Laptops for Teachers: An evaluation of the TELA scheme in Auckland schools

7. Enriching the picture in 2008

In this section, data are presented from three case-study schools. These data have been grouped to provide evidence of the similarities and differences between the schools and begin with contextual data regarding infrastructure. Then the data are organised thematically. The central ideas and themes, which emerged very early in the initial analysis of surveys and were further consolidated through the more detailed work in focus groups and logs in selected schools, are continued. The overarching notion that is developed is the idea of the laptop as a hub, as the tool at the heart of the work of the teacher.

Infrastructure in each school

In this section we comment briefly on the infrastructure in each school at the time of our visit. The nature of the resources varied between the schools but there was obviously a common strong commitment to providing teachers and students with what they require. In all instances this necessitated additional funding, which was sourced in a variety of ways. Common features were access to the Internet in classrooms and the provision of data projectors either in classrooms or in common spaces such as multimedia rooms. Also common was student access, either through portable computers or the provision of sufficient easily accessible desktops.

As the principal of School 100 said “I’m aware of the research and it is very critical of leaders…they can be the biggest barrier in school development and improvement. So we say ‘yes’ unless we have to say ‘no’…and I can’t think of a situation where this has happened.” School leaders at this school worked on cutting costs in other areas to achieve what they wanted and in finding new sources of funding.

Similar sentiments were expressed at School 800 where the principal explained that s/he always tried to give the teachers what they needed to do their job. Extensive fundraising and strong support from the board and the parents’ association had enabled the school to purchase CoWs (Computers on Wheels) and it was intended to purchase more. It was also intended to provide teachers with better quality digital cameras reflecting the value the school placed on these.

At School 500 the media centre had been provided through external funding and sponsorship. The ICT coordinator worked hard to source the necessary funds to provide what were seen as essentials of learning for the students.

Data projectors and/or interactive whiteboards were a feature at all schools to some extent. These allow the laptops to be used as an interactive resource and extend the functionality of a ‘blackboard’ considerably. Computer access for students varied across the schools from multimedia units to banks of computers in the classrooms. Computers on wheels were used very successfully in School 800.

In all schools it was apparent that Internet connections in the classrooms were integral, providing access to a wide range of resources for teachers and students. The data projectors in School 500 were very successfully used in conjunction with the Internet to provide students with access to the wider world. Digital cameras were extensively used in School 800 and School 500 to provide students with both records of their activities and authentic situations on which to base their learning.

The laptop as hub

The teacher laptops are an integral part of the infrastructure of each school, particularly in terms of classroom practice. They appear to act as the hub through which a range of teaching and learning activities and other resources are managed and connected. The importance of the laptops and their centrality is evidenced by the wide range of uses they are put to and the extent to which they play some part in most of the classroom activities we observed. Many of the other pieces of infrastructure, such as the data projectors and the digital cameras, would have minimal use without them.

It also seemed that the innovation and/or enrichment that was occurring in the teaching and learning we observed would not be able to happen without them – or would be very limited in extent and nature. These uses included: providing immediate links to a range of software and other resources; links to other people through email and the Internet; connecting to other infrastructure and extending the classroom through greater access and usability. They also included increased efficiency in planning and preparation as well as in the delivery of lessons.

The centrality of the laptop to teacher practice was captured most clearly when the lead teacher at School 800 described teacher reaction when the laptops were taken in to have Classroom Manager updated so that they could write reports. Seemingly one said, “Oh! I feel like my fingers have been chopped off”, and another “Where’s my laptop? I want my laptop”. As she observed, this gave her a clear indication that everybody was using them. They had been taken away and “teachers were like, well, I need that”.

In School 500 there was similar sentiment from one of the interviewed teachers.

“This year I think I was without my laptop for a couple of days, without it for a day and I’m really unhappy and I’m at XX’s office beating on the door. The same thing with the smartboard … the smartboard is my link between getting the class to use the laptop together or in groups and without it I’m left with just a whiteboard”.

This teacher used the smartboard very effectively in all her lessons and had extended the student learning experiences considerably as a result of access to the technology. That she felt having a whiteboard was a lesser option reflects how the smartboard had been infused into her practice as a norm not as an added extra.

Teachers often described how their laptop was an entry point into using a variety of other tools and resources and how there was more freedom for them to work from a variety of places and times. One teacher in School 100 stated that s/he did

“…all my work at home on my laptop and then I plug it in the network and just copy it to our network files. I’ve got um, [Smartboard] software on my laptop, so if I want to use something that I’ve devised then I can do that at home, it enables extended work…spend a lot of time globally looking for stuff…try and bring it back together and synthesise it in to something different. Sometimes you don’t need to do that, sometimes it’s just there in black and white and that’s good…I make it mine… useful for the specific target audience; your classroom”.

A teacher in School 500 described how her/his laptop was central to everything that s/he did

“I come into class, I set my laptop up. I do all my planning on the computer as well, [Links to websites] quite often I will go in and find things and I will put them on a computer. I’ve got folders for everything so I have folders for sharing whole class work … all the children have their own individual folders as well and there is a class one for photographs, one for things that we’ve made… it’s a very messy sort of storage device…of their learning in a sense.”

