ICS Grid

ICS Grid is a library of curricular resources covering all Irish secondary school subjects, providing student and teacher materials, along with a collection of online tools for building courses and creating content, assessment, communication, and tracking of student performance. It enables teachers to collaborate in designing and sharing customised lessons not only in their own schools but with all teachers in schools across the country, promoting constant resource development.ICS Grid delivers these resources via a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) developed by ICS Skills in conjunction with Enovation Solutions and Cambridge University Press.

ICS Skills has worked extensively with Irish teachers to ensure that the learning resources in ICS Grid are precisely mapped to subjects in the Irish curriculum and their examination syllabi. All content is developed or sourced by Irish teachers, to meet the demands of a challenging examination system as well as providing a rich and varied educational experience for students. ICS Grid consistently brings reliable, appropriate and relevant education content into Ireland’s classrooms.

Through the ICS Grid your school will have its own VLE providing access to a shared network of digital resources from teachers nationwide along with exclusive access to digital resources from international content providers through the Global Grid for Learning.

Each school’s VLE will have the following:

1. Access to the Global Grid for Learning library.
2. A hosted Moodle Learning Management System for your school.
3. Access to mapped curricular content (subject specific courses
4. Access to a central course / resource repository
5. Training and Support for your teachers.

Global Grid for Learning

Global Grid for Learning (GGfL) is a digital content service pioneered by Cambridge University Press, one of the world’s leading educational publishers. GGfL connects learning communities worldwide to a single source library of multimedia, multi-publisher digital learning resources, sourced and selected from over 40 global content providers and publishers.

Resources will be accessed through the ICS Grid and come in many formats such as :

• Interactive learning objects
• Video clips
• Audio files
• Images
• Animations
• Documents
• Ebooks

TheGGfL library makes it quick and simple for teachers to find exactly what they are looking for. To enhance discoverability of resources and ensure relevant search results, GGfL lets users filter content by:

• Keyword
• Age Range
• Subject
• Resource Type
• Timeline
• Content Providers

Communicate. Collaborate. Educate

GGfL has been specifically designed to allow teachers and their students to:

• Bookmark their favourite learning resources and then share these with other users within their school network
• Instantly choose from our library of over one million digital learning resources to create rich, multimedia lessons that will both engage students and enrich the learning experience.

Hosted Moodle Learning Management System

The leading open source Learning Management System in the world, Moodle is designed to provide educational institutions and corporate training departments with the best tools to create quality online learning courses.

This LMS provides a collection of tools for assessment, communication, uploading of content and tracking of student performance. It will also enable teachers to collaborate and share customised lessons, not only in their own schools but with all teachers in schools across the country, promoting constant resource development.

Mapped Curricular Content

Students are increasingly becoming more media-savvy. So it’s important as a teacher to be able to engage them in the classroom using subject specific digital learning resources. Furthermore finding high quality and copyright-cleared educational resources online is often time-consuming and overwhelming for teachers. But now it doesn’t have to be.

Through its mapped curricular content the ICS Grid offers educational institutions a safe and reliable way to search, stream and download digital learning resources which are already packaged into subject specific lesson plans for your convenience ( Maths, English, Irish, History, Geography,etc).

By providing educational institutions with mapped curricular content the ICS Grid saves teachers valuable time in acquiring educationally relevant resources whilst also aiding the engagement of 21st Century Learners.

To register your interest in the ICS GRID please click here.

For more information on the ICS Grid please contact grid@ics.ie or call ICS Skills on 01 7753008