Remember the screeching sound of chalk on a blackboard? Remember the dusty, mouldy smell of a textbook? Remember squeezing your legs into a solid two-seater wooden desk? Remember the small round hole (actually an inkwell!) in the desk that everybody shoved their unwanted sandwiches into? Remember the Overhead Transparency Projector which often used to start releasing a noxious burning smell after a while? At Woodlands International College your child need never experience those outmoded relics of the past.
At Woodlands we have been making full use of Smartboards for the past several years. Smartboards are interactive screens using a computer and digital projector to project maps, graphs, videos, or indeed any other illustration. These Smartboards are also interactive in the sense that a student can touch and draw on them, as well as observe 3-D objects and compete in interactive games. This advanced technology has been a welcome addition to the teacher’s pencilbox, facilitating a far more interactive and engaging learning environment, and one that captures and holds the interest and imagination of the students. The powerful medium ensures an enhanced propensity for digesting, processing, and retaining information.
In 2018 Woodlands implemented and rolled out the use of iPads in all classrooms throughout the Intermediate Phase (Grade 4 – 6). Comprehensive WiFi coverage has been established via the school’s proprietary server and this has allowed the College to exploit fully the opportunity of using technology such as the iPad on a larger scale. The combination of the ITSI textbooks platform with the iPad and full WiFi has resulted in a fully digital interactive classroom experience. Students are able to interact with learning materials such as notes, 3D images as well as related videos.
The use of ITSI and the linked app MiEbooks, provides students with a variety of tools such as videos, PowerPoint presentations, apps as well as urls to provide a multi-faceted learning tool suited to a wide variety of learning styles. Our teaching staff have designed notes, textbooks and videos which supplement the classroom experience.
The MiEbook App also enables students to develop their own summaries, high light notes and create study materials. The use of the iPad as a ‘textbook’ within the Intermediate Phase is only a fraction of the skills and exposure our students receive to this 21st Century devise.
The use of the iPad as a learning tool is limitless, however, a few of the applications are:
These skills include:
- Mastering of MiEbooks through which students have completed assessments, used flask cards, accessed textbooks, and worked with subject learning paths.
- Ability to access and participate in Zoom Meetings
- Submitting work to teachers via several platforms such as email, Message and Airdrop
- Using Keynote for presentations
- Using Pages for drawings
- Recording videos and voice messages
- Using Markup to manipulate photographs
- Saving files to their iPads
- Exporting text/graphic to Pdf
- Using Google Classroom and Google Meets
- Completing Google forms, Google Docs
- Adding notes to pdfs
- Uploading and submitting assignments on Google Classroom
- Using Google Earth for research
- Using clip Apps to create instructional videos
- Using Garageband for Music
So, no more dusty, mouldy textbooks or burning transparencies at Woodlands College. Ever.
