News
Learn about how Bracken can help your company reach your goals.
Take a look at what we've been up to during the first three months of 2021
Welcome back
"A goal without a plan is just a wish." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writer and pioneering aviator
UPDATE - 22/7/2020 The Tarn Group will continue to operate normally and the team is here to support you through this time. If you have urgent work we've got staff available to can help you get it online quickly. . ----- UPDATE - 22/7/2020 While Covid-19 has turned the world upside down, we have been fortunate enough to see demand for our services increase especially in schools where e-ako maths was a featured resource for schools. Our support team has also been optimised to help customers generate new and engaging content. . ----- UPDATE - 11/5/2020 \ Now New Zealand is at alert level 2, we have returned to our office. Visitors please sign our Covid-19 tracer registry and follow safe hygiene practices when in our office. We are still more than happy to continue working with you online. If there is anything we can do to help, please contact one of our team. ----- UPDATE - 30/4/2020 With New Zealand moving in to alert level 3, we have reviewed our situation and will continue operating remotely. If you require our services, please don't hesitate to contact our team. ----- With COVID-19 spreading throughout the world and likely to continue affecting us here in New Zealand, we would like to keep you up to date with The Tarn Group's plans to manage the situation. Nobody knows what the future will bring but we will continue to provide our clients with ongoing support and wish you and your family the best throughout this difficult time. While we are a small team, we still have processes in place to support our staff and clients during this situation. The nature of our business allows our customers to continue working with us remotely, as our work is mainly conducted online. Your need for swift online content may increase over this time and we are here to support that. Get in touch with your account manager and we will help get you through any challenges you may encounter.
It is incredible just how much can change in three months, and this has been a time of many uncertainties with Covid-19 changing how we interact in our work and home environments. However, it has brought attention to the importance and relevance of having online education tools and we are fortunate enough to see demand for our services increase, especially in schools where e-ako mathematics was a featured resource. The Tarn Group has transitioned into the current environment with the reinforced focus on supporting the digital transformation of education and increasing the available online resources for our customers, to help navigate the new digital climate. To acclimatize to the post Covid-19 normal, Joe has returned as the acting CEO to drive the development of Bracken and James is now the Business Development Manager, focusing on ensuring our customers are supported and successful in increasing their online education presence. We are making steady progress in the re-development of Bracken with a range of functionality now in review and being tested. Furthermore, with our recent move to AZURE we are able to seamlessly scale up our servers to match the demand and increase the speed of our service. Sadly, we had to say goodbye to our wonderful Software Developer Woody (Andrew Wood) who has moved onto a new position at NV Interactive after 14 years with The Tarn Group. However, before he left, he finished the re-development of our video uploaders and these are in the process of being deployed as a brand-new collection of uploaders that are easier to use, faster and more secure for your convenience. Thank you for your continued use of our service, We value your feedback and are excited about how The Tarn Group can support you in the future,
New developments
The Tarn Group business update. Here is a summary from Joe about what has been happening at The Tarn Group from a business perspective.
While we continue to roll out improvements to Bracken with our Bracken 2.0 road map, it's now our video uploaders' turn for an upgrade. Our first step has been to update our desktop uploader to support larger files and improve the video uploading process for our users in general. We also have brand new iOS and Android apps, which can be used to upload videos directly from your mobile or tablet device to Bracken faster and more secure than ever.
During these times of change, utilising video has been a critical aspect of how coaches, teachers and clinicians have been able to provide continued support for their athletes, students and patients. Here is a story about how our clients at The Gait Lab in the UK have utilised Siliconcoach video software to support virtual consultations and help diagnose and treat patients. "Siliconcoach has been a lifeline to us, and it is the most valuable tool in our video consultations we have been doing. I have seen over 60 patients for video consultation, and I get the patients to pre-record a video of their gait and clinic tests, and then I share my screen and analyse it with the patient." Sophie Roberts, Podiatrist thegaitlab.co.uk Thanks, Sophie, for the feedback. If anyone else out there has had a similar experience, we'd love to hear from you.
Customers
Cook Brothers needed a way of keeping healthy and safety current and engaging for their staff so they could ensure compliance. Using our tool, Bracken, we created complementary suites of modules tailored to teach a range of subjects from company Induction to site-specific information.
Night 'n Day needed a way to streamline staff inductions and improve staff training. To achieve their goal of consistent delivery, we worked closely with their content experts to assist them in using our Bracken platform to construct their modules and create a platform which reflected their company structure.
Education Technology Ltd. needed to develop a system for New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission that would improve the reading, writing and maths skills of New Zealand adults, for work and for life. We partnered with them to use Bracken to deliver an online learning solution that is intuitive and feature-rich.
Training and updates
For the duration of New Zealand's lockdown we are offering weekly online workshops to help you get a jump on your online course development, as well as some socialising with other content authors around the country. So if you're finding yourself look up at a mountain of content to build into an online platform, come along and get some tips on how to efficiently author courses.
In this eTraining workshop, Lauren redesigned a module to show you how to use our tools to create engaging content for your learners.
Creating interesting modules that are going to engage your learners can be hard. Modules end up looking the same and get boring quickly, reducing effectiveness. In this eTraining, we covered how to gain inspiration from your surroundings to develop new and exciting modules like these.
Our module summary pages recently received a bit of an overhaul to give our users an even smoother learning experience. Summary pages are an important part of our users' learning process. They give learners the ability to review their work on a module allowing them to learn from mistakes, and reward successes. Giving someone the ability to review their work on a module not only adds in an element of reputation, but also allows them to check that they are happy with answers they have provided throughout the course. You've got to love that feeling of seeing heaps of green ticks when you've reached the end of challenging module.
Micro-Learning is all about delivering bite-sized learning that’s going to allow your learners greater opportunity to receive and absorb your information. Micro-learning is easy to deliver with Bracken, at the latest eTraining session Cara Negri discussed the benefits and best practices of micro-learning, as well as provided some insight into how Bracken can help you facilitate this.
Our latest features; xAPI and LRS have enhanced our tool kit to allow us to create tailored solutions that allow businesses to incorporate online content they’ve already created or use their favourite tools from other systems.
Our eTraining sessions are an awesome opportunity to catch up with our team and other businesses to discuss all things eLearning.
We have added the ability to add pre-set Shapes to Bracken pages. The shapes can be resized, rotated, and styled in the same way that Cells can. To insert a new shape: On the Bracken toolbar, click theMedia tab. Click the Shape dropdown. Choose the desired shape from the palette. The shape is inserted in the default location on the page. We’ve chosen a selection of what we consider to be the most useful and frequently used shape pre-sets. Adding more is possible.
It was awesome to see so many different sports come together to discuss common challenges and give us an opportunity to share the exciting developments coming up.