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| Espresso Education and OUP Press Re-Define ‘Blended Resources’ Espresso Education and Oxford University Press (OUP) today announce a partnership to develop and deliver "blended resources". The companies plan to combine their expertise in the digital and print educational fields to blend the best imaginative, multimedia content with the best structured primary schemes, used in thousands of classrooms around the country. The first set of resources will be based around non-fiction texts from OUP's Oxford Reading Tree 'Fireflies' series, with an initial prototype available for demonstration at BETT 2008. OUP and Espresso will offer teachers: • Electronic cross-referencing to the curriculum to support planning and assessment; • A resource that will allow work to be extended beyond the classroom and be shared at home; • A range of media that helps engage the interest of children and create excitement and rich opportunities for learning; • The chance to motivate children by providing a wide audience for their ideas and writing. The basis of this "blended resource" is not simply the combination of multi-media, video rich resources with print-based resources; it is the enrichment of both ingredients so that the combined blended resource offers greater value to the teacher and the child. For teachers, OUP and Espresso will provide an ideal blend of resources to offer a rich, topic-based lesson. This will include video and picture stimuli for the whole class to foster discussion and speaking and listening; enjoyable activities to assess comprehension and link the video and the book for independent or whole class use, and a real purpose for writing with the opportunity to post reviews to a wider audience. With this exciting new blend, teachers will save time and have instant access to these structured, supplemental resources all linked to Framework objectives. Future resources will draw upon different combinations of these multimedia and print ingredients, thereby ensuring each "blend" meets a unique and targeted objective that fully supports the needs of a rich learning environment." All Espresso subscribing schools will receive the digital elements of the blended resources as part of their basic subscription. On Espresso, 'Oxford Reading Tree Fireflies Plus' will stand as a discrete learning object in its own right. When paired with the Fireflies book and a comprehensive set of teaching notes, the materials on Espresso will bring added value and support a series of lively and inventive literacy lessons Lewis Bronze, CEO Espresso Education stated, "We have partnered with OUP because both companies want to add real value to teaching and learning. We're delighted to be working closely with such a well-respected organisation and we hope our customers will derive real benefit from the collaboration." Rod Theodorou, Director of OUP Primary adds, "Teachers have to work hard to mix and match resources every day. We want to save teachers time by doing some of this work for them, and offer this as a free extra service. Teachers tell us they love the character, warmth and creativity of our resources. We knew it would be a fantastic idea to work with Espresso because they share that same passion for rich motivating teaching resources. It's just a great way to embed ICT and increase creativity in the classroom." write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |