Education Innovation Awards: shortlisted entries
March 4, 2013
Many thanks to everyone who entered our first ever EICE Awards. We’ve read some very inspiring entries from education establishments that have used technology in an innovative way and the judges have a difficult task ahead. And thanks to the sponsors: Teach Primary Magazine, Innovate My School, 157 Group, University Business and NIACE. The winners will be announced by Spencer Kelly on Saturday 9th March, and here is the shortlist:
Manchester University
The SCARLET project uses augmented reality (AR) so that students can access special collections and rare books and manuscripts in controlled conditions, with access to digital resources. By linking fragile and rare objects with related online resources we’re creating an AR information-rich world of materials and digital assets – helping students to connect with primary source materials.
Hartsholme Academy
We have designed, researched and embedded a totally new pedagogy that we have called ‘immersive learning’! The learning areas are transformed – for example, if learning about the book Skellig, the room is turned into the garage from the book and the children work in this environment. This is achieved using special effects technology and all the children have an iPad to record their learning, as well as communicating ideas with others.
Hospital and Outreach Teaching Service, Edinburgh
We are a unique service that supports children across Edinburgh, in both primary and secondary schools, who are experiencing interrupted education due to health or social and emotional difficulties. Our team uses iPads in innovative and creative ways to engage pupils in their learning and to address curricular and health and wellbeing targets to great success. We are beginning to blog with our pupils too.
Linaker Primary School
Inspired by an episode of The Gadget Show, year 6 children took part in a project to send our GoPro camera into space! We have created trailers using iMovie, presented the project to the school, parents and governors and produced written and ICT driven work. This project has stirred genuine excitement within our school about the possibilities of technology that is so easily accessible to all of us – all of the resources for this project were bought from Amazon.
Norris Bank Primary School
Our vision at Norris Bank Primary is that children have an entitlement to have immediate access to a secure internet to personalise their own learning and understand the benefits of learning together through the use of blogging software. The school invested in an iPod touch for every year 5 and 6 children, who use a range of educational apps, store personal information regarding their own individual learning journeys, have immediate access to multimedia tools such as a camera, video camera and an audio device to support and record their learning, have immediate access to blogging sites and much more.
The Cedars Primary School (SEBD special school)
Our special school caters for the 60 most challenging children in Hounslow and surrounding boroughs. All the children have a wide range of severe emotional, behavioural and social difficulties (SEBD) and an increasing number have complex additional needs. Using iPod touch devices we have helped improve children’s reading fluency and accuracy by having them record themselves reading for one minute and then listening back, with the chance to re-read and re-record to make improvements. Results were not only seen in the data but also in the children’s attitude and self confidence in seeing themselves as a reader. Using an iPad and the app Book Creator, a child has written and published an eBook to read and share in the iBookstore.
Priory School
The Mobile@Priory project challenged our young people to create their own mobile device policy linked to the school’s UNICEF Rights Respecting School ethos. The result was a student-created policy that has now been embedded for two years. Teachers across the school have been exploring how the devices that young people bring in can be used to enhance learning. Led by David Rogers, students, teachers and artists worked together to create and team-teach lessons involving mobile devices.
Shaw Wood Academy
We have been using the augmented reality app Aurasma with the children to make them more engaged and enthusiastic about learning. They have been creating videos about what they have been doing in lessons and have then linked these videos to display board images so that when anyone walks past the image and holds up a mobile device they can watch the video that the children have created. Aurasma has been so impressed with what we have done that it came in to record our work.
Wawne Primary School
Wawne Primary School’s Excel Elites group consists of four year 5/6 children. This began with a ‘Growing into Work’ project with BT that involved the children exploring and creating spreadsheets to analyse the costs associated with telephone contracts. Through this the children have developed their Excel skills and have recently undertaken a project to pass their skills onto children and staff in the school through the publication of training guides and leading training sessions.
All Saints Roman Catholic School
Wireless mice and mobile interactive white boards have been introduced to enable more student interaction with ICT during lessons and we have a fully operational VLE with the full school curriculum on it enabling access anytime, anyplace , anywhere. We have stopped sending letters regarding school matters and now use an interactive messaging service that sends correspondence via either text or email.
Gateacre School
We recently acquired four iPhones for use in the classroom, working with an A-Level Physics group to put together some revision video clips using some software provided on the phones. The videos feature summary sections of the Physics course including guides to a variety of tasks such as remembering particles and rearranging equations.
Hawarden High School
We are a pilot school for the new Hwb+ Welsh assembly government scheme that will provide all schools in Wales with a VLE and a dedicated server with support. We are piloting the SIMS learning gateway to enable parents to access pupil data, reports and other details via the internet. This will improve communication, improve transparency and encourage the local community to embrace the digital age.
Holly Lodge Girls’ College
Physics is not a subject that is popular with girls and teacher Kate Doran is inspiring her GCSE students by setting up a Twitter account (@PhysicsGirlies) where they can talk about current lessons. This causes the girls to summarise their learning into 140 characters and really think about what the key points of the lesson are. Not only does this create a set of comprehensive notes to revise from, the students can engage with the scientific community who act as role models.
