Laulon Online Educational Systems

Laulon Management, Education and Technology Solutions has designed and built specialist educational assessment and online reporting systems that can be customised for individual education authorities. These systems include reporting systems, questionnaire systems and online assessment systems. The key development partner in these projects is FinPa New Media.

One of the core systems developed by Laulon Management, Education and Technology Solutions is the Laulon Online Reporting System. Customisations of this online reporting system is currently used by all secondary schools in Hong Kong and by all secondary schools in Victoria, Australia.

The Laulon Online Reporting System allows principals to log on to view reports of student outcome data over time to assist with the planning of school improvement initiatives. The two implementations mentioned above provide reports for secondary schools but there is no reason why the system cannot provide appropriate reports for primary schools. The system has four components:

1. Logon The reporting system includes a logon system for each user so that access can be controlled by the education authority. Each school will need to be issued with a username/password by the education authority. The system can allow schools to set up additional users themselves. A user in a school can only access reports for their school.
2. School reports A wide variety of report formats can be presented to the school user including bar charts, line graphs, scatter plots and tables. All reports are presented so that they can be printed on one page (unless the table is excessively long) and the user can “cut and paste” the graph or the table into a Microsoft products (eg Word, Excel, etc.). The format and purpose of the reports is determined by the education authority. Following are examples of some reports used in the Victorian system:

   The school level reports can report data at a combined level (across all subjects offered by the school), at an individual subject/strand level or can drill down to look at performance of sub-groups of students or individual students.

   The system can report data for one school compared with data from all schools in the diocese or any category of “Like Schools” such as schools of a similar size or with similar student populations. The system also allows the user to code their own student data with local characteristics such language background so that the school can compare performance of student groups within the school.

   The system can also complete statistical analysis of data to provide further reports. In both the Victorian and Hong Kong implementations of our system, the education authority has chosen to develop “value added” reports providing schools with a relative measure of whether students have done as well as could be expected.

   Finally, the system can provide a complete online user manual and help support for each screen.

3. School Administration This is an area where the school’s administrator of the system can set up new users and code student data with local characteristics
4. System Administration This area allows the education authority to set up one master user for each school, enable/disable reports, load new data, edit or extract data and run statistical processes (if required)

The Laulon Online Reporting System uses Microsoft SQL Server and runs on servers maintained by the client.

Each implementation of our system is completely customised for the client. The client is provided with a perpetual licence to use the system and all of the source code so that they can complete further enhancements to their system. Alternatively, we can provide services to maintain and/or enhance the system after the initial implementation.

ICT Review Tool

Laulon Management, Education and Technology Solutions has developed the ICT Review Tool to assist schools to review their capacity to use information and communication technologies.

The design premise for the ICT Review Tool reports is that capacity to use ICT should be developed evenly across the four STaR Chart dimensions: Hardware and Connectivity, Professional Development and Support, Digital Content and Student Achievement and Assessment.

The ICT Review Tool requires the principal, ICT coordinator and teachers to complete an online questionnaire. Once these questionnaires are completed, four reports are generated:

1. School ICT Profile Report: STaR Chart provides an overall profile rating for the school's ICT capacity and a sub-rating for Hardware and Connectivity, Professional Development and Support, Digital Content and Student Achievement and Assessment.
2. School ICT Profile Report: STaR Chart - Detailed Analysis provides a more comprehensive analysis of the areas of Hardware and Connectivity, Professional Development and Support, Digital Content and Student Achievement and Assessment.
3. School ICT Profile Report: Engaged Learning provides an overview of a leader's view of current and future policy with regard to using ICT to enhance engaged learning and how it compares to teachers' views.
4. School ICT Profile Report: Teacher ICT Profile provides a general profile of teacher attitudes and experience in using ICT in the classroom. This report can be used to prioritise resources and support for teachers as they implement strategies involving ICT. Note that at least five teachers in each sub-category (eg Teaching Level = P-2 or teaching experience = 3-4 years) for this report to report a profile for the sub-category.

The ICT Review Tool reports provide a snapshot of ICT capacity for the school. A school can complete the ICT Review Tool questionnaires at any time and generate reports for any given period. This allows schools to say, complete the questionnaires every 12 months and compare reports for the current period versus reports from the previous 12 months.