Melbourne School Visits and rubbing shoulders with Victoria's Principal of the Year (2013)

During my stay in Melbourne I was lucky enough to visit two very beautiful schools. I was starting to have some classroom withdrawals, so my two days in these schools was a welcome change of pace to my study tour and a great opportunity for observing iPads being used as part of regular classroom routines. 

My first school visit was to St. Albans Heights P.S., located in a diverse multicultural area North West of the city. The majority of the student population speaks English as a Second Language, making literacy a core focus for the teachers here.

The principal here, Helen Otway, was a key person I wanted to track down as part of my study tour as she was a participant of the ‘iPads for Learning’ trial in Victoria at her previous school – (as well as being named Victoria’s Principal of the Year in 2013). This trial happened 5 years ago, giving Helen a number of years of experience implementing this technology into classrooms.

At St. Albans they were at the ground roots phase of implementing a 1:1 iPad program in the P-2 (Prep is the NSW Kindy equivalent) classes which is quite a different approach to what I’ve seen in other schools – usually the iPads are given to the senior primary students before eventually filtering down to the younger students. When I talked to Helen about the reason for this, I received the best response… “21^st century learning is part of the curriculum as much as literacy and maths is now. We don’t wait until our students are in year 5 before we teach them how to read, so why would we wait until then to expose them to technology. We need to start from the very beginning and teach them to be good digital citizens before they get older and have already begun forming poor digital habits”.

One of the unique things about the 1:1 iPad program here is that the parents have been responsible for purchasing the iPads, as school funds simply could not cover the costs. The device type was stipulated and ordered through the school and around 75% of parents have participated in this. The remainder of students are supplied with a school purchased iPad – so all students have equal access at school, but they can’t take the school purchased iPads home.

Play and Say

While observing, I got to see iPads used in a variety of contexts as a tool to enhance the learning experience for students. The most exciting lessons I got to observe were ‘Play and Say’ sessions which is a speaking and listening focused program team-taught by the classroom teacher and the EAL/ESL teacher. This program is all about allowing students to practise speaking in Standard Australian English in an imaginative and explorative play-based environment. Students are assigned roles such as Journalists, Video Recorders and Guest Speakers which require them to report back to the group – but to do these jobs successfully they have to communicate with their peers. I can see the benefits of implementing such a program in my context to improve speaking and listening skills and support transitions from Aboriginal English to Standard Australian English in a positive and enjoyable play-based environment. When students develop a better understanding of language and its structure, it will transfer to their reading and writing skills. After all, ‘if we can say it, we can write it, and if we can write it, we can read it’

Green Screen Production Room 

My second school visit was to Warringa Park School, a special education school located near Hoppers Creek. Warringa Park has an extensive (and I mean EXTENSIVE) eLearning program that includes a 1:1 iPad program for all students (over 400 iPads provided by the school) , a digital media room, Apple TVs in every classroom and even a Green Screen video production room.

In Warringa’s Annual School Report, it states that over 95% of students made good learning progress in 2014, with staff firmly believing that this is attributed to the eLearning program.

In talking with the teacher’s there, I saw a flip-side to the uses the iPad has as a learning tool. Seeing the digital portfolios that staff  have created for the students in their classrooms, you can see how beneficial the iPad can be for teachers and tracking the learning progress of students. Seeing these records, that teachers and support staff input -written data, photos and videos of students engaging in tasks at the touch/swipe of the iPad was amazing to see (and at no extra work for the teacher because the kids do the work/take pictures or video themselves and send this to their teacher). The implications for this in assessing, reporting and differentiating the curriculum is enormous as well as being easy to share with parents to help form learning communities between home and school.

I greatly enjoyed my time at both schools, and felt very lucky to be welcomed so warmly. It’s so inspiring to see great educators going about their core business in innovative and dynamic ways and I appreciate every minute of time they were able to spare – because let’s face it, time is a precious commodity in the world of teaching and learning!

Warringa Park School