S/he described the profound effect a recent server upgrade had had when s/he lost a lot of resources and that even though s/he still had the laptop and smartboard s/he felt a strong sense of loss.

This notion of the laptop as a place for storing material either directly or through the network was frequently mentioned. However, as well as being a storage device, the laptops allowed for retrieval of material in different locations. This was particularly relevant where classes were working in the media room in some instances and on the CoWs in others, as evidenced in School 800. The laptop often appeared to be the link between different learning locations and the repository of both teacher and student work.

Another example of the capacity of the laptops to sit as an interactive hub was seen at School 800 where the teacher champion showed us how his/her laptop contained everything needed for his/her teaching. All of his/her unit and lesson plans were on the laptop with hyperlinks to other documents and resources. When teaching in the media room this teacher simply plugged the laptop into the network and had the whole lesson ready to screen through the data projector. In this way the laptop provided for preparation and planning, sharing of key lesson resources and the type of delivery notes usually written onto a blackboard.

The laptop was described by a teacher in School 500 as a

“very important tool for my teaching and the children’s learning more importantly. There’s a number of different ICT things that I use, for example, digital cameras, video cameras, just all sorts of different types and that is to sort of gain and get them to learn more about language experiences and then I might take that into their oral language writing programme and even maths and numeracy programmes.”

Also in School 500 another teacher described the use of the smartboard and basically the laptop as the central point of his/her teaching

“…like I will talk about writing when we start the lesson off we will do our learning intention, we do our success criteria all together and I’ve got the note book, the smartboard, I open and make notes together so we have got that information the children and myself to go back and have a look at and then over the week because we don’t do writing in isolation it’s a plan and works over a week or a week and a half and so that is our base work that we can go back to and see the lesson and revise if we need to.”

This modelling and sharing of learning formed the basis of his/her programme.

When students were researching, working on finding resources, the teacher’s laptop often served the function of sharing with everyone a useful website that one of them had found. As explained by a teacher from School 800, “Often when they are researching I will grab someone else’s site and put it up on the data show on my laptop”.

Leadership

Within each school the senior leadership was highly supportive of their teaching staff and clearly proactive in ensuring the school vision and goals were being met. How this was done and the nature of that leadership did vary but across all was the sense that the key leadership role was seen as facilitating and supporting effective teaching and learning. All three principals were highly approachable and enthusiastic about their school and what was happening in it.

Perhaps the most individual senior leadership was to be seen in School 100. At this school the principal was a visionary educator with strong personal philosophies around teaching and learning. These had come from international research and other literature but were very personally driven within the school. The principal was seen as the source of high level ideas which others then turned into practice. The senior leadership team were highly motivated and supportive of the principal’s theories of education as were key members of the staff. One of the teachers described the principal as “the ‘mad genius’ at the core of what we do”.

At School 800 there was a sense that the principal’s role was more of facilitator and provider. S/he was the central person through whom decisions were made. S/he was clearly part of the decision-making process but listened to others and was receptive to new ideas. The teacher champion in this school was very strongly supported by the principal.

The School 500 principal was spoken to only briefly but was very knowledgeable of the school, of what was happening within it and of the needs of the students. The impression was that, as with the other principals, s/he was very supportive of what was happening and worked hard to ensure the teachers and students were supported.

Teacher champions

All three schools had very obvious teacher champions who provided models of effective practice for other teachers and who were willing to support their colleagues in their professional practice. Their enthusiasm for the potential of ICT, their understanding of the relative capabilities of their colleagues and their willingness to help others were key features of their leadership, which was both formal (School 500) and informal (Schools 800 and 100).

At School 800 this champion was a classroom teacher who had been specifically employed to lead the ICT integration in the school through modelling and sharing expertise. ICT was fully integrated into her/his own practice to an exceptional level. This was evidenced in her/his use of the laptop as an interactive workbook, which included all her/his planning, resources and delivery notes. What was perhaps the secret to her/his success in motivating others was her/his low key approach and willingness to support in a non-threatening way through the modelling of practice and being a highly skilled communicator. S/he talked of “taking away the barriers which teachers felt they had” in terms of using technologies and to set expectations that they could meet. Moreover, s/he considered each teacher’s needs and current level in relation to technology use and designed their support accordingly. “It’s about taking a journey to finding out what would be the best way for them”. In this way s/he was personalising the learning of the teachers to ensure both authenticity and appropriateness.

At School 500 this champion was the ICT coordinator who was also a member of the senior management team. S/he supported teachers both technically and pedagogically and, as with School 800, appeared to work on the belief that you make the small things easy for teachers. An example of making small things easy could be seen in the way s/he took the digital cameras to download pictures for one of the teachers so the lesson could continue in the afternoon. S/he appeared to be readily available for the teachers and able to provide the kind of just-in-time support that is often cited as needed. S/he was also able to extend the teachers and their practice. For example s/he had spoken to one of the teachers about using her video clips of students explaining mathematics as a professional development resource for other teachers. This champion had investigated “every possible source of funding” in order to build and maintain resources at the school. Her/his success was evident in the level of infrastructure in the school.

