High-tech way to learn

THE British School of Bahrain (BSB) has revealed major plans to make a fully-fledged move into the digital age by providing every single student with an iPad, enabled with high-speed internet connectivity featuring the latest software in educational applications.

The school has linked up with telecom provider VIVA and is readying for a pilot test with a Junior School class to assess the system, address any problems and train the first set of staff members in the new form of teaching provision.

The school administrators believe enhancing educational experiences with the latest in technology is the way to prepare children for careers in the 21st Century.

Head of the institution, Karen Moffat, said: “We are not teaching this generation unless we are teaching them to be digital … because the world they will go into when they leave school will be digital. In the words of Daniel Pink ‘we must prepare students for their future and not for our past’.

“Our intention is that when school reopens in September iPads will be wrapped into the school equipment so every student in the school can access the internet from anywhere and, at the same time, it can enhance the communication between the student and the school.

“iPads are a perfect solution because they are liked and are highly transportable even for the younger students. There are wonderful applications available for education and recently Apple has signed deals with many publishing houses.

“It is also about balance. It does not mean that the pen goes out of the window. It is a tool and it still is important. Kids will continue to write and handwriting skills are important. But for research skills, presentation skills and for getting expertise from other people there is no comparison to the digital world.”

VIVA Bahrain has signed an agreement with BSB and iMachines to provide a reliable high-speed internet connection through cutting-edge infrastructure in order to support advanced digital learning for the first time in the kingdom.

The school will be WiFi enabled and Viva is tailoring its offer so that the system can handle the extra traffic by providing a bandwidth that could be between 20 and 45 Mbps. Plans of integrating cloud computing are also being studied.
 
A major task that the school faces is training its teachers in the new mode as lesson plans will soon include videos, hyperlinks, photographs, interactive writing and newly-styled revision tasks.

Mrs Moffat said: “Children are not just absorbers of knowledge, they are creators of content and that makes a huge difference because in our times the teacher was the wise sage on the stage. Children were there to absorb their knowledge. That concept of teaching is gone. It is not possible with digital education. The teacher is the guide on the side.

“You don’t simply integrate technology into the curriculum. Every school that has gone digital will tell you that it utterly transforms the way you do things. It puts emphasis on problem-based learning.

“In the old days we would get rewarded for finding information in the library or in the encyclopaedia. Today, we have 100 times the libraries of Alexandria at your fingertips. We are overwhelmed by information. So, we have to teach children how to verify sources and to check who has put the information up because there is a lot of bogus information on the internet as well.
 
“We have to instruct our teachers how to teach a different kind of literacy.

“You can for the first time personalise learning. The teacher’s role is very important and this does not replace the teacher. What it does is to give the teacher more tools but it requires a lot of planning upfront.”

BSB is in the process of obtaining licenses for a number of software applications to aid classroom studies and also plans to include every subject taught in the school into this new form of learning.

Although the school has not revealed what the financial implications will be for parents, it hopes to wrap most of the extra investment into the school fees.