Tablets Transforming Teaching and Learning at Carey

Leanne Guillon

Head of eWorld Learning

Carey Baptist Grammar School

Kew, Melbourne, Australia

From a teachers’ conference, 1703

• Students today can't prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!

National Association of Teachers Journal, 1907:

• Students today depend too much upon ink. They don't know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.

Melbourne Declaration

• The Melbourne Declaration and VELS expectations are very clear. Twenty First century learners must be confident and creative users of technology.

• Tablet computers allow us to integrate technology more seamlessly into the classroom and beyond.

It’s not technology, it’s life

Professor Erica McWilliam - QUT

Where to begin....

• The journey began at Frankston High

• Research generous sharing of resources

• Computelec – Rose Elsom

• Met and trained some of the early-adopter staff

$300 of Tablet functionality gives us flexibility

• All the normal functions of a lap top

• Plus the ability to swivel the screen to create a flat work surface

• Annotate text

• Draw and design

• Onenote – electronic note book- Revolutionary !

• Organise, structure

• Clip from the internet

• Voice and video recordings

Why tablets in Middle School ?

• Age and stage appropriate

• Text manipulation

• Paperless marking and feedback on work

• Onenote and all it can offer to assist with organisation

No more one size fits all !

• JS- recently moved to Mac

• Yr 10 and beyond, students begin to have more specific subject focus

• Can select the most appropriate machine for their subject interests

How to begin ?• Middle School staff take delivery of a tablet Sept ’07- staged roll

out to familiarise staff

• First students with tablets in Yr 7 Feb 2008• Pull rather than push approach- staff not obliged to use the

tablet functionality, shown the advantages

• Tablet training by specialists Rose Elsom and Stuart Deane after the official school yeat ’07 23 staff keen to attend

• On going training for staff- individual and group sessions

• Learning Area based training- very successful

Fujitsu LifeBook T4410 Tablet

2010 – it’s not about the bike !

Art Rage

A new take on prac. reports

For teachers, the electronic chronicle

Survey results

Measure by the standard of the ‘average’ teacher not the early adopters !

Data driven planning

– Proficiency has developed quickly given Onenote has only been taught at the school since 2008. Has quickly reached a level equivalent to the standard software like Outlook

– Need to improve Excel knowledge and use

– Always more to consider– Cyber citizenship, back up training and managing the

temptations of 1:1 programme

Kids say...• “It has enhanced my learning because it's easier, as I have all

my work on my laptop not in separate books. It's also more fun with a computer with all the features that you can do with it.”

• “It makes me feel good to know that i am saving all the paper, but it is annoying when something goes wrong and you can’t reverse it. Using a computer is also good because you can do so many things that pen and paper alone cannot.”

• “It has enhanced my learning because I can learn in a different way to how I learn without a computer. It is good to learn with both a have a good variety and you learn a lot more. It had helped me a LOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

A word on assessment

• 19th century assessment tools in the 21st century ???

• What is stopping us from creating assessment tasks that allow students to do more than write essays ??

A futures-focused school isn’t set in some hazy ‘other’ future. It’s a school parked solidly in the present, but with an attitude and a commitment to engage with the future in order to discover alternatives as a context for making choices today. A futures-focused school wants to choose and

create a future for itself and its students. The alternative to being futures-focused is to wait for the future to happen and then respond, or worse, to

view the future as no more than an imagined glorious past, which the school seeks to recreate.

David Loader : Jousting for the New Generation: Challenges to contemporary schooling, published by ACER Press.