don’t publish too much

One of the biggest complaints that students had was that many teachers published too much information on their course Bulletin Board. As a result, students often missed the important news. The same applied to links and extra content. Some teachers were posting four or five extra articles, links or videos for extra reading after each class – and the students just couldn’t keep up. So, teachers are encouraged to only publish the most important information and extra resources.

4. Students need (20 minutes) training

While most new students are more computer literate than the average teacher, they still need a basic introduction to the itslearning system to ensure everyone knows what it is and why they should use it. Today, every new student at the College attends an IT Orientation class at the start of the year, including a 20-minute introduction to itslearning.

Kjetil believes this introduction is essential for the success of the system. “There’s no point in a teacher putting information on itslearning if the students aren’t using the system. The orientation class is a way to get students actively using it’s learning right from the start of their time here.”

Read more user stories

How do others benefit from using itslearning? Read more user stories to find out.

The answer is My library, that combined with the page tool gives you endless ways to create and share resources.

"With My library you don't have to copy and move materials from one course to another," says itslearning trainer Jonny Eriksen. "You simply search for the resource in the library and add it to a course."

According to Jonny, resources are easy to update in itslearning, too. Even if you’ve used the page in a number of courses, you only have to update it from My library once, and it will automatically update in all the courses where you’ve used it.

But how do you reuse your materials or share them with others? Let's start with materials that you’ve created or found yourself.

Creating materials in My library

My library – which has a tab of its own in itslearning – is basically a place to create and store your personal resources. Adding new materials is easy: simply click 'Add' and start creating your resource. Currently, you are limited to adding pages, but you’ll be able to add more types of resource in the future. Pages however, have many possibilities.

"The page tool is a great tool for producing teaching materials," says Jonny. “You start with a blank page and you can then add any number of different elements. Basically, a page is like a mini-webpage and you can easily add text, polls, videos, images, files, links and RSS feeds. For a teacher, the sky is the limit."

Reusing the pages you create

Once you’ve created a page, it’s very simple to add it to a course.

1. On the course page, click Add and select Add content from ‘My library’.
2. Find the page you want to reuse in the list of resources. You can use the search to find it, or click the Library column header to see your resources at the top.
3. Click on the element you want to add.
4. Click the Add button and the page will appear in your course’s tree menu.

Sharing content with others

What are pages?
Do you use notes in your courses? Why not try pages instead? The page tool is a great tool for producing teaching content, and has more possibilities. Read more about My library and pages in the online help. Why not share what you've made with your colleagues or teachers around the world? Your materials might save one of your colleagues a great deal of time in the future. You can share the pages you create with other teachers, either at your school, at your site or throughout the itslearning worldwide community. To share a page, click the 'Sharing' button and follow the on-screen instructions. Other teachers can then find your page when browsing the library.

Using what others have made

You can also save time by re-using materials that other teachers have made. My library contains resources on a variety of different topics – from itslearning tutorials to materials on specific science and history subjects. But how do you find them?

Simply click Add content from 'My library' in your course page and you will see a list of all the materials in the library and use the search function to find what you’re looking for. As of now there's no preview function so you have to add a page to a course to preview the content. If you don't like it, simply delete it.

That sums it up for My library in itslearning. Give it a try today and start sharing your learning materials!

"A 12 year old student returned from a family vacation in the middle of a semester, and when I asked where she had been, she answered: "'The south, of course!'" explains Marit, a Norwegian teacher and speech therapist. "She meant southern Europe, but I was amazed to discover that she didn't know anything about the country or city she had been to."

On another occasion, Marit met the mother of a student who was planning two weeks of extra vacation. At that time, a heated debate was raging in the media about student absence due to irregular family holidays and, without being asked, the mother exclaimed in a sharp voice: "They learn just as much from travelling!"

Marit knew that could be true, but also knew that it was not always the case.

Learning away from home

Award winner
Marit’s Exploring the World project won an award in the Creative use of itslearning category at the Share & Use Conference in Sandvika, Norway, in 2011. Based on these experiences, Marit began to imagine the outline of what was to become Exploring the World – a project for holidaying students that ensures they remain focused on learning during their vacation and uses ICT as a motivating factor.

Marit has now developed the course as part of her "ICT in Learning" MA, and uses it with her students if they vacation during term time.

As part of the project, students receive assignments tailored to their destination before, during and after their vacation. The assignments differ depending on the age, but the principle is basically the same. And even if the student doesn’t have access to the internet during the vacation, they can still experience a positive learning outcome because of assignments before and after.

Upon return, the new knowledge is turned into learning resources, for both fellow students and teachers.

Positive parents

Marit is clear that the student’s new knowledge should be valued as an important contribution to the school community, but this should not happen at the expense of the family's vacation.

"The assignments are created with the whole family in mind so the student can carry on with usual vacation activities," she says. "All I ask is that they bring a notebook, mobile phone or digital camera during the day, and use a couple of hours by the computer in the evening or morning. This enables them to create things about their experiences – an online photo story, for example."

But what do the parents say when their children have to work during their vacation time?

"The project hasn’t been tested thoroughly yet," responds Marit. "But those who have done it have been positive. The learning activities are meant to be fun and interesting for the whole family."

Learning in a secure environment

Some parents may be worried that images and video from their family holiday might be available on the internet, but Marit tells them not to worry. itslearning requires a username and password, and anything created by students is only available to others in their class.

There are other advantages with itslearning, too. While on vacation, students can participate in discussions with teachers and other students – in a secure environment – and so follow what’s happening during the class while they are away.

Marit hopes that Exploring the World can meet the students' and parents' need for vacation during the school year, and help teachers see this type of absence as a benefit, for both the holidaying student and the rest of the class.

YouTube for schools offers teachers the opportunity to enliven their teaching with video, without the fear of exposing their students to inappropriate content. Simply put, the channel only contains age-appropriate educational material – hundreds of thousands of videos, from science experiments and lectures to historical documentaries and news footage. And you can tailor it to your institution.

As a teacher, you can log in and see all available content – and you can then create playlists of videos that will be available to students at your school. All comments and related videos are disabled, and search is limited to the YouTube for schools site. You can even suggest videos that you’d like to be included on the educational YouTube site.

This is a great resource, but it still requires a good learning platform if you want to make the videos directly relevant to your students’ learning.

Using videos to enhance teaching

itslearning allows you to embed videos from channels such as YouTube directly into you teaching resources (if ‘embed videos’ sounds scary, don’t worry, it’s as easy as cutting and pasting text in a Word document) which means you can relate them directly to the task that the student is doing. What does this mean in practice?

Giving students extra help with homework

When setting homework assignments, one maths teacher embeds a video from the mathTV.com YouTube channel that explains the topic (simplifying radicals, for example) along with the assignment description. This way, when students start working on the assignment, they can get a quick refresher of the concept before they begin

Using videos with tests to track student understanding

One itslearning user asks her students to prepare for classes by watching instructional videos online (she creates her own videos, but there are plenty of ready-made videos available on YouTube). She then uses the itslearning test tool to check how well they understood the concepts in the video before the students come to class. Here’s how she does it.

The teacher embeds the videos into digital tests and the students have to answer concept-check questions after watching each video. Her student can then see if they have understood the video or if she has to watch it again – and the teacher can see which areas have caused problems for her students – and can prepare her classroom lessons accordingly.