E learning – friend not foe

Bilton Grange's article was published in 'Prep School' magazine

Bilton Grange’s article was published in ‘Prep School’ magazine

 “Bilton Grange still at the cutting edge of ICT”

There follows an article from the most recent edition of ‘Prep School’ magazine demonstrating how Bilton Grange continues to lead the field in I.C.T. teaching.

Prep school age children take familiarity with the latest web technology for granted, but how can this be used productively, creatively and safely within the classroom?   Enlightened prep schools are looking to embrace new internet technologies (Web 2.0), as friend rather than foe and go beyond simply teaching about the safe use of the web.  Whether it is a video clip of Latin verb endings on YouTube or creating interactive posters on World War II on glogster.com, cross curricular e-learning is here to stay.

Bilton Grange Prep School in Dunchurch, Warwickshire has recognised the power of tapping into that which children find both exciting and familiar as a way of enhancing the learning experience, with judicious use of the internet.  Developing the School’s own ‘Facebook’ style networking site BG Blogs, run on the open source platform Elgg, together with other platforms such as Edmodo (www.edmodo.com) not only creates a secure and safe place to learn e-safety skills but has allowed learning and discussion to take place beyond the boundaries of the classroom and the teaching day.

Interactivity with ICT is the key: the more children use it to create content, the greater the understanding of its public/shared nature.  Often, if children misuse ICT, it is because they believe they are acting in a world apart from reality, not behaving as they would in the ‘real world’, so an integrated approach ensures that children appreciate it as part of reality.  Giles Tollit, Deputy Head of Bilton Grange, comments “In some schools, sharing passwords can be seen as part of friendship. At Bilton Grange the children have come to see that passwords are like toothbrushes: don’t share them and change them regularly” – part of the School’s approach to building good ICT safety habits.

The concept of ‘whole brain learning’ – that of using visual, audio and kinesthetic methods to help children learn, is not revolutionary, however using the internet to interact with these styles of learning within the classroom, perhaps is.  Certainly, all teachers would agree that there is a place for different types of learning within the classroom, and use of the internet within the classroom is never at the expense of the contact between teacher and pupil.

Taking a snapshot across the timetable of an average school day, how could internet tools be used?  Pupils in a history lesson on the Second World War might create a comic strip on toondoo.com to develop their own propaganda posters; in an English literature class, children could be creating a movie to represent the sequence of activity in a scene in Romeo and Juliet on kerpoof.com or analysing the use of language with a ‘word cloud’ created on wordle.net.  Science pupils across the country are currently involved in powerleague.net, debating the most important inventions of the 20th Century, so this debate could be used and brought into the classroom.

‘Crowd sourcing’ is a term used to describe the process of tapping into the collective intelligence of a wider group through the internet, be that other students also studying a subject, or indeed at a teaching level, teachers dealing with the same curriculum or ideas.  The benefits of this are twofold: through the use of sites such as powerleague.net, pupils are able to reach out and create a debate on a whole range of issues relevant to their subject – such as the best invention of the 20th Century, or climate change.  Furthermore, teachers, asking a group of their Twitter followers, could pose the question “what are your ideas for teaching the Vikings?” and have responses with an immediacy never available before. Outside the immediate surroundings of the classroom, sites like Twitter go beyond purely social networking or micro blogging functions and can provide a ‘personal learning network’ enabling teachers at a distance to discuss, share resources and engage in open dialogue within a public arena.  David Noble, Head of ICT at Bilton Grange, comments “Prep School teachers have long had the chance to learn from and discuss with each other electronically, using the SATIPS discussion email lists and forum, but developing a personal learning network on Twitter allows us to learn from subject leaders and classroom practitioners across the world.”   

Clearly, there are drawbacks, and feedback from IAPS Heads of ICT is that different teachers have different levels of competency and willingness to incorporate the internet into their lessons.  Communicating the value of e-learning to staff, and additionally parents, is a vital part of any school’s approach to cross curricular e-learning.  Education at every level is important and the responsibility lies with those responsible for ICT within schools to demonstrate the potential the internet has, if appropriately harnessed, as an educational tool, to transform the way pupils learn.

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E learning – friend not foe
E learning – friend not foe
 

Tags: ICT, Pre-Prep, Prep