At School 100 there were several champions. These were teachers who were highly motivated and skilled in innovative uses of ICT. They modelled successful practice in their classrooms and were willing to share their knowledge and experience with others. They were fully supported by the senior management team and encouraged to take risks and try things. This latter support is crucial for teacher champions if they are not to feel isolated in their school.

A strong professional learning culture

There was a strong professional learning culture evident in each school. This learning culture was evidenced in the daily conversations of the teachers, in the way they interacted with each other and in the language used when discussing their professional practice. It was also evidenced in the conversations we had with the ICT leaders and the school senior management. In these schools teachers are encouraged to try new things, to take some risks and to learn from each other. The teachers were willing to speak openly about their practice and were not concerned at having observers. In two cases (School 500 and 100) this was further extended to include an ICTPD contract and “sharing situations with other schools within our cluster” was commented on often.

A teacher interviewed at School 100 said that teaching here “is more like being in a creative industry for me because I don’t feel stifled”. The principal at School 100 also talked of the place of creativity in the school culture describing something akin to a contagion effect. What he described was how “people did interesting and creative things and people brought in…at this school there is no mandating…it evolves.” A teacher interviewed echoed this, explaining “like I got onto blogs and wikis really early and I passed that on to S, now S has led pod casting”.

When we talked to a teacher in School 100 about the potentially overwhelming nature of some of the ideas that the principal (described as the “creative director” by one interviewee) might espouse s/he responded that it was “OK to freak out because there are half of us who are able to help others”. This school had a formal system of buddy coaches “that helps to cater for people coming in at different levels”.

The notion of peer coaches or collegial professional support was also strong in the other schools if not as formalised. At School 800 there was evidence of the modelling of shared learning across the whole school. The teacher leader in ICT explained that

“Modelling like; well specifically what was happening is that people would say I really want to do this but I don’t know how to do it, so from there it was a journey to find out the best way to do it for them, and generally I’d start that on my own and then pull them in.”

Professional development was also emphasised in these schools. In School 500 one interviewed teacher described all of their staff meetings as professional development and described a notion of internal professional leadership “…it’s not led by management; they tend to be led by people who would be appropriate to lead PD”. A teacher in School 100 referred to an international conference that s/he attended that had been part of their professional development, saying that the principal “encourages the right people to go to conferences, rather than just management”. Learning from this conference had clearly been implemented in this teacher’s practice and many of the examples of where the laptop impacts on the teaching and learning experiences of the students in this class could be traced back to this resource.

In all schools there was a sense of both pressure and support for teachers to develop their professional practice and to meet the expectations of the school. The common practices we saw in classrooms, within each school, suggested very clearly expressed expectations about what is taught and how it is taught. They also suggested a sharing of practice across all teachers.

Extending professional practice

In these schools, professional and classroom practice have both been extended through the use of ICT and through the use of the laptops as a hub for other tools as discussed previously. The laptops may have an indirect influence but they are always somewhere in the process of teaching and learning; whether in the planning and preparation of lessons or being utilised as a tool for curriculum delivery in the classroom.

Planning, preparation and delivery

The use of the laptop for planning seemed almost too automatic to warrant mentioning but on questioning it was clear that all teachers used the laptop to plan, some only for longer- term planning and some for day-to-day planning. While the teachers spoken with indicated they used their laptops extensively for planning, several stated that not all teachers in their schools used them to the same degree as they did, but acknowledged that a great deal of progress had been and was continuing to be made.

At School 800, for example, a template, a shell was set up for planning. The teacher leader worked with teachers initially to put their planning onto the laptop “down to where our literacy and numeracy plans are all on the laptop and you just have to highlight what it is you’re teaching now”.

School 500 has an intranet with all the school policies and resources for every single curriculum area where teachers can get activities,

“You can get AOs [achievement objectives] just everything you want on all those, the school songs, everything, absolutely everything on there. That’s how you can learn it (to use the laptop), just little things like that make a difference…all planning is on there…you can book the computer room…”.

Teachers in School 100 also talked of “having everything at your fingertips…It’s all there for you, you know exactly what to do…and it’s nice because you can add to lessons every year and make them, better.”

Similarly, a teacher at School 500 described how

“There are all kinds of teaching examples right throughout the day and for myself I do all my planning on it. I plan everything on it like I use it to hold all my reading planning, writing planning, everything, just everything which is really, really good. At the touch of a key I can see what I’ve done and what I need to work on it and all those progressions.”

This teacher used a paper copy when doing group work so that other students could continue to use the laptop and other technology that was attached to it.

Extending and improving practice

Another teacher in School 500 discussed the effect on his/her own practice and how it had been extended through the use of ICT. S/he described her practice as definitely much more interesting for his/her students. S/he had always had a problem with teacher talk and was not aware of how much until s/he “actually started videotaping and seeing myself butting in and taking over and explaining, explaining and they didn’t get it whereas they get a lot when they are watching someone else do it”. This had progressed to where the students themselves were videoed as a pair and then the class listened to it or groups listened to it independently on computers. “Children are much more interested in listening to themselves or their peers read a story or say what they are learning and what they would see if it was a videotape rather than a teacher”. The further intention was that at some point the children could show their learning through podcasting on the school website and go out into the homes. The students managed this entire process themselves through the teacher’s laptop.

