twynham school share point 2007 10 v1 1

Mike Herrity Twynham School Learning Gateway 2007-10 P a g e 1

An illustrated guide to our work with SharePoint as a Learning Platform


Contents Twynham School Learning Gateway 2007-2010 ................................................................................. 3

Chapter One- The Staff Gateway ........................................................................................................ 4

Top Navigation .................................................................................................................................... 5

Accessing timetable and class data ..................................................................................................... 6

Individual Student Data ...................................................................................................................... 7

Staff Alerts- Cover and Lessons not registered ................................................................................... 8

Staff access to Media Library .............................................................................................................. 9

My Programs ..................................................................................................................................... 10

IT Room and hardware booking ........................................................................................................ 11

Staff Collaboration- sharing resources and ideas ............................................................................. 12

Staff Training and Development ....................................................................................................... 13

Tracking data with the analysis pyramid .......................................................................................... 14

Chapter Two- Student Gateway ........................................................................................................ 18

Student access to the Library ............................................................................................................ 19

Twynham School Student Council .................................................................................................... 20

Twynham School SOS (Stamp out substances) ................................................................................. 21

Chapter three- Subject Learning sites ............................................................................................... 22

Using permissions for student and staff views ................................................................................. 23

Student revision through the Revision Gateway .............................................................................. 24

Chapter 4- Customising a theme on the Twynham Learning Gateway ............................................ 25

Chapter 5- Creating SharePoint websites ......................................................................................... 27

Easy editing of website pages ........................................................................................................... 29

Extending the look and feel of websites in SharePoint .................................................................... 30

Subject choices on the 6th Form Site ................................................................................................. 32

Chapter 6- Parental engagement: moving beyond Online Reporting .............................................. 33

Subject Options pages ...................................................................................................................... 34

Easy editing of the Options Online system ....................................................................................... 35

Administration of the Options process through the Learning Gateway ........................................... 36

The power of the parent with Mentoring Online ............................................................................. 37

Easy editing of the online mentoring system ................................................................................... 39

Target Setting through the online mentoring system ...................................................................... 40

Chapter 7- The importance of Student Voice ................................................................................... 41

Web Parts and other solutions in this E-book .................................................................................. 43


Twynham School Learning Gateway 2007-2010

Twynham School is an international leader in the use of SharePoint in an educational context. A

1600+ Secondary school in Christchurch UK, since 2007 we have utilised a large range of out of the

box features within SharePoint 2007 and combined these with wide ranging customisations to our

Twynham Learning Gateway. The result has been a powerful collaboration platform which allows

students, staff and parents to: work efficiently; develop independent and inter-dependence in their

learning strategies, and support children in achieving their full potential.

Why an e-book?

In early 2008 the systems team at Twynham School wrote a guide to the work we were doing with

our Learning Platform which simply became known as ‘the pdf’. This showed all our early work in the

first year and along with speaking at dozens of conferences has led to over 800 schools contacting us

in the last two years. The only problem with ‘the pdf’ is it is now very out of date!

As well as this, March 22nd 2010 is our three year anniversary of working with SharePoint as a

Learning Platform and to mark the event I have written up everything we have done in the last three

years to produce an e-book. With the launch of SharePoint 2010 being just two months away it

makes sense to record everything we managed to do with SharePoint 2007.

What the e-book is and is not

The main aim of the book is to give an overview of the development of our Learning Gateway over

the last three years. It is not intended to give a detailed account of how and why we did everything.

A version with all this detail would be over 100 pages and is perhaps a proposition for another time.

The e-book is also not very text heavy but contains over 60 screenshots and is only 6,000 words so it

hopefully isn’t too heavy a read.

How to find out more?

For more detail on anything in the e-book you can read my blog www.sharepointineducation.com

which contains all the detail on our work. You can also get along to one of the conferences we

regularly speak at or get in touch with us directly. We have visits on a weekly basis or we can arrange

a live meeting or even visit your school.

