The site has three access modes – Students, Visitors and Managers and proved to be a very successful project which will be repeated in an ammended form in future summers.
The students register on the site and have privileged access to a menu bar consisting of Home, Edit Personal Page, Send News Report, Send Topic Report, Feedback and Log out. These are tools which can be used in the lead up to the Summer School whereby participants can add or amend text and image information for their Personal Pages and they can work individually or in teams to create content for the Newspaper or the Topics sections. The Feedback section encourages them to send a daily personal evaluation about the programme. A sytem of earning points for doing different activities was an attraction and although some students took this to extremes, most young people thought that it added to the interest in using the site.
Visitors to the site can see the list of participants in Find a Person, can look at the daily Learning Express News for each of the preceding days and can look at the Topics Reports from the Community Plan wheel.
In 2001 we added LETV, our own set of video programmes including news, cartoons and "docusoaps", all published online each evening during summer school.
Managers have access to the data that is continuously accumulated by the students’ inputs into the site. This is both quantitative and qualitative and can be used to guide the progress of the programme because it is so immediate, providing an accurate picture of the situation within seconds of the information been entered.
Visit the site at www.learningexpress.org.uk and let us have your comments.
For more about our work in Dudley read 'Joined up and Wired up - the Audit into the Potential Creative Uses of Digital Media' in schools on the Artform website and the Success For All site about Out of Schools Hours Learning programme in Dudley. Also visit MagnetSites to find more about MOOSE, StaffMag.net and the KidsMag.net Internet club for young people.