Recording observations about students in real time

In both School 800 and 500 we saw examples of teachers recording formative assessments of students in real time. Teachers described how their laptops were on their desks and they recorded observations directly onto them about individual students. It was reported, for example, that during the course of teaching, if a child did not have forward number sequence, the teacher would quickly type this into the maths plan

“so the plan just evolves and evolves. Planning becomes much more focused, in fact teaching and learning has because I am able to hone in a lot quicker. …. Whereas in the past, I may have made a mental note of it and maybe remembered next time….”.

At School 500 Year One students spoke into the laptop as they practised positional language. This enabled the teacher to record their oral language as a means of both recording learning and developing an authentic resource to share with other students. Once the whole class had completed the recording process a PowerPoint was developed that included pictures of each child and them describing where they were (eg, I am under the table).

Enriching and extending learning experiences

In all three schools, ICT was used in diverse and exciting ways to enrich and extend the learning experiences of students. These uses were across the curriculum and ranged from basic numeracy exercises on the Internet through to the use of digital cameras to explain positional language and the use of iPods to access examples of effective speeches. In this section we provide a range of examples of the activities undertaken to highlight the breadth and depth of use of ICT in three different contexts, in three different ways but always to enrich and/or enhance student learning.

Archives of student work

The teacher laptops, along with the school server, served as a repository of student work in all three schools. This repository included electronic portfolios, working documents, and photographic records of activities. Student work was also archived and retained as a resource through the creation of published documents, such as collections of student writing which could be found in the school library or in classrooms.

In School 800 there were examples of students having a permanent record (on CD) of their experiences at camp or of photos sent from a biologist in Antarctica with whom they corresponded when researching Antarctica. They also had very detailed folders containing examples of work completed throughout the year and even very young students displayed a thorough knowledge of what these folders contained and exactly how to retrieve anything contained within them.

In School 100 one teacher discussed the contents and potential use of students’ individual blogs. This included students using their blog as a showcase

“If they’ve done a particularly good thing they can direct their next college teachers, employers to what they were doing when they were eleven…I can use it with my next class and say can we improve on this. So then again it’s the total constructive work and…it’s not all my voice”.

Student work is able to be produced professionally and used as a resource through ICT. Teachers talked of the fact “we had our books” in the class library. Several across the schools also referred to using work that had been completed either by current students or those from previous years as exemplars for stimulating current work.

At School 500 there were folders of student work on the school intranet. This meant that the teacher could ask Justin, for example, if they could all look at his published piece and it could be used as a reading text. Another classroom teacher in School 500 referred to being able to

“store things that the kids can refer to, it is something that we can go back and look at…there are some things that I know a couple of children are struggling with and so they can go back in their own time and have a look…but it’s all independent”.

In School 100 as much of the students’ work was retained on their individual blogs, it could be returned to often by themselves and others, and referred to in different contexts.

In School 800 students had their own multilevel folders, which they could navigate around with ease. These contained a full record of everything that they had used ICT as the medium of delivery for during the year. They also contained work at various stages before final publication that the students could look back to and comment on. The teacher and students could also use this as a measuring gauge for the progress that had been made in both the use of ICT and academically throughout the year.

Modelling and sharing learning

Laptops and data projectors were often reported as being used to model practice in some way. This could be the teacher modelling how to do something or other students doing so. For example, in one classroom, a new entrant class in School 500, the laptop and data show were used as the teacher modelled sentence structure. A sentence written by a child formed the basis for the teacher’s input.

“I said to J, can we use your story to all look at it together and so we put J’s story up and we read it and see what it says, then we think about what else we could add to it, say to make it a little more interesting…I do try to use it as a way to show them what is expected…”

Similarly, with older students a teacher at the same school described how s/he copied what students had written into a smart document and then in a workshop was able to use their writing to illustrate ideas, so making it more real for the students. “They know it (the writing) is going to be shared. It’s a bit more personal”.

There were also many examples given to us by both students and teachers of sharing learning, using technology. Year 2 students at School 800, for example, explained how they had to research a planet and indicate what made it possible for people to live there or not. They had to present this as a photo story. A member of the group researching Venus explained how they put pictures from the Magellan space probe into their work. These students were very articulate about what they had learnt despite having no prompts in front of them.

In School 500 the teacher described how she used students to model and share their learning in mathematics. Children who had gained a new concept or worked really well with a particular strategy so that they could explain it clearly, were videotaped doing it. “The next day for maths the group will watch the video and then hopefully the children can see how we use language to explain what they are learning, what they are doing”. The benefits are twofold: it increases student confidence, and those children who are struggling with a particular concept in mathematics are seeing it again in ‘child-speak’ at the same time as they are physically doing it.

In all three schools there were multiple examples of students presenting their work to each other. In many instances different groups covered different topics and then presented their findings to the whole class whether through PowerPoint, booklets or posters. There were also examples of students willingly sharing expertise and skills to support each other.

Anytime resource and support materials for students

Technology in these schools provides students with access to a range of resources and other infrastructural support materials to undertake their class work. The most obvious examples of anytime infrastructural support for students were in School 100 but all three schools had technology highly accessible to students.

In School 100, where the students were of intermediate age, they could use photocopiers, iPods, cameras, editing suites and teacher resources without supervision. Furthermore, they could come into any classroom at any time to work with resources or go to the library when they needed to. We observed more than one student ask a teacher (not their own) if they could use the computers in his/her classroom even when a class was present. We also observed a lesson where students were working in three different locations dependent on the current task.

A different take on the notion of technology providing anytime support described above is that of differentiating and/or personalising learning. All teachers and students interviewed in the case-study schools gave detailed examples of how the Internet is used in their classrooms to provide material to support teaching and learning. In School 100 students log into an Australian-based maths system (Mathletics) where the classroom teacher sets a course that students can study online at their own level, and at the end of the course they can join a live competition at their own level with students from around the world. Students were asked if they were given the choice of doing that kind of mathematics or having a textbook or worksheet in front of them, which one would they choose? They chose the interactive website stating this was because it involved real people at the same time as learning.

Similarly, at School 800 we observed a Year 3 numeracy lesson where students were working on different online activities dependent on their capability. These activities were graded and students moved through them at the appropriate pace. Of particular note, in this lesson, was the way a student with special needs was able to work alongside the other students but on an activity that catered for her level. This was managed with no apparent difference in the way she was being treated or working.

A teacher in School 100 talked of how students look at the learning intentions for a particular unit or topic then highlight class workshops they need to attend. The teacher timetabled ‘workshops’ or times with her/him for each learning intention and students chose the ones they needed to be at. “In any one day there could be ten kids working on completely different learning intentions while I work with a workshop group…. only the kids that need to be there”. One of the examples s/he provided was in the use of iPods to support the teaching of speech making. On the iPods were examples of different kinds of speeches and other resource material for the students. If students felt confident in the work they were doing they could go outside with an iPod and continue working on their speech while other students were in a workshop with the teacher.

A different way of thinking about the use of the web was given by a Year 1 teacher in School 800 who found that accessing material on the internet could provide valuable opportunities for reading mileage and for differentiated activities in terms of this. “We have found some really good reading Internet sites and they [the Year 1 students] just think they are playing computer games and they don’t realise what they are doing”. The teacher also mentioned that using different Internet sites for reading enabled her to provide a greater choice of reading activities, appropriate to the level and current needs of the student….. “Inserting letters into words, alphabet train, word families and blends, talking books”.

Recording experiences

The use of digital cameras to record experiences was seen to promote learning in different ways at the three schools. In writing in School 800, for example, the use of visuals was a memory aid in terms of what actually happened, an aid that helped (in this case Year 1 students) to revisualise the events, placing the students clearly within the context. The use of

“real visuals… when the children see themselves in the photo……helps their writing because whilst they’ve got their memories, if they can physically see the progression [of the Eagle helicopter landing] and the people that spoke to them, it’s helping them to process what it is they’re actually writing”.

In School 500 a teacher also suggested that the students need visuals to remember experiences.

“Last Friday we made muffins and each group had a recipe that they were following. So there were four groups all making a different batch of muffins each and so I gave each group a camera…so they took pictures of the process and then our next step this week is… I will probably work with a group at a time, and we will sequence the pictures and they can highlight, not highlight, write up the key words and that will help them with their next steps in doing procedural writing. They would forget I’ve given them a little bit of test but basically told them list out what happened, in what order and write out a vocab list”.

Also at School 500 we saw students writing while a PowerPoint was shown through the data projector of their experience. In this instance they had been to the park nearby and “played” in the leaves. The students then came back to class and wrote about the experience. The PowerPoint of the actual experience enabled them to be more descriptive and authentic in their writing.

Articulating learning

There are a number of ways in which technology helps to articulate learning in these schools. At the simplest level it captures and supports the reporting of learning. In an integrated studies unit in School 800, Years 7 and 8 students produced posters or brochures on the computers about an environmental issue. However, the medium assumed greater significance because they were reporting in German, a language they were studying that term. The computer medium served as an ideal way to visually capture the information, given the students’ level of German. The pictures carried most of the message, supplemented by the core, basic German vocabulary that the students had learnt. With limited linguistic knowledge, they were still able to convey quite sophisticated ideas.

School 500 demonstrated two very different and potentially powerful ways to allow students to both articulate and consolidate learning. The Junior Oral Screening Test (at 5 years 1 month) had consistently shown children entering the school to have an average age, in terms of oral language, of 3 years and 3 months. So, a key goal in the junior school was to raise vocabulary. The new entrant children were working on positional vocabulary as they were known to have difficulty with under, over, on top, in etc. These children had, the previous day, gone into the playground in pairs with a digital camera and taken photos of each other in various stances or positions (largely in, over and under but also upside down!). The camera operator gave instructions about where their partner should be, such as “on top of the monkey bars” or “underneath the tree”. They directed their own photo-shoot for five pictures each. When they returned, the teacher connected the camera to her laptop and downloaded the images. The class quickly viewed them and selected the best ones and each selected their favourite one. The next day that photo was available for each child and, in pairs, they talked to each other about it, practising the positional vocabulary. Each had a turn sharing a sentence with the group. Finally, each child recorded the sentence which was then linked to the photo on a PowerPoint so that the whole class could view it and have the positional vocabulary reinforced in a meaningful context. Each slide had the question “Where is….?” and the recorded response was played as if answering. The children were next moving on to writing the sentences.

Experiencing the world outside

Technology allows students to see the world through their own eyes or through the eyes of others. They can view the world as it is through the likes of Google Earth. One teacher at School 500 reported “rehearsing” the route of a trip before the children took it so they would be cued as to what they would see on the way to their destination.

Another example of enriching the learning of the students through experiencing the world outside of their usual ambit was in School 500 where news was accessed through Google news pages or the TV1 or TV3 news channels. This was a Years 5 and 6 class. The teacher selected appropriate content to play from the on-demand list. S/he explained that this allowed the children to “see” places and people not part of their own lives. As the teacher further illustrated, one time they were reading about the Golden Gate Bridge and it was “so easy” to find a picture of it online to show the students, “so easy” to help with “lots of prior knowledge stuff”. An aim, always in the foreground at this school, was to extend vocabulary and students not only talked about what they were seeing but kept a class book of new words. Different students each day had responsibility for keeping and adding to it and at the end of a week the students worked in the computer lab on some activity planned to incorporate the words encountered that week.

An interesting slant on this notion of seeing the world through your own and others’ eyes was observed in School 800. The principal of this school had made contact with a colleague in Sydney and through this initial contact the decision was made for a class from each school to work together on a project. Digital cameras were used at each school to record the everyday life of a ‘kiwi’ and swap this with a ‘kangaroo’ (that was actually a crocodile called Bindi, after Bindi Irwin, the students informed us). The kiwi and the Australian counterpart were stuffed toys. Their experiences were recorded on digital cameras as students took turns to take both camera and toy home. The experiences in the respective contexts (Auckland and Sydney) were filmed and then written about and exchanged electronically (although the kiwi was sent by parcel post to the other school).

Another example from School 800, of using technology to experience the world, was the use of email to talk with an Antarctic biologist as students worked on a research unit on Antarctica. Seemingly they told her what they knew and she commented and added to their knowledge. The children took a printed copy of an email from the biologist to share at home with their parents, furthering the reach of their learning. It was a focus or a talking point to enable them to talk with adults about what they had learnt. When we interviewed the students, one said “She sent like a seven page email to us…. I’ve got the email in my bag”. Clearly, the email and the process had impacted on this student.

Students, in a School 100 classroom, also virtually experienced shopping and living on a budget using online sites. This task required them to plan meals for the week, to look up suitable recipes, to buy ingredients and to stay within a budget, a cross-curricular undertaking.

Extending learning

As already alluded to, in School 500 there was a concerted focus on vocabulary building. In a new entrant classroom, the digital camera and laptop were used to extend the practice of oral storytelling. The teacher reported that after the shared book, s/he previously used to get the children to retell the story orally. But now s/he used photographs of people and actions (they had a large props box in the classroom) to record the story. Then the children “take the pictures, like creating a story board and put it through Photostory and it speeds up and transitions itself into a little movie”. The children then narrated the movie. Oral language is stimulated as they work together and recall the vocabulary to retell. Also, the notion of sequence is developed.

In School 500 the social skills learning for the year had focused on the notion of respect, in particular, respecting learning and learning respect. One case-study teacher asked his/her different writing groups to take digital cameras around the school and take photos of children who were demonstrating respect to each other. They then brought these pictures back to the classroom

“And I have trained some of my children to put them onto the laptop or computer and then we show them as a slide show and then from that we went to our computer suite and we all made up PowerPoints and we did writing as a writing experience as well. We did some drafting and publishing and then the best ones were chosen and then we played them in the theatre”.

Another angle on extending learning, or more accurately ensuring learning, was the idea expressed by a School 100 teacher that students were “ getting” how they were going a lot quicker and s/he felt that it was because there was a visual and an aural channel a lot of the time…. “It’s visual as well which is what is really good about the smartboard and the iPods compared to when you are just talking”.

The traditional curriculum objective of delivering an oral presentation was considerably extended by a teacher in School 100. S/he described how students began usually by researching using the Internet, a common occurrence currently. The students generally typed into Word although some preferred to write. However, where students needed to “brush up on certain things” they were able to listen to downloaded podcasts of speeches of famous people (using a site called T Talks) that the teacher put on the iPods. S/he also used a new virtual community called iTunes for educators. These students were able to access models of speeches and not necessarily at their desks or in the classroom. The iPod Touches meant they could access the internet from the playground or field. At times, if working with a bigger group, the smartboard was used to access the Internet and a particular speech.

