We're proud to have been associated with and contributed activities to Schools on OnLine. As the report below shows, it was hugely pioneering. Much of what was learned became The Science Consortium - a 'NOF-funded' programme for professional development.
Let there be Internet (TES 1997)
Schools OnLine, the country's grandest project to get schools exploring the Internet reaches its formal close this December. Last week, in a contented rather than mournful gathering, teachers and industry partners came together to celebrate the project's success. Only now two years from when the DTI established it, it has been dubbed as one of the bravest research projects into what the Internet offered.
Nevertheless with £ two and a half million of industry sponsorship, and another a million of DTI money, sixty schools teamed up with industry partners in making forays into what might have been just ether. Now, as more schools signed up over time, 90 schools with 580 teachers and 2300 pupils were braving the phone bills and regularly using the Internet. More than find Internet gold - the nuggets of information they set out for, school reports tell of learners becoming motivated, developing autonomy, gaining confidence and sharing with peers. Another view, expressed by one observer, was that these successful schools may be exceptional schools - outward looking and self-selecting. Perhaps this is in the nature of pioneers.
Schools OnLine has a list of credits match any Spielberg movie. It was managed by computing firm ICL and Ultralab at Anglia Polytechnic University. It involved some 50 IT companies working in partnership with over a hundred schools. The findings squash a mainstream idea about getting schools connected. Expressed by Prof Stephen Heppel, one of the project founders, as the business of plugging a optic-fibre cable into the head of learner and expecting a learning outcome - he went on to explain how the school reports all show the importance of a teachers role in motivating / mediating /briefing / debriefing pupils - in fact much the same learning 'model' schools already operate.
What was perhaps new is how the Internet helps create communities that learn together. For example, a project run by the NCET teamed a secondary school with their feeder primaries to bridge the transition between phases. Here the juniors could ask their friends how they were finding the big school and be sufficiently reassured. The school says it seems to have paid off with the new intake settling in better than usual.
A science project run from Sheffield Hallam University offered a place for schools to share experimental work, then pool and discuss results. The 'science education community' they set out to build gave access to real scientists who pupils could ask questions using email. Similarly Leicestershire's Comenius Centre who ran the modern languages project report how teachers used Internet editions of foreign newspapers - stories about the death of Princess Diana, were used to stimulate class work, while email exchanges with French schools led to a particularly authentic dialogue between peers. If there was a downside, it was that French schools were less often wired up to the net and had less curriculum space in which to experiment.
With the government making plans for a National Grid for Learning, (already acronymed 'Nigel') and with the sun setting on Schools OnLine it's timely that there a stockpile of experience to feed into the current consultation. As if carving up Africa at Yalta, those keen to ensure that the borders are drawn in the right places will want to respond. Copies of the DfEE document are on the Internet at www.open.gov.uk/dfee
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