BFHS is a Catholic co-ed high school with about the same number of students as Kolbe, but in Years 9-12. Their Senior Year (Year 12) has around 260 students. I spoke briefly with its Principal, Dr George Milot, a respected Catholic educator and then spent time with their Deputy Principal of Academics Ann Perry and their Technology Coordinator Susan Kiley to look at the integration of technology in the curriculum. Of particular interest was their intention to go 1:1 iPad across the curriculum in all years in 2014.
Every classroom is equipped with data projectors and they will soon have 20 classrooms with Apple TV. While they still have some desktop computers in the school, most students use laptops. There are some sets of iPads which have been allocated to groups of teachers in the various learning areas to develop pedagogical skills that draw on the use of iPads. One Maths teacher has been flipping her Maths class in much the same way Shane and Lian do, with some amazing results.
What I found interesting was the approach to integration. At a diocesan level, Catholic secondary schools have been directed to evaluate their curricula with the Common Core Standards. This has been embraced by BFHS and they have drafted a skills development framework designed to be achieved through the use of mobile technology. Put into our language, it looks like the following: The HOLAs have collaborated to determine which learning area would take responsibility for developing which skill at which Year level during which Term.
So, what does this look like? Here are some examples given to me. I will apply them to our situation. At Year 10 level, students are taught how to blog in RE. Year 8 students are taught basic research skills, including how to reference sources accurately in their SoSE classes. These and other skills are programmed to be taught at specific times in the overall school curriculum so that other learning areas can follow up with activities that draw on and reinforce these skills AFTER they have been taught in the learning areas that have taken responsibility for teaching these skills.
This approach has been possible at BFHS only because the HOLAs worked together to decide on a list of 21st century skills and then volunteering to cover them in their subject areas. Then a small team programmed their commitments and published it.
Their next step was to develop sets of rubrics for assessing the learning of these skills. To this end, weekly learning area meeting times have been built into the school day so that learning area teachers can collaborate in drawing up the rubrics for each skill. They are currently involved in completing this task.
Susan told me that they do not want to be depending on specific apps across the board, eg, requiring everyone to use Evernote, but rather to find apps that help their teachers to teach effectively using the technology. Helping teachers to find apps that will be useful in their learning area and to become comfortable i using those apps seems to be the focus of their PD for staff. Ann and Susan were off to a curriculum PD meeting at another school after meeting with me ... and the PD was about using iPads in the classroom.
I asked about Edmodo, but they don't use it because diocesan policies discourage the use of social networking sites, of which Edmodo is one. They use Edline, which sounds like an upmarket version of Myclasses. It appears that it is run on their intranet and provides everything they need. I found the following introduction to a testimonial from Bayside Academy on the Edline website:
"With Edline, Bayside now has a coordinated and systematic method for sharing information with parents via a private and secure website customized for Bayside. When something new is posted or when important details change, parents receive an email alert encouraging them to access that information."
I asked about the use of Google Drive and Google Docs. It appears that they make use of these apps to store files for easy access and for collaborating on projects.
Some Gems found along the way ...
The school has PA announcements in the morning and in the afternoon, when school starts and when it ends. The announcements are delivered by students. Morning announcements begin with prayer. Afternoon notices end with a prayer. They have been experimenting with producing "TV news" with some success. There present efforts have been posted to the school's YouTube site. They make use of their Facebook page to publish their productions so that ex-students and current students and their families can view them. Their aim, according to Ann Perry, is to produce their morning and afternoon news as video broadcasts, possibly from their TV studio, which is in their media room.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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