Our BYO Program at Oakleigh State School is in its 5th year. After starting with a pilot program in 2014, the program has evolved over time into its current model which is that every student in Yrs 4-6 are given the opportunity to bring along their own iPad to support, extend and enliven their learning. Each year our teachers have worked very hard to use them to support what we know good learning looks like. Additionally, they also use them in ways that is potentially transformative for our learners (for tasks that could not be otherwise completed without the use of technology) – creating digital books to upload to the iBooks Store, screen-recordings that demonstrate students’ understanding, digital portfolios that show individual goal setting and then the subsequent photographs of the learning that demonstrates when these goals have been attained, movies that show a scientific process and data gathering of individual maths results to be able to design a digital solution.
This year, we had 100% uptake of this opportunity for our incoming Yr 4 students. This is absolutely fantastic and testament to the work we have done as a community of learners in understanding how the use of technology can be an important component in enhancing the learning and teaching experience for both our teachers and students. Interestingly, in last year’s School Opinion Survey – this aspect was the greatest area of positive change for our parents.
A range of activities have been occurring in our BYO classrooms this week. The most important thing at this time of the year is the setting of clear and consistent expectations for all learning and activities in a classroom. The use of the personal devices have been an important part of this with teachers discussing their expectations for their use in learning. Additionally, from a technical perspective, we need to ensure that the devices will work the way they should on our network and that the necessary apps have been installed. Some of our teachers conduct an iPad Audit in the first few days so that our families have the opportunity to add apps that are necessary for the start of the year. This year’s technical work and adjustments has been the best yet and we have been able to get off to a extremely smooth start in this area. Opportunities also exist for parents to drop in to get assistance or to ask for help via our Parent BYO Facebook page.
Opportunities have also arisen for teachers to start talking about the need for respectful and responsible behaviour in all areas – including that to do with online behaviour and technology use. These conversation are, of course, ongoing and we will soon publish an overall plan for our school for Semester One in the area of Digital Citizenship.
In addition to the setting of routines and expectations a number of activities utilising the iPads this week have included:
- the use of stands in some rooms for iPads and lap tables to enhance student posture.
- the bookmarking of sites that will be useful within learning like the Collins dictionary and Soundwaves Online
- the use of number fact apps to check that tables knowledge is at the level it should be
- the writing of goals in digital books that will later contain examples (photographs) of the work in which the goal was attained
- our new Japanese teacher introducing her use of the ‘Flipped Classroom’ using Showbie so that children get to learn at home and then do as much verbal practice as possible at school
- the use of a Scavenger Hunt which involved children being outside and gathering photographic evidence of objects
- the setting up of Showbie files so that basic skills can be reinforced early in the year
- the use of the MyScript calculator to run some fun activities with problem-solving at the heart
We thank all of our families for the excellent work over the holidays in setting up devices and preparing the mindsets of the children. We look forward to sharing more great stories of learning as the year progresses.
