Tawa Intermediate School, New Zealand
AVerVision355AF frees up teachers and engages students in an amazing way
Tawa Intermediate School is a "decile
8 school" with just over 500 students. It is located 20 minutes north of Wellington,
in the suburb of Tawa. The school is in its 3rd year of an ICT Online Bridges Cluster.
In the 3 years of being in the cluster, the school has seen a huge increase in the
technologies used for teaching and learning.
The school has 18 classrooms. Each room has a data projector, class computer, 3
notebooks and within a syndicate of 3 classes they share 10 portable computers.
Teachers use data projectors regularly as part of the teaching program. All students
at the school have their own Gmail accounts and they regularly use Google Docs.
All classes have a blog. Ultranet is used as their LMS. The Ultranet hosts the school’s
website and each class, syndicate and learning area has its own page. Children use
this all the time to access information. The
AVerVision355AF visualizer (document
camera) was trialed in the senior teacher and ICT PD leader’s
classroom. Their class has 29 students and is made up of Year 7 and 8 students.
“It was great to see student engagement increase every time I turned the visualizer
on.”
- Taylor, Year 7/8 Teacher, Tawa Intermediate School
Impact on teaching and learning
Benefits within the classroom brought by the
AVerVision355AF visualizer
(document camera):
- Immediate transfer of any document to the data projector
- Efficient sharing of information
- Instead of photocopying, it can go straight up on the screen
- Sharing of students’ work immediately instead of scanning, which means there
is instant feedback in front of their peers
- Student work is no longer just seen by the student and the teacher, so it has the
potential to increase the effort all children put into their work
- An immediate audience for students’ work
- Ability to demonstrate particular skills, i.e. different art techniques or using
classroom equipment such as protractors, compasses, calculators and rulers
- Annotate on student’s work immediately, take a photo and upload it to
their e-portfolios or the class blog, or even email it to parents
- Increases efficiency because it decreases the need to photocopy and organize resources
- Show science experiments without having all the students crowd around a desk
- Conduct experiments with dangerous materials that students can’t touch on
their own
- Increases student engagement through being able to share their contributions such
as home learning, current events work or anything physical
- Sharing of physical resources from outside to a wide audience rather than passing
things around
- Time lapse photography
- Being able to grab the teachable moment when relevant material presents itself,
for example, a novel a student was reading with descriptive language or an advertisement
in a newspaper
Invaluable for chemistry experiments
In one of the experiments, the class made casein plastic by adding vinegar to a
pot of heated milk. The teachers used the visualizer
(document camera) to ensure
the whole class could see the transformation as the vinegar was stirred into the
milk. When the reaction was complete, students molded their own piece of plastic
under the visualizer (document
camera).
“It showed us what was happening in the science experiments without
looking over the teacher's shoulder”
- Year 7 Student, Tawa Intermediate School
Ease of use for teacher and student training
The AVerVision355AF visualizer
(document camera) requires
the user to have mid-level ICT skills in that it is fairly straightforward to use.
Students pick up how to use it really quickly and with only very minor training.
When asked her opinion, Sarah, the teacher, said “The permanent set up of
the visualizer (document
camera) means the teacher can avoid the traditional hassles that come with
a camera, for example, transferring photos to a computer, and worrying about whether
the camera is charged. The visualizer
(document camera) is always
on hand in the classroom for that teachable moment where sharing a physical resource
is so important to the learning and engagement of students.”
“We all got a turn and the whole class could see what we were doing."
- Year 8 Student, Tawa Intermediate School