Primary and secondary state-school students will soon be able to supplement their learning experience by getting lessons in the virtual world wherever they are.

The €8 million project, financed by the EU’s Regional Development Fund, provides a personalised learning environment where contacts, resources, documents, school information and the latest news are all stored in one central space, which can be accessed anywhere.

The eLearning platform, known as Fronter, was unveiled yesterday at a conference at Mqabba primary school, attended by school heads, teachers and other education stakeholders.

The platform will initially be implemented in 28 primary schools, which were chosen because they already had the necessary ICT infrastructure in place. Training for teachers will start in February. It is envisaged that Fronter will be used in all state primary and secondary schools by 2013.

The platform is designed like a virtual school. The “school building” is the Fronter website itself. This is then divided into classrooms, which pupils can access with a unique password. There they will be able to access lessons their teacher puts online, even if they are sick at home.

Teachers will also be able to assign homework, which pupils will then be able to submit online, after which they will also be able to see their grades and teachers’ comments on their work, which will not be limited to text but can also consist of audio and video files.

The site can also serve as an online social network for members of the classroom, while teachers will be able to share resources with each other.

Parents will also have access to the system, where they will be able to view their child’s attendance, progress and teachers’ comments.

Aside from Fronter, schools will also be implementing a management information system called E1, which will allow teachers to record attendance and monitor pupil performance. It will also include a finance manager for school administration.

IT Minister Austin Gatt described the project as one of the most important steps forward for the country’s education system. He added that the platform has the full support of the teachers’ union.

“The only limitation of this system is the imagination of the teachers who will be using it,” Dr Gatt said. Dr Gatt added that the government was also investing to increase bandwidth in schools.

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