Smart Brampton Ellis School Case Study

Case study

Brampton Ellis School From pit to net The regeneration of a South Yorkshire mining community saw a major investment in primary school IT equipment. Challenge Back in 2003 Brampton Ellis Junior School and its two feeder infant schools benefited from a £250,000 project to put interactive whiteboards in every classroom. The project, called Pit2Net, reflected the regeneration of a mining community between Barnsley and Rotherham that had seen pit closures and high unemployment. Funded by the Government’s e-learning foundation, Pit2Net transformed teaching and learning in an economically depressed area that had lost much of its Victorian employment base. In addition to SMART Board™ interactive whiteboards, 142 laptops were put into the schools to encourage independent learning. Two years down the line, teachers and pupils are so used to SMART’s cutting edge technology they cannot imagine life without it. After initial training and support from Rotherham Borough Council, teachers quickly adjusted. They are now independent innovators, experimenting with new ideas, and creating unique lesson plans from Internet sites, texts and pupils’ work. When temporary refurbishment works were carried out at Brampton Ellis Infant School, ICT Co-ordinator Naomi Oliver was given an unpleasant reminder of what life had been like before interactive whiteboard technology transformed classroom teaching. “For a while we lost the server,” explains Naomi. “Although I carried on using the interactive whiteboard I couldn’t print and save my work on the internal network or access the Internet, and I realised then what an integral part of our day-to-day learning SMART Board interactive technology had become.”

To regenerate a South Yorkshire mining community that had suffered from pit closures and high unemployment with the very latest educational technology.

SMART solution A £250,000 project called Pit2Net that installed SMART Board Interactive Whiteboards in every classroom allowing teachers to create original, innovative lesson plans.

Result After just two years, SMART’s cutting edge technology has so revolutionised lessons that teachers can barely imagine life without it.

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For Naomi, the Internet is a key teaching tool, particularly in history. “When I use any kind of visual material to teach young children I need text that is at the right readability level. Some of the CDRoms available are too busy whereas the BBC schools website ‘Famous People’ doesn’t crowd the children out with facts. Famous People has integrity in terms of curricula content and I can use the interactive whiteboard as a big screen to demonstrate to the children how it works.” Naomi, who teaches six and seven year-olds, explains: “When you go to the Famous People website you choose a character, for example Henry the Eighth, and advance from one frame to the next. It’s like a slide show and I demonstrate to the children how they can click on hot spots in each picture to get more information.” Children studying Henry the Eighth can click on a picture of a lute and hear an example of Tudor music. Elsewhere they learn Henry enjoyed playing tennis and if they click on a hot spot they discover Tudor tennis balls were stuffed with dog hair. Other hot spots contrast how poor and rich people lived in Tudor times, examining their style of dress and diet. “By demonstrating to the children how Famous People works I fuel their interest and they can go on to use it independently on their classroom laptops,” says Naomi. Other names from the past in the BBC’s Famous People series include prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, pioneer nurse Florence Nightingale and diarist Samuel Pepys who wrote about the plague and the Great Fire of London.

“Children are fascinated by technology, but you have to make sure that the resources you create for them are genuinely interesting so that they want to become engaged with them. It’s essential to get as many activities as you can where the students are coming up to the board and using it themselves.” Naomi Oliver, ICT Co-ordinator, Brampton Ellis School.

Naomi says: “The BBC has pitched Famous People at a level that six to seven-year-olds can easily understand. I have several pupils who have gone on to use the website at home with their parents, helping to fuel their interest in history.” The Internet is also used as a key learning tool at Brampton Ellis Junior School where pupils look at images from national gallery websites to enrich their artwork. ICT Co-ordinator Lois Gunby says: “I can zoom in on a famous painting from the National Portrait Gallery to demonstrate painting techniques and stimulate class discussions. Before SMART Boards I had to print off a picture and laminate it, and making the picture large enough for all the pupils to see was always a big problem.” Unlike a conventional whiteboard or blackboard, a SMART Board interactive whiteboard enables Lois and her colleagues to prepare, store and display material effectively, cutting down on paperwork. In addition to using the Internet as a teaching resource, Lois uses Easiteach software. “In science there are animated sequences that explain concepts in an easy way,” says Lois. “By using the maths software I can invite children up to change the size of graphs or move shapes around. Because the children can operate the computer by touching the SMART Board interactive whiteboard with their fingers, the whole experience is very tactile, very intuitive and user friendly.”

About SMART SMART Technologies Inc. is both the industry pioneer and global education market segment leader in easy-to-use interactive whiteboards and other group collaboration tools. The awardwinning SMART Board interactive whiteboard is the most widely installed interactive whiteboard in the world. Many school jurisdictions have standardised on the product, which is used to provide interactive learning opportunities and enhance student achievement in more than 450,000 classrooms spanning every U.S. state, every Canadian province, every Local Authority in the UK and in more than 100 countries worldwide. SMART products also include interactive pen displays, interactive digital signage, wireless slates and software. Using SMART products, groups can access and share the information they need to meet, teach, train and present. SMART’s education customers include New York City Board of Education (U.S.), Oxford University (UK), Kobe City Board of Education (Japan), Barnier Public School (Australia), University of Ottawa (Canada), United World College (Singapore), Stephen-Hawking-Schule Neckargemuend (Germany), Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind (U.S.) and Harvard University (U.S.). SMART is a private company founded in 1987. Employing more than 900 people, SMART is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with assembly facilities in Ottawa, and offices in Bonn, Tokyo, China, New York City and Washington, DC. SMART has been issued and maintains a broad portfolio of patents with numerous U.S., Canadian and other patents pending. In 1992 SMART formed a strategic alliance with Intel® Corporation that resulted in joint product development and marketing efforts, and Intel’s equity ownership in the company. SMART products are sold through dealers across North America and distributors worldwide. For more information, visit www.smarttech.com.

About Steljes Steljes creates opportunity for partners, customers and end users by pioneering innovative technologies that enable people to interact and communicate more effectively while working and

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