Contact details

You can contact me by email at [email protected] or call 01202 495724. If you are

so inclined and use twitter please feel free to link up with me @mikeherrity. I hope you find the

ideas and examples in the e-book useful and look out for the free web part on page 43.

Twynham School won the BECTA ICT Excellence Award in 2008 for learning

Beyond the Classroom and works with over 400 schools internationally to

support the development of their Learning Platforms.

http://www.sharepointineducation.com/

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.twitter.com/mikeherrity


Chapter One- The Staff Gateway

The Staff Gateway is built with functionality and efficiency in mind. One of the key pieces of

feedback from teachers is frustration at the time it takes to get access to data and confusion at the

number of systems they have to use. As a result we have built a simple and intuitive interface where

access to data and resources is always available within 3 clicks.


Top Navigation

Where possible icons are used to create a more visual interface and the icon bar allows staff to get

to their most used resources instantly. Above the icon bar are quick links to related sites which staff

have access to dependant on their permission level.

To the right of the icon bar is the ‘My Data’ toolbar. This contains four dropdowns to data which

teachers will use on a daily basis. The most frequent feedback we get from teachers about using

data is if they could use one system less than the currently do (and ideally not at all) it is the MIS

(Management Information System). My data allows teachers to: check the latest attendance of

students in their classes; identify and target for action students falling below 90% in their tutor

groups; examine which students in their classes are underperforming compared to their targets; look

retrospectively at results data for performance management purposes. We will show examples of

My Tracker/My Results later. Examples of My Registers and My Tutor Group are shown below with

student names removed.


Accessing timetable and class data

Below the quick links, icon and data bars teachers are directly displayed their timetable which shows

the current teaching day which can be expanded to show a two week view.

From here the teacher can access class data in one click and individual student data in two. Clicking

on the class name instantly brings up the following page with core data about the students in the

class. Again student names have been removed.


Individual Student Data

Clicking on the data link next to any individual student name brings up their key information. This

includes: parent contact details; student timetable; attendance in both tutor time and lessons;

achievement and attitude to learning grades across a key stage. The design of the page was created

by both students, who can also access the information through their ‘My Progress’ page and parents,

who get to the data through their ‘My Child’ link. Students particularly wanted all the key data to be

viewable in one page with traffic lighting so that green shows positive progress and orange and red

showing factors which might hinder progress.

The timetable, tutor time attendance and lesson by lesson attendance all show a collapsed view

which can be expanded to show a full view within one click.


Staff Alerts- Cover and Lessons not registered

One of the key quick wins when launching the Staff Gateway was the ability for staff to gain access

to crucial information. Every morning by 8.15 a.m. any cover requirements are entered into the MIS

system and instantly appear on the Staff Gateway. If a member of staff has cover on the day this will

be shown both within their timetable in the correct period and below this in a separate ‘Cover’ web

part with full details.

In addition to this when teachers forget to complete lesson registers the ‘Lessons not registered’

web part will flag these up at the end of the lesson. Both cover and missed lessons are the only items

that appear red on the Staff Gateway to signify urgency and ensure they are easily seen as alerts

when they appear. A further element of the page which teachers find to be very useful is the ability

to search for any teacher or student through the ‘People Search’ web part.

In addition to the ‘Cover’ web part all staff can look at the ‘Full Cover Sheet’ sub site to see which

colleagues are absent and who will be covering for them.


Staff access to Media Library

One of the sub sites of the Staff Gateway is the Media Library. Over the course of three and a half

years the Twynham Systems Team have digitised over 5,000 video and audio clips and these are

made available to staff both within the school and at home via password protection. The use of the

Media Library is now widespread with televisions and DVD players becoming a thing of the past

across the site. Teachers access the media simply by clicking on the asx files shown below which

brings up a media player.

Video can also be directly embedded into pages on the Gateway so that these can be accessed by

students through an in-house built SharePoint Media Player.

Mike Herrity Twynham School Learning Gateway 2007-10 P a g e 1 0

My Programs

Staff and student access to software away from school is always an issue especially when the

software is subject specific and unlikely to be owned by individuals. The Twynham Learning Gateway

overcomes this by making software available from the school servers. Staff and students simply need

to go to the ‘My Programs’ section of the Gateway and open the relevant software.

