The Applied ICT A2-level Project Management class at Haslingden High School, located in Manchester, England, needed a better way to collaborate on projects in order to fulfill a requirement to learn project management techniques and work together from school and from home.

Wise Systems and Solutions put them in contact with Matt Duncan of NetDocuments who granted the class a NetDocuments basic account to enable them to complete their project.

After completion of their semester, they sent us the following report:

Objective 1: To meet the requirements of the specification for students to use project management tools and techniques appropriate to team working.

• "We were able to utilise and report the use of standard ways of working."

• "The majority of students worked really well with the principle of copying their team's inbox folder in on all project related emails."

Objective 2: To provide a practical solution for storing files to allow collaboration between team members at school and from home.

• The students entered their final year of ICT studies knowing that there are a number of issues associated with working on the school network that hamper productivity. Such as only having limited user rights; down time because of viruses; USB sticks banned; and no connection of own laptops.

• As a group we were very appreciative of a better solution than emailing attachments backwards and forwards between home and school.

• A few students were a bit alarmed when the files they uploaded to NetDocuments were "moved" not "copied". They obviously didn't read the dialogue box when it appeared! The higher achieving students quickly came to trust that the file in the NetDocuments repository was the only version required.

• I had initially informed students that we would not have full functionality because we were working on Office 2000, but in practice we did not seem to experience any restrictions.

• The following quote is from student KF at the end of the unit: "NetDocuments is a good system, as it has the vast amount of facilities that make it ideal for uploading work from anywhere. However, I think the downside is what we found in unit 8. Firstly the [confusion about] lack of compatibility with older versions of office namely 2000 and also the [delay surrounding] integration with networks such as the one at school. If this worked fine within school, it would be a big asset"

Conclusion: I am extremely pleased with my students' development using NetDocuments. I am proud that they will go on to university or employment with this experience and understanding of the principles of online document management.

NetDocuments would like to thank Haslingden High School for their innovative approach to teaching and project building.