Schola Europaea European School Brussels II

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PANORAMA
the future use and installation of such
equipment in similar situations. One such
obstacle was that the classroom computer
and the netbooks were originally equipped
with different systems: Vista and XP.
Another problem was charging all twenty of
the computers, because the trolley was only
equipped for sixteen. This involved some
gymnastics every morning connecting all
the computers. Even now, unfortunately,
the problem has not been resolved, and
the productivity of some students has
been limited because the students, having
been allocated a computer with their own
number on it, prefer to work with their
“own” computer rather than having to
share with another student.
It was also necessary to overcome other
problems with some creativity, such as
organizing students into teams to take
out and put away the computers. These
structural procedures are essential to the
project, since the efficient organisation of
equipment is a vital factor in maximising its
usage.
The project was further hampered by
network issues: often it was slow to start
or simply disconnected in the middle of
work in progress. On such occasions the
browser screen would fade and all data,
images or text that had been gathered were
lost, much to the dismay of the students.
The organization of groups, early learning,
and laying the foundations of work were
carried out in class, but this has not
focused solely on technology: the main
reference points were the competences
described in the Carnet Scolaire.
One of the central tasks for students at the
beginning of the project was the creation
and maintenance of a classroom blog. This
meant, therefore, deciding if the blog as
the centre of work should be given greater
weighting in order to allow it to integrate
more fully with the learning of the mother
tongue.
An offshoot of the project was the
integration of the technological skills
acquired by the students with the use of
a word processor and spreadsheet. At the
same time as they were learning about
nouns, adjectives and verbs, they were also
discovering files, hardware, documents,
user names and passwords.
Finally, the learning of these skills was
followed by the enrolment of students in
Studywiz.
Studywiz is an attempt to capitalise on
students’ everyday use of ICT to enhance
their learning experience. It aims to teach
the students to use it in a responsible
way in a safe environment. Currently
only children from 5th year classes are
accessing Studywiz, but it is possible
for this platform to be used successfully
by other year groups. Children use it to
complete learning tasks, assessments,
save and keep work or to send mail to
their teacher and other students within
the group. Teachers can use Studywiz to
allow students to access work at home (for
example when normal lessons have been
interrupted), to set assessment tasks and
to monitor pupil progress.
This project is still in the initial stages but
it is already clear that it has a very positive
impact on students and in time will enable
the pupils to use ICT skills to support their
own learning.