Friday 29th February 2008
Written by Dave Smith – HIAS ICT Consultant…
Download the report on the outcomes from Day Two of the visit, including images, by clicking on the link here - Fronter_Trip_Day_Two
Kastellet Skole – Oslo, Norway http://www.kastellet.gs.oslo.no/
Any schools wishing to link-up over Fronter with Kastellet Skole please contact Torill Røeggen – Assistant Principal via torill.roeggen@ude.oslo.kommune.no
Kastellet School in Context
Today we visited Kastellet School, an all-through school with 610 pupils/students between the ages of 6-16, with 50 teachers. Children do not formally start school until 6 years of age in Norway. Kastellet, built and opened 4 years ago is a National Show School for the effective use of ICT to engage pupils and parents. Operating on one site, pupils were schooled in a number of linked-up buildings. As well as ICT, the school focuses heavily on Languages and the Arts.
Supporting Fronter Implementation through Digital Guides
The Assistant Principal explained how Fronter had been in use in the school for four years and they had considered it vital to allocate human resources to help with implementation. The appointment of three members of staff with 30%-50% off-timetable allocated to supporting the training and logistics of Fronter has been a real success. The team meet weekly to discuss ongoing MLE development needs and the evolving training needs of the staff. This team helped to develop both the ICT strategy and effective implementation, including the creation of schemes of work focussing-on Fronter use.
Provision, Provision, Provision
Access to ICT facilities was impressive, with a ratio of 1computer:2 students in Key Stage 3/4 and 1 computer:3 pupils in the equivalent of Key Stage 1/2. To achieve this the school had taken the conscious decision to purchase some refurbished desktop PCs and makes laptops available within the school to pupils/students on a loan basis. ICT in the form of desktop PCs, laptops and digital projectors was seen everywhere in school – however, the school currently have no interactive whiteboards.
Digital Competence as a necessity, not a desire
The transference in the past year of end of school examinations at sixteen to online versions has meant that it is no-longer sufficient to develop student ICT skills – it is vital, as pupils cannot succeed in the examinations without effective ICT skills and the ability to apply it. The Assistant Principal reinforced this explaining that, “We have to give students digital competence; it is a necessity.”
The Impact of Fronter on Organisational Management and Teaching and Learning
Fronter has had a major impact on both organisational management and teaching and learning throughout the school community – pupils, students, staff and parents/carers access the system to provide a central hub for information and learning activities. The best phrase is… “You want it? Find it on Fronter.”
Paper has effectively been removed from home-school communication, except in the most extreme cases where parents/carers/pupils do not have home access to the Internet and paper copies of some documents are sent home. However, to help overcome this somewhat the school opens its library up until 4.30pm each day allowing parent/carer access.
By creating online permission slips for a skiing trip for example, the teachers were able to get parent/carer permission directly through Fronter, with the MLE helping them sort the groups automatically, removing the tedious job of chasing paper permission slips.
Quick Wins for Teaching and Learning – Doing it the Kastellet Way!
- To develop an enthusiasm for Fronter amongst parents/carers ensure that it is populated with content prior to providing access – give them reasons to love the MLE, not reasons to say, “It’s boring!”
- Use the Portfolio Tool during parental consultations, to allow pupils/students to show their parents/carers what they have been working on
- Centrally created templates, which teachers can choose from and fill with content are vital, removing a need for staff to carry out this repetitive and unnecessary time wasting task – let the teachers add content, not waste time creating the boxes to put it in
- Reusable resources – once created the materials are available year in, year out – no need to chase around looking for resources – just add more, remove outdated links etc to enhance the impact the following year
- Use the Individual Learning Plans to allow the creation of pupil/student targets, accessible to teachers, pupils/students and parents – enabling comments to be added in an organic manner. This provides all stakeholders involvement in the learning process and in-turn reduces the risk of pupils/students straying from their learning path
- Make the MLE the first point-of-call for pupils/students by creating links to library resources in school, links to film clips, useful websites etc
Portfolio – Won’t the pupils/students run out of space?
One student presenting to the group explained how, “I have documents from the 6th and 7th Grade and I am now in the 9th Grade and I still have lots of space left.” So, an ongoing portfolio of learning can be created without the burden of worrying excessively about storage space.
Second visit to Fronter Offices
During our second visit to the Fronter Offices we got a glimpse into some of the exciting tools that are to be featured in future releases of Fronter. We again got the opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions. Issues relating to the interface for primary schools, particularly at Foundation Stage and Key Stage One were discussed and Fronter were very open to ideas and are keen to listen to the views of practitioners and pupils through the LGfL Reference Groups.
Final Thoughts…
All-in-all the two-day visit was a very useful fact-finding exercise and will be used to feed into the Havering Fronter User Group. Both the Norwegian schools and Fronter were very welcoming and it was a very well-organised event by LGfL led by Tim Stirrup.
Read about Day One here: http://haveringict.edublogs.org/2008/02/28/london-mle-lgfl-visit-to-fronter-from-a-hias-point-of-view/
