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What is Spark Island Online? - Our partners - Our team - Advisers - For more information

What is Spark Island Online?

Spark Island Online is a web-based learning service for children aged 3-11, their teachers and parents. It has been designed, built and tested in close cooperation with teachers and education experts to help children practise and develop core skills in a highly interactive and enjoyable way.

Spark Island Online focuses on English, maths, science and ICT and contains over 130 interactive learning activities, all linked to one or more learning objectives in the National Curriculum, numeracy and literacy strategies, Scottish Guidelines and QCA schemes of work. All activities are accompanied, in the teachers' site, with printable teaching suggestions, worksheets and additional paper-based resources. The parents' section of the site includes information, ideas and advice on all aspects of primary education.

Spark Learning, the company behind Spark Island Online, has undertaken extensive research among primary school teachers to find out which topics are thought to be most difficult to teach and the areas where ICT can add the most value to teaching and learning. We have developed learning activities around these topics and integrated them with the characters, plot and environments of Spark Island. All learning activities are then reviewed by our educational advisers and tested in classrooms.

Spark Island Online has been designed for use in the classroom and at home. We aim to balance different styles of learning activities; from dragging and dropping, clicking and 'closed' outcome activities to activities with open-ended exercises through which children can explore, discover and create. The activities are designed for skills reinforcement and practice rather than to test and assess and the colourful animated context of Spark Island with lively characters and game 'features' such as lives, timers and scores all help to motivate and inspire learning.

For as little as £100 a year for schools and £49 a year for homes, subscribers can access, play and download a growing bank of interactive learning activities as well as printable teaching suggestions, additional worksheets and resources. New learning activities and resources are published each term and subscribers are notified by email.

The context and characters of Spark Island are constantly being developed and have been used as the basis for a number of other 'Spark Island' products, described below.

Our Partners

Spark Learning has teamed up with a number of other publishers or content providers to develop books, CD-ROMs and school resources based around the context and characters of Spark Island. In 2002, Spark Learning joined forces with BBC Learning, a division of BBC Worldwide, to co-publish a range of products for the UK home learning market. The innovative three-year deal included the publishing of books and CD/DVD-ROMs, covering Literacy and Numeracy across the whole primary age range and used games, animated characters and activities from Spark Island. Find out more about BBC/Spark Island products here.

In 2003, a partnership with Collins Education was formed and a series of co-publishing projects have followed, under the Collins/Spark Island brand. ICT Aventure, a complete set of resources for schools supporting the QCA scheme of work for ICT was published in October 2003. This scheme consists of a teacher's guide, a pupil book and a CD-ROM for each year group from 1 to 6. A range of home learning National Test practice books was also published and are widely on sale in consumer outlets across the UK. Futher co-publishing titles will be published in 2004 and 2005. Find out more about our Collins/Spark Island products here

Spark Learning has also made the activities on Spark Island Online available in SCORM format, so that they can be used by schools as part of a virtual or managed learning environment such as RM's Kaleidos and Granada Learning's Learnwise.

Management Team

Tom Davy, Chief Executive and founder. Previously Chief Executive of Addison Wesley Longman (EMEA group), the educational publishing division of Pearson Plc. 20 years experience in publishing for business, consumer and education markets in a variety of media and formats in the UK and internationally. He has developed and launched successful multimedia products for educational markets in the UK, Europe, Asia, the USA and South America and has held senior management positions in five media companies.

Nick Kind, Publishing Director. Before joining Spark Learning in 1999 he spent five years developing web-based products and services for Jane's Information Group and Thomas Nelson, both part of the Thomson Corporation. His last two projects were to put the complete Arden Shakespeare online and to write Thomas Nelson's electronic publishing strategy for the schools market.

Jonathan Black, Finance Director. Fourteen years experience in strategic planning, finance, IT and operational management, since 1994 in the context of health science publishing. He was Senior Associate in the London and San Francisco offices of Booz.Allen & Hamilton. (1986 to 1992) In 1992 he joined the Times Mirror Company in Los Angeles as Director of Strategic Development moving and became Senior Vice President, Finance & Operations at Times Mirror International Publishers in 1994. Since 1997 he held the same position at Harcourt Publishers International. He co-founded Physicians Decisions Ltd (www.pdxmd.com), a medical information business, which was successfully sold to a large media group in 2001.

Caroline Hartley, Education Content Editor. Part of the team that developed and launched Spark Island, Caroline has worked in educational publishing for many years. Before joining Spark Learning she was a project editor on primary CD-ROMs at Dorling Kindersley.

Spark Learning has an extensive network of freelance editors, designers, animators and programmers, named in the credits page.

For general enquiries contact info@sparklearning.com.

Non-Executive Directors

Tim Hailstone, Non-executive Chairman. Thirty years experience publishing professional information, much of it in the medical and health science field. In 1979 he cofounded the highly innovative Gower Medical Publishing. From 1991 to 1996 he was President of Times Mirror International Publishers, which included Mosby, the global medical publishing house. From 1996 to 1999 he was Chairman & CEO of Harcourt Publishers International where he championed the acquisition of Mosby and Churchill Livingstone to form, along with W.B.Saunders, Harcourt Health Science now the world's largest publisher for healthcare professionals. He co-founded Physicians Decisions Ltd (www.pdxmd.com), a medical information business, which was successfully sold to a large media group in 2001.

Other non-executive directors. The company also has one other non-executive director: Stephen Ross, Chairman, Springboard Plc.

Editorial Advisory Board

Anne Sparrowhawk is director of Sparrowhawk and Heald, a consultancy giving advice to and managing projects for a range of different organisations in the teaching and ICT industries about how ICT can be effectively evaluated and used in the classroom and at home to enhance children's learning.

Heather Govier is a writer and developer of teaching materials across Key Stages 1 and 2 for national organisations such as BECTa. She is chair of the charity MAPE (Micros and Primary Education), a national voluntary support organisation for primary teachers wishing to make effective use of ICT in their teaching.

Simon Adorian is currently Deputy Headteacher in a 630-pupil Middle School for children between the ages of 9 to 13, as well as working part-time as the Dorset LEA Literacy Consultant. He has taught in a number of Middle Schools where he has been responsible for managing English, Drama and Assessment issues. Simon is also the author of a number of plays published for both the Primary and Secondary age range.

Roger Keeling is Head of Maths and IT at Newman College of Higher Education in Birmingham. He was a co-founder of MAPE (Micros and Primary Education)and ITTE (Information Technology in Teacher Education) and has also developed a number of well-respected educational programs.

Julia Eccleshare is a leading name in children's book reviews. She is chair of the Smarties Children's Book Prize, and is also the Children's Book Editor for The Guardian. She broadcasts regularly for the BBC with programmes including Open Book and Front Row. In 2000 she was awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Award for her outstanding contribution to children's book reviews.

Margaret Bell, originally a teacher, has held many key posts in IT and education, and was Chief Executive of NCET until 1997, when she became a founding partner of Belle Associates Ltd, an independent consultancy for ICT in learning.

For more information

Please contact any of us on info@sparklearning.com or at the following postal address:

Spark Learning Limited
Ames House,
7 Duke of York Street,
London SW1Y 6LA.
Telephone: (+44) (0) 20 7004 2606 - Fax: (+44) (0) 20 7004 2612