Revamped National Curriculum site helps teachers share ideas
- Added:
- Feb 02, 2010
Digital agency e3 has created a new national curriculum website, with a focus on helping teachers share ideas.
The site, commissioned by the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA) and COI, aims to be a daily teacher resource that will save time and assist learning.
A brand new primary curriculum will be implemented in 2011 with entirely new content.
The necessity to include this new content prompted QCDA to conduct rigorous user-testing, which was conducted in e3’s and Abilitynet's on-site user-testing labs in order to improve navigation and information architecture.
The newly designed site will help teachers to think about how they can design compelling learning experiences using the new guidance materials.
Key content has been developed ‘by teachers for teachers’ in a bid to free up time, inspire and meet the needs of the core audience.
Stuart Avery, joint MD, E3 stated: “QCDA commissioned research with teachers about how the national curriculum is used in schools and found that interactive tools and rich media content are favoured. On the new site, rather than featuring large amounts of text-based content, users will be able to interact with a number of collaboration tools such as a ‘curriculum design tool’ and ‘take the curriculum tour’ video.”
E3, with the project team, have developed interactive tools that clearly communicate the new primary curriculum content, thus reducing the time needed doing this manually.
The curriculum design tool will encourage teachers to inject new and fresh ideas into a case study library that can then be shared with other users - something that has traditionally been restricted to within schools.
Paul Emmerson, QCDA's National Curriculum website development project manager, stated: “We needed to engage with teachers and encourage them to use the site more so that they can familiarise themselves with the changing primary curriculum set for implementation in 2011. We’ve added an interactive Flash video to visually show how the curriculum will be changing and to help teachers to find content on the new site. The site will also show teachers how to work more efficiently and in a much more collaborative way.”
Phase one of the site is due to launch at the end of January with a second phase due in March 2010.
http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/
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