W:
edtechnology.co.uk | T: @Educ_Technology
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL S | DIARY | 05
Why is 1:1 not personal enough?
Limiting devices by locking them down and keeping ownership of them is old thinking –the 21st century is one of personal technology, says Andrew Howard
However, one of the strong
elements of the founders’ original vision hit a very clear set of thoughts and opinions in my mind. In the founding vision, one key factor was the creation of a strong 21st-century approach to education, embracing modern technology. We quickly had various
AB OV E : Princip al Andrew H oward says one of the founding
v isions of Sandymoor School was to embrace modern technology
T
here is so much in the educational sphere about how schools need to be
moving towards a 1:1 solution, with many, many articles stating that this is the way forward. It is my opinion that this is nowhere near ambitious enough and in fact actually stops the real discussion from taking place which is more about personal use of technology in an educational seting. Three years ago, I found myself
being appointed as the founding principal for a brand new school, in the North West; Sandymoor School was proposed by a group of local parents as an additional secondary school in the area, with an ambitious aim to be a ‘Fresh Approach to Education’. I quickly found myself having to firm up my thoughts on many different aspects of education and school, and in fact quickly develop opinions about things I had never considered before.
contractors assigned to us, to help us develop our school – when I was appointed, there hadn’t even at that point been agreement on the exact location of the new school and we needed temporary accommodation, builders to build a brand new school (and architects to design it), but most relevant to this was the IT contractors, assigned to help us develop our vision and bring it to fruition. Civica were our appointed contractors and it was here that I started to hear the message about how we should plan for 1:1 very strongly. And I objected straight away. As I sit here writing this, I have a personal mobile, a work mobile, the Surface Pro I am typing on and a tablet by my side – in total four devices all connecting wirelessly to the world wide web and all, with the exception of the work phone, personal products. Although we serve an incredibly disparate community, with incredible affluence to one side of the school and terrible deprivation on the other (we have some of the most deprived housing estates in the UK within a mile of the school), virtually every student has a smartphone and/or a tablet. The school’s vision has
technology embedded at the very heart of everything we do. We have a completely cloud-based environment, with Office 365 as the driving engine through which
everything is delivered and access to the ‘cloud’ was always going to be something that was key to the transformation I was determined to lead here. As with all school leaders,
therefore, I am faced with the usual dilemma – I want to drive forward innovation, but cannot afford to push the resources at it I would like, although I can and am doing so, by having a slight change in mind-set. As virtually every student has a personal, internet-enabled device in their pocket, why not embrace this and use the technology the students already have and are comfortable with? We also run an ‘at cost’ leasing scheme, where for a few quid a month, a child can have an internet-enabled device of their own and this, coupled with a small bank of school-day loanable devices, means that we can guarantee that each student has access. Without costing me a fortune. The devices are truly personal,
owned and controlled by the student. So they customise them … so what? I am sure I am not alone when I say that as a child I took pleasure (and pride) in covering my exercise books in paper, stickers and doodles, making them my own. Did it stop me from learning, or the teacher from teaching? No, I don’t think so. Limiting devices, by locking
them down and keeping ownership of them is old thinking – the 21st century is one of personal technology. Limiting people to access via a single device is the same – access anywhere is the modern world and our students deserve to access their learning this way, with their personal technology. ET
Andrew Howard is Principal of Sandymoor School, a free school that opened in September 2012 in the North West of England
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64