XOOLON’S REVOLUTIONARY NEW SPORTS PORTAL

XOOLON’S REVOLUTIONARY NEW SPORTS PORTAL IDENTIFIES A SPORTING FUTURE FOR EVERYONE

[ClickPress, Tue Jul 17 2007] The Xoolon Sports and Fitness Academy, a unique and revolutionary sports portal designed to improve primary and secondary schoolchildren’s sporting prowess and lead to better targeted teaching, launched on Thursday 12th July. Schools around the country are already piloting the service. Physical education staff use Xoolon to evaluate pupils’ key mental and physical strengths; the system pinpoints those sports most suited to individuals and highlights Gifted & Talented and low ability students. The portal also offers the PE department its own customisable online space to access ability assessment, communication tools, bulletin space, advice on health and educational resources and a comprehensive database of local clubs and facilities.

The Xoolon sports portal combines ICT and education across the curriculum. It dovetails with nutrition and Healthy Schools initiatives, maths (in graphical representations of PE results) and biology (analysis of sports moves and impact on body) and can boost overall grading in many areas of Ofsted inspections including quality ICT resources, PE and the overall health and happiness of the school.

An all-round appraisal through a series of physical and mental tests entered onto online Xoolometers identifies to which six sports children are best suited, making PE fun for everyone and allowing teachers to gain better knowledge of their students’ abilities. Pupils love to enter sporting results on their own Xoolog or personal section of the portal. They find it highly motivating to view their statistics graphically and can aim to beat their own personal bests as well as measure themselves against school and national results.

When run with Year 6 classes on their secondary school ‘tester days’, PE teachers can ensure that the term gets off to a flying start by early identification of children who are gifted or need additional help. The sports psychology or ‘mental toughness’ test developed with Sheffield Hallam University is completed by pupils and mentors and identifies mental strengths and weaknesses, areas of development and to which sports or positions (eg attacker or goal keeper) children are best suited. The total Xooscore collates each child’s mental and physical competencies allowing teachers to record results accurately against national curriculum standards.

Children can print off a certificate from the website showing which sports (from athletics to lacrosse, rugby, tennis and water skiing) are their ‘top three’, providing a useful confidence boost for those unsure of their sporting abilities. The portal also provides easily accessible links to local sports clubs and facilities, fostering School Sports Partnerships, better links with the community, and making it straightforward for pupils to continue their activities outside school hours.

The Kingswood Partnership of seven schools in Bristol is already using the Xoolon Academy as part of its StudyWiz VLE and Downend School is opening its doors to interested parties on Thursday 12th July when it runs the tests with its Year 7 students. Downend’s Active for Life co-ordinator, David Beesley, says, “This system really helps the pupils to develop a good attitude towards healthy living, and it’s giving them a solid skill for the future. We can help them to do their assessment for learning, but we can also help them with questions relating to their sporting ambitions, such as: How am I doing? Where am I heading? What can I do next? How do I set about this?”

Access to the Xoolon Sports and Fitness Academy for an entire school can be gained via a one off set-up fee for secondary schools (free to all feeder primaries). This includes their own school’s space on the Xoolon website which the school can edit to match the look and feel of their website . Teachers can also add information such as news and resources concerning PE and sport. For a small per-seat annual sum Xoolon can also offer easy integration into a range of 10 framework virtual learning environments which support the National Curriculum within schools.
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Notes to editors:
The Xoolon Sports and Fitness Academy:
• Allows teachers to assess pupils’ sporting abilities quickly and easily
• Gives teachers the equivalent of specialist sports coaching knowledge
• Provides teachers with better knowledge of their students’ abilities
• Identifies Gifted & Talented children and the less able, enabling teachers to better support their pupils
• Provides a useful driver for fostering School Sports Partnerships between schools and clubs covering sports beyond the school range

For more about Xoolon, please visit: www.xoolon.com
For more information:
Catherine Dhanjal, TheAnswer Ltd
Catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com or 01883 650434/0794 166 9925.

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