NetDocuments helps A-level students August 3, 2010

Posted by gfwhewitt2 in NetDocuments, News.
2 comments

A-level students at Haslingden High School in Manchester took an innovative approach to delivering the Applied ICT A2-level Project Management model.

Faced with the usual school network issues their teacher approached NetDocuments director Matt Duncan (matt@netdocuments.com ) for a licence for the students. Matt kindly provided this and a very successful implementation followed.

Read what their teacher had to say:

NetDocuments at Haslingden High School

Applied ICT A2-level Project Management

January – May 2010

 Objectives:

 To meet the requirements of the specification for students to use project management tools and techniques appropriate to team working.

1. To provide a practical solution for storing files to allow collaboration between team members at school and from home.

 Outcomes

1. To meet the requirements of the specification for students to use project management tools and techniques appropriate to team working.

 We were able to utilise and report the use of standard ways of working.

The majority of students worked really well with the principle of copying their team’s inbox folder in on all project related emails.

 

We have touched on the ideas behind versions and revision control before, so it was great to use a system that allows for the control of revisions. However, we were a little confused that this dialogue box refers to “versions”, as “revisions” would probably have reflected the theory we studied more closely.

1. To provide a practical solution for storing files to allow collaboration between team members at school and from home.

•  The students entered their final year of ICT studies knowing that there are a number of issues associated with working on the school network that hamper productivity. Such as: only having limited user rights; down time because of viruses; USB sticks banned; and no connection of own laptops.
• As a group we were very appreciative of a better solution than emailing attachments backwards and forwards between home and school.
•  A few students were a bit alarmed when the files they uploaded to NetDocuments were “moved” not “copied”. They obviously didn’t read the dialogue box when it appeared! The higher achieving students quickly came to trust that the file in the NetDocuments repository was the only version required (while still implementing their own precautionary back up strategy).
•  When the NetDocuments site implemented updates, we had a day or two downtime while waiting for the network technicians to allocate the new ActiveX control to the relevant network stations.
• I had initially informed students that we would not have full functionality because we were working on Office 2000, but in practice we did not seem to experience any restrictions.

 

The following quote is from student KF at the end of the unit:

“the net documents is a good system, as it has the vast amount of facilities that make it ideal for uploading work from anywhere. however i think the downside is what we found in unit 8. firstly the [confusion about] lack of compatibility with older versions of office namely 2000 and also the [delay surrounding] integration with networks such as the one at school. if this worked fine then, within school it would be a big asset”

 Conclusion

 I am extremely pleased with my students’ development using NetDocuments. I am proud that they will go on to university or employment with this experience and understanding of the principles of online document management.