The software is made available through terminal services.


IT Room and hardware booking

With 12 IT suites 8 of which have some open booking facility and dozens of pieces of bookable

hardware the Twynham Learning Gateway allows efficient management of resources for IT support

staff. The Room and hardware booking facility allows staff to identify and select a resource to use up

to two weeks in advance. The process is automated so that staff simply click on the time and

resources they wish to book and fill in the basic details.

ICT room booking setup is a simple an easy to install system. This can be configured to individual

school needs including number and name of rooms, number of periods in the day, 1 or 2 week

timetable and pre-timetabled rooms.


Staff Collaboration- sharing resources and ideas

SharePoint is of course famous for being a collaboration platform and as well as the wide range of

tools and resources staff also regularly use the Twynham Learning Gateway to share and work on

projects. A few examples are shown below with the first being a collaboration site for our current

review of Key Stage 3.

The site below is our Teaching and Learning site.


Staff Training and Development

In addition to collaboration sites the Twynham Learning Gateway supports staff training and

development. As a training school we support trainee teachers and make a wide range of documents

and videos available to support the development of outstanding teaching.

Our Leading Edge work includes video training on effective whiteboard techniques.


Tracking data with the analysis pyramid

One of the key challenges for schools with the importance of outcomes and league tables is the

quality of data analysis and an appreciation of a school’s strengths and weaknesses. At Twynham we

have used the Learning Gateway as a vehicle for the instant analysis of both Reviews and Reports

throughout the year but also public examination results. Not only does this data system provide a

powerful tool for senior leaders to analyse headline data it allows middle leaders, pastoral leaders

and classroom teachers to drill into specific information and form accurate judgement on the quality

of results.

The Data Analysis Pyramid consists of:

1. Headline Analysis showing an overview of results and breakdown by gender.

2. All subject report giving a subject by subject overview with gender breakdown.

3. Individual Subject Report with gender breakdown.

4. Individual Class Report with Key Stage Tracker.

5. Individual Student Report.

6. Teacher Analysis Report to present feedback on results.

The Data Analysis Pyramid is created within Reporting Services and then integrated into SharePoint.

To access the data teachers click on the data page and are presented with the interface below.


The Headline analysis is shown below and gives a clear overview of results with key figures.

Clicking on the top right of the Headline Analysis brings up the All Subject page.


When teachers click on any subject it will bring up the Individual Subject Analysis shown below.

This then leads to the Individual Class Analysis which is shown below. This consists of the students

names (removed in the example), their KS2-KS4 projections and their performance across the

current Key Stage. Where student grades are lower than their target they are shown in red and

grades above target are shown in green.


If a teacher would like to see how a student performed across all of the subjects against their subject

this can be done simply by clicking on a student name from the page above which brings up the

Individual Student Report.

At the start of the autumn term all teachers with year 11 and 13 classes have to complete a Teacher

Analysis Report which is automatically generated from within the Learning Platform.


Chapter Two- Student Gateway

When we started to build a Student Gateway and discussed with students what they wanted we

were a little surprised when they said- ‘the same as the Staff Gateway’. Students liked the clean

simplicity of the icons and wanted to get rid of the right navigation bar altogether. They also wanted

as little writing as possible on the page and the addition of a Picture Gallery. For students most of

their time on the Gateway is spent in the Learning Areas- subject and revision sites. The Student

Gateway is shown below.

Students have the same basic functionality with the timetable showing a one day/two week view.

Gift and Talented Year 8 Students have started experimenting with ‘My Site’ as an e-portfolio but

major developments in this area will take place with SharePoint 2010 when greater functionality will

make a better solution.

Students also have access to the ‘My Progress’ site which displays their key details, tutor time and

lesson by lesson attendance, grades and reports. See page 7 in this guide for further details on our

Online Reporting to Parents solution. We also give students access to the same software as teachers

through the ‘My Programs’ link. This is used largely out of school but our netbook roll out could see

no software being made available on the machine but through the Twynham Learning Gateway.


