Technology, where are we now? One school’s story

Technology is moving us forward at an increasing rate of knots.   No sooner is one piece of new kit embedded in school before another one comes along that is slicker, faster, more fitting for your needs.   It is nigh on impossible to keep up with such a fast pace and a clear remit for the use of technology is needed if we are to avoid jumping in with every new innovation that comes along.   At Hawes Side we use technology in numerous ways but  it’s core purpose is to stimulate, enhance and support learning.   It is not as a bolt on but permeates the very fabric of school, part of its DNA. We have recently taken stock of where we are now with technology, what is embedded and working well, what requires attention, and what is no longer applicable.  Some of the approaches covered here I have blogged about before but hopefully this provides a station stop on the technology train!

Children at  Hawes Side use a range of technologies and approaches in school, mirroring their informal learning out of school.  Technology is part of each learners’ toolkit and as the children would reach for a pen, pencil or ruler, they will also confidently reach for a laptop, an iPod or iPad. Technology helps us blur the distinction between home and school, between formal and informal learning.   It provides parents with a window on their child’s education and a gateway to shared learning experiences that can have a profound impact on children’s attitudes towards education.  It means the world to most children, to have their parents and families not only show an interest in their learning, but to actively be a part of it.

All the technology we use supports basic skills in some way or another.   Parents are able to participate in their children’s learning journey every step of the way, and at every stage of their development.  Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all developed through the innovate use of filming and green screen technology.  From scripting, drafting, planning, writing and reading auto cues to presenting, reviewing and modifying performance, the technology supports and enhances the children’s learning.   It isn’t seen as a gimmick but as a powerful tool to engage learners in these vital areas. One of the many benefits of using technology in this way is that the results of such experiences can be shared across the school community via a number of large screens around the school and beyond the physical building through the school blogs.

Hawes Side school blogs are extensively used by all class and pupil groups as a powerful vehicle for learning in its many forms, and for sharing learning.  The virtual environment forms a flexible e-portfolio providing children, and the wider school community with an online record of learning- easily accessed and shared. QR codes enable us to link online learning with traditional, non digital approaches.   Using a QR reader to open web links not only excites and enthuses the children, it also allows them to quickly find the learning and links to learning that they require.

Staff are well versed in the use of new technologies to support learning and further their own professional development.   They continue to develop new, exciting and innovative approaches to their classroom practice that stimulate and motivate the children.   We run staff surgeries each term to share ideas, approaches, web tools and apps that are working well in classes.   We also use the surgeries to support each other with concerns and problems- to provide a coaching and collegiate environment that helps us move forward together as a community of learners. Piloting new ideas and approaches serves us well and gives us a chance to really assess the value of new initiatives before they become whole school.   It is easier to monitor the success or failure of a new initiative in one or two classes than it is across twenty one at one time!  Staff can visit each others’ classes to observe how a particular pilot is being played out. The use of the iPad as a teaching tool, with the whiteboard being used to mirror out via an apple tv is currently generating lots of interest across school, with those classes that don’t have this yet clambering to be part of phase two.

Technology allows us to link immediately and meaningfully with our partner schools around the world.  The children can collaborate with their peers in classrooms from Birmingham to Beijing, from Bolton to Berlin! Staff also fully embrace such partnership working, keeping in touch with colleagues in Australia and our European partner schools.   Blogging is a fantastic way for our school community to support our worldwide connections, bringing real global learning into our classrooms.

The use of technology has also seen a rise parental involvement and engagement.  Families have the opportunity to become fully versed in new learning approaches with the school providing workshops and special events to support this. Recent experiments  in live blogging have shown a healthy appetite for furthering IT skills that serve a real purpose. Parents and relatives have appreciated being able to stay in touch with the children whilst they are away on residential visits, learning along with them and sharing insights into what happens on such trips.    Innovative approaches to homework involve parents and families like never before, links via the website and blogs keep the whole community informed and recent micro tutorials using the ‘show me’ app on the ipad enable to the children to record their learning to share with their peers and the world.   Learning is discussed and shared- it is high profile in the home as well as the school giving children a powerful positive message that says learning doesn’t stop at 3.30pm, nor is it confined to a school building- learning is everywhere, learning is collaborative and learning is fun!

