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Solutions

East Midlands Broadband Community

East Midlands schools at the forefront of personalised learning and e-safety

Brief:

The East Midlands Broadband Community (embc-pl) boasts one of the largest integrated ICT infrastructures in the world to provide learning opportunities for over 2000 schools and 900,000 teachers and learners across 8 Local Authorities in the region, including:

Schools, libraries, teachers, learners and parents are already benefiting from an advanced set of Microsoft technologies including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 portals and learning environment, the latest Exchange email service, advanced Single Sign-On, managed WAN and a filtered, e-safe environment. 

The service sets a new benchmark for integrated and managed educational ICT services which will ensure East Midlands schools are able to meet DCSF targets for Personal Workspaces, access to an Integrated Managed Learning Environment plus online and real time reporting of student progress to parents. 

Solution:

Synetrix, a Microsoft Gold partner, designed the full architecture, including application and systems integration, propriety IP around SharePoint extensions, enhanced turnkey solutions, and manage the service for embc.

The service is based on the most advanced Identity Management solution available in the education sector, a fully auditable and federated single sign-on system based on Active Directory, that will enable users access to their workspaces and email based on a unique profile that will seamlessly follow them through school moves and educational phases, even ensuring their interface is age specific and filtering levels are appropriately set. 

The latest Microsoft SharePoint technology provides a portal for each Local Authority and will enable collaboration, communication and sharing across the region.

Based on flagship Microsoft products, the service also enables mobile access to learning opportunities via laptops, PDA’s and SMART Phones as well as school, library and home promoting anytime access to learning.

Jay Neale, Commercial Director at Synetrix comments, “embc have taken a strategic long term view of IT services for East Midlands.  They have built solid foundations and a rich application suite on which they can not only meet imminent government targets, but is at its heart is designed with the intelligence to support future demand in scale and evolution of personalised services, providing flexibility for local choice as well as centralised services that allow aggregation and scalability benefits.”