On the Mornington Peninsula, 42 kilometres from the centre of Melbourne, you will find Kingsley Park Primary School in Frankston. The school has great facilities including 20 classrooms, conference rooms and a resource centre.
A strong student leadership program provides students with skills in communication, interpersonal interactions, decision making and leadership. The school uses the latest teaching technology to successfully achieve these goals and support the students in the Bring Your Own iPad Program.
Over the last 5 years they have added 8 multi touch television screens and are continuing to increase these numbers. They have kindly let us visit in order to see how the technology was being embraced by educators and students. .
At Kingsley Park all curriculum subjects are enhanced by innovative use of IT, from interactive touch screens to iPads and interactive applications. These technologies allow students to think and develop their knowledge further.
When Matt Brand, Digital Technologies Leader, joined the school team he was dedicated in continuing to introduce the latest technologies to help improve student engagement and make it easier for teachers and staff members to be focused on their goals in the classroom.
The school utilises touch panels with built-in PCs in order to free the teacher’s own laptop up for other tasks and enables users to pull any resources from the school’s network for the class to interact with. .
Having everything in one place to present and interact with, it’s just amazing, it really engages the students
Trish Papettas
Catering to this generation’s visual learning needs is an essential part of being able to show content on an interactive screen. Visual learners are good at memorising things by seeing them. They notice details and remember images better than learning with audio. This is how the use of a HDi interactive screen can be a huge advantage in the classroom.
Many applications, such as those featured in the Microsoft suite, are now supported by gesture controls and inbuilt inking tools, so teachers can use their HDi screens just like they would with their smartphones or tablets.
Last term, whilst studying text from our selected book, we scanned it and put it on the interactive screen to have the students able to read it all together; reading the words, maps and the images…. the level of comprehension was amazing!
Trish Papettas
Interestingly, the HDi multi touch screen has also been used to help with punctuality in the classroom. Regular attendance is highly important; working together on this is the key to success and using the right tools makes a big difference to the class dynamic.
I use the screen first thing in the morning when students arrive to mark attendance, they see and select their faces on the screen and everything is interactive as they mark themselves in. Furthermore, being able to have students present and interact with their own work in front of their peers on the screen makes a huge difference in improving their engagement levels in class.
Scott Gardner
Teachers have also been using interactive games on the screen to further engage students in subject areas such as Mathematics.
We thank Kingsley Park Primary School for allowing us to understand some of the more powerful ways they have adopted their HDi multi touch screens. It was great to see the students and teachers alike approaching the technology so seamlessly across their day of learning.
