Featured Teacher
University of Southern California also
inspires me. I look to these people
when it comes to best practice with the
use of technology in the classroom.
What are some of the ways in which
you use ICT to help other educators
to improve in their practice?
JESS has always been at the forefront
of using cutting edge mobile technology.
We adopted the use of the iPad in 2011.
Asa Firth, who is now our Deputy Head
Teacher and Head of Key Stage 2,
and I spoke about the use of mobile
technology at the very first What Works
event held by the KHDA. We presented
on ideas that are still being used today
at conferences all over. Both Asa and
I were very passionate about finding
ways to infuse the use of technology
in lessons at a time when it was not as
prolific as it is today. I have been running
Tech Byte sessions for the past few
years. These are optional professional
development sessions that staff can
attend. In these sessions, I look at
new apps, how to use them effectively
in lessons and also new software
that might be useful to teachers and
students. We have hosted Apple
Distinguished Educator David Kirtlan of
Elsium Solutions in the UK at our school
twice and we have also hosted Spark
teach meet events here.
Within the student body, we have
the Tech Leader Programme. Tech
Leaders are trained to assist other
students, parents and even teachers
with understanding new applications
that they may need help with. Students
applying for the position of Tech
Leader have to submit a short one
minute video clip in which they tell me
why I should consider them for the
position. I insist that as a requirement
of the application process, they need
to upload their videos to our Dropbox.
From Year 4-6, we have a Bring Your
Own Device (BYOD) policy in effect
that allows students to use their own
iPads. The students and parents are
given a contract, which they both have
to sign. In rare instances, we have
used this contract to remind them of
their agreement with us about the
acceptable use of these devices.
Share with us two successful ICT
projects that you ran in the school.
The one that we always go back to is
the project that led to our current use of
mobile technology in the school. This
was in 2011. Asa was Head of Year
Four and I was working with him then.
At that point, the school had invested
in a number of iPads so each class had
one. We sat down before Christmas to
discuss potential projects for the next
term. We mulled over a particular idea
for hours… what if we did everything on
an iPad? What if we taught exclusively
on an iPad for an en tire week? This
formed the foundation of what we
named Mobile Tech Week. We used
all the iPads that we had in the school
and trialled the BYOD system for the
first time to supplement the numbers.
Overall, we had enough devices for
the entire year group of 88 students to
share one between two.
We used Book Creator, which is still one
of the best apps to use in schools, to
create multimedia ebooks throughout
the week. The focus of the work was
habitats and adaptations. Students
chose particular habitats to research
and represent using various forms of
multimedia within the ebooks. On the
final level, students were told to plan a
trip to the habitat, so they were looking
at apps like Skyscanner, Google Maps
and Apple Maps to find the locations
of restaurants and safaris. In the end,
students had ebooks with dozens of
pages of text, images, video and audio
footage.
Last year, when I moved to Year 6, I
ended up with the same cohort that I
had taught back for the Mobile Tech
Week project. Obviously, we couldn’t
use the same type of project, as it
Class Time
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