Student access to the Library

Students can directly access the school library system through the student page of the Learning

Gateway. The library site contains recommendations through a ‘Book of the Week’ system along

with a current summary of the student’s current and previous lending. Students automatically

receive updates informing them of when their books are overdue. Students can search for books

online and reserve them through the system so that they can be collected at their convinience.

The library system also contains a list of online reading suitable for students through the ‘New Web

Sites’ link.


Twynham School Student Council

Students running or taking part in the Student Council can also communicate their current work with

all students through the Learning Gateway. The Student Council has three sub-committees which

focus on Teaching and Learning, Technology and Culture. Their site linking the three groups together

is shown below.

Students and the three teachers co-ordinating the student council add notices and minutes of

meetings to the individual council sites with the teaching and learning site shown below.


Twynham School SOS (Stamp out substances)

One of the key areas of student support work at Twynham School is our SOS or ‘Stamp Out

Substances’ programme. This aims to support and give advice to students who have any concerns

about substance misuse. The team and site below was entirely designed and created by the student

team working with staff on the SOS project.

Students now maintain and update the site after basic SharePoint training. Where possible we now

try to encourage students to manage as many of the student areas as possible.


Chapter three- Subject Learning sites

The main engine of the Learning Gateway is of course the subject learning sites. These are set out in

a fairly standard format which can be seen below. Essentially students can navigate to their subject

in one click from the student homepage and then reach their relevant year group in a second click.

We insist that departments allow only one further level below the year group which can be the topic

site. This ensures that students only have to make a maximum of three clicks to get to any resource.

When students are in any individual site they can navigate to all other subjects using the left

navigation. Each subject site has standard areas including key links and any shared documents and

with key subjects like Technology we place subject specific programs which can be directly accessed

through our servers.

As well as the top navigation remaining throughout the whole site to allow students to move across

areas we have kept the icon bars throughout the sites. This is potentially controversial with students

being evenly split on this decision. For some it was seen as very convenient but the negative for

others was the extra scrolling this has created. This is typical of many of the decisions we make

where end users are split on the best layout. We review these decisions regularly after end users

have lived with the update for a while and constantly look for feedback.


Using permissions for student and staff views

One of the recent changes we have made with topic or subject year sites is to introduce permissions

on the page. On the previous page you will have seen there is a staff tab with assessment, admin,

resources, schemes of work etc. Whilst we have kept the staff tab for some aspects like admin, over

time departments have started to want their teacher only resources for specific lesson to live near

the student resources that they also would need to access. The way we dealt with this can be seen

below.

The view above is a staff view which shows student resources on the left and staff specific resources

to the right. When a student arrives on this page the use of permissions means that they cannot see

the staff areas on the right and their lesson resources spread across the whole web part zone.


Student revision through the Revision Gateway

Our first ever project which involved the creation and sharing of learning resources actually began

back in March 2007. The project involved the creation of subject sites purely for revision which can

be seen below. Students were the key architects of these sites, choosing the entire layout of the

page and which resources they wanted access to.

The Revision Gateway was launched to all year 11 students in computer rooms for feedback. The

programme was an instant hit with 140,000 pages viewed within a month of its launch.


Chapter 4- Customising a theme on the Twynham Learning Gateway

One of the last changes we have made to our Twynham Learning Gateway focuses on the design of

the sites. The original sites were almost entirely undeveloped and an example of these is shown

below. This is very much what is known as ‘Vanilla SharePoint’ and can be very unappealing to end

users. At the same time for our team without a designer in 2007 we wanted to make sure we had a

focus on developing an effective Learning Gateway which had useful resources. Whilst we wanted to

return to design we felt it was important to start with functionality.

In February this year we decided it was time to take a serious look at the overall design to create a

more professional and blended look across all the sites. This is the first time we have outsourced any

work for our internal gateway and the best investment we have made in the three years. For this

work we went to the undisputed king of SharePoint design, Sam Dolan who is also known in

SharePoint land as Pink Petrol.

