The focus of my investigation: Elearning to enhance Education I have always been a fan of technology in education. Right from the time I bought my first ZX Spectrum home computer, followed my Acorn Electron, my Commodore 64, my Apple compatible and... my first 386 PC at more than Rs.50,000!! For my MBA course in Stategic Information Systems at the University of Technology, Mauritius, I obtained the approval of my supervisor, Mr C. Bokhoree (to whom I express my gratitude here), to do my dissertation on Strategic Information Systems for my school. A tall order indeed, as no books or articles on SIS mentioned of such systems for education! Moreover, I did not want my dissertation to be merely academic and just theory: I wanted to actually create an SIS for myself and for a school as I firmly believe that technology can greatly enhance both teaching and learning, to give its adepts a competitive differential advantage. My idea was to use whatever was available to help educators and learners. I could (and still can!) see great potential in eLearning with eAssessment and automatic grading of exercises, news and announcements, weblogs, wikis, messaging, chat room... Thus I launched an eLearning portal at: http://lbis.info I have been experimenting with lots of educational software, blogs, wikis and eLearning platforms since 1998, from Classbuilder to ATutor, and finally settling for Moodle, a great Open Source platform for education, at the beginning of 2006. After launching the LBIS eLearning Portal, I went on to experiment with podcasting and audio/video in eLearning. I wanted to explore avenues for easily putting students' multimedia work online. What I have in mind is an ePortfolio platform where each lifelong learner's work can be stored online... for life! In the course of my research work, I chanced upon KEEP and I decided to investigate the possibilities offered. I must say I'm impressed by what I have seen so far! I believe KEEP holds a lot of promises and that, along with other software, it can help me better achieve the aim of my dissertation: Developing Strategic Information Systems to enhance education.

Introduction  Say NO to Drugs Click here to download a plug-in. What results have emerged? The video clip of SuperA against Drugs

SuperA: Say NO to Drugs - The Story  Click here to download a plug-in.

My approach and evidence I have gathered When my IGCSE Computer Studies students Adrien Duval, Simon Gilmour, Cedric Lemasson, Kaveesh Juddoo, Irsham Maudarbocus and Adil Calleea showed me their clip of a funny fighting scene filmed on a low-resolution mobile phone camera, I talked to them about doing an educational clip with a better resolution. I asked them to do a short film against drugs... They enlisted the help of their friends Calvin, Steven, Shaan and Asad... and did the clips we have on this page. The students were enthusiastic and very motivated to work on the story. They even decided to have an intro and a couple 'Making of...' clips. They improvised their own script and dialogues based on the idea I suggested, an anti-drug story. However, they still included funny fighting scenes but no one was harmed in the making of the clip! And they did not smoke for real!! I must also point out that they obtained the permission of their Form 5 Coordinator who gave her approval after viewing the clips. I am also obtaining the approval of the students' parents prior to publishing this web page for the community. Just like you, I am personally against drugs and violence - and one may ponder over the use of violence - even if fake - by young students in a film. But that's another debate. Moreover, their stories often reflect what they see in society. Here, however, it's faked violence for a good cause! The work shows that students can do great team work when motivated. I used PowerPoint to present the story and the clips during the Form 5 Retreat. The audience had great fun viewing the clips and the show was an instant hit, proving that Information Technology can be used for educational purposes! I am convinced that such audio/video projects offer great scope for language use and exploration, as well as drama and acting. One can easily imagine formal language exercises where students have to write a synopsis of a story, then the script complete with dialogue and narration, all to be marked by the teacher and counting for mid-term or end of term as part of continuous assessment. Then students make an oral presentation of their work using presentation software. Again, this can be rated by peers and formally marked by the teacher. After improvements suggested by the teacher and other students, and after obtaining official approval, students can then make the educational clips. These can then be presented in class and/or posted online on a secure website like this one, to be rated by peers and other members of the school community. As for me, I have already adopted the above approach and even my Form 1 students have started working on similar audio/video projects which may also include non-fiction work, such as documentaries on hobbies, the environment, plants and animals, any worthwhile cause such as sensitising people against Child Abuse, Bullying,Harassment... The possibilities are practically endless! Work can certainly include other subjects: for example, a student can 'play the teacher' to explain a difficult Maths or Physics topic to their friends. A student - or even a teacher - teaching L'Accord des Participes in French can make a great show indeed! On the LBIS eLearning portal, I am encouraging students to become assistant-teachers as I believe you learn best what you need most to teach. Thus students have started helping in Business Management and even Hindi and Chinese! Thanks to KEEP, I can now involve students and colleagues in audio/video projects that can be integrated in the lessons!

Resources Students who are ready to act Idea for a story, a lesson or a documentary Mobile phone / Video camera PC or Notebook with Internet access (broadband preferably) An ePortfolio platform such as KEEP!