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Havering Sixth Form College

Year 3: TWEET! - Teaching With Emerging and Enabling Technologies - TWEET! 2009/2010

 

 

 

 

Project Description

The TWEET! Project will pilot the use of mobile and wireless technologies to provide innovative and interactive support for learners in the creative arts. By increasing wireless connectivity and providing mobile devices and projects we hope to make a marked impact on learner achievement and satisfaction. Working together the two colleges, Havering Sixth Form College and City and Islington College will benefit from pooling knowledge and expertise and plan to share our excellent practice with the Further Education community.

Aims include:

• To provide enhanced and extended wireless connectivity in two organisations.
• To pilot the use of mobile and wireless technologies to provide innovative and interactive support for learners in the creative arts areas in two organisations.
• To share knowledge and expertise across the two organisations in order to develop maturity in both organisations' strategic approach to mobile and wireless technologies.
• To evaluate and share pedagogic issues and practices for mobile learning with peers and other colleges.

Objectives

A recent (September 2009) survey of 14-19 students enrolling at the college identified mobile telephones as the main technology for work, study and leisure. The mobile phones in use were capable of accessing the internet, social networking and storing considerable amounts of music and video files. When asked about technology to enhance study; wireless connectivity, ability to use own devices or to loan devices, text messaging, peer group discussion, online homework clubs and downloadable or web based course materials, were all requested.

The results of the survey have given us confidence in our plans to provide and use mobile technologies at both colleges. We expect the provision will improve student satisfaction and have a positive effect on standard of course and exam work

1) To implement and improve wireless access at each institution:

• To extend and enhance wireless access at Havering Sixth Form College to include the new design labs and to provide wireless access points in communal meeting areas outside of the classroom (including open-air locations) enabling students to use either their own or college based mobile devices .
• To set up wireless access at the Centre for Business Arts and Technology and extend access at the Sixth Form College, increasing provision of wireless enabled centres within this year, to 2 centres enabling students to use their own and college based mobile devices.
• To utilise knowledge, professional networks, project management skills and technical expertise from both organisations to speed up the effective implementation of the wireless networks.

2. To explore the use of wireless and mobile technologies to enhance learner experience.

a) To design, run and evaluate up to 4 pilot projects in each organisation in the related areas of media studies and photography. Projects to provide - Real world work like experiences e.g. e-enabled location shooting for photographers, micro blogging for journalists, shared production diaries for media production teams.

3. To improve and increase interactive communication.

a) Through student communication with teachers and course materials
i) in all college study spaces e.g. learning centre, café, classroom.

ii) on work experience or during self-directed study or project work.

b) To provide mobile access to new opportunities and channels for one to one and peer group communication e.g. Twitter, Flicker, facebook.

c) To provide mobile access to learning content as learning objects that are available and portable on the devices.

4. To provide the skills required for the design, development and adaptation of learning content suitable for mobile devices

a) Enabling teachers to create activities to encourage communication between students and tutors providing feedback and support through a shared web-based environment such as Twitter.

b) Enabling teachers to design assignments and assessment activities that exploit mobile connectivity.

5. To develop teachers research skills.

a) To evaluate pedagogic issues arising from using mobile approach and share experiences with others in the form of case studies and CPD activities.

b) To engage in action research and producing useful reports and presentations to peers and the wider community.

Target groups:

The project aims to support students studying creative arts, photography, media studies at both institutions. Students at HSFC and CANDI will be aged between 16 and 19 and will be studying at level 3 whilst additionally at CANDI there will be adult learners at level 4 on the Foundation Degree course. As part of their studies these students are required to work extensively out of the classroom with limited tutor support. A number of the teachers at both colleges supporting these students are currently studying PGCE PCET and will also be equipped with similar devices to facilitate feedback and discussion

Partner

City and Islington College

 

Year 1: Using Mobile Technologies in the Classroom, at Home and in the Field to support Minority Teaching Groups (MoLeMINT) 2007/2008

 

 

 

Recent technological and societal advancements have started to change the ways in which people learn. Mobile technologies are enabling ‘any time, anywhere’ access to information and the development of Web 2.0 publishing technologies has enabled people to share information more easilly than ever before, fostering the social network generation of learners today.

This project therefore focused on the introduction of mobile technologies in the forms of 2GB and 8GB ASUS eee PCs, Apple iPods and HTC Advantage personal digital assistants (PDAs) to students in minority subject groups in Havering Sixth Form College to enable evaluation of the devices’ pedagogic benefit and the overall student experience. Findings of social surveys and focus groups indicate that students are keen to use mobile learning devices both in and outside college and are indicating their preference for particular devices taking into account functionality, size, portability and cost. 

College and Project Background

Havering Sixth Form College is located on a single site in the London Borough of Havering, an economically prosperous borough with low unemployment. It is located between Hornchurch and Upminster some five miles inside the M25 ring road. There are now 2054 students, nearly all of whom are aged 16 to 18. Recruitment is buoyant and the college has exceeded its recruitment targets comfortably in recent years. In 2004, over 40% of Year 11 students from Havering chose to attend the college and over 25% of students travel from outside the borough. These students are more ethnically diverse.

