Children and adults: highway, or byway

We are calling Studywiz in Southampton ‘eCity’, and held an information event last night at the school I started my teaching career in, Sholing Junior School (a very successful school, I might add). My thanks to the Head Teacher, Marc Parnell, for the use of their facilities. I was keen to keep my input to a minimum, and use the event as a showcase of the excellent progress that has already been made by Southampton schools.

I was also keen that, if possible, the schools represented would bring children along to both present, and demonstrate to adults what they could do. Well, what an effect that had. The usual quiet listening occurred, and I gazed across the room at the assembled tired teachers, hoping they wouldn’t become glazed. That didn’t happen, and the input from all the adults (including Hilary from Etech, who brought her usual gravitas and credibility to the situation) was excellent - enthusiastic, concise and clear, keeping everyone present informed and, importantly at this time of year, awake!

However, once the children were able to contribute, the room began to buzz, and the examples of what kids could do ellicited applause, and there was a great response to live chat between the children present, and those back at their own school. Subsequently, the kids then mingled with the adults, and showed them what they have done, what they love about Studywiz, and answered questions. They will always amaze me, and I’m chuffed the event went so well.

There was also proof that the practice in one school, to use children to train adults and other children, is going extremely well, as I have advised all along. If you’re reading this, and are implementing your Studywiz deployment, remember that children are the key to a smooth rollout. They were born in an age of web based technology, and are guaranteed to speed your journey.

Students Engaged

Hello. This is Regina again, updating information about my iPod/Studywiz study. After one week, we asked our students what they thought about the iPod. Did they see it as a study tool, or was it honestly, just a bit of a fun toy and status symbol? Did they find it useful or was it just one more device to carry around besides their phone. Was it just one more thing to remember in the evenings, getting it charged up and ready to go?

I expected a balanced response to these questions but I was really surprised at the overwhelming enthusiasm the students shared. One student claimed she felt really confident that her vocabulary, understanding and pronunciation had become better in just one week because she was playing with a whole variety of educational tools on the iPod. Another felt his translation and vocabulary was massively better because he sheepishly admitted that he was addicted to one of the Spanish Vocabulary games. Another felt her understanding of the text was better because she was listening to the audio over and over again and she was watching the video with the same audio and this also helped her understanding of the lesson passage.

Students in this photo are working together on verb tenses and translations.

iPod mobile project

I’m Regina Cockerill, Middle School Technology Coordinator at TASIS England, an American-International school in the suburbs of leafy Surrey, England. This is our fifth year using Studywiz. We were fortunate enough to have been provided funding for a pilot study of iPods in one of our foreign language classrooms. This was inspired by Louise Duncan, another Studywiz user and great promoter of iPods in education.

Although the foreign language teacher knew in his gut that a ubiquitous device like the iPod could transform foreign language education, we are riding our own learning curve daily. The past two weeks has required figuring out what to purchase, figuring how to manage an AUP, deciding how much ‘freedom’ to give 11-14 year olds on the device, deciding what apps to purchase, deciding what our learning objectives and outcomes would be, announcing the project to the community, and launching the training and delivery of the devices to students.

The students have taken their privilege and responsibility really well. They are watching Spanish curriculum videos, audiofiles and .pdf files regularly. In addition, they are addicted to Spanish Word Search games where they are given the Spanish word and they must search for the English definition. These are usually played on the bus ride home. Students are already excited about how much better they comprehend their Spanish lessons because they can view or listen over and over again, at their own discretion. This puts constructivist learning in the hands of the student — perhaps the best way to learn.

One of the great surprises was that we, as teachers, were only considering the students’ need to access Spanish class documents from Studywiz. The kids of course, were so excited to find all their homework easily available through the Studywiz mobile interface … and all their eLocker documents available at the click of a button. These students began to realize the instant access of learning material that was available to them. We’re only in week one of a six week study. We’ll keep you posted.

The Internet turns 40!

According to Oliver Burkeman of the Guardian the invention of the internet could be attributed to an event that happened on the 29th October 1969 at UCLA. On this day the word login was typed on one computer and appeared on a second computer several hundred miles away. The internet, known then as the Interface Message Processor, was born. Burkeman goes on to write about the amazing advances in technology especially in the last 15 years. In his article he quotes computer scientist Steve Crocker who was present on that day  in UCLA in 1969 “…there has not been, in the entire history of mankind, anything that has changed so dramatically as computer communications, in terms of the rate of change.”

Burkeman believes that it is with the development of web 2.0 in the last seven years that the true capacity of the web has been revealed. He descirbes how blogs, Twitter, pod-casting, video-sharing and Facebook have become embedded in our culture.

“But you almost certainly know all this: it’s part of what these days, in many parts of the world, we call “just being alive”.

Click here to read the article.

Academic Review and Learning Plan

Twice yearly reviews - 1:1 interviews.

All our students twice a year have a 1:1 interview with their tutor and a parent is present. These focus on academic progress and three school wide targets are written and comments made. This involves paper which is then photocopied and sent to parents, tutor and head of year. As a teacher they know nothing of these targets and the follow up review struggles to monitor progress as some paper is lost.

We have set up Studywiz eportfolios for all our Yr 7, 8, and 9 students. So we created a learning plan folder called academic review and inside a learning plan was created and dated with objectives called target 1, target 2, target 3 and comments. Staff now add in targets and comments and parents can view, pupil can collect and monitor progress over the years and all teachers can view using dashboard and search. Save on cost of posting, photocopying and admin staff time. Wonderful!