“Teachers talk a lot about differentiated learning, and allowing students to go as far as they can. With the Macs and tools like Keynote, our kids absolutely have that ability.”

Laura Sanderford

The Gillispie School: Keynote Encourages Creative Thinking

Keynote Sparks Innovative Technology Usage

Though Sanderford has seen firsthand how easy-to-use the Apple technologies are, she says the success of the roller coaster project has benefited from the participation of Joe Morris, Gillispie’s technology director and an Apple Distinguished Educator. Sanderford enlisted Morris’s aid in bringing her students up to speed on Keynote, which he says ideally supports children’s natural curiosity for learning. So eagerly did one class embrace the application, Morris says, that students came up with their own unique use for Keynote.

“The kids asked if we could load the SmartBoard software on their computers,” Morris recalls. “This added a whole new level of interactivity, making it possible for their classmates to come up to the board and touch things and move them around during their Keynote presentations,” Morris recalls. “They embedded buttons to link to different information, and included interactive games and tasks that would test their peers’ knowledge. One third-grader created a timeline activity for a book report, and actually dragged blocks of text around to change the flow of the chapters on the fly. As a teacher, that level of creativity just blows my mind. But with Keynote, we’re seeing that sort of self-directing learning every day.”

24/7 Computer Access Creates Love of Learning

Watching Gillispie’s students dive into their Keynote projects, Morris has been ecstatic. He believes that a daily immersion in educational technology — made possible by the school’s 1 to 1 learning program — has been largely responsible for the willingness of Gillispie’s students to push technology tools like Keynote and iLife beyond their limits.

Says Morris, “Laura’s sixth-grade students had been in the first third-grade class at Gillispie to receive their own Apple notebooks, and we’ve seen how incredible the projects are that these kids are doing. One student’s Keynote presentation contained things that I’d never shown him; he just figured it out for himself. For me, this really points to the success of our 1 to 1 program, and how kids learn when they have 24/7 computer access. They’re absolutely unafraid to play around and do stuff on their own.”

An Aura of Excitement

At first, visitors to Sanderford’s classes might be somewhat put off by the elevated noise-level they hear while students work with their computers. But she says that blend of eager voices is proof-positive that students working on their Keynote presentations are engaged and on task. As they acquire both knowledge and digital literacy skills, their enthusiasm tends to bubble over — an event Sanderford is always happy to witness.

“What I absolutely adore is that the kids can’t restrain themselves in the classroom,” Sanderford reveals. “They’ll be working on a Keynote presentation and figure out how to link to a cool website, or include a video. And they just cannot stop jumping up and down and running around to share what they’ve learned. It’s so exciting to watch them!”

“Teachers talk a lot about differentiated learning, and allowing students to go as far as they can,” Sanderford adds. “With the Macs and tools like Keynote, our kids absolutely have that ability. To see them telling each other, ‘Come on, try this link; check this out!’ is just incredible. I don’t have to say much more than, ‘Go for it, guys… have a ball.’”