Our focus is on providing the most comprehensive and relevant online teaching and learning solution to suit your needs. This carries through to the design of the user-interface and the individual modules, all assembled to offer a variety of learning outcomes—not just for the students who use Ultranet, but also the teachers adapting to teaching with digital tools.
Click on the buttons to the left to explore some of the key attributes of Ultranet in more detail.
Ultranet is divided into three interconnected spaces: WebSpace, ClassSpace and uSpace. Each features a range of services and tools to support students, teachers and parents in making the most of the learning management system.
WebSpace
Getting some presence in the World Wide Web is often the first step schools take when going 'online'. Ultranet contains all the features required to build and publish your own dynamic school website. With the addition of a dedicated News Centre module, publishing school events and activities is also seamless and easy. Because WebSpace is integrated with the Ultranet platform, it means authenticated users can also sign in to the website to gain access to additional site tools such as making online bookings of school resources. When partnered with a compatible Student Management System, Ultranet can also present parents with special login access, so they too can obtain updated assessment and attendance records, as well as keep in communication with the school and teachers.
ClassSpace
This is the area that houses the virtual classrooms, and is the main hub where teachers can share digital resources, host collaborative tasks and publish learning content. In ClassSpace, students have a greater potential to be engaged and interact with the learning process using media-rich resources, online quizzes and homework or sharing in group wikis or discussions.
uSpace
This is our unique area that houses our social learning network, where Ultranet users can access individual profile pages to publish and share their own content. uSpace harnesses the fun of social networking sites whilst putting it in a learning context, featuring a flexible e-portfolio page for each student, plus useful tools such as blogs, photos and video sharing.
Finding content online might be as easy as performing a search in Google, but what about when you want to make your own page? Writing web-pages with dynamic and attractive content can be tricky, especially if you don't have a computing background!
That's why we've embedded a powerful and flexible visual editor (a.k.a. "WYSIWYG") for building the Ultranet pages. With an interface and tools that will be familiar to anyone who has used a standard word processing or desktop publishing software, the Ultranet page editor will help you get your thoughts and ideas on the screen.
On top of using the visual editor, we've also included a few special modules to assist with publishing your content online. Photos and videos can be easily shared through the Media Gallery module, which allows users to create slideshows of any uploaded pictures, as well as a built-in encoder to turn your video files into fast, web-streaming Flash movies.
The built-in wiki module also provides users with the option of hosting group-authored content. Teachers and administrators can moderate this content, with the ability to compare changes between edits or roll-back to a previous page version.
Time: the number one obstacle for teachers in learning new technologies. We know that teachers pack a lot of their attention and focus each day on preparing lessons, marking work and—if they're lucky—even having their own personal lives!
That's why Ultranet has been developed over the years with close consultation with teachers, in order to design tools and solutions that are easy to pick up, yet make no compromises in performance or flexibility.
The user-interface and panels in Ultranet follow a familiar sequence throughout the application, which means that if you learn a workflow in one area, chances are it will be mirrored in another section. This minimises the time it takes to learn a new module or execute a task. It also means that the average teacher who may not be 'tech-savy' can have a decent go at learning and creating exciting new web activities.
Teaching styles have to be responsive to the needs of the students, as well as the intention of the learning goals. In planning and designing their units, teachers often have to decide which method and resources to use in order to achieve a class objective.
Ultranet accommodates this by slicing up each web page and virtual classroom, resulting in a variety of individual page modules that teachers can deploy as and when they see fit.
The great thing about this modular approach is just how fast it makes things. Not only do users have a selection of pre-built and customised web tools for use in classrooms—they can also be easily positioned around different areas of the page layout using a simple drag-and-drop function.
Here's a brief overview of the page modules:
Tasks. Create worksheets online for homework or assignments, including online submission.
Discussions. Host online forums for student conversations, questions or taking polls.
QuizBox. Write online tests, quizzes and forms, including auto-marking and timed attempts.
Wiki. Open content editing to students, with version control and roll-back/restore feature.
Resources. Upload and share files and handouts, create hyperlink bookmarks or embed digital learning objects.
Media Gallery. Publish photo slideshows, or embed automatically encoded Flash video files.
Calendar. Add important dates and reminders at personal, class or school-wide level.
Publishing and sharing content on the World Wide Web can have great benefits, but it's always good to be able to control just who gets to see what.
Along with the easy creation of content in Ultranet, setting security levels and permission access is also offered at various levels throughout the application. Teachers and administrators have the ability to customise which pages are available for public access, or drill deeper to allow only certain classes or groups to access a resource. Teacher can set up password protected staff-only areas, or schools can establish certain pages to be accessed only by cluster schools through a secure account.
With special permission settings on certain modules, teachers can even take fine control of objects in the page, allowing students to have particular edit rights. Moderators can also be set up to check content such as discussion posts, so that inappropriate comments can be flagged before going live.
The inclusion of the secure uSpace network also means that schools can offer a social networking solution that is safe from strangers and integrates with the wider online learning tools in Ultranet. Users can control who is in their buddy network and publish only certain materials to them accordingly.
Students naturally require guidance to help them frame and organise their learning and revision materials, but this is often made even more difficult when teachers themselves get swamped in stacks of paperwork and folders!
That's where digital solutions can come in very handy, especially in being able to categorise and store large repositories of resources easily in one space. Ultranet allows users to achieve this through its range of resource sharing facilities.
Teachers and students benefit from having dedicated places to obtain lost handouts, important exam notes, course guidelines or even homework activities.
Office administrators will also appreciate the online solutions such as the built-in Bookings module, for managing school resources and scheduling, as well as the News Centre for gathering and publishing school notices and newsletters.
Online spaces would be nothing without the participation of other people. In fact, as an information and communication technology, the internet really is about connecting people.
Ultranet facilitates these opportunities for working with peers and colleagues, providing multiple tools across the application to share resources, give peer review and feedback, provide support or help in a group project.
Ultranet shines particularly well when teachers use the online space as a platform to launch rich-tasks across multiple school classes, or to involve the wider community in a topic of study. Because it is web based, the system is not limited by physical constraints—thereby allowing classes to be shared by users who may not even be in the same country, let alone city.
Physical classrooms are great for face-to-face contact and interaction. But they're always restricted by the time in which participants can all be in the same room, and also the actual space itself. Why else would we need trips to the zoo?
This is why Ultranet's virtual classrooms are an excellent extension of the physical class space, allowing the learning to be extended through the internet and accessed from home.
The uSpace portfolio also encourages students to think laterally, building up a repertoire of their best work over their school lives—especially across the different subjects and teachers they may encounter. And when their time comes to move on to another school or even beyond, they can export all of their files and take it with them on a disc. Now that's portable!
The world is full of choices, and computer operating systems are not an exception. The great thing about using web-based applications is that your users don't have to be tied down to any particular flavour of computer.
Ultranet utilises some of the latest web technologies and standards to deliver a user experience that is dynamic, responsive and intuitive—but most of all consistent across Windows, Macintosh or Linux.
To deliver this smooth and reliable experience for all users, Ultranet is recommended to be accessed in the following modern web browsers: