Spotlight on: Junior School digital strategy
Mr Matthew O’Reilly, Head of Juniors
In an increasingly globalised and digital world, it is hard to predict where we will be in just 20 years’ time. Flying cars and time travel might still sound like madness, but I’m sure the Internet also did to people before its inception in 1990.
What’s not hard to comprehend, however, is that technology plays a large part in our day to day lives and will continue to for the foreseeable future. With this in mind, the Junior School digital strategy has been established not only to ‘keep up with the times’ but also to provide pupils with experiences in learning that reflect what life outside of school is like, and enhanced opportunities for learning through incorporating new digital technologies where we can.
Our Junior School Tech Council was formed this Spring Term and the girls meet regularly to discuss possible innovations at the Junior School. The council is led by myself and I am joined by a pupil from each class to continuously drive digital life in the direction our girls want it to go. Thanks to our Tech Council, we recently purchased an Amazon Echo, which features Alexa the intelligent personal assistant. Each week one class takes a turn to provide a home for Alexa and the group is then asked to feed back on the ways in which the girls have used it. Alexa can provide information on topics ranging from the weather outside to historical queries, or it can play songs or read audiobooks: the possibilities are almost endless.
The Tech Council also led the discussion on Virtual Reality (VR) and how our Junior School could benefit from the technology. We purchased some VR headsets and, as part of Fairtrade Fortnight, pupils have been able to engage with specific Fairtrade Fortnight VR experiences, using the headsets to extend their understanding of Fairtrade farming as well as the girls’ studies on Africa.
The Fairtrade Foundation produced a video that can be watched via the headset, allowing the viewer to virtually explore a coffee farm in Kenya, an opportunity near on impossible in real life! After trialling the headsets throughout the fortnight the girls are looking forward to continuing using them for other topic work: in Geography, the girls will go on trips to the rainforest; in History they will be able to witness life in London during the Blitz. This collaboration between education and VR enhances learning, taking current visual learning (photos and videos) even further and turning them into more authentic and tangible experiences.
One pupil said of the experience:
"I really liked being able to go somewhere different while I’m still at school"
On top of this we are slowly introducing the use of CloudBase into the Junior School curriculum. Well established in the Senior School, CloudBase allows pupils and staff to collaboratively work on projects and documents together, whilst also offering the opportunity to share work together. We are already using the Cloud for homework, spelling lists, topic resources and council work, which makes all the above easy to access at home. It is exciting to also let you know that from September 2018 each of our Year 6 pupils will have a personal tablet device to prepare them for the style of working at the Senior School.