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edtechnology.co.uk | T: @Educ_Technology
Tailor your content
by Peter Mason Support and Engagement Manager for Planet Sherston
H
Top school puts lessons on iTunes
A leading independent school is making dozens of its courses available free online, so lessons can be downloaded by pupils or teachers at other schools. The Stephen Perse Foundation in
Cambridge, is making an initial 87 of its iTunes U course units freely available, with more to come. The units cover a wide range of
academic disciplines from literature, languages, the arts, sciences, mathematics and humanities and have been created by teachers in the school for use with their own classes for teaching and revision. Initially, these have been created with
examination courses in mind such as the International Baccalaureate Diploma, A-level and IGCSE and GCSE. However, some are already fi nding that they have great potential for younger ages as well. There are also courses, from the school’s own curriculum, aimed at younger students (11–14). iTunes U, the academic version of
Apple's iTunes download service, is a free application available on Apple mobile devices like iPhones, iPods and iPads and can be accessed from 51 countries across the world. It is perhaps best known for podcasts
from many of the world's leading universities such as Yale, Harvard, the Open University and Oxford but it is also now being taken up by schools. iTunes U collates digital materials such as web links, video, audio fi les, iBooks, apps, spreadsheets, PDFs etc. The teacher can amend the courses at any time which will then be updated automatically on everyone's devices. Tricia Kelleher, Principal at the Stephen
Perse Foundation, said: “We are now seeing technology in schools enter a new era. Where schools like ours have been using tablet devices one-to-one for over two years, the novelty value has gone. This is great because the focus shouldn't be on the technology anyway, it should always be on learning. “It actually makes the role of the
teacher more important than ever. Every teacher has a digital world of learning at their fi ngertips and it is right, it could even be said to be a responsibility, that this is shared with the students. "We have to ask some fundamental
questions about what we expect from traditional resources such as textbooks. It doesn't mean that the textbook is dead but it needs to fi nd a new place in this digital age.”
ow much do online retailers know about your shopping habits? “Too much” would be
a likely and understandable response. There is, however, a wide acceptance that our search data and purchases are collected and analysed in order to make tailored recommendations and an equal acknowledgement that this modern technology has not replaced all our shops or our shopkeepers. Retail has just moved with the times. Whilst we’re well aware that retailers'
intentions in harvesting such data are not exactly benevolent (they are businesses and do exist to part consumers with cash after all) they aren’t totally malevolent either. While the quality of product recommendations from online retailers might be eerily accurate and the algorithms used to generate them are complex, the concept of shopkeepers that know their customers and their preferences is hardly a new one. Why then, hasn't such technology seen
greater adoption in the education sector? Adaptive Learning technologies, systems which tailor content to their pupils' educational requirements, are based on really quite similar ideas to those used in retail. They assess what the customer's (pupil's) needs are by looking at what they already have (their educational purchases, as it were) before suggesting what they should buy (learn) next. Is it because of that age old nagging concern – that we might be replaced? By a machine? The reality of adaptive learning's
potential in the classroom couldn't be further from the truth. Adaptive Learning has the potential to be a fantastic classroom resource, and just as the printing press will never destroy schools or the teaching profession, neither will the computer. Unlike traditional classroom resources such as the textbook and the CD-ROM however, Adaptive Learning opens the door to the bespoke learning experiences that have been tailored specifi cally to the learners – and all without creating additional work for teachers. What are we so scared of?
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