How one School in Northern Ireland Adopted Xello Following a National Rollout
Background and Challenge
As part of this national service, Northern Ireland became one of the first UK clients to acquire Xello, the flagship product in CASCAID’s portfolio of careers education and guidance software.
A national implementation of any software solution is not without its challenges, but Xello’s seamless onboarding process coupled with a solid vision executed by long-standing partners, CASCAID and NI’s DfE and DE, made it all possible.
Kim Bingham, of Lagan College in Belfast, explains her views on implementing Xello and, crucially, how it is helping to future proof her careers provision.
Kim is Head of Careers at Lagan College and also teaches science full-time—a very busy woman. Kim says they have been using multiple career platforms and services with information and data all filed across different locations. Trying to keep the information up-to-date is proving to be very time-consuming. Her team of career teachers recently increased and Kim wants a tool that they can all use. One that can help her monitor the team’s progress and support them all in delivering their career education goals.
‘We went into lockdown and I wanted to build a portal for both staff and students, but especially a platform that students will love. ‘
School
Location
Problem
Solution
The Solution
Kim says, ‘I joined a Xello webinar arranged by the education authority and was instantly blown away by what Xello could do for me, the potential and the ability to include our own lessons and resources.’
Kim has nothing but praise for her careers team. ‘They’ve all worked so hard to get onboard with Xello. We now have all of our lessons and resources in Xello and can easily share them with our students.
She says that by having all of their resources and data in one place it is now so much easier keeping them current and takes less time.
‘I love the educator tool!’ Kim says, ‘I teach full-time so having the educator tool helps me keep on top of my admin duties. With our expanding team of career teachers, I can easily monitor and evaluate how our department is doing to ensure we’re all on track.’
The Results
‘Our careers advisers work remotely and they can still conduct guidance interviews with our students whether they are in the classroom or learning at home. They love that they can set assignments and see exactly what students have or haven’t completed.
‘And the students, they’re totally sold on it. We’ve been trying for years to engage them and we can now see how involved our students are with Xello. The assessments are fun activities which help to further their understanding of careers in order to create plans for their future.’
Even as we talked, Kim was logged into the educator tool. ‘Look!’, she said, ‘296 students all logged in and are working in Xello!’
One of the next steps for Kim and her team is to introduce their subject teachers to Xello and explore ways that it can be used in subject lessons.
Kim’s enthusiasm is contagious—we’re in no doubt that they’ll have this implemented in no time at all.
About the School
