Reasons Behind The Factfinding Visit:
1. To explore excellent practice in the use of Fronter – powering the London MLE
2. To meet the Fronter Management team to discuss future developments and exchange positive ways forward 

Download the report on the outcomes from Day One of the visit, including images, by clicking on the link here – Fronter_Trip_Day_One

Thursday 28th February 2008

Written by Dave Smith – HIAS ICT Consultant…

I currently have the pleasure of visiting Oslo in Norway to represent Havering during an LGfL visit to see (the London MLE powered by) Fronter in operation in schools in Oslo. As part of the visit we are talking to the management at Fronter about how we would like to see the London MLE develop in our schools and to explore further what features the next releases of Fronter will include.

Visit to Nedre Bekkelaget Skole – http://www.nedre-bekkelaget.gs.oslo.no/
Today I visited Nedre Bekkelaget Skole – a primary school for pupils between 6-11 years of age. The ratio of teachers to pupils was 1:21 and the ratio of computers to pupils was 1:1.5! The school had recently introduced interactive whiteboards into Years 4-6 and had no plans to expand beyond this.

High Pupil ICT-capability, Online Learning Effectively Embedded
We met the staff and children of the school and the children showed us the Fronter MLE (Managed Learning Environment) in action. The pupils worked very confidently with the tools within Fronter and demonstrated how they were able to access activities/tasks developed by their teachers – both downloading and uploading activities to the interface. The pupils also use Fronter for communication and parents are able to use it to help support pupil learning in a very effective way. Individual Learning Pathways have been created by teachers for pupils to work autonomously to undertake research, with inbuilt assessments that provide a snapshot of pupil progress.

Personalising Learning, Nurturing Autonomy
Group rooms for individual or group learning were available for pupil use to work on Fronter-driven activities. Due to the way in which the Internet had been set-up, pupils only had access to the Fronter interface and therefore there was no need to worry about pupils being off-task or accessing inappropriate web-content.

Communication Made Easy
Communication has been revolutionised, in fact the Headteacher commented that he was now able to “keep all staff informed in a paperless fashion and the staff love the shared calendar” – reducing the need to chase around looking for information. Everyone in one place, accessible at all times. Priceless.
Pupils’ daily/weekly tasks were accessible via Fronter – with a list of spellings and homework tasks included, allowing pupils to be further involved in their learning.

Getting staff onboard – Quick wins…
To encourage staff to use the tool he hid a sentence in daily message saying where he had hidden a bar of chocolate in the school – not only did this encourage staff to use the platform, but it encouraged the fun element of Fronter’s capabilities too!

Fronter Offices – Listening to our views, considering future needs
We visited the Fronter offices and met with Roger Larsen (pictured right) the Managing Director of Fronter AS, who showed us around the offices and introduced us to the dedicated support team for London. Roger admitted that LGfL receives a level of support way beyond that normally supplied for customers. We then had an opportunity to explore the future elements of Fronter, including some proposed Primary interfaces. I pushed the point that we must continue to listen to colleagues and pupils in Early Years and Key Stage One, as well as Key Stage Two in order to get it right – the representatives from Fronter and LGfL were very positive in this regard and suggested the setting-up of a pupil reference group to gather the views of pupils too.

I look forward to a visit to an all-through primary/secondary school tomorrow.  Read about Day Two here: http://haveringict.edublogs.org/2008/03/01/london-mle-lgfl-visit-to-fronter-in-oslo-norway-from-a-hias-point-of-view%e2%80%a6-day-two/

Dave Smith
HIAS ICT Consultant
Oslo, Norway