Learning for the community of Hawes Side extends beyond the school gates.   It is not restricted by time or place.   Learning for the children of Hawes Side is not an insular experience, it has a real, worldwide audience who are easily reached,  encouraging and supportive and hugely interested in sharing and participating in collaborative approaches to learning.  Technology is changing the way we think, teach and learn.   It is providing the children with opportunities like never before. It is up to us to engage with, manage and ultimately embrace these opportunities.

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Micro Peer Tutorials

Recently the children have been enjoying making mini lessons, or micro tutorials, to help each other learn. It is often said the best way to consolidate learning is to articulate it to someone else. We’ve been using this approach in school and with the ‘Show Me’ app on the iPad we’ve been able to take things a stage further.

The children love using this screen casting application to record micro tutorials. They rehearse their learning and then record a short  two minute explanation of a key concept or idea. This recording is then embedded on their class blog for other children to view and learn from. It is a great way for the children to support each other with tricky areas of learning.

We have been promoting this approach by showing the children the micro lessons in assembly and encouraging them to find areas they think would be best explained via a short peer screencast.   It not only helps the children who watch the presentations but also those who are making them.   More children are now coming forward with areas they want to teach and we hope to build a powerful peer based resource in school via this method.   Below are a couple of examples of how ‘Show Me’ is supporting the children’s learning.

http://www.showme.com/sma/embed/?s=2sPpRlw&w=580&h=434

http://www.showme.com/sma/embed/?s=z3eRUQq&w=580&h=434

A Coaching Culture

There are lots of inspirational practitioners in schools, piloting new approaches and ways of working, but often the ideas and initiatives they are exploring never make it beyond one or two classrooms.   How do we move from pockets of innovation to a culture of innovation?

One of the most important ways to make this transition it to develop a culture of coaching.   There obviously needs to be encouragement from school leaders to run with new ideas; to trial different approaches, to fail, evaluate and modify, but beyond this peer support can be a powerful lever for change.  The development of blogging is an example of how such an approach can be effective.

In many schools the development of blogging is limited to one or two classes where the teachers are confident in their use of technology, have the right attitude towards innovation and can see the tremendous possibilities of this medium to further children’s learning.  Our first attempts at blogging would fit this model.   With the encouragement of the head, one or two teachers with a passion for ICT made fantastic use of the blog, they got their children and parents on board and really enjoyed developing their learning and engagement.   We looked at where we wanted  blogging to go (a campus style blog with every class and pupil group represented) and knew that for us to reach our goal we had to have all staff comfortable in developing their skills in this area.

As with any new initiative, we anticipated, reluctance, fear, worry and concern across a large staff.   We had already begun to look closely at coaching in other areas of classroom practice and staff development and consequently explored how this might support us in promoting blogging.   Through careful planning and management we were able to arrange one to one support at various times, pairing up confident staff with those less so.   We had broad agreement that the use of web 2.0 would be a whole school objective for performance management and in pm meetings we outlined how this might be supported. The introduction of staff surgeries (see earlier post: the staff surgery) each term, to support each other and share concerns and ideas has also been helpful in promoting blogging across the whole school.

We spend so much or our time in schools isolated, working alone with children in a classroom, pressed for time and too tired at the end of the day to consider our own professional development.   Arranging coaching meetings gives staff time to reflect on their practice, to talk through things with their peers and to explore innovative approaches with the support and encouragement of those around them.  Sometimes the best resources are close at hand, we just need to create the time and space for coaching and support to develop.

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Why blog?

The educational landscape is constantly shifting.   We live in a time of continuous change where the boundaries between home and school are blurred and where the gap between formal and informal learning is closing.   Learning doesn’t finish at the end of the school day, nor does its reach extend only as far as the school gate.   Learning happens anywhere, at anytime and this has never been more apparent than now.

 The traditional models of education and professional development have been ripe for a change for some time but with the advent of web 2.0 technology, such ambition can become a reality.   The opportunity to work on what you want, when you want, where you want and with whom you want is now a possibility.   Online educational forums provide round the clock access, freeing us from the constraints of time and space.   Blogging enables me to share my thoughts on a huge raft of educational issues; it allows me to engage with other educators from around the globe, wherever I am and whenever I want. It provides me with a space for educational thinking and dialogue and a fitting vehicle for keeping a log of my ideas, reflections, musings and deliberations.     

