By Rob O'Neill
Sydney Morning Herald April 12th 2005
In the quiet suburb of Quakers Hill, in Sydney's north-west,
Barnier Public School proudly declares itself "the technology
school".
Information technology has transformed the face of education
at all levels but is still often treated as a separate
discipline.
The computer teacher teaches computers and the other teachers
teach everything else. But that approach is dying fast
and Barnier is at the forefront of that change.
Principal Rod Gibbs is pursuing a vision of the "complete
integration of technology into teaching and learning" in
which all courses make use of technology and all teachers
have responsibility for delivering computer-based instruction.
"
The vision has been articulated very clearly to teachers
and staff and it is the teacher's responsibility with the
support of the Department of Education and Training and other
staff to do that," Mr Gibbs says.
To deliver on that vision, Barnier has invested in technology
that allows the teacher's "personal" computer
to become the classroom computer while students work in
pairs
on synchronised desktop PCs."
We wanted to create the most engaging learning environment," Mr
Gibbs says. "This is a generation saturated in screen
culture."
The school has bought seven state-of-the-art interactive
whiteboards, from Smart Technologies, which are synchronised
through software called SynchronEyes with a data projector
to allow the teacher's PC screen to be displayed to the
entire class. The teacher can control the computer through
touching
the whiteboard's screen, so students can see what they
have to do to complete an assignment or to move to the
next part
of the lesson.
Teachers and students can still use the board as a whiteboard,
using "digital ink" to draw over the top of the
projected image.
Much of the system's capabilities are in its software where
class sessions can be prepared in a file called a "smart
notebook document" and then shared by the class. These
documents look like webpages and, like them, can also host
other documents such as flash animation files and images.
The system promotes real-time engagement with the entire
class, says computer co-ordinator Jane Gee. If a student
has a query about a word, for instance, a dictionary is
bookmarked and the word's meaning can be investigated as
a class or
individual exercise.
Five of the screens are permanently based in years five
and six classrooms while one is in the technology centre
and
another available for bookings.
Barnier is moving from a Macintosh platform to PCs to
match the technology the students have in their homes
and will
likely encounter when they move on to high school. Before
making that decision, the school surveyed parents to discover
there were only 6-10 families with Macintoshes across the
school and 20-30 without any computer in the home.
"
We're working with the local high school to link and to make
sure the students transition," Ms Gee says.
Mr Gibbs is in no doubt his school is at the cutting
edge when it comes to using technology in education.
He says
that the former chief information officer of the Department
of
Education and Training, Paul Edgecumbe, now the CIO
of the Government of NSW, recently visited and had
never
seen anything
like it.
Smart Technologies' president Nancy Knowlton says the
company's biggest customer worldwide is the US Department
of Defence
and it is also used by the Australian military and
many corporate organisations.
'Reproduced with Permission from Sydney Morning Herald  ' |
