SUCCESS STORIES
EdTech for more engaging and active learning
Warrigal Road State School
Introduction
Teachers helping teachers
When people first think about using technology to teach their classes, it may seem daunting. It’s easy to see how some might fear that modernizing their classroom will automatically add to the complexity of conducting classes. This is not the case for Suzanne Paisarn and Zoy Vorkas, the Learning Enrichment & Technology Coach power duo at Warrigal Road State School in Eight Mile Plains, Australia.
Suzanne and Zoy are not only tech coaches, they are also teachers. Needless to say, they understand all of the difficulties and initial apprehensions about introducing an edtech to the classroom as well as anyone.
edtech mission
Helping teachers engage students
Suzanne: We conduct multiple professional development sessions for teachers and often work with them, one-on-one or in small groups for coaching to look at ways that they can improve teaching and learning through educational technology.
It’s important to give teachers confidence at the beginning that they’re not on their own and we’re very approachable. It’s like teamwork.
Zoy: As edtech coaches, we help to move some of the hurdles out of the way for teachers by just having the technology and the setup, because sometimes it can be one little thing that’s only a minor setback, but they see it as a much bigger obstacle than it really is. We always try to smooth the road. We do go into classrooms to support teachers, be an extra pair of hands to troubleshoot.
One of the first things we do is model a lesson or two or three for that teacher to show them how it’s done. And while we’re doing that for the teacher, we’re also upskilling the students and helping the teacher see that they don’t have to know everything and be able to do it all themselves.
Suzanne: Our school also offers a program called WOW – Watching Others Work. So another thing that we do is we help teachers if they are feeling reluctant about a new learning program. We offer them the opportunity to come and visit another classroom where that program is being used and just come and see what the kids are doing and how engaged they are and how other teachers are doing.
Edtech mission
Helping students show their learning process
Suzanne: Our school motto is: “We start with a belief that all kids have brilliance in them.” Unfortunately, sometimes the traditional ways of learning don’t allow all students to show their brilliance. Students might find the physical task of writing challenging.
Explain Everything digital whiteboard provides different avenues for children to present what they know, giving them the chance to be creative. It allows for that multimodal sort of presentation. They can include videos, they can create animations. They also love to find images and things like that. Put simply, it allows them to get creative and they get excited about the project, whereas if it was just a paper activity, it would be quite boring for them. An online whiteboard enables the students to be more independent – they don’t have to continuously ask the teacher about everything, as they can access video or audio clip explanations.
Zoy: A very important part of education in Australia and in our school as well is providing every child the opportunity to show their learning, regardless of what level of ability they’re at. Explain Everything whiteboard gives every task that open-ended nature, and allows every child to show what they can do.
They learn through showing, and grow and progress in their learning through using the edtech. Explain Everything allows them to be creators rather than just consuming content that others have produced, and they love to create videos to show their learning and share it with others. Creating videos is a lot more meaningful because they’ve worked on it themselves, and they’re so motivated to make it good for their classmates, too.
This is one of the exemplary templates from Warrigal Road State School that students use to create their assignments:
Suzanne: Students that are often not at the top of the class when they get on technology, they really shine, and it helps build their confidence and their self-value.
solution
Explain Everything for better learning and teaching experience
Suzanne: Explain Everything provides the opportunity to use all those higher level thinking skills – explaining, justifying, analysing, evaluating – instead of just regurgitating content. Learning these days is very much not about the content itself anymore. It’s all those other elements. The educational technology, including Explain Everything whiteboard app, provides a great platform for developing many of those life skills that children are going to need going into the workforce, and just as adults in general.
In grade three, students have to do their poetry recitals. So what many of the students have chosen to do is to create an animated Explain Everything whiteboard project that relates to the stances in their poems. Then, they move on to adding their voice, and they go to a quiet place to add their recorded audio and make a whole video. Then the teacher can play the explainer video to the class and the students feel a lot more comfortable.
Take a look at this example of a student’s poem project:
Zoy: Explain Everything is a tool for children to explain their knowledge and understanding in different subject areas. So wherever we can, we encourage teachers to provide children with the opportunity to use a digital whiteboard, and new educational technology in general. It really allows them to show their knowledge and understanding better than the more traditional pen and paper method.
Suzanne: Students get really excited when they find out they can actually work with someone in the class next door,expanding their boundaries so that it’s not just their little class, reaching out. This opens up their minds to so many new learning and experiences. We are hoping that in the future, we’ll be able to do this for other schools as well, or all around the world even.
educational technology
Redefining education with digital whiteboard
Zoy: One of our focuses has been trying to embed the educational technology into the curriculum, not trying to force it, but rather implement it where it makes a sensible fit.
The SAMR model is a model for using technology in general in our classrooms. It stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition.The whole idea is that if you’re using edtech as just a substitute for a piece of paper or a book, then that’s using technology at a relatively low level, and its effect on learning is valuable but minimal.
Suzanne: At first, we only had Explain Everything as a whiteboard app on the iPad, because from Prep to Year Three, we have about twelve iPads per class. It’s not one-to-one, but we also have a BYOD system where they bring their own device.
When we’d get to the fourth grade, we’d start going back to more traditional styles of learning. We started researching to find out whether it was available in another format and we discovered the web version of online whiteboard. We approached our administration and we told them that this is the way we wanted learning to happen at our school, and that we needed to continue and not just stop at grade three.They were happy because they know that we want learning to be creative, interactive, and collaborative.
It fitted in with our framework and philosophy of how learning happens here at our school. It is a good tool that fitted in with effective teaching strategies and that made it easy to convince them that it was something worth trying and now, they’ve seen the value in it. They’ve seen how many teachers are prepared to give it a go and take it onboard. Obviously we’re going to continue the subscription.
Zoy: We often talk about educational technology being in the future. Some people have wanted to sort of ignore it and say: “Oh, it’s in the future.” But children have been living with technology since they were born. As educators, we need to keep up with it and walk alongside. I don’t think we can be ahead of the children.
Explain Everything for Education
Create engaging materials with the online whiteboard.
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