Havering has a very different economic profile from the London east area as a whole. Employment is mainly in the wholesale and retail trade, public services and business services, with health and social work and hotels and restaurants key growth sectors. In the Index of Deprivation 2004, Havering was ranked 214 out of 354 local authorities in England. Havering is the least ethnically diverse borough in London, only 6% not being White British according to the Census 2001.

The college has a strong concentration on Level 3 courses, particularly AS levels and A levels. There has been  steady growth in the number of students who enrol on pre-vocational courses; 30% of students study for a vocational certificate of education (VCE) or general national vocational qualification (GNVQ). A relatively large proportion of students, about 30%, mix GCE and VCE courses. Some 53% of students are female. Approximately 18% of the college's students are from minority ethnic backgrounds compared with 3% in the borough.

Havering Sixth Form College has good IT resources both as a central provision and within dedicated IT classrooms. The ratio of desktop computers to students is approximately 1:2.87 and all the teaching staff are provided with a laptop. The college has an effective wireless network (which extends over a number of buildings) providing access to all IT resources throughout the site. Almost all the classrooms are equipped with an interactive whiteboard and data projector and these are increasingly used to support teaching and learning.  Extensive use is made of the virtual learning environment (VLE) Moodle, which is externally hosted by the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC).

The ‘Using Mobile Technologies in the Classroom, at Home and in the Field to support Minority Teaching Groups’ (MoLeMINT) project focuses on students between the ages of 16 to19 using mobile technologies in the classroom, at home and in the field to support teaching and learning within minority teaching groups. It aims to explore what new teaching and learning opportunities are created for students using mobile technologies and to establish the pedagogic benefit, usability and suitability of mobile technologies for various teaching groups within Havering Sixth Form College.

Project aims

• To explore what new teaching and learning opportunities are created by providing learners with mobile devices to support teaching and learning
• To determine the problems and successes encountered by (either) providing each student in a class with a mobile device or by providing a class set for student use
•  To determine which mobile device is most suitable for a student when studying a particular subject 
• To determine the impact the additional use of mobile devices will have on the College network as well as the controls that need to be in place to support this
• To determine the most suitable mobile device to support students studying a range of minority subjects in class, at home and in the field. 

Key objectives

• To establish the mobile device as a tool for ‘any time’ learning
• To ascertain which device is the most suitable to support teaching and learning in a number of different (minority) subjects and locations, ie in class, at home and in the field. 
• To measure qualitatively how students and teaching staff react to the use of mobile devices and how they perceive them to support teaching and learning
• To measure qualitatively how students react to the use of mobile devices
• To measure qualitatively how teaching staff react to the use of mobile devices
• To measure qualitatively how students perceive the use of mobile devices to support teaching and learning
• To measure qualitatively how teaching staff perceive the use of mobile devices to support teaching and learning
• To develop and adapt teaching resources as necessary to support their use on the range of procured mobile devices in a range of subjects.

Benefits

Benefits for learners, across all learner groups

Learners gained:

• Improved access to IT facilities
• IIncreased confidence in the use of mobile devices to support learning
• independent learning skills
• resources in new formats, such as podcasts
• access to the same technology at home and in-class.

Benefits for staff

Staff gained

• use of mobile devices to support teaching and learning in the field
• increased in-class access to IT facilities
• opportunities to develop resources in new formats
• access to mobile devices to support teaching
• alternative resources to support current teaching.

Benefits for the lead college

The lead college gained:

• increased provision of mobile devices to support teaching and learning
• increased range of teaching and learning resources
• raised awareness of mobile devices to support teaching and learning
• Opportunity to fully consider the use of mobile devices to support learning
• Practical experience of a large-scale research activity.

Lessons learned

The use of these devices in teaching and learning was initially limited by the timescale of the project and the inability to get hold of them quickly. Although teachers were happy to try the devices they had already done much of their lesson planning for the year and were reluctant to change their plans. It quickly became obvious that to implement these types of devices into teaching successfully both teacher and students need sufficient training. Many of the Geology students who received an HTC Advantage PDA were unable to make effective use of them because they were not aware of all of the device’s capabilities. Some more inquisitive students who took full ownership of the devices and dedicated sufficient time to investigating their abilities were able to demonstrate to others what they could do. 

It was also evident that without knowing the capabilities of each device it was difficult to encourage their use in teaching and learning. Modern Foreign Language teachers showed no interest in the use of iPods until students needed to be able to listen to a teaching resource that could not be uploaded onto the College virtual learning environment because of copyright issues. However, once the files had been loaded on to an iPod and distributed to the student group it rapidly became apparent that the device was an effective learning tool, with the parent of one student stating that her daughter used the device every night to carry out revision for Italian Listening skills.