Cooperative learning

Interacting by reading and commenting on someone else’s writing through a blog was a practice seen in School 100. Blogs, however, also served a broader function of coordinating learning. A teacher showed us the blog site s/he had set up where tasks were posted and where sites were suggested as resources. Students posted their responses to the tasks and peers asked questions “and then it all goes on….. questions to questions and answers to answers, it’s more cooperative, more co-constructivist”. This teacher expressed the belief that blogging enhanced the exchange of ideas in class….. “giving their opinions, interacting, thinking about what other bloggers are saying”. And, as the posts all come past the teacher, there is the facility to review and assess students’ ongoing work and perhaps use the content for an individual conference.

Interviews with students in School 100 reinforced the value of having writing posted so that others can read it and give feedback. Although one confessed it was “a bit nerve wracking really knowing that people can read what you are writing; it’s also good to find out what they think, from another person’s perspective”. There was a common belief that the use of technology engages students.

“My kids, they love coming to school. Their parents say they get up early: they are at school by 8 o’clock – 90% of my class are here. It’s great they love coming to school. It’s not because of me: it’s because they have all these resources to engage with.”

Perhaps more tellingly, when asked what they might miss if they were to attend another school, students at School 100 talked of “getting to interact with other people and things.” The people featured as well as the technology; in fact the technology facilitated the interactions from the way they spoke.

Enhancing student skill

These schools are keen to enhance and build on the skills that they perceive students to already have, thus they are at the core of their learning. One teacher at School 100 described the school as having an

“ICT bias in the best way, we want it to be cutting edge, kids they’re all on Bebo, they know about setting up their websites, they all know how to blog, it’s becoming a fact of life so part of the major way they’re going to be writing is online, um, so it fits in with their interests. Of course the tasks are school orientated [but are built around experiences] that students already have in their out of school lives, thus making it more relevant to them”.

A teacher at School 800 commented that although many of the students had the hardware that they were using at school also at home, there is no one there to show them how to use it and how it can be used in a multitude of different ways. Another at the same school also acknowledged that s/he presumed in some cases that her/his students knew more than they did and gave an example of having to retrace her/his steps and ‘teach’ how to send an email. So there seems to be a ‘fit’ that teachers are trying to make between constructing relevant learning and enhancing what students already know, or do not know.

Involving students

In all of the case-study schools students were very involved in their learning. Both they and their teachers described normal classroom practice as including regular use of a variety of technologies and activities that involved the students as the decision-makers with the teachers as supporters and developers. The use of the laptop and other technologies supported high-level formative practice, while recording the journey for both student and teacher use.

A teacher in School 100 discussed the fact that his/her students acknowledged that they were not learning in the traditional way, and that some had difficulty coming to grips with this.

“One of them literally sat here and said (because I asked them how they wanted to learn at the beginning of the year) ‘all I want you to do is give me a textbook, tell me what to finish, and I’ll have it done’. Now she’s the top mathematician, very bright but she was confusing the fact that she’d got that mathematical ability through that style of teaching or learning. And it wasn’t necessarily because she’s gone up more this year than she ever has, because she’s been let off the leash, she’s not confined by the text book”.

A common theme was that students valued their own work more and were proud of the high quality of their completed tasks. This was not to say that ‘all’ of their work was completed to a ‘published’ quality. In School 800 one class had a series of books that they had ‘hand written’, although the cover was produced using ICT. These books had been kept throughout the year and were in the library for others to view.

Meeting school-wide goals for learning

Each of the schools had a clearly articulated vision and set of goals for teaching and learning. These were all quite different in some respects but all focused on meeting the needs of the students in the classrooms. They appear to have been based on the context and culture of the school community and ranged from improving oral language through to enriching learning experiences and implementing a notion of invitational learning. The extent to which this vision was innovative varied greatly, but none was static, that is, practice in each school was shifting and changing in some way from what it had been in the past.

In all the schools the use of ICT was directly related to both the clearly articulated student achievement goals and a clearly articulated philosophy of learning.

This was particularly evident in School 100 where there was a complex interweaving of the notion of invitational learning as a core underpinning principle of learning and instruction in the school, and the pervasive use of technology. There was also an understanding that there was a solid theoretical base behind articulated ideas of student learning and that teachers had to work at it to make the theoretical a practical exercise. As one teacher explained, it is up to teachers “how we are going to teach practically using these ideas and this technology…”.

We did query whether technology had made invitational learning possible or whether invitational learning had provided an appropriate framework within which to utilise the potential of technology. We did not get a clear response to this question but it would seem that the two were being developed in tandem in many ways and that any attempt to define causality would be meaningless.

Further to this notion of linking ICT to a philosophy of learning, it is also used only where appropriate and for specific learning purposes. It is not an “extra” activity outside of teaching and learning. This was articulated in School 800 where it was explained that ICT is only used where there is a need, “ICT doesn’t sit out on its own: it’s part and parcel of our learning…some days it sits out here and other days it sits right at the core”. At this school, ICT appeared to be primarily an enrichment tool, a way of extending the learning experiences of students and making them more authentic. A wide range of activities were undertaken using ICT across the curriculum.

In School 500 the ICT coordinator reported that teachers were becoming discerning about what programmes they were using, there was more of the why and how they can be used to support learning, “yes it is difficult because you see something and you are so enthused about trying to get that, but using that in a way that is purposeful is really quite important now”. In another example of purposeful use a teacher from School 100 referred to finding a website that had interactive activities to reinforce several maths concepts. However, as s/he only required part of the electronic worksheet s/he used the smartboard software to modify it to meet her/his students’ needs.