The overall change is very clear and can be seen below. At the same time there are more subtle

changes with the use of the same 4 colours from the banner and navigation bars throughout the

page. This particularly makes a difference in blending the written elements into the colour scheme

to give a very professional look. I would happily recommend Pink Petrol based on the work we have

done and he can be contacted on twitter as @pinkpetrol or by email through [email protected]

Sam's website with examples of his work and service can be found at http://www.pinkpetrol.com/

http://www.twitter.com/pinkpetrol


http://www.pinkpetrol.com/


The reaction to the new look gateway shown below has been very positive with staff and students

commenting on how clean and professional the sites now look. We have also taken the opportunity

to reorganise the sites to make sure the resources staff and students use continually are instantly

available. Although the notices and other areas of the site are text based the overall feel of the site is

far more visual and appealing.


Chapter 5- Creating SharePoint websites

During 2008 and 2009 we have moved beyond the creation of internal Learning Gateways to the

creation of external anonymous access websites. The first project was our main school website

which was being redesigned in the summer of 2008. Moving the site into our SharePoint set up was

a big challenge but the benefits for many schools are clear as they can save in hosting costs. More

importantly moving websites into SharePoint allows them to be updated by chosen end users

without the need for developers. As soon as the design was completed by an external team our

SharePoint team set about creating master pages to produce the website which can be seen below.

The main changes to the website design were aimed to create a much more visual site with a greater

use of images. At the same time, with the creation of gateway and in particular the Parent Gateway

it was possible to slim the overall content of the site out and move this to the internal gateways. The

key change within the school was to move from seeing the website as a place for all information to

seeing the website as an extension of our prospectus for future parents and students.

In addition to this the site is the key point of entry to the internal gateways. Staff, students and

parents click on their relevant site and are taken to a login page which takes them directly to their

personalised page. The website can be found at www.twynhamschool.com

http://www.twynhamschool.com/


The student zone contains a video tour from current year 7 students for year 6 students to get a feel

for what life at Twynham School is like.

Key processes for the school including the admissions process are all made available to parents

through the website.


Easy editing of website pages

Using SharePoint to produce websites means that key areas such as latest news can be updated

without any technical skill. The image bellows shows a simple interface for adding text and images

which is as easy as adding to a word document.

When this is completed the latest news appears instantly on the page. This role has recently moved

over to the Headteachers PA instead of a member of staff from the IT team which ensures that

valuable technical expertise is not used on administrative tasks. In addition to latest news, job

vacancies can be added in minutes without waiting for a response from the technical team.


Extending the look and feel of websites in SharePoint

One of the real challenges with SharePoint is how do you make it look beautiful like many normal

websites? This is an area we wanted to develop and the decision to make a new, more visual and

edgy site to engage older teenagers in June 2009 gave us an opportunity. As with our main site the

6th form site was designed by an external agency but this time there was a greater focus on working

with our existing A-level students to find out what would appeal to them. The results are shown

below and the site can be found at www.twynham6thform.com

The site is far from traditional with a top and bottom navigation with a large central zone for high

quality visual images. These images rotate in a loop covering the key areas shown in the bottom

navigation. The top navigation is largely administrative, allowing students to book open mornings,

request prospectuses and most importantly apply to the sixth form.

The application process is shown on the next page and is all powered by SharePoint lists. This allows

the application to be quickly processed by the 6th Form team with the SharePoint list containing both

the student aspect of the application and the interview element. The third aspect is the offer section

which again can sit inside the same list. All of this data is shown in a dashboard which allows the 6th

Form team to see key data on the number of applications, subjects chosen, offers made and the

number of students accepting offers. During the 2009-10 application process Twynham 6th Form was

inundated with 417 applicants through the site for just 200 places.

http://www.twynham6thform.com/


The Open Morning Booking system is shown below and each new request sends an alert to the 6th

Form administrator.

The application form for students is shown below.


Subject choices on the 6th Form Site

The main engine of the 6th Form website is the subject areas which allow students to make decisions

on their A-level choices. The start of the process is the carousel shown below which displays the

subject list visually.

