Ministry Support Drives Spike In School Demand

Ministry Support Drives Huge Spike In Demand From Schools For Learning Management System Software

Ministry of Education funding support – along with the ability for parents to quickly and easily log on through the internet and keep in touch with their children’s school progress – are key drivers for a massive spike in demand for Ultranet, a Learning Management System (LMS) from New Zealand education IT specialist Edtech.

Ultranet lets schools aggregate all the digital resources used for teaching and learning in a school. These range from providing a safe social networking space and sending school notices home, to online discussion forums and the provision of links and resources for learning.

Edtech CEO Peter Nelson says the recent Ministry of Education decision to fund implementation cost and the first six months of licence and service costs for Edtech’s Ultranet and three other MOE-approved Learning Management System solutions has caused a huge spike in demand.

“Since the MOE announced the funding package the response from schools has been phenomenal. In just the past three weeks we have signed up 70 primary schools and 11 intermediate and secondary schools around the country. There’s a good spread in size and location ranging from small rural schools such as Bunnythorpe Primary school in the Manawatu with 34 students through to Massey High in Auckland with over 2,000 students,” Peter Nelson says.

The Ultranet LMS has been developed by Edtech over the past five years and is now live at a total of 152 schools around the country serving around 85,000 pupils. The solution runs ‘in the cloud’ and costs on average around ten dollars per student per year.

The MOE funding for Ultranet followed a pilot programme where Edtech implemented Ultranet at 40 schools around the country, demonstrating to the MOE that the software could be installed and implemented successfully, and would deliver the benefits hoped for.

Peter Nelson says the MOE support for systems like Ultranet is in response to good evidence internationally that greater involvement by parents greatly contributes to student engagement and higher achievement. However, he says, the portal feature for parents is just once facet of Ultranet.

“Learning Management System software is helping transform the way teachers teach and the way children learn,” Nelson says.

Ultranet customer Jasmin Leitz of Bethlehem College says Ultranet is now embedded into virtually every aspect of the school curriculum and teaching programme.

“Today students enjoy using a range of modules – such as. blogs, wikis, discussion forums, calendars, task boxes, polls, etc – to reflect, to communicate, to set goals, to celebrate learning and to collaborate with their teacher, parents and peers. Their social learning network ‘uSpace’ is primarily used for the development of our ePortfolios and ‘ClassSpace’ houses our online classrooms where students access the links and resources that will help them extend their learning. Ultranet is used successfully in Bethlehem College with our Year 1 students right up to our Year 13’s. Just recently we have begun rolling out Parent logins so that our families can enjoy the opportunity of partnering in their child’s learning,” Jasmin Leitz says.

Peter Nelson says the rapidly building demand for Ultranet has Edtech’s Ultranet implementation teams gearing up to increase capacity.

“Last week we appointed four new staff specifically to the Ultranet team. As overall Edtech staff numbers are now over 100 and as we now have two capable Ultranet business partners,we are well able to easily handle the existing business and scale quickly to meet the increasing demand,” Nelson says.

He says each Ultranet implementation is highly structured to ensure the best results. Implementations run over 12 months so teachers and pupils can gradually introduce the new toolset in a way which is easy to manage and which is tailored to deliver the greatest value to each school.

ENDS

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