Shropshire Learning Platform

Azzurri Communications are revolutionising teaching and learning by providing unique and practical educational technology.

Azzurri provides both hardware and software solutions designed specifically for education.

Azzurri has a proven track record of providing practical, robust, flexible and innovative ICT environments through a consultative approach. Its service offering includes:

• TALMOS Learning Platform
• Managed services for schools
• ICT hardware solutions
• Infrastructure
• Interactive technologies
• Telephone systems
• Security solutions
• Broadband internet service provision
• Internet safety and email
• Wide area network management.

As a participating company on the Becta Learning Platform Services Framework, Azzurri provides a coherent learning platform to deliver the Government’s vision for personalised learning.

Azzurri is one of only a handful of companies to achieve the Becta Accreditation for Laptops for Teachers, Interactive Technologies and Internet Safety and is also a supplier to the Infrastructure Services and Learning Platform Services Frameworks.

We have developed a proven record of supporting UK education and meeting the best value requirements.

Etech is a software/multimedia developer with 14 years experience of developing training and educational products. Etech is based in Australia, with offices in the UK, Hong Kong, Russia and the USA.

Etech has designed and developed Studywiz, a primary and secondary school virtual learning environment. Studywiz is capable of delivering all forms of content and learning objects, from simple text through to video, animated material and interactive simulations.

Studywiz was launched in 2000 and is designed to be flexible in adapting to individual client needs. A comprehensive range of system settings mean it can be deployed in a wide range of ways to suit customer requirements.

The Studywiz solution is supported by a comprehensive professional services package which is delivered by primary and secondary advisors working on the current national strategies.

Studywiz clients include; The Kingswood Partnership (Bristol), Edinburgh City Council, Warwickshire County Council, Dudley Griid for Learning (UK), The State of Maine Education Board (USA), Nassau BOCES, - New York State (USA), the Yarra Valley eLearning Cluster (Australia), and many more schools in the UK, USA, Germany, France, Korea, Vietnam, Korea, Singapore, Japan, China and Australia.

Fronter was founded in Norway in 1998 and is now used by two million users in 2,000 learning institutions through eight countries. In the UK we power the National College for School Leadership’s talk2learn platform and work with several schools, colleges and a number of local authorities.

The Fronter Learning Platform consists of more than 90 tools with functionality in the following areas:

• ePortfolio, personal work and social software (web 2.0)
• teaching and learning (LMS)
• content creation and publishing (LCMS)
• collaboration and knowledge management.

Fronter is a fully hosted and managed learning environment and can be integrated with school management information systems (MIS). Fronter is compliant with all established eLearning standards and can be integrated with third party systems and technologies, e.g. Microsoft Learning Gateway. Fronter is available to everybody, with twelve different languages and support for accessibility standards (WAI).

Fronter is based on open technology - Linux, Apache, MySql, Php and the source code is available to customers. This means Fronter provides professional institutions with the benefits of an open source learning platform while at the same time providing a guarantee of security, reliability and scalability, to a fixed cost of ownership.

Users and educationalists are in control of all Fronter developments and all major decisions are taken by our users, or reference groups.

Netmedia Education, part of the Espresso Group, specialises in the development of web-based learning platforms, data driven education websites and portals, and education applications.

Netmedia has contracts with West Midlands RBC (WMnet), the East of England RBC (E2BN), the Yorkshire & Humberside RBC (YHGfL), and through its framework agreements with Easynet, and also provides services to the South East RBC (SEGfL) and the North East RBC (Northern Grid). In all Netmedia Education serves 42 local authorities and over 6000 schools. Together with Espresso over 12000 schools receive our services.

In 2005 Netmedia completed the deployment of its learning platform to 2850 schools across the East of England.

In 2006, Netmedia client school, Droitwich Spa High School, won the Sports College National Innovation ICT Award for its innovative use of the learning platform in sports education. In 2005 Netmedia Education, through Essex County Council, won the Becta Innovation Award. In previous years it has won the New Statesman Award for e-Government Project of the Year, the MirandaNet Award, the Becta ICT in Practice Award, and the ippr/Guardian E-involvement Award.

Netmedia actively influences the development of standards in the education sector through its membership of the School’s Interoperability Framework Association (SIFa), its membership of the UK SIF Board, the DTI’s Broadband Stakeholders Group, the Becta Learning Platform Stakeholders Group and The British Educational Suppliers Association. Netmedia seeks to drive openness and to deliver learning platform services that keep the total cost of ownership as low as possible, whilst achieving interoperability with other learning services.

Pearson Education is the UK’s leading education company. From pre-school to high school, early learning to professional certification, our text books, digital learning tools and testing programmes help to educate millions of people nationwide.

Pearson Education’s primary activity is that of educational publisher in the markets of higher and professional education, English language teaching and schools (both UK and international). In the UK, Pearson Education is developing a reputation for innovation in products and services that make a real difference to the lives of teachers and children.

Pearson Education are adding to their range of educational products by launching the Pearson Learning Platform, which is powered by UniServity’s online collaboration technology. UniServity was founded in the UK in 1999, and has been developing and providing Learning Platforms, community portals and web-based collaboration tools for over seven years. The company is a market leader with over one million people using their product across twelve countries. It has been recognised as one of the fastest growing companies in the UK, ranked 58th in the 2004 Sunday Times Techtrack 100 Survey and has recently won a number of prestigious awards for their learning platform.

Within Pearson Education, Pearson Phoenix will be managing the learning platform. Pearson Phoenix’s current principal activity is the provision of management information systems (MIS) to schools and local authorities throughout the UK. The Pearson Learning Platform and Pearson Phoenix’s new centrally-hosted Integrated Education Management System, e¹ are fully interoperable and together constitute a full managed learning environment (MLE).