When students select a subject they are taken to the subject home page which consists of a brief

introduction, more detailed course information and a video shown below. These videos were taken

for every subject showing a year 13 students giving an overview of the course and explanation of

what the Twynham 6th Form experience is like.

Our work on the Twynham 6th Form website in SharePoint has been widely written about and if you

would like to read about it in more detail a full account can be found at http://tinyurl.com/y8f7dlr

http://tinyurl.com/y8f7dlr


Chapter 6- Parental engagement: moving beyond Online Reporting

One of the key areas we have been developing as a school since 2007 is our engagement with

parents using online resources. For Twynham we think Online Reporting is a key resource for parents

to keep up to date with their children’s progress. Beyond this however we have taken a lot of time to

think beyond hard data and try to actively involve parents in the key aspects of a student’s life. One

of the most successful elements of this work is our Options Online system shown below.

The site was originally built in 2007 outside of SharePoint and became instantly successful. Although

both the paper copy and a DVD of the site were made available to parents only a handful were ever

taken. By the time of the 2010 options process all parents have now used the Options Online

system.

The site has a number of areas with the Key dates and Headteacher introduction shown in the

centre of the page. The top navigation has key details for parents surrounding the options process

and most importantly allows them to ask questions online. As with the 6th Form website the subject

area at the bottom of the page is the most important area for students and parents. The same

format as the 6th Form website is used with a tab system to move students and parents through the

key details for each subject. As well as a student comments video we have also created short clips of

sample lessons for each subject.


Subject Options pages

The tab system within all subjects moves from Introduction to course information, student

comments and sample lessons.

The ‘contact us’ section of the tab system allows both students and parents to ask questions directly

to the Heads of Departments of each subject.


Easy editing of the Options Online system

One of the key strengths of the Options Online site is the ease with which it can be edited.

No technical knowledge is required with editing as easy as typing when using word and

attaching a file in the same way you would to an email. Key staff can be given edit rights so

that whey they visit the Options Online site they will see an edit button on each subject site.

When they click on the edit button the entire contents of the page becomes available in a

rich text editor. The top half of the page shows the text for titles, introduction and course

information. When any section is editied clicking ok will update the viewed page in real

time.

At the bottom of editing page there are the options for email, pathways and video. The

recipient for the contact can be set along with which pathways the given subject is in. There

are also the student comments and sample lesson videos. Changing these simply requires

deleting the current videos and uploading the new video. To upload you simply click attach

file and select the video from your computer.


Administration of the Options process through the Learning Gateway

One of the most powerful features of the Options Online system is the management of the whole Options process through one interface. The Admin interface consists of a student list, interview time, interview form, interview data, group list and a print/export facility.

When students have made their options selection the Options Online system allows administrators

easy extraction of data using excel. Clicking on the Interview data section brings up all students,

showing the contents of their dashboard. This can then be simply extracted into excel to mainpulate.


The power of the parent with Mentoring Online

Having successfully implemented Online Reporting and Options Online in 2007 in early 2008 we

moved on to looking at how we could work with parents to make our year 11 mentoring system

more effective. Most of the evidence from recent reports has show that parents have the potential

to play a crucial role in student performance. The crucial element here is the extent to which parents

take an interest in the work students are doing at home.

Talking with parents at Twynham School it became clear that they needed more frequent less formal

input into what their children are working on to support positive conversations and support at

home. As a result of this feedback and input from students we have built a mentoring system which

allows fortnightly information to be shared on students target setting.

The image above shows the mentoring home page for teachers and support staff. The site is inteded

to support staff in working through a focused programme with students and creation of targets

which can be seen by all the stakeholders. At the top of the page are the key overview sections for

the whole process. The left navigation directs the staff through the weekly content for mentoring

and each contain a video overview for those who prefer information visually.

Each of the weeks of the mentoring programme consist of an overview, the detailed content,

resources needed for mentoring, exemplar targets, data relating to the student and the target

setting page. The exemplar targets were a recent addition with some support staff feeling they

needed further support in setting specific targets which were meaningful and well written. The real

benefit of the system is this aspect could be added to the SharePoint system within minutes.


