Aula365® The first School Support Tool for the home, that stimulates collaborative intelligence, favors the learning process through Primary Learning Content and motivates learning through a social platform based on participation and collaboration in a secure environment. Through a series of multimedia and interactive content, and with its own pedagogical model and developing the most advanced 2.0 web resources, students are given a new educational experience: “to learn by teaching”.
Aula365 appeals to our children’s intelligence in a fun way and related to their vital world.
Aula365 promotes participation through conversations by:
- Provoking from a pertinent problem.
- Enabling through relevant content.
- Idea sharing resulting in a flexible truth.
Aula365 student take on an active role, they are committed to the learning process because they are being recognized for their participation in the construction of knowledge.
Aula365 bring parents and children together in the teaching-learning process, the most significant stage in a child’s life, and in this way, revaluing education for the future.
institutional video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j38qixoICL0
Our objective with Aula365 is to help transform education. Develop a space where to learn is to celebrate knowledge: with the participation of children, constructive conversations and constant innovations. The way of learning in the digital age is by provoking one another, understanding that the competences can only be acquired by practice. You learn by doing and you teach through conversations. The educational transformation also applies for teachers. We must be committed to teaching and each one of us must go back to our roots. We must put emotion in the center of the action and privilege learning by doing, creating. We must be committed to teaching, and everything about it. In Aula365 knowledge is not forced, it is enabled through a fun world that relates to them, that appeals to their intelligence, not only their critical thinking but their creative thinking as well. The future depends on a classroom where you can enter and exit whenever you want and from wherever you are, 365 days of the year. We understand that education has to be based on mutual help, collaborative learning, creativity and innovation. Our philosophy is that more than creating a society of knowledge, we must learn to believe in ourselves because it is the only way we can create new worlds.
Aula365 was developed in 2006 and has been evolving since then towards a state-of-the-art school support online tool for the home.
We are currently present in 10 Spanish-speaking countries and Italy. To do this, we have developed an efficient process for customizing content and services to local needs in the following countries:
www.argentina.aula365.com www.colombia.aula365.com www.espana.aula365.com www.mexico.aula365.com www.italia.aula365.com
These are only some examples of the main countries that are using this solution today, and we estimate reaching 10 more countries in the next 2 years.
The medium term strategy is to launch a multilanguage version of the solution so it can be accessed in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian, allowing more students and families to access the experience of collaborative learning.
To achieve this we have finished developing a platform that enables delivery of content in multiple languages and allows users to decide which language they choose to use for audio, texts and interaction.
The greatest innovation we are generating content-wise is the production of interactive 3D stereoscopic movies, using the Aula 365 family of characters. Students will then have a chance to access a new way of viewing through the Internet and learn by creating.
The estimated launch of this Project is October 2010.
Aula365 has two business models oriented towards final users (B2C) acquired by e-commerce, and that which is used by companies B2B2C that includes the Aula365 as a value-added service, for example, telecommunication companies (Telefónica of Argentina, Telefónica of Spain, Telecom of Colombia, Fastweb in Italy, Autofin in Mexico, etc)
On a conceptual level, Aula365® is made up of 4 features:
Technology. This solution shows an intensive use of state-of-the-art technology. Based on .Net Ajax, combined with other elements of development, it enables an experience for the user that does not sense a change from one tab to the other. This allows more interaction, speed and usability. Furthermore, the platform allows an easier adaptation to other languages and countries, and delivery to mobile devices. This versatility allows implementation in initiatives such as OLPC and ClassMate.
Content. Aula365® is the largest educational editorial, with school content developed by specialist from different fields. It is a tool that supports formal education, the content explain the topics seen in school, following the guidelines and educational programs produced by teachers. The content is displayed in an interactive and multimedia fashion. The resources are: animated movies, biographies, infographies, images, monthly specials, blogs, RSS channels, simulators, e-books, tutorials, etc. Together they make up the largest Spanish educational resource Ecosystem in Latin America.