 So much of the school day is given over to operational work, to maintenance rather than development and this can be a constant source of frustration. It is great to be able to sit down and collect my thoughts, to think about the bigger picture and wider educational issues.   Blogging is also a way of relieving the stress one can feel as a headteacher, it provides me with the opportunity to consider in my own time a myriad of matters and to share my thoughts and ideas with peers beyond my immediate group. It helps me keep abreast of international thinking and enables me to see things from a number of different perspectives.

I began my first blog a few years ago; using wordpress I set up smichael920 and later added edthoughts for shorter posts.   These two platforms give me the opportunity to collect my thoughts and share ideas.   Sometimes it’s just good to know that you are not alone in your thinking and what you are doing is supported and greeted with encouragement, backing and a genuine desire to see you do well.   Other educators will feedback and leave comments saying that they have thought about or tried something similar.   People will share their experiences, the difficulties they’ve faced and the challenges they’ve overcome.  We can learn from each other’s journey and the open, online collegiality is hugely beneficial with quick responses from around the world helping to shape new ideas and thinking.  

Last year we had an overhaul of our school blogs and I thought this would be a good time to introduce a Headteacher’s blog to our school community.   It serves a different audience to smichael920 and has enabled me to expand on thoughts, idea and news from our weekly bulletin to parents and carers.   I have found this is a useful way of logging those important events in school and opening up dialogue with the wider community on issues and events that concern them.   I would like to say I set time aside to update this but the reality is it happens where and when I can. That’s the beauty of blogging though; I don’t need to be sat at my desk in order to post an entry!

Blogging, along with the use of twitter and other social media has enabled me to develop a personal learning network that supports and challenges my thinking and links me to likeminded professionals the world over. It would be great to hear how other teachers, principles, headteachers and educators are making use of this fantastic vehicle  

(This post is taken from an article I wrote for Ldr magazine last year)

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Powerful Parental Engagement

‘It takes a community to raise a child.   We are the community, these are our children.’

Nigerian proverb

Research supports what those in education already know – parents‘ influence on learning outcomes can be greater than school influence.   A few years ago I attended a workshop on social capital which confirmed the need to build strong and lasting relationships with parents and families in order to give our children the best possible start in life.  Following this workshop we worked hard to develop our social capital and were ultimately recognised for our efforts with the Parental Engagement Quality Standard from the Schools Network.  We make good use of technology in our work with families but have also developed some very successful ‘non tech’ approaches to ensure we reach out to all our community.

Building an online presence via the school website and blogs has no doubt been of great benefit,  giving families a window on children’s learning and the opportunity to engage like never before.  The website has recently been changed to make it more visually appealing and less text heavy.   We had originally seen the site as a place to put policies and information for parents but most of these were being read less than their paper versions!  In short the website was not engaging parents and families, it may have served as a form of online prospectus for new parents but its use was limited and in need of an overhaul.   We made use of film and our green screen studio to create a virtual tour of the school, the children were heavily involved in filming with uniform being modelled and described rather than simply written about.  The children also described different aspects of the school, writing scripts to run on an auto-cue in the studio.   Links to learning are made and again the children play a great role in promoting the use of platforms such as ‘I am Learning’ which support and complement in class activity.

The blogs have undergone significant change  over the last few years changing from an online social environment run by the children to a class based resource jointly managed by staff and pupils.   Many pupil groups and projects also have blogs to ensure parents have a very clear idea about school residential visits, charity work, assemblies, school and Eco council and much more.   Not only do they know about such group and their work, they can actively get involved, contributing and sharing ideas.   The new approach to blogging has seen their development as a shared learning resource which is having a positive impact on the children’s education.   For many of our children this is significant, having their parents ask about  and share in their learning is incentive enough to see school as important.   For many, their own school days were less than successful and it is easy to transmit their negativity to the children.   Blogging has the potential to enable the children’s work to reach and audience of millions – but it is just that, potential.   It doesn’t happen overnight.   Most importantly for us it has proved to be a method of engaging parents in their children’s learning in a way that counters their own school experiences.

In addition to making good use of technology to support engagement, we have developed a number of other initiatives that have extended our social capital.   One of  the most important decision we made was to fund the position of a Family Support Worker.  We had discussed this idea for some time before we actually had the money to make it a reality.   Julie is not a teacher – a very important factor.   She relates to the parents, the hard to reach families who prior to her appointment would never have engaged with school.  We had always felt we were not doing enough for those children who would arrive without breakfast, with no socks on or the soles of their shoes missing.   We would feed them, find some clothing for them, but we were really just putting a plaster on the problem, not getting to the route of it.   Julie is able to follow up these problems without having to rush off to class after, she makes home visits, signposts additional services, helps fill in forms etc…   She has set up toddlers groups, parenting classes, basic skills workshops and much more.   Most importantly, she has got the parents who need them to turn up!

I have blogged previously about ERIC time and Learning Logs so I won’t say much more here, just reiterate how successful these initiatives have been and continue to be for us.   ERIC (Everyone Reading in Class) time was a way of getting more parents into school.   Many of them were already on the playground by 3.10pm so it was simply about opening the doors 20 minutes before the end of the school day.   The Learning Logs have broken down the barriers many parents felt when faced with rules and regulations around homework, it was about giving them an opportunity to work with their children in creative and expressive ways.   There are no restrictions other than the work cannot extend beyond a double A3 page.   We have found the parents and children love the chance to use fold out panels, envelopes, models, games and other approaches to explore the learning objectives.  In class, staff will make a big fuss of the Learning Logs, they devote time to sharing them and allow the children to talk abut them in detail recognising how important this shared learning is.

We have looked closely at how the curriculum can better support parental engagement and when planning topics staff now ask, ‘how can we involve parents and families in this learning?’   Sometimes it will be inviting them in to a workshop, a series of presentations, an assembly or event at the end of a project.   Other times parents will be involved in the introduction where an initial stimulus is developed.   Their interest at this stage can be so important to the children sustaining theirs throughout the unit of work.   Learning doesn’t just happen when teaching takes place, the more we can do to engage our parents and families the better the chances for our children.

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A Primary Partnership

About a year ago all Blackpool Primary Schools got together to create the Blackpool Primary Partnership.   It was fast becoming clear to us all that, in the future the local authority was going to struggle to provide the support we had previously enjoyed, and a new direction was needed.   As part of the new partnership we agreed to meet in regional clusters of seven or eight schools each half term.   Over the year, we each agreed to give up six staff meetings to the common cause and the meetings rotate around the schools with year groups getting together to share, collaborate,  support and encourage each other.   The host school for each meeting provides the chair and minute taker and each school contributes around an agreed area of learning.   The first meetings last term helped cement relationships and support between schools.   Where once this had been sporadic and ad hoc, it was now given a strategic footing with all schools, initially at least, buying into this model of mutual support.

Tonight’s meeting was different from those held last term in that all schools in each regional cluster met together.  Rather than just year groups, each school as a whole, was asked to share one or two ideas that were working to improve writing.  As the meeting was only an hour it meant, in reality, one 5 min presentation per school.   With a little flexibility built into the timings we managed to cover a wide range of initiatives from practitioners from Foundation Stage through to Y6.

It would be naive to believe all the teachers from our cluster felt enthusiastic about tonight’s meeting.   Unlike teachmeets where people come along to listen and share of their own volition, many teachers tonight didn’t choose to attend, they were directed.   Some staff would no doubt have preferred their own staff meetings back at base.   Some of those presenting were certainly very nervous about sharing with an audience of over 150 rather than a smaller number of colleagues from their own schools, but the evening was a success nevertheless.   The presentations well received and supported, and definitely took some presenters out of their comfort zone!   We finished a few minutes early to give staff time to share emails and phone numbers, to bounce ideas off each other and plan further collaboration.   What may have seemed to some, an unnecessary gathering, finished as the start of a new way of networking locally.  In lots of instances tonight was about reaffirming the things we are all already doing in isolation, in some cases it was about sharing new ideas and initiatives that have proved successful but most importantly, tonight was about teachers sharing their practice with other teachers beyond their classrooms and schools.  Our meeting was one of four taking place simultaneously across the town. It will be interesting to share how the other three went and it will be interesting to see where the Primary Partnership takes us, for such a collaborative approach offers huge potential for the professional development of staff and their classroom practice.

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Beyond the school gates – how technology helps

This year has seen a rise in the use of techology to support learning beyond school. Some of the approaches we have been using for a while at Hawes Side really helped to bridge the home-school gap and the installation of a green screen further supported us in extending learning opportunities. Here are some of this year’s biggest successes in the use of technology to take learning beyond the school gates.

Blogging – this has continued to rise and be utilised to support and share learning. The introduction of staff surgeries and a coaching appoach to its development has obviously helped get everyone on board and it was no mean feat to get all 21 classes up and running! The live blogging this year, from York and Robin Wood, were really powerful and got the parents engaged like never before. They were able to follow their children’s exploits on the two residentials and comment back. The pupils and staff blogged about everything, from the coach journey and what they had for breakfast to the Minster, the Jorvik Centre and much more. Seeing what they were up to and being able to comment back on things as they were happening was a revelation for many. It is now very much a part of how we intend to take blogging forward.

Green Screen – we were fortunate enough this year, to work closely with CMS, a Blackpool media company who fitted us a green screen sudio. We have been meeting with the company regularly to develop the system and now have a great little set up that the children have confidently made excellent use of. There are many examples of how this has helped extend the childen’s learning but my favourite story from the green screen was Emily’s advert. One of our Y6 classes were filming adverts they’d written to support work on persuasive writing. I watched some of them on the class blog and was impressed with Emily’s as she is such a quiet girl and her advert belied this fact! I tweeted out the advert and received a message back from Mr Tobin aka @narthernlad to ask if he could use the advert as a stimulus for his Y3 writing lesson! Emily was delighted when Ian sent pictures back from his class showing them watching her advert and producing their own work based on it! The green screen, and the use of twitter to share learning is certainly something we wil be expanding on in 2012.

 

Web 2.0 – like children in a toy shop we have continued to play with lot of web 2.0 tools and made use of some more than others. Among the favourites in school are wordle and tagxedo, wallwisher, voki, voicethread, photopeach, animoto and prezi. Wallwisher has been used well to link with partner schools around Europe and Australia, to gauge parents views on things and collect their thoughts and ideas. We have used it to ask questions of our partner schools and community and it is a simple and effective way of collating feedback. Dropping our school development plan into wordle was also reassuring as the words learning and children came out the largest!

QR Codes – the children have really enjoyed using QR codes. They stick them on displays to lead viewers to further information, they stick them in their books to link to online content and each class door displays a QR code that leads to ther class blog. Next year we intend to create trails with facts and puzzles around school to make a tour of the site an interactive experience!

School Website – our website is always being developed and this year we have changed a lot of content and its look. Thanks to the green screen we have added video introductions and tours with testimonials from staff and children. We have moved away from a text heavy site that no one really wants to wade through and replaced it with a more fun, interactive and engaging experience. We have woked with a company called Virtualsixty to build what we hope is a more appealing and exciting introduction to the school and more. The use of programmes such as I am Learning ensure that the children and their families are able to extend learning by logging on via the website.

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The New Digital Leaders

Last week our Digital Leaders gave presentations on a number of programmes, tools and applications they have been researching and trialling over the last month. This year’s group have a slightly different remit than previous incumbents as they introduce staff and pupils to the possibilities of the new green screen, but their confidence, understanding and ability illustrate how children’s approach to technology to support learning is changing.

Our previous ICT groups have operated under different names; The ICT Group, The ICT strategy Group, Web 2.0 Kids but essentially it is a group of 10 and 11 year olds who support the school in developing the use of technology in the classroom. From road testing hardware to presenting on Web 2.0 to staff the group have a key role in taking us forward.

Our first ICT Group was formed several years ago, when we asked a group of interested Y6 children to take away some netbooks to trial. We asked them to play with them for a week and let us know what they thought. Their findings surprised us- they said they were ok for connectivity but the keyboard was too small and children would want full size laptops-but most importantly we realised we had been missing an important voice in our development of technology in school, the user. Me of them gave us a detailed written summary of the netbooks’ capabilities and potential for classroom use!

Since then our different groups of digital leaders have sported less confident staff in the development of class blogs (each year group is assigned Pupil ICT support) researched and presented on web 2.0 tools (identifying a key number to support learning) and presented nationally on their work at the ICT Register event. In the summer we held our first ever ‘kidsmeet’ which gave the children the chance to share what they had been doing with other schools who were using similar approaches. They regularly share their findings with staff and governors on different aspects of technology and in the new year, our New Digital Leaders will present to a larger number of schools on the ‘I am Learning’ platform.

The children have an important voice in the development of technology across the school. Year after year they surprise us with their increasing knowledge, their mature approach to its use to support learning and their willingness to research, share and move our thinking forward.