The image below shows the content section of one of the mentoring weeks.

When staff click on the data section they are instantly recognised and shown the students they

mentor from the MIS system or a SharePoint list (student surnames removed). When they click on

the name of their student the Online Reporting page which can be seen in chapter one of this

booklet is instantly brought up.


Easy editing of the online mentoring system

As with previous examples including our websites and Options Online system all the resources we

produce at Twynham School are aimed at the end user. This is not only for viewing but for editing

and ownership. On each of the mentoring pages there is an edit button which is permissioned to

specific users so they can quickly and easily update the site. The editing page is shown below and

mirrors the options site system.

Perhaps the most revolutionary element of this editing system is the ability for end users to upload

video without any fuss. This is a simple process which involves clicking delete next to the video or

resource at the bottom of the page. They can then upload a video or resource which will instantly

appear on the site.


Target Setting through the online mentoring system

The target setting process within the mentoring system is shown below. Staff select the student they

are mentoring and fill in the target, steps need to achieve and comments boxes. An inbuilt spelling

system ensures that poorly spelled targets are not sent home. By clicking ok the target instantly

appears on the students Online Reporting page and is available to all teachers, the student and their

parents.

At the start of the next mentoring session all staff begin by reviewing how successful students have

been with their targets. This can then be quickly reviewed within the mentoring system and this is

shown below. This review will then appear on their Online Reporting page.


Chapter 7- The importance of Student Voice

One of the reasons we have been able to keep making progress with our Learning Gateway has been

the continual evolution of the system. Central to this has been the constant feedback from staff and

parents but, most importantly, the students. As you will have seen earlier we run Student Council

groups throughout the year focusing on culture, teaching and learning and technology. All three of

these groups have impacted on the Learning Gateway throughout the last three years. Very recently

the Headteacher of Twynham School, Dr Terry Fish and myself were given presentations by the

culture and technology group to make two key recommendations.

The first was from the technology group with a series of recommendations of how we can further

improve the Student Gateway. The document they produced from 6 thirty minute meetings is below

and it shows the level of thought they have undertaken.

These recommendations where produced by between 12 and 20 students at each meeting but in

turn they use tutor captains to take feedback from all students. This process ensures that the

information coming back from students effectively reflects their views as a whole. We are able to

further support this process by using surveys within SharePoint which can be named or anonymous

and compulsory or voluntary. During the last three years we have used these for a wider number of

issues including decisions on study leave and feedback on the quality of learning within

departments. The regular reflection allows us to ensure that the Learning Gateways are always

evolving in line with student expectations.


The other recent example from the Student Council is the recent work they have done on our

reward system. Student’s recently presented their views on how we could use the Learning

Gateways to make the system more relevant, engaging and appealing. The image below shows a

balsamiq mock-up they have completed to show how the system should look and work.

This second image shows the navigation for the system.


Web Parts and other solutions in this E-book

I hope you have found this e-book useful in demonstrating the work we have done with SharePoint

2007 in an educational context. Please do send any feedback or get in touch if you have any further

comments or questions. The SharePoint community in education is huge, especially in the UK, North

America and Australia. The more sharing we can do the more we will see the learning platform used

to good effect.

Free Picture Viewer Web Part

At the BETT show in London in January we gave away one of the in-house web parts we have built,

our Picture Viewer web part. If you would like to receive the web part for free with details on

installation contact me at [email protected]

Home Drive and Resource Booking web parts

Two of the web parts shown in this E-book are from an external development team and have been a

key part of our success in driving user engagement and adoption at Twynham School. The first is the

Home Drive web part which allows all students and staff to access all their files externally from the

fileserver. The other is the Resource Booking web part which allows staff to book ICT rooms and

hardware for lessons automatically. Both of these are commercially available and if you would like

further details of how to get hold of them contact me on the email address shown above.


twynham school share point 2007 10 v1 1

Education