look, listen, explore
Welcome to FutureVu
Learning in the real world. Home of the VIEW Project
VIEW Multi-User Edition
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Information for Employers
An Introduction
The demand by young people wishing to access an employer’s work place in support of their learning has significantly increased with the development of vocational opportunities in schools and beyond. The emergence of the new Applied GCSEs is causing that demand to grow far in excess of the supply. The success of the 14-19 vocational curriculum is dependent upon the successful engagement of employers and is recognised as a critical component of vocational education by Government.
The VIEW project provides a mechanism to strengthen employer involvement in vocational education, enabling virtual access to their workplaces by potentially tens of thousands of students and minimising the cost to any one employer. VIEW helps remove some difficult barriers to education business links such as geographic location, health and safety and confidentiality.
VIEW is an ICT based resource which will enable young people to navigate around an employer’s workplace exploring the environment through a series of panoramic digital images. At any point they are able to ‘point’ at items of interest and access; closer views, scanned documents, audio clips and video. All of the items are accompanied by text based background information providing a rich perspective on a real work place.
How does VIEW work?
There is no substitute for seeing a VIEW application running on a computer. Many people who have been present at demonstrations of VIEW quickly appreciate what is often very difficult to convey in words. Any employer who is considering offering their workplace as a VIEW application should arrange for their staff to see VIEW. Seeing is believing and the success of VIEW is dependent upon the enthusiastic support of employers and employees.
The VIEW virtual visit enables a young person to research a workplace. The research isn’t done for them, since most of the evidence that they are looking for is where it is actually found in the real workplace. VIEW doesn’t resemble a text book where information is organised together under headings and offered in a logical order. VIEW is an accessibility tool and depends upon students and teachers developing skills that enable the young person to gather relevant information by looking, listening and reading.
VIEW allows the student to move around the workplace between special points called ‘nodes’. These are chosen in discussion with the employer to allow a wide coverage of the workplace and are points where lots of information and activity is visible. Typically, a workplace is covered in around 40 – 50 nodes all connected in a network to allow the student to move between each node exploring the workplace.
At each node the student can ‘spin around’ and through a panoramic image see 360 degrees. There is a limited ability to zoom in on items of interest but more importantly some items become ‘hot spots’ that can be clicked on to reveal even more information, such as a closer image or a sequence of images representing a process, a close view of a document or an interview with an employee or perhaps in some cases a piece of video. All these layers of information are accompanied by a narrative encouraging the student to read alongside images and listen to spoken words.
Data fusion
What appears to be a two dimensional network of nodes across the workplace is really an Aladdin’s cave of hundreds of bits of information that has to be found, considered, collated and related to other parts of the workplace. Students develop research skills to help them manage this process and these are skills that will help them in the real workplace. They must of course relate what they find to their particular vocational course, but they will also be looking at real working environments and real working people, all of which builds a better understanding of the world of work and the role that they might desire for their future.
Each VIEW application has some plans and maps of the workplace to help the student find their way around. They cannot ‘jump’ about however, they must work out routes around the network and make their own notes to ensure they do not get lost or lose track of where an important piece of information is kept. Some of this information is more easily found than others. People are easily spotted but documents might be in folders, cupboards or drawers. VIEW encourages young people to be inquisitive to ‘dig’ out information. What they find is authentic material from the workplace. This in turn might cause the student to ask more questions than it may answer. VIEW is as much a starting point for research as it is a source. The VIEW application ‘seeds’ information and references to encourage the young person to seek extra data from a variety of sources including the internet, library, newspapers and their local community.
VIEW is all about using a fusion of multimedia technologies to create expansive learning environments hat are as true to real life workplaces as possible.
Find out more...
If you would like to find out more about VIEW or would like to speak to us about how we might develop a virtual tour of your workplace, then do not hesitate to contact us. You can find our contact details on our Contacts page.
The South East England Development Agency has funded the construction of six VIEW applications. All six will be provided on CDs courtesy of SEEDA to schools in the South East of England free of charge.
Skillsmart, the Sector Skills Council for Retail has funded the construction of a VIEW of Retail CD based on House of Fraser, Oxford Street. The CD is available free of charge to all schools in the UK through their local Education Business Partnership.
