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Post date: May 24, 2015 8:11:41 AM
Last week a small group of teachers from Highland attended the GAFE UK Roadshow at Preston Lodge High School in East Lothian. The half day event was added at a very late stage to the UK Roadshow, hence it was quite short notice, but we still managed a group of five. Louise Jones, two teachers from our pilot schools and two from Milton of Leys Primary in Inverness.
We arrived to the most Scottish of welcomes from the Preston Lodge High School Pipe Band who gave a brilliant performance and rousing start to the event. The Google pop-up classroom was a great model of a future learning space, bright, airy with comfy break out areas, we were quite interested in the nice large screen they had too! Blueprint here of the room. There were various models of Chromebooks and Android tablets to have a look at and demo.
Calum is also the DJ for the East Coast FM and was recording at the event for his radio show the 'One Pound Sound Hound Round' . Our very own Kingussie Primary School P6/7 Teacher Sandra Robertson gave an impromptu performance in GAELIC! A first for East Coast FM! Well done Sandra! Listen again here. https://soundcloud.com/ecfm-shr/shr220515-sandra-robertson
Some of our thoughts as we headed north
The Chromebooks in East Lothian had been used since 2011, with no breakages, we noticed they didn't have the hard-shell covers or personalisation like ours. Calum also said they had not seen any deterioration in performance. Google Classroom is a big development for them, they have seen a drastic reduction on copying costs. It'll be the next step in our pilots, we'll start to do some professional learning and some trial classes.
It was well attended by the pupils and some other local authorities, but we got a sense that there were a lot of folks who were quite receptive to taking GAFE forward. It was such an inspiring keynote and it would be good to have a much larger event in Scotland looking at ICT in Learning and include partners such as ICT Services. Education Scotland were represented at the event by James Fanning, Head of Emerging Technologies, it would be good to see how this develops. Access to Glow, for example, is dependent on learners having access to technology at their fingertips and BYOD as a single strategy is still not inclusive, workable or flourishing in the primary schools (or secondary). GAFE and Chromebooks can potentially offer an economically viable way for 1-1 with devices for learning offering that instantaneous access.
A huge thank you to our hosts, we enjoyed the event and took away lots of ideas from our visit. All the photos we took are in the Google Drive Folder (with shareable link) here. There was an official photographer so sure there'll be better ones available soon!
Sandra sings!
East Lothian Council have been using GAFE for 6 years and have their own GAFE domain called edubuzz.org, all developed under the watchful eye of David Gilmour, ICT Development Officer. GAFE is used by all staff and learners on their current managed devices, it is embedded in their practice. The council are now taking forward the Chromebooks after the extensive pilots at Preston Lodge and Ormiston Primary.
Google asked learners to design Doodles based on solving global problems. The winning ideas included: A natural light powered flying car, plastic waterbottles which self-biodegrade after 30 days and (our favourite - above) The Cloud Plow, imagine a high sky vehicle that can push the clouds away from one country to another, inconceiveable?
Calum Stewart, Deputy Head Teacher PLHS presented their journey using Chromebooks, this started in 2011 when the school were gifted 40. Calum talked of the high adoption of GAFE, ease of use, how the Chromebooks had improved over time. A key part of this was 'organic growth', it was not a top-down approach and staff gravitated to using GAFE. In Ormiston Primary they have drastically cut down on printing. The pupils are very keen to see the Chromebook work develop and be able to take them home.
Liz Sproat, Google Education for Europe and Middle Eastern Africa (EMEA) provided the keynote speech, it was a holistic picture of how access to information has impacted on learning and how we need to enable young people to become the problem solvers (and finders) of the future.
There was a key focus on how GAFE has been developed to meet the demands of education, from both a learner and educators' perspective. Google Classroom has been designed by educators, it is constantly evolving as feedback on its use is provided. More information about Google Classroom on our page.
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