Since 1984, Ramesys has delivered innovative ICT solutions to UK education in the pursuit of e-learning excellence. Working with over 16,000 schools and over 70 local authorities, Ramesys delivers it’s award-winning ‘Assimilate’ learning platform and Microsoft Learning Gateway solutions along with managed services, infrastructure and transformational ICT services.

Our track record of customer success is due to the experience, stability, longevity and commitment of our staff to the education market in the UK. Additionally, our long history of working with large commercial organisations enables innovative supply-chain driven solutions, facilitating customer benefits from the best-of-breed technologies and experience. This track record, coupled with the size and financial strength of our organisation, places us in a unique position to deliver visionary solutions to schools, academies, local authorities and BSF partnerships that provide technology to support teaching, learning and management within the national framework of Every Child Matters and the delivery of Children’s Services.

Ramesys is one of the most highly accredited education-based ICT companies in the world. We consistently achieve quality accreditations and are the only managed service provider to education who has achieved the ISO17799/BS7799 Information Security Management accreditation alongside the ISO9001:2000 quality standards certification - a vital reassurance for any customer.

RM is the leading provider of ICT software, services and infrastructure to UK schools, colleges and universities. Founded in 1973, we have spent over 30 years designing transformational solutions for education that are based on the needs of teachers and learners in the classroom.

RM provides a range of learning platform solutions and services from single school through to regional and national education implementations, including Glow - the world’s first country-wide learning platform which will be used by 3,000 schools and 750,000 pupils across Scotland.

The RM Kaleidos Learning Platform is a family of products and services designed to help schools and the education community realise their full potential and goals:

• RM Kaleidos VTLE: a sophisticated virtual learning environment system enabling teachers to plan, create and deliver differentiated courses and assignments
• RM Kaleidos Portal+: providing communication and collaboration tools, personalised learning spaces, e-portfolios and access to information and resources anytime, anywhere
• RM Kaleidos Data Exchange: enables integration of data from diverse systems such as SIMS or Integris management information system and simplifies the user management of the Portal+
• RM Kaleidos Assessment: a comprehensive tool for target setting, e-portfolios, assessment, analysis and reporting
• RM Kaleidos Services: including planning, hosting, support and training.

Many schools already have elements of a learning platform, but few of these systems interact to share common information. RM works closely with our customers and other educational ICT suppliers to provide schools and local authorities with a fully integrated ICT environment that helps them raise educational standards and attainment.

Serco is one of the leading partners operating within education.

We work closely with schools, learners and local authorities by providing managed ICT services, learning platforms, management information systems (MIS) and a range of other services.

Our reputation and depth of experience has been developed through understanding the needs of stakeholders and providing them with high quality support and solutions.

We are able to offer a full service including design, implementation, training and on-going support. By embedding our educational knowledge and experiences into a learning platform we can support all aspects of personalised learning and be a meaningful partner in the transformational journey.

Whilst we will operate within a standard contractual and delivery model, we are acutely aware that each teacher, department, faculty, school, federation and local authority has individual requirements that require a bespoke approach if ICT is to make a sustainable contribution.

UniServity has been developing and providing learning platforms since 2000.

By January 2007, more than ten per cent of English secondary schools and hundreds of primaries across 70 local authorities were using the UniServity learning platform.

UniServity can provide the learning platform to schools either as a hosted solution, or in partnership with existing infrastructure and hosting managed service providers.

In addition to providing learning platform technology and managed services, UniServity have also developed effective implementation support for customers. The support includes a framework and consultancy model, the “Roadmap to Success”, which supports school leadership teams in the effective, transformational implementation of a learning platform.

A key feature of the support is “The Learning Matrix”, which maps pedagogy and school improvement issues onto the learning platform. All UniServity implementation support and tools has been refined through working closely with school leaders and teachers during more than 1,000 on-site support and implementation visits.

The UniServity Learning Platform was originally developed in the UK, but its comprehensive multi-language support means it is currently used in more than twelve countries and UniServity support more than a million users.

UniServity has received a number of major prestigious awards for its work with learning platforms during the last two years including:

• Education Exporter of the Year 2006
• Supplier of the Year 2005
• BESA “Education in Partnership” Award 2006
• The company has also received certification under BS EN ISO 9001:2000.

Established in 1975, Viglen have achieved a sound reputation for service and quality in the schools IT market. Since 1994 we have been registered with BSI and in 2003 we were accredited to ISO 9001 in recognition of ongoing continuous improvement.

Our success is largely attributable to a single company philosophy that pervades everything we do - IT’s Personal.

Viglen is a mature Original Equipment Manufacturer and ICT service provider to 9,000 schools and 25 local authorities achieving diverse educational objectives.

We recognise the unique needs of each school, understanding that the solution must be tailored yet still based on a set of tried and tested education based tools that are easily customised for a perfect fit.

Our proven track record in product and service delivery includes:

• ICT hardware and software design and build
• Infrastructure design and provision
• Learning platforms
• Local and wide area networks
• Software licensing
• Managed services

At Viglen we pride ourselves on meeting and exceeding customer requirements through personal relationships. Our Schools Division contain specialist business development professionals who are available for onsite customer meetings to provide advice on the best solution for you.

Our goal is to enable whole school improvement and educational transformation through our partnership approach. We seek enhanced learning outcomes based upon personalised learning, genuine stakeholder involvement and encourage long-term relationships with schools and local authorities alike.

Becta leads the national drive to improve learning through technology. We do this by working with industry to ensure we have the right technology for education in place. We also work to support the education workforce to make the best use of technology to improve learning. So that every learner in the UK is able to benefit from the advantages technology brings, thereby helping them achieve the best they can.