Tesco SchoolNet 2000 Project Description

Computers were not wired up very well to the internet in 1999/2000....not many schools were online and those that were had very slow connections.

Tesco SchoolNet 2000 was an online project, allowing schools to come into a Tesco store and use the equipment to take part in the worlds biggest online project....the Guinness World Record Award shows that!

Over 520,000 children have taken part. Over 17,400 UK schools registered for the project.

Tesco SchoolNet 2000 still exists online, with Ultralab's big friend Intuitive Media who do very similar things to Ultralab.

Tesco SchoolNet 2000 is now known as SchoolNet Global.

Ultralab and Tesco went on to design the Learning Zone in the Millennium Dome.

Here is extract information from The Story of SchoolNet....

The SchoolNet Global project has grown from the long and valuable collaboration between Intuitive Media and Ultralab. Both organizations are driven to place the full power of technology in the hands of children and teachers and have led the development of participative learning on the Web.

Ultralab is based at Anglia Polytechnic University, and is dedicated to research into teaching, learning and technology. Professor Stephen Heppell, Director, is advisor to many governments and a world leader in developing the use of technology in education.

Intuitive Media, led by founding directors Bob Hart and Carole Fletcher, is dedicated to promoting the creative uses of ICT in education at all levels - from infancy to maturity. The company has a long track record of leading educational projects and developing highly imaginative ICT-based educational tools. They work closely with Ultralab developing the SchoolNet Global project.

Here is a chronology of the participative online projects in which the SchoolNet Global team have been involved:

1. - Apple Global Education The first major online collaborative global curriculum project, funded by Apple Computer, and originally led by Dave Allan, the project was further developed by Ultralab and Intuitive Media. The project initially used e-mail, then AppleLink and then eWorld, to bring together child and academic authors from over 200 institutions in 30 countries around the world, to work collaboratively on curriculum investigations.
2. - Schools Online A DTI-Funded Ultralab project. A group of schools and universities were encouraged to build their own HTML pages based around curriculum projects, and communicate through e-mail and web “stickies”.
3. - Tesco SchoolNet 2000 The Millennium project, initially sponsored by Tesco and developed by Intuitive Media and Ultralab, which enabled child authors in 18,000 UK schools to publish their collaborative curriculum investigations online. Since 2000, the project has been funded by Intuitive Media. The direct precursor to SchoolNet Global.
4. - Scoop Online community system for schools, created by Oracle and Ultralab. Precursor to Think.com.
5. - Compaq Quality in Education Intuitive Media developed the Quality in Education website for Compaq. At its heart was Intuitive Media's powerful content management tool - a technical breakthrough allowing staff to edit a complete website, with no programing.
6. - Millennium Schools In response to demands from SchoolNet member schools, Intuitive Media upgraded its content engine and provided schools with a tool to build their own completely editable websites. One thousand schools have joined the project.
7. - Think.com Sophisticated online community system, based on Scoop, developed by Oracle with guidance from Ultralab. It is now used to host the GridClub Clubs.
8. - GridClub Multiple media online project for UK 7-11 year olds. Funded by DfES and developed by Intuitive Media, Channel 4 Learning and Oracle. Includes a rich resource of educational games on the GridClub.com website, supported by Channel 4’s What If? educational TV series. The online Children’s Clubs are hosted in Think.com and developed and run by Intuitive Media and led by James Blomfield who brings his SchoolNet 2000 experience to make the project a great success.
9. - SchoolNet Global Building on the online resource base and established community of SchoolNet 2000, the technical innovations of Quality in Education and Millennium Schools, and learning from the experience of all the above projects, Intuitive Media and Ultralab opened up the SchoolNet Global project to schools around the world.

April 2002 - England The UK Department for Education and Skills contracted Intuitive Media to provide the SchoolNet Global service for all schools in England.

July 2002 - New website The SchoolNet Global website front-end is rebuilt with Intuitive Media's new content engine, take2theweb, ready for its new global role.

1. - The Millennium Schools merger Intuitive Media's school website building tool is brought into SchoolNet to provide a fully comprehensive service for schools and children.

January 2003 - Going global The project is launched to teachers from around the world at the BETT show in London, the European SchoolNet conference in Brussels and British Council events in Moscow and St Petersburg.

March 2003 - Members in over 20 countries Just two months after its international launch, we have project members from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda and USA.

Ultranaut Shirley Pickford reflects:

As one of the advisory teachers, it was my job to give kids the opportunity to produce their web pages for the SchoolNet project and I remember the thrill of the first page to the excitement of the stats at the end of the Dome stage of the project in December 2000, by which time we had far exceeded the Guinness World Record. Although we worked primarily with schools, at every public event we had queues of young people who wanted to make their web record of life in the UK. Weekends at the Dome were manic, with visitors who wanted to show off their web pages to their families and mates. It was a marvellous example of user generated content winning hearts.