Autism-thoughts of a father

I have never written a post about my family. About my eldest son’s struggles throughout his education with dyslexia, my second son’s autism, and the difficulties it has given him. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. It’s probably because I know I can’t tell their stories in a few short posts. It’s a lifetime work! And it’s where to start.

Most recently though, my second son has been having a more difficult time than usual and it has got to all of us a bit. It’s heartbreaking when your son or daughter tell you they have no friends, no one wants to talk to them and they spend most of their time alone. Niall recently said to me ‘I just don’t want to be lonely anymore’.

All through school we fought to be heard, to be understood, to find people who really, genuinely wanted to help and are sympathetic to the difficulties. Niall was statemented at 9 years old when he was in Y5. Up to that point he had been simply regarded as difficult, naughty, cheeky, you name it. I am sure there were those who still felt this to be the case after he got a statement. Our parenting was called into question and what he was generally felt to need was some firm discipline. He had huge problems dealing with instructions, a pragmatic, semantic difficulty means he interprets what he hears differently. He used to panic as a youngster when he mum said she was just going to dive in the bath! Because his problems aren’t extreme it’s easy to think they’re not real, he has never wanted to share them for fear of sticking out. He declined any support throughout high school as in his first term an SEN teacher came into his class and said, in front of everyone ‘Come on Niall, it’s time for your ‘Let’s sort it out’ session.” He tried hard to fit in, to understand the social mores and be accepted.

School was always difficult to get right, not so much academically (although he really doesn’t get maths!) but more socially and emotionally. He interprets things literally, speaks out of turn and inappropriately, but is devastated when such misdemeanours are pointed out. Forging good relationships with staff proved hard and with peers even harder. He has one good friend who he has known since he was five years old but beyond this, he struggles socially.

He was recently told by ‘friends’ at college that no one liked him, they found his behaviour odd and didn’t know how to deal with him. We’re currently working through this with him, telling him that as people get older difference are celebrated rather than ridiculed, that his unique outlook and creativity will serve him well as he enters adulthood. I hope the constant encouragement and support from home can balance the difficulty he faces daily beyond it.

The learning will be televised

The introduction of monitors around school gave us somewhere to display our digital content.  A digital display board.

 

The children had been creating photostories and presentations at home and we were finding it difficult to share their work on any scale in school.   We decided to install screens around the place and scheduled the children’s work to play at key times during the day.   The children are used to the screens now and look forward to seeing their work being broadcast around school but I can still remember the look on thier faces when they were first installed.

I often tell the story of a disenchanted pupil in Y3 who with the support of an enlightened teacher learned to use photostory.   He persuaded his mum to come along to one of our parents’ workshops and less than a week later he was producing photostories for his maths and other films to support different areas of learning.   He loved seeing his work around school and it had a profound impact on his attitude to his learning.   Not only that, his friends saw the potential and got in on the act!   Soon we had children bringing in their own projects for us to broadcast across the school.

As with anything new, when we fitted the screens we weren’t quite sure of where we might go with them.   We began to test and stretch their capabilities and eventually felt we needed something more.    We were fortunate to meet CMS, a local media company who agreed to fit a green screen studio for us in school.   This gave us the opportunity to put the sceens  to much better use.   To not only share the children’s work, but also to create their own in-house films, adverts, vodcasts and more.   Some of the early projects were great fun and the children immediately saw huge possibilities   With the aid of twitter, an early advert made as part of a Y6 literacy lesson was used by a school in Bradford as a stimulus for a Y3 writing lesson! The children quickly turned the green screen into a roller coaster, a newsroom, the beach, a playground, outer space, you name it!!

Current projects include ‘Hawes Siders’ our school soap, ‘A story from School’ our answer to Cbeebies’ Bedtime story and the teaching and learning group are making a film about how children feel about marking – this is for staff and will be used at our next professional development meeting after Christmas.   The children find the green screen easy to use and it supports their basic skills development giving them plenty of opportunity for speaking and listening, reading and writing (planning, scripting and autocue feature as much in any project as filming and presenting.)   The green screen studio has enabled us to explore further possiblities in the use of technology to support learning, the screens enable us to share  this learning.   We also use a scrolling RSS feed on the screens to advertise class blogs and relevant information.   Custom widgets also allow us to screen house point totals, birthdays, awards, sports news and much more.   Live broadcasting is our next step, beaming in-house offerings across the classrooms and screens around school.   The learning will be televised!