Last week I was fortunate to listen to, and meet Abdul Chohan, from Essa Academy in Manchester. He is the director there and is an ADE and has The schools we work at are very different. This year I am lucky to be at high achieving school which has just implemented a 1.1 laptop policy with a robust (usually) wifi and full-time IT support staff.
"In December 2008, Hayward School - our school - was at the point of being closed down. Poor attendance and years of underachievement had cemented a culture of low expectations. Failure was often seen as inevitable. In each of the previous four years, the proportion of students getting five A*-C grades including maths and English at GCSE was below 30%. Students lacked aspiration and staff lacked inspiration. Our use of technology was ineffective and expensive: " ...)read the rest
I had read about Essa Academy and their use of iPods a few years ago. I had also watched videos of students engaged in learning with their devices. It was great to meet Abdul and hear how far the school has progressed, now using iPads and creating their courses on iTunesU. Some of my takeaways from the afternoon were about how to implement change,having a school vision, building belief in students(and staff) being transparent and developing people. Teaching and Learning is about building relationships, no matter what school we are at. It is always about learning, not the technology.
Below is Abdul's talk at the "Learning Without Frontiers" Conference
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