St Joseph's Kingswood Term 1 - 2015

St Joseph's Kingswood Term 1

Term 1 at St Joseph's has been extremely busy. We have 1 teacher on the grade that was involved with the ilearn project last year and 1 teacher that is new to ilearn. During term 1 we have had many successes and of course many challenges. We began the year with a number of issues and thought that if we share our experiences it may help other ilearn schools. 

Challenges:

IOS Updates

Most of our students required the latest IOS update on their ipads. This meant that some students didn't have certain apps, couldn't download any apps, some apps would not appear in the self-service app, some apps wouldn't work without the update etc. It was a challenging time. We then discovered it took at least 3hours per ipad for our IT support person to complete just one update. After many discussions and weeks of doing 1 ipad update on the day we had IT support at school we came up with another way to complete all of the updates at once.  

All students made sure all of their work was saved onto google drive in their KLA folders. We then had to delete some apps that took alot of memory eg. imovie. The IOS update required a certain amount of memory to be done and most of our students did not have enough memory left to install the update without going through this process. When each ipad had enough memory we installed the update. When the update was complete we then re-installed the apps that had been deleted from each ipad.....It sounds easy enough i know, but it took us quite some time to realise this was the easiest and fastest way to complete all of the required updates. 

Successes:

Genius Bar

We set up a Genius Bar in our shared space. Every child has their name on one or more apps as an expert. When a student has a problem or needs help with a particular app they go to the 'genius' for assistance. Our Genius Bar is modelled on the Apple Store and we even have apple t-shirts and laniards for our genius' to wear while working in the bar. 

Grade Partners

This is my first term with the I-Learn program and I must admit at the beginning I felt very overwhelmed. I didn't have a great understanding of how to effectively use technology in the classroom. Knowing that my grade partner and the grade had already had a whole year of learning experiences really made me feel anxious about the term ahead. I really had nothing to worry about. My grade partner has been so patient and supportive in explaining and demonstrating what I have needed to know along the way. It really helped that I had someone with me who had all this prior understanding to guide me through this first term. As a result of this the children have been able to continue and extend their learning with a range of new apps and I have been able to follow along learning as I go ! 

Our Year 5 Kids Are Now Used By Teachers For IT support

Technical issues arise at various times throughout the school day. Teachers at St Joseph's now call Year 5 students to come to their classes and help sort out the technical issue they are experiencing. This has been a wonderful and natural bonus that has occurred due to the implementation of the ilearn program. In addition our students use the Google Drive with confidence and ease, they are also able to assist both teachers and other students within the school with anything to do with Google Drive eg. uploading files/photos, creating files, creating files within files, changing the colour of files, sharing documents with students and teachers, organising information etc.  

Integration of Apps Into One Presentation by the Kids

This term we have noticed a significant difference in what the students are producing on their ipads. We now have students going completely out of their comfort zone and experimenting with a variety of apps eg. FMM. Last year students created a presentation about a topic they had been learning about that included pictures and information. Now the presentations they are handing in have pictures, information, popplets of their workflow, voice recordings,  reference pages, collages of pictures etc. It is truly wonderful to see their creativity!!!