Services. Aula365® gives the user a broad range of services to build knowledge in a community, producing network thinking and applying collaborative intelligence to achieve knowledge. The resources used in this category are: school wiki, virtual teacher, master classes, third-party widgets, an exclusive platform for document sharing, Classroom Logs, among other collaborative networking services.
Management and support. We firmly believe the student must constantly have support and guidance in his or her way towards knowledge. That is why we are on top of everything going on in our community of students. This way, our students feel support and have guides and guardians that show them the way down the learning path.
In the society of knowledge, there are new ways to learn and teach, that incorporate the best of virtual media to enrich the educational experience. Reading, listening and viewing audiovisual material is not enough to complete the learning process. Only when we are capable of teaching others can we internalize what we learn and in the act of teaching is when we most focus on the concepts at hand. Aula365® is a new world that stimulates collective and collaborative intelligence, the co-construction of knowledge and the participation and interaction between peers with common learning interests. Aula365® is a new space created with their own codes, interests, emotions, relationships with friends and school buddies to learn and have fun at the same time. In this new world we created for students, a family of characters were designed with different personalities and characteristics, and they help kids by becoming their best school mates throughout their entire school life, from primary to secondary school. Aula365 has social sections where users can add friends and study mates, see what they are studying now keep a calendar, create their own avatar, make their own study folder (mash-up) with the sites we have selected for them (RSS) add school tools, papers, study groups, and other services. The academic section has multimedia and interactive resources for learning and reviewing the subjects they see in school, with animated movies, infographies and biographies based on school content and learning languages. We also created a reward system called aulines for acknowledging collaboration for helping out fellow students. This interaction between peers has the presence of a guardian, and is moderated to provide a safe and entertaining learning experience.
Aula 365 has been developed by a team of over 200 professionals, specialists of different subjects: teachers, web designers, pedagogic experts, multimedia designers, illustrators, script writers, communicators, content developers, psychologists, programmers, instructional designers, among others, and has required an investment of over 300.000 hours of development. There are currently over 2 million users accessing Aula365 in Spanish speaking countries and Italy.
The solution Aula365® is a service that offers content and software as a services (SCAAS) and was developed with the idea of integrating the family in the kids educational process in mind, therefore, it not only has content for students, but also has content for parents and teachers with the purpose of having them come together in the network of knowledge and experiences, and join the students in their learning and teaching process during their whole school experience.
A completely revamped design makes it more user-friendly, a social educational network, safe environment and secure content, new 2.0 movies that enable more interaction with other resources (infographies: (http://argentina.aula365.com/el-sistema-digestivo , biographies http://argentina.aula365.com/albert-einstein , school blogs http://espana.aula365.com/mejorar-la-redaccion , exercises, educational games, papers, summaries etc.).
The conceptual innovation applied to the platform allows the user to have their own personalized study folder (mash-up) containing all the information and content of interest in one same place. The user can administrate from here all the resources he or she considers useful for homework, research, practice and also share the knowledge with other students in a fun and efficient way.
For the first time, the words of philosopher Michel Serres are confirmed:
”The Great revolution of the Internet Age is that for the first time, instead of having people go to education, education goes to people”
This is the conceptual basis of Aula 365, education goes to you, to one place, wherever you want, whenever you want, 365 days of the year, to help you get better grades in school.
Aula365®, is a world where students learn by teaching, a space thought for promoting creation, participation, innovation, collaborative learning, community building, emotion, helping your peers and having all that result in more collaborative intelligence and even more importantly, more collaborative innovation.
We have thousands of testimonials from the Aula365 community that are thankful for the possibility of participating and interacting with kids from other countries and for the improvement in school grades: http://argentina.aula365.com/funciona/
Sadosky Award for Intelligence Best Technological Innovation (2007)
Iberoamerican Award for Quality Education Education Category (2007, 2008 and 2009)
Mate.ar Award Education category (2007 and 2009)
International Union for Quality Award for Argentine Quality (2009)
Successe Case by Microsoft For adopting early technologies applies to education
Intel chose Aula365 as an international PARTNER in SOFTWARE and CONTENT solutions applied to CLASSROOM EDUCATION
Arroba de Oro Award Semifinalist in Education Category (2007)
