Home / Teaching / How to Teach Online / Leadership of Education Technology in Schools / Case study 3 – Developing a strategy to implement a vision
Case study 3 – Developing a strategy to implement a vision
In this video, hear from two primary school leaders about their journey with education technologies and the benefits their school has experienced.
Our vision is to maximise learning and develop the learning potential of children really strongly, and if you have high expectations of what children can achieve then their learning power can be improved and can be focused and concentrated and really, children are capable of far more than we actually give them credit for. We utilise research on brain development and the best learning possible, in order to be able to do that and IT or technology is a crucial part of children being able to discuss their learning, discuss the best parts of their learning, discuss you know, and understand when the best learning takes place and use that repeatedly in order to achieve the highest possible expectations.
Vision always comes first because you’ve got to have a very clear direction that you want to be headed in and then a strategy to implement the vision, so that you actually have markers on the way to getting there. We had to put the infrastructure in place so we spent a huge amount of time, probably two to three years, working on CPD and understanding how the best learning took place, how you can maximise learning potential and then we were ready to introduce technology. There was a huge explosion in terms of how children could use it and communicate through technology in order to discuss their own learning and that of others and maximise how they could learn best.
We have a 1-1 iPad deployment at school and we wouldn’t be able to achieve our vision without that. For professional development for our teachers, they removed the walls in the classroom, so for example they’ve signed up to Twitter, they’re connecting with schools globally, they can give instant feedback to pupils through Showbie so less time is spent on actually marking books, but time is spent for teachers to collaborate, to talk about pedagogy, to unpick how children learn.
For our pupils, the iPad is a digital pencil case so it gives them the choice in how they’re going to present the work, it’s not the teacher stood at the front of the classroom saying this is what I want to see in your books, they can choose - are they going to make an iMovie? Are they going to use clips for example and put something together in there? Are they going to make a Keynote? As long as they have the main success criteria in it then that’s great.
It enables pupils to learn outside so you can see them going outside, they’ll be filming out there, it just removes the walls for them in the classroom as well, they’re not confined to one place. They also have that communication with the teacher so when the teacher is giving feedback through Showbie and the teacher is using Apple Classroom, they can see that straightaway and they can respond straightaway as well, so there’s no time wasting, they’re learning straight away, they know how they’re going to be applying it, it puts them in control of their learning as well.
In this video, we hear from Jonathan Clucas and Claire Jones from Layton Primary School about their journey with education technologies and the benefits their school has experienced.
Thank you to Apple Education staff and Apple Distinguished Schools for creating this content.
Key learning points from this case study
- Their vision for their school and pupils’ learning has driven their use for technology
- Creativity and choice for their pupils’ learning was what they hoped technology might enable
- CPD around maximising pupils’ learning came first. The school then explored how technology could help them with that
- Technology has opened up new learning and CPD opportunities for teachers. It has also reduced their workload, especially around marking
Once you’ve reflected on the points raised, click the ‘Mark as complete’ button below and then select ‘Our learning so far’ to hear from Katy Chedzey about the themes we’ve explored so far on the course.
This article is from the online course:
Leadership of Education Technology in Schools
Created by
This article is from the free online
Leadership of Education Technology in Schools
Reach your personal and professional goals
Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.
Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.
