SUCCESS STORIES

A story about a teacher who thought applying tech would be a challenge

The Malton School of Science

Introduction

Malton School is a small and successful 11-18 secondary school situated in the market town of Malton, North Yorkshire, UK. The school focuses on allowing students and their teachers to feel able to take risks in extended their learning. This recently has included developing an iPad for learning scheme across the two school sites. The iPad for Learning Scheme involved the roll out of 1:1 devices across the school, allowing staff and students to enhance their teaching and learning through mobile technologies. As part of this process, Academia (an accredited Apple Solutions Expert) provided freelance consulting and teacher James Hannam from MakerLabs to help support the staff in making best use of the technology.

Through a 7-week bespoke training program, involving onsite and in classroom training, James worked closely with the entire teaching team to show teachers how a few apps could be used to dramatically enhance their teaching and their students’ learning.

This is a story of the Head of Department for Music, Julian Taylor.

" Having spent considerable amounts of time designing, printing and collating the workbooks, it seemed a mammoth task in converting them into a digital / interactive medium." Julian Taylor

CHALLENGE

Adapting To A New Tech Roll Out

As a full time music teacher, musician and father, Julian found it difficult to see the benefit of using an iPad to deliver his lesson content. Typically, students completed highly refined workbooks and learnt from his practical demonstrations in class. Having spent considerable amounts of time designing, printing and collating the workbooks, it seemed a mammoth task in converting them into a digital / interactive medium.

SOLUTION

Dynamic lesson plans

Using Explain Everything Julian was able to quickly convert his existing printed AND digital workbook files. By adding his OneDrive and Google Drive accounts inside the app, he could quickly convert presentations with a few taps of the screen.

RESULTS

A captivated classroom

Though a whole school approach, Academia and James Hannam focused on minimising the amounts of apps used on their iPad devices. The project takeaways include:

A minimal learning curve ensured that even the most hesitant staff were able to use mobile technology in their teaching.
The migration of content into a single application with minimal effort. This led to less time spent trying to convert files and more time spent creating new and exciting resources for students.
Leveraging the power of the cloud and multiple media sources to quickly and easily use existing content to push the (physical?) boundaries of the classroom.

Email Academia and James Hannam to learn more about how they created an environment for success using technology.

" By simply sharing the Explain Everything presentations with his students (using AirDrop, OneDrive, or Showbie) they were able to immerse themselves in the context of the Blues." Julian Taylor

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