Palestine KlasCement.net A source of inspiration Hans De Four (Belgium) Coordinator (ad interim) OER-network KlasCement Founder STEM-ICT-kidslab Fyxxi.be Organisor ICT-days for up to one thousand teachers

AGENDA Educational portal Success factors – Content – Technology – Communication – Strategy Elearn.EDU.PS – Achievements – Challenges Content Technology Communication Strategy Are you a teacher? Share!

WHAT? Educational Resources Network! A total of teachers in Flanders (Belgium) Learning resources – learning objects (documents, websites, multimedia, exercises, activities, …) – Shared by teachers and educational organisations – Validated and approved – Creative Commons licensed Network – members

WHEN? History! 1998: Start as initiative of a teacher Bottom-up sharing 2002: Support from MoE in Flanders (Belgium) 2004: First database 2007: Increase in projects and colleagues Part of non-profit organisation 2013: Part of Flemish MoE

WHO? Team! Coordinator Project coordinator Communication & PR Design & user environment Developers: 3 Validators: 9 (part-time) TOTAL: 14 people (10,5 FTE)

WHY? 12 reasons why an Elearn Portal is one of the best investments for education Teachers win time Teachers see, use and reuse good practices Part of professional development Inspiration for new lessons or new learning methods Good examples for teacher training Networking: Learning resource network Part of IT-strategy to digitise schools Innovation of education Possibility to create connection with other portals and content from other organisations One central point to start - Single sign-on Better communication with teachers Ministry can share content and information

CONTENT TECHNOLOGY COMMUNICATION STRATEGY Successful! HOW?.

CONTENT

Success factor 1: CONTENT “The user is the content” Content – It’s what teachers need! – Validation to find content more easily and avoid copyright problems User – List of users with search engine – User profile with activity on portal

TECHNOLOGY

Success factor 2: TECHNOLOGY Interface / Design: Easy to use – Demonstrate the portal in schools to see how teachers use it – Listen to the users – Log every action > Statistics Coding / Content: Easy to find – A good and fast search engine is crucial – But it can’t work without good metadata: keywords vocabularies

COMMUNICATION

Success factor 3: COMMUNICATE with members: – Newsletters – Automated messages (eg. birthday) with members who share: – Correct (small) mistakes – Thank you! with future members: – PR in educational magazines, via blogs, at fairs, …

VISION (STRATEGY)

Success factor 4: VISION (STRATEGY) Ownership: It’s YOUR site – Bottom-up – Horizontal (same level) User engagement – Activate inactive users – Stimulate to rate, comment, share, … Gamification – Points – Tips & tricks Innovate or copy Keep it simple!

elearn.edu.ps

VISION (STRATEGY) Adopted in MoE Elearning Portal Palestine ACHIEVEMENTS CONTENT A lot of learning resources were already approved and others are ready for approval by a content evaluation team TECHNOLOGY Attractive new interface and design Willingness to develop within the MoE COMMUNICATION Big promotional campaign

VISION General coordinator (1 FTE) Elearning Portal Palestine ADVICE: TEAM – A NEW UNIT CONTENT Validation coordinator (0,5 FTE) Validation team: 16 teachers – 16 supervisors TECHNOLOGY Technical coordinator (0,2 FTE) Two developers (2 FTE) One server manager (0,2 FTE) COMMUNICATION Assistant (who also takes care for administration) (0,6 FTE)

General coordinator (120%) Technical coordinator (50%) Developer 2 (100%) Developer 1 (100%) External developer (20%) Validation coordinator (50%) Validators (32 x 15% OR 10 x 50%) Administration (30%) Communication (30%) Server admin (20%) Elearning Portal Palestine ADVICE: TEAM – A NEW UNIT

VISION No other tasks for the general coordinator Elearning Portal Palestine ADVICE: DEDICATED TIME CONTENT Reduce the workload of supervisors Give teachers time to validate (15% per week) Goal: Validation of new content within two weeks at the most TECHNOLOGY Don’t overestimate the capacity of the team (eg. Mobile app) COMMUNICATION Engagement of users – Gamification – Ownership

VISION An office for the team Good infrastructure in schools and at home + Wi-Fi connectivity Elearning Portal Palestine ADVICE: TOOLS CONTENT Validation room in MoEHE Good internet connection + Social network + Facebook Hardware and internet support at home TECHNOLOGY External hosting, that reliable and secured, with regular meetings Internal server for backup, development, source code repository Debugging procedure with ticketing system COMMUNICATION A budget for promotional campaigns

VISION All skills to become a coordinator who motivates, coaches, has a vision, thinks positively & innovative, believes in the project, … Elearning Portal Palestine ADVICE: TRAINING CONTENT For validators: Validation manual: Criteria – Most important guide For teachers: Digital skills TECHNOLOGY Training of developers in PHP, Drupal Time to study the code (and make mistakes) COMMUNICATION Writing for the web

ARE YOU A TEACHER? Are you a teacher?

TIME TO SHARE YOUR WORK WORK TO SHARE YOUR TIME By sharing: – you’ll become smarter – you’ll be happier – you’ll have a better network – you’ll win time You gain knowledge by sharing

BE CONFIDENT BELIEVE IN YOUR (NET)WORK Make time to share! Start uploading, even if you hesitate about – Quality – Usefulness The community will decide (and you’ll be surprised) Sharing inspires!

TAKE SHAPE SHARE Download Change Use the content in your classroom ReUse Evaluate and change ReMix UploadReShare Comment and rate online Become the most active member!

Hans De Four Coordinator (ad interim) KlasCement

Images used in this presentation Alphacoders: wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i= Designed by Freepik.com: And by myself: