“Apple digital tools have made a massive contribution to personalised learning over the years, and encouraged major changes in teaching styles.”
Graham Kinrade, ICT Adviser,
Isle of Man Department of Education
Isle of Man Education Department: Planning an innovative technology future
The Isle of Man Education Department takes its digital technology seriously. All 35 of the island’s primary schools are equipped with Macs. Two have piloted 1-to-1 programmes for a number of years, enabling small children to take home a MacBook to finish work each evening. Now - to help map the Department’s ambitious plans for the future - one of the UK’s experts on technology in education, Professor Stephen Heppell, is to assess the effectiveness of the island’s innovative primary school digital programmes.
“We have 4,400 Apple Mac computers in our schools. With Apple digital tools, they have made a massive contribution to personalised learning over the years and encouraged major changes in teaching styles”, says Graham Kinrade, the island’s ICT Adviser. “Now the time is right to look at the benefits and drawbacks of 1-to-1 and other approaches to technology. We also need to find new ways to measure learning success. It’s easy to mark a maths test. It’s more difficult to assess a project put together in iMovie, with music added with GarageBand”.
The Isle of Man is sixty miles off the northwest coast of Britain. Its 227 square miles of land mass is 40% uninhabited. The island’s history can be traced back 10,000 years and it boasts the longest continuous parliament in the world. Its traditions also include innovation in teaching and learning, and many of its schools have pioneered different uses of digital technology since an Apple Mac was first introduced in an Isle of Man school in 1987.
The Isle of Man’s education philosophy, and application of digital tools in schools, supports a long-held belief in economic and social freedoms.
“Our idea of a proper preparation for a child is to encourage free thinking”, explains Graham Kinrade. “This ties in strongly with personalised learning styles that respond to individual needs and capabilities. That is why we have always employed different approaches to digital technology in our schools - to meet learning needs in different ways”.
After such a sustained period of investment in technology, the Education Department is keen to ensure that technology can be seen to have had a real effect on children’s learning development, and to be able to measure and compare its different approaches to technology.
“Technology has to be accountable in the same way as any other programme in schools”. says Graham Kinrade. “As educationalists, we can be confident about improvements in reading age, motivation and creativity that technology seems to have spawned. As we plan for the future, though, we want to be sure that we are using technology most effectively”.
The Isle of Man Education Department has encouraged use of technology through a range of innovative initiatives.
In the mid 1990s, for example, teachers were encouraged to buy computers with interest free loans, so they could learn to use them effectively with children in the classroom. Now every teacher has a Mac or PC laptop, renewable every three years.
Dhoon School and Anagh Coar School have operated Apple 1-to-1 projects for several years, enabling seven to eleven year olds to have a personal MacBook to help them in school, as well as for use and learning at home.
Other island schools have adopted partial 1-to-1 programmes, offering Year 6 class students the chance to take Apple laptops home for one term. Some schools offer computer access on a bookable basis.
A computer bus has toured the island’s school playgrounds since 1998, providing teachers with new ideas, and children with an unusual and early form of mobile classroom. Managed by ICT Consultant Alex Townsend, the bus uses 23 aluminium iMacs with wireless keyboards and mouses. It has recently been revamped to provide more attraction to older children.
The teacher programme has changed attitudes to technology. ICT Advisory Teacher in Graham Kinrade’s team, Julie Wilsdon says: “There has been a steady growth in confidence amongst teachers using technology. They realise that a lot of what they do is much quicker and more effective using technology, and that surprises them. We’re also getting to a stage where they know it’s OK if they don’t hold all the answers, and that children are capable of learning from each other”.
As for the 1-to-1 programme experience, at Dhoon School, 62 children now use their MacBooks in the classroom and at home. Julie Wilsdon was ICT Coordinator and a teacher there before joining the Education Department. She saw a “fantastic change” in the children after the first three months of the project. “This was a happy school anyway, but to see the motivation to learn and the skill levels shoot up in such a short time was way beyond what we were expecting”, she says.
