With Term 1 now well underway our boys are deep into the challenge of using their iPads and laptops to extend, enhance and deepen their understanding of subject matter and to create, connect, organise and personalise their learning.

2016 marks the fourth full year of the Newington Personal Learning Technologies program. Beginning with a structured iPad-based experiement in 2011, the program has grown to now incorporate all boys from Kindergarten to Year 12.

This week all Year 7 boys are working with E-Learning Leaders Mr Terence Priester and Mr Michael Ha, supported by Ms. Nikki Stevens and the enthusiastic ICT Service Team.

The initial focus for Year 7 is ensuring that they have the raw ‘building blocks’ for learning with their iPads. In class groups they’re learning about SPACES and the online student Diary. They’re learning the strategies to stay organised: navigating through their online classes in Canvas to access work from class, complete their homework, and upload many of their class assignments. In upcoming lessons they’ll focus on tools for making notes, audio/video screencasts, and other ways to organise their notes and reflect on what they have learned.

At Newington, the use of ‘personal’ technology by boys is not a gimmick – its use is purposeful and strategic and is used by teachers in ways that are vitally important for the boys’ learning. ICT used in creative and relevant ways helps boys safely and steadily build the skills essential for coping and thriving in the 21st Century; it is about far more than the technology itself. As the learning, mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) theorist, Seymour Papert notes, “nothing could be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed”. The whole ICT team is looking forward to an exciting year ahead as the boys partner with teachers to discover and learn.