Using New Technology
To support our students.
Highcliffe has a long record of being at the forefront of using technology to support our students learning and progress – after all we were one of the very first schools to have a wireless network and laptops for our teaching staff.
9 months ago we took an innovative step of purchasing an iPad for each of our teaching assistants having identified that these smart devices had many possibilities to help support our students. The new and exciting journey started a few days later when the IT team were able to distribute to the whole team.
Each and every day new uses of the iPad are identified but some examples are:
• Using the iPads to browse for inspiration during Art and English writing lessons
• Having lesson plans and resources emailed to teaching assistants to aid support in lessons
• Students using iPads to annotate key points in e-books and even be able to make the text bigger where vision is an issue for the student
• In PE being able to recording activities for analysis so students can see their own performance instantly
• Having instant access to information about groups or individual students needs and progress allowing the teaching assistant to adapt how they support students where they have not met the students before.
• Using animated apps for exploring the human body and organs in Science and PE
• Students being able to use translation services to look up their own words in Language classes
• Taking photos of whiteboards during lesson and sending these to students via email to help them with taking notes.
• Photograph work within Art, Design & Technology to document student’s projects and progress.
• Researching topics in class using either the internet or apps from the app store
• Accessing revision material online such as BBC Bitesize or Birchfield interactive when working with individuals or small groups
• Access to instant information and registers to help teaching staff in lessons.
• Giving presentations using Keynote whilst walking around the class rather than from the front (using Airplay)
• Keeping important documents for quick access
• Instant access to the schools shared documents and online resources via MyHighcliffe
• Exciting new ‘unit’ in ICT being developed so students in year 8 will have the opportunity to develop their own apps which will be tested with the teaching assistants
• Being able to access the schools email and other systems securely away from ‘prying’ eyes of students
• Using whiteboard apps to record notes and images with the output being able to go directly to all the students in the groups instantly via email.
• Small groups of students being able to manipulate Google Earth to look for types of structures and rivers.
As you can see we are very excited by how these devices can help support the teaching and learning of all our students. We are also starting to trial iPads in a number of areas such as English, Maths, Art and Technology to see if we can find other new ways of using this technology.
