Could portable devices be the way forward, as opposed to textbooks?
The Itaka School in the Spanish city of Seville is just one of many educational institutions which are now embracing technology to support their lessons.
Students are learning how to use and access cloud-based documents on devices such as iPads to work on school projects in the classroom and at home.
This initiative has been recently rolled out to help students feel more connected to their school tasks instead of just reading books and relaying that information directly back into assignments. It is teaching children about specific topics as well as how to interact with and best utilise digital technology for learning, which will help them to eventually adapt into working life.
Part of the technological advancement at Itaka and hundreds of schools across Europe is to test a new online self-reflection tool called SELFIE.
This tool gathers the views of the students and teachers and then transfers this into a personalised report that outlines the school’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to integrating technology for the purpose of education. The SELFIE tool will report on the types of devices which are used, how those devices are supporting communication and how useful technology is for students.
The SELFIE tool can be customised for each school’s needs, therefore, optional questions can be simply added to give a more accurate and detailed report for each particular school. This tool has been designed so that schools can reflect on what is working and what’s not. It’s not about comparing one school to another, rather how every school can continue to keep up to date with key technological advancements and embed technologies into the curriculum.
Interested in embedding the SELFIE tool at your school?
Topics: learning, education, classroom