In School 100 one teacher discussed resources found on the Internet, describing them as

“not all very deep, there’s a lot of just busy work, and I was very aware…you analyse what was busy and what was productive, and is this actually gaming or is it educational game, and what kind of games are the best and which aren’t, so it made me think about it”.

There was a common belief in all of the schools that the use of technology engages students and as such it was seen as a valuable tool. This was clearly articulated by a teacher from School 500 in the quote already given above about her/his kids loving coming to school.

Responding to student need

The examples provided in the previous section highlight the similarities between these three schools in the way they have used ICT to enrich and/or enhance student learning. In all instances the student and their learning needs were at the core of what they were doing. Their contexts, however, meant things had a different focus and/or approach.

At School 800 the emphasis appeared to be on enriching the learning experience through the use of different media and the addition of new dimensions. The push-pull effect was obvious at this school with the “students pushing and the teachers having to know”. A six- and a seven-year-old interviewed were quite clear that they learnt “some off the computer and some our teacher has been telling us about”. These youngsters used electronic and print sources of information. One said “Usually when I go home I go on Kids Astronomy…and I get out books about planets”. They were fired up about astronomy; they were able to tell us a number of things they had learnt about the planets (they could name them in order!) and about why the moon “goes into a banana shape or is only a half one” and about the fact that in the Milky Way there are “lots of millions and zillions of stars that nobody can even count them”. One liked the computer because “when we want to learn about a planet, we just click on it and we go down and it tells us something that we don’t know about space”.

At School 500, as already mentioned, there was a clearly identified oral language problem. In this context, technology was being used very purposefully as part of the solution to this problem. This school was a school that admitted to being initially “technology driven” but it had worked to a point where technology was seen as a “tool to make teaching more powerful”. In all of the examples we saw of technology being used, there was some aspect of oral language, whether it was the Year 1 students practising oral language or the Year 3 students explaining mathematics concepts while being recorded. In this way technology use was closely linked to a targeted area of student achievement. The key philosophy was that teaching is empowered through the learner being more engaged and more independent. There was also a belief that students were more likely to “complete a technology learning task [than a traditional paper and pencil one] because they can view their work, review their work and be more involved in the process”.

School 100 is an intermediate school and as such the students are older. At this school technology was being used to extend the core philosophy of invitational learning. This is learning that is personalised and individualised. The underpinning belief is that “kids will run to school excited about their learning”. The senior management articulated a philosophy of innovation. “An innovative paradigm, that’s what we are on about here. It’s about creating knowledge or using knowledge to create your understanding of the world”. The technology and the systems (or the de-systemising and alternative structures that the senior management talked about to enable flexibility) were designed to support such a view of learning. There seemed to be a complex synergy between their view of learning and technology.

Conclusions

In all three schools there were some strong commonalities despite the differences in approach and focus. These could, perhaps, be described as a recipe for success or at least the building blocks of success.

In all three schools the use of ICT was natural and unforced. It was part of a wide range of media and pedagogies employed, where appropriate, to meet student needs and to enrich their learning experiences. It was also ubiquitous in terms of planning and professional work. Each of the schools had a clearly articulated vision for learning. The laptops were an integral part of this ICT infrastructure. In every example we were given of teaching and learning the laptops had had some part to play. In previous data collection when we had focused on the laptops, this had not been made clear. The laptops are so integrated their use is no longer explicitly acknowledged. They are, to a large extent, an invisible part of these teachers’ toolboxes.

The learning culture in all three schools was also very apparent. Each of the teachers was willing to talk to us, to share their classrooms in an open and transparent manner. They readily engaged in professional conversations and talked of the support and expertise of their colleagues. Whether informal or formal, peer modelling and coaching was common. We also noticed how these schools saw the chance to be involved in the evaluation as a learning opportunity.

The role of the formal leadership in these schools cannot be understated. Each of the principals was very different in personality and leadership style. Yet there were similarities in the way they supported the staff and facilitated the implementation of the agreed vision. That there were clearly articulated and implemented teaching and learning goals and strategies is a reflection of the coherence across the schools.

As well as the principal there was at least one teacher champion in each school. In only one instance was this as a formal ICT coordinator role. These champions were in all instances highly skilled and innovative practitioners who modelled both best and next practice to their colleagues. Perhaps more importantly, they were also very aware of the capacity of their colleagues, of the need for small steps at a time and the need for collegial support and pressure.

The extent and nature of the infrastructure in each school was very different. Each had obviously been contextualised to fit the school culture and climate and the needs of the students. While the infrastructure at School 100 was extensive, the other two reflected what can be achieved with a carefully constructed plan and pragmatic decision-making. It should be noted, however, that at all three schools the cost of their infrastructure was highlighted and ways of finding extra money had been necessary.

While two of these schools were in high decile areas the third was not. It is important to note this and to realise what can be achieved at any school where there is sufficient will and desire to do so. A focus on meeting the needs of students, of providing them with a variety of opportunities and ways to learn is perhaps the most important ingredient of all.