Our Lady’s Catholic High School
We organised a series of events titled Hack To The Future to inspire and engage pupils to consider studying and/or working in fields connected with computing and digital creation. Around 700 people have attended these events and the BBC commissioned a film about one of them.
Penwortham Priory Academy
We have introduced an iPad scheme to pupils in years 7,8 and 9. Working with the e-learning foundation, we’ve had a 97% take up by parents so pupils can have their own iPad to use in school and at home meaning that, whilst at home, parents and siblings have access to mobile technology too. Now the students are much more independent and we can begin to flip learning so that they can do the learning and research out of the classroom and the application whilst with the teacher in school.
Queensmead School
We have set up two extremely popular YouTube channels that provide interactive tutorials for pupils studying maths at GCSE and A-level, as we want pupils to have access to free, high-quality. For most A-level classes and some GCSE, pupils look on the videos the night before and then ‘do’ in class. The quality of pupil output and questioning is much higher.
Whalley Range 11-18 High School
Over the past 12 months we have pioneered the use of new media across all areas of the curriculum and have significantly increased our social media presence. We have a YouTube channel with a variety of full HD content including promotional videos, live performances, student-led content and faculty specific channels. These have been viewed over 32,000 times in a year. Our twitter account (@WRHS1118) is a fantastic tool to interact with students, parents and the community. This is used to share multimedia, host competitions, promote community events and highlight our achievements.
Chwarae Teg
We provide Institute of Leadership and Management training and extensive wraparound support as part of a ESF/Welsh Government Funded Project. Our innovative use of technology is in equipping our trainers and officers to work remotely so they can deliver training and support at any location. We use an interactive forum on our website and webinars to enhance and expand upon the learning our participants receive. We also use Twitter to engage people and promote learning (@womenspire).
Bury College
The SensoryPod by Osborne Technologies Ltd is proving to be an effective learning environment for learners with profound and multiple learning disabilities. All the learners have a unique set of skills and abilities along with very individual preferences for the sensory environments that they prefer. The pod itself allows me to create the perfect sensory environment to meet the individual needs – relaxing music and subtle lighting or a dramatic thunderstorm with loud exciting sounds and cool temperatures to match.
Cardinal Newman College
This year in A2 Computing we’ve had the theme of “others learn through our learning”. This has led to some exceptional projects being developed in class, such as one using the Microsoft Kinect and working with local primary schools the software allows children develop their hand writing skills through Skelton tracking to allow them to trace letters.
Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College
Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College’s focus has been on how technology can create connected learning experiences using readily available technologies to connect learning with the real world. We have two leading projects using Google apps – one with learners on the Autistic spectrum and one with Foundation learners and eAmbassadors, so a major benefit of the latest technology is in developing social interaction and communication.
Hull College
Hull College has enabled the local community to harness technology more effectively through the Humber Open Innovation Project. The principle of the project is to promote local opportunities to build partnerships and capacity in the city. We have achieved by developing free software that is available to all and delivered a web platform that enables businesses, schools, colleges, universities and local authorities within the Humber region to identify opportunities for collaboration.
Leeds City College
We’re supporting our students learning using technology and BYOD (bring your own device.) This has many advantages: the students are familiar with their own tablets, laptops and smart phones and they have access to them outside lessons and the library. We’ve looked at the traditional classroom and worked on providing an alternative where students have a much wider range of options than the traditional desktop computer: these are our Active Learning Zones. The wireless network has been developed not just to allow access to the internet, but to students’ own network areas and files via a free app.
The Sheffield College
The Sheffield College runs life skills programmes for young people with severe learning disabilities to help move them towards independent living. Even though they occupy the same social spaces as other students, they tend to sit together with the staff who support them and do not tend to engage with students without learning disabilities. A new digital mentoring project, ‘Games to Engage’, is addressing this. Run by technology savvy student volunteers, the digital mentors are initially trained in disability awareness and then form small teams, creating a Wiki together themed around their personal interests.
South Staffordshire College
Staff were introduced to augmented reality (AR) technology by the e-learning manager, Stephen Wileman. Many departments have seen the benefits of using the technology and have begun cross college development of resources for it. The developments have led to unanticipated benefits with the wider use of video and better consideration of how to make videos with AR interactions.
Sacred Heart High School
Working with TASC software we have developed a student reflection tool called SMyLe, it stands for Share My Learning. Through a browser, students can sign onto SMyLe and they see their timetable. Drilling down into individual lessons they can reflect upon parts of the lesson that were WWWs (what went well) and EBIs (even better if) as well as rating their progress and enjoyment using a sliding scale. Heads of Progress can see the data sorted by year group and so are able to intervene at a very early stage to raise student engagement.
Brinsworth Academy
The Games Britannia festival focused on using games as the catalyst for education delivered over 50 hands-on workshops and lectures last year to over 1000 school children, aged between 6 and 18 from across the country. Created by Mark Hardisty, an IT Technician at Brinsworth Academy, GB covered everything from coding to interactive fiction. Highlights included a BAFTA Games Question Time and a girls-can day with coding, animation and careers advice.
