I've referred to this project in several past blogs and thought I'd put up a bit more detail around it. This kicked off in both schools this week and students and Teachers alike are excited about the possibilities. I'll make sure to keep you posted as to its progress. 

MS OneNote Cross Border Curriculum Sharing Project

Feb-March 2008

Overview:

OneNote Cross Border Curriculum Sharing Project - It is the intention of the project for 1 school in Northern Ireland and 1 school in the Republic of Ireland to deliver the same curriculum content at the same time to the same age group of students. One class in each school will deliver the coursework using Microsoft OneNote on a mix of laptops and UMPCs. 2 other classes in each school will deliver the coursework in their traditional manner (whiteboard/notebooks/blackboard). There are several goals to offering the OneNote Project:

• Was there an impact on the grades for the participating students? Did it make a difference?
• Were the students more engaged with learning the subject materials?
• Did the Teachers gain any productivity benefits by delivering a "paperless" application?
• Is OneNote an adoptable application which would benefit other Teachers and students?
• What are sufficient training requirements for schools that wish to use OneNote?
• Did the UMPCs drive participation and what did the participants think of them as a learning tool?
• Much more to be discussed and agreed

Details:

The 2 schools chosen for the pilot are:

• Ireland- Dunshaughlin Community College- a Microsoft Global School of the Future located in Dunshaughlin, County Meath, Ireland
  • 24 YTC students (15-16 years old)
• Northern Ireland- Wallace High School- a leading NI school in ICT and Innovation located in Lisburn, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland
  • 14 AS Level students (16-17 years old)

Partner engagement:

• The Microsoft Schools Technology Innovation Centre (STIC) will be the lead project manager of the initiative, Tom Jackson (i-tomj), STIC Manager, will co-ordinate all activities. The STIC is part of the European Education Research and Innovation Centre (EERIC). The EERIC/STIC partners are Intel, HP, Cisco and Classroom 2000 (C2k). The EERIC/STIC will make available 10 Intel UMPCs and laptops as required.
• Wholeschool.tv- Wholeshool.tv has created the OneNote notebook for the coursework from the content supplied by Wallace HS. They have also built into the notebook the ability to "map the curriculum" to the Northern Ireland designated curriculum for Post Primary (grade years 8-14) schools. This will allow Teachers to "tag" content to specific areas of content and map back to required teaching and delivery criteria each NI school must meet for each student.
• Intel- Colin McHale, Country Manager Ireland, and Sean Maguire, UK PS Manager, have arranged with two of their partner companies to supply sets of Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) to both schools for the pilot. The reason for the need of these devices is driven by the lack of bookable time in their computer labs for course delivery along with a lack of mobile devices (laptops and UMPCs). On top of the 10 Q1 UMPCs which they have already loaned to the EERIC/STIC:
  • Samsung- 15 new NP-Q1U Q series UMPCs built with Windows XP SP2 for Wallace HS and 10 Q1 Ultra Mobile UMPCs which were originally loaned to the STIC. These will be going to Dunshaughlin CC. Supplied through Samsung UK and loaned through Added Dimension
  • Vyepc- 15 new Mini V S237 UMPCs supplied by Vye Computers Ltd of Leatherhead Surrey will be built with Vista Business.
• Classroom 2000 and HP- working with the MS STIC they rebuilt the 10 existing Q1 Ultra UMPCs with Windows XP SP2 from a Classroom 2000 build

The agreed course work will be:

• Life in Hitler's Germany 1933-1939
  • The social impact of Nazism on social classes: the role and status of women

This specific coursework is part of a larger piece but due to school schedules, exams and holidays it was decided to concentrate on a specific theme for a pre-determined period of time.

The core content areas will be:

• The Nazi Economy
• German Workers
• Women (key area)
• Education (class contribution section)
• Hitler Youth
• Jews
• Other Minorities (class contribution section)
• Volksgemeinschaft
• Nazi Ideology
• Curriculum Mapping

The project will run through March 14^th with all relevant data and results collected and collated by the end of May.