Project Exploring Science Planning & Personalisation Tool
The Exploring Science Planning & Personalisation tool was proposed to be developed and published as an additional component of the Exploring Science KS3 Science teaching course that Pearson Education were currently developing.
The idea to give teachers a convenient means of reviewing and arranging Exploring Science teaching materials (i.e. the information that is presented in the printed Teacher and Technician Planning Guides) at both unit and topic level, giving access to certain ‘hard-wired routes’ through the teaching content that have been mapped to student ability levels.
Whilst providing pre-populated planning information in an integrated way that can be reviewed at both the unit and topic level, the ESPT would also allow teachers to:
- Modify existing plans by removing and adding tasks using the ‘Task bank’ facility
- Modify existing plans by creating their own task ‘on the fly’
- Get an overview of how thoroughly they are covering the curriculum by using the ‘Curriculum Compare’ facility at unit level
- Save planning on a per-unit basis (each saved unit plan will de facto contain all associated topic planning, and allow teachers to drill down and review planning at the topic level
- Export plans in MS Word editable format
Planning
With a very tight and fixed publishing deadline, the planning and specification stage was critical. A workshop was held with all key stakeholders to establish the exact criteria for the project. From this a detailed functional and technical specification was produced mapping out the delivery requirements.
Technical
ESPT uses multiple technologies to provide a fast and robust cross-platform application. The majority of the application is written in ActionScript 3 making use of the Flex framework and the Cairngorm architecture. The application is wrapped in Janus with our custom extensions written in C++. All application data resides in a local embedded SQLite database which we create from our production based online MySQL database.
Our team also authored a front-end to the production database and tooling to convert the MySQL database to SQLite.
We provided an MSI installer for Windows and an installer package for Mac.
Testimonial
“It was vital that we published our first Planning and Personalisation Tool in advance of the end of the summer term, to give teachers time to plan over the summer break. The deadline was extremely tight for a bespoke digital product, not least one of this complexity, and so it is quite incredible that we delivered three days early – due in no small part to the dedication and commitment of those involved at Creative Jar and Encore. From the initial workshop onwards, it was very clear that Jethro and the team had a strong feel for what we wanted, and they were responsive, flexible and good-humoured throughout the project, coming up with creative solutions to problems and proving very happy to work around unforeseen issues and last-minute changes. We’re really happy with how the product has turned out and it’s meeting an incredibly positive reception in the market: we’re already reprinting less than a month after publication.”
Emma Whale
Senior Publisher, Pearson Longman
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