Reading time 12 minutes
Introduction
CleverBooks: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Educational technology podcast protocol podcast for teachers, students, parents and educators alike. Today, I’m your host, Herbert innocent and joining me is Jak Kearney. Welcome, Jak.
Jak Kearney: All right. Good to see.
CleverBooks: Awesome, awesome. So thank you, Jack, for joining us on this podcast. And as I said, earlier on there, the aim of the podcast today is to understand this concept of digital classroom and how it impacts schools, for parents, students, teachers and educators alike. And you’re invited here today basically to share your opinion and your experiences in building an effective and interactive digital classroom environment, in your school, as well as what has been your experience in that, but also, maybe some thoughts you have in terms of how it’s going and how it has really helped your students, your school and your colleagues, your staff in taking that forward. So thank you again for joining us. And let’s jump into the interview.
My pleasure was fantastic. So my first question I just want to understand is maybe on your background, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself, your country where you’re from and what you do?
Jak Kearney: Yep, so my name is Jack Carney. I’m the head of sort of grand International School, which is an IB world school based in southern Spain. I’m British. I’ve taught internationally for quite a few years, and in a few different countries. I joined the school 12 years ago, and eight years ago, I became the head of school.
We have 1150 students on site with over 100 boarding students. We are based in the most southern point of Spain, and we teach the International Baccalaureate programme from three years up to 18 years. But we also have a nursery on site as well. There are students from four months old, up to 18 years all on one big giant campus, which is wonderful.
So my background is I’m a I’m a maths teacher, I still teach maths, I believe strongly that leaders should should model the behaviours they expect of others. So I still teach. And that’s essentially where my passion is. So I’m in the classroom, I have a diploma, one group at the moment. So where we just finished the end of year exams, starting to think about what next year looks like.
I’m also I’ve been a big advocate of technology. For a number of years. I think the school has as well, we were very progressive school. We saw probably 12 years ago that technology was where where we were kind of wanting to drive forward. Our journey sort of implementing technology started with what were the benefits for students. I think that’s that’s always got to be the start point. We started simply with things like Chromebooks, they were a cheap way to get going. They didn’t last but they certainly got people thinking about what what technology wasn’t how we could use technology. We started off with, with products for staff only and didn’t make the students have to have have technology.
But over time, we started to realise that actually, it was ridiculous for staff to have laptops for students not to so we introduced sort of a bring your own device programme. So our current setup is that we after a long journey, we moved to Apple products. And eight years ago, we became an Apple Distinguished School, we were the first school in Spain to be an Apple Distinguished School. Right now we have iPads for students aged four years old, up to 10 years old. And then from 11 years old, they have a MacBook Air. And that’s all the way through secondary. So we provide them until the students are age eight. And after that they bring their own iPads in and we look after them in school. And in secondary, they have their own MacBook Airs.
That journey has obviously been a very slow, but but a very long journey. And there were lots of learns along the way that I’m sure we’ll dig into a little bit more. So it’s a little bit of background about us as a school. We are also a member of the inspired network of schools, which is over 80 different schools around the world. So from a tech point of view now, we’re not really driving things quite as much it’s sort of centralised so that we’re learning from each other a lot as well which is which is really great. So we’ve got opportunities to network and build build on what we’re doing, but also to steal great ideas that are out there and think about how we embed them in our own situation.
Digital Classroom
CleverBooks: That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. It’s fantastic to hear how the journey has been a slow transition, they’re going from traditional, but also integrating modern technology there. And so maybe that leads into into my next question, which is, what is digital classroom? In your opinion?
Jak Kearney: I think I think it’s quite strange that the concept of a digital classrooms probably shifted over the last last few years after the pandemic, if you’d asked me before the pandemic, my answer would have been more along the lines of a classroom that that allows technology to be used as a tool to enhance the learning experience for students. I think now, especially, especially over the COVID time, we were actually having, obviously, we were online, so that was a totally digital classroom. We then had a mix of those things when we had some students who are in school, and some students were at home. And we call that a hybrid lesson.
So I was teaching 15 Kids in front of me and 10 kids at home at the same time. And that was that was quite interesting. So I think I think that the concept has shifted now to to include, I suppose inclusivity, I certainly as a school, we’re looking at how we can use that that model of learning for students who have long term absences, or for students that perhaps are, school refuses to still engage them in learning. But ultimately, if you take the connectivity out, for me, any use of technology should not replace what happens in a classroom, it should enhance, and it should, it should be there to take students to a different place that a regular classroom couldn’t get to. Okay.
CleverBooks: Okay, I think and maybe to clarify that. How do you maybe so what will be the elements of digital classroom and the role in school?
Jak Kearney: And is that the only role or is that more subtle, but I think I think it’s quite often schools fall into a trap of, of starting to use technology, and then just using it for the sake of it. And I think that’s, that’s where we need to be very careful. As educators, we have to understand what the purpose of the use of technology is. So elements of a digital classroom, firstly, you need a great network infrastructure. Without that it doesn’t work. And you need, you need to invest heavily in professional development, because just giving people laptops doesn’t work either. Needs to be professionally developed for for for staff, but also student development.
So I think those are really important aspects that we can’t we shouldn’t forget, I think then what you need is creative teachers, you need teachers that aren’t afraid to get things wrong. But what you also need is a great IT team on hand to solve the problems when they do go wrong, because we all know, anytime you plan a great lesson. And then what happens then.
So I think I think those those things sit before you even get into the concept of a classroom, you need those things in place. But for me, I think different elements would be they allow for much more student inquiry. They allow for more open ended tasks and exploration. I think they allow students to take their learning in different directions. I think they allow for different aspects of collaboration. They enable, I suppose collaborative memory bytes, that that students can access back and forth. They allow learning to take place inside and outside of the classroom, sort of, sort of anywhere, anyplace anyhow. And I think the other thing that, for me technology or an element would be is to make the invisible visible, is a concept of something that I can’t quite see into something that I can see it understand.
Parents & Digital Education
CleverBooks: Fantastic. That’s awesome. And I think also this, you touched on a little bit there about your story and how you got from beginning to really start integrating that into machine to the slow process. And I suppose if if a parent was worried, and maybe they were wondering what are the benefits of going digital?
Jak Kearney: So I think it really depends upon the school and what their philosophy about it is, as I said it, if you’re saying we’re going digital, I think my second question would be to them or my my rebuttal would be what does that mean to you? If it’s every lesson we’re using technology because we use it? It’s not the right answer. If it’s to enhance the learning experience, then I think then the vision is right. So a worried parent. I think it’s about reinforcing what safety protocols are in place.
That that we’re adding an opera tunity rather than mandating, it’s how do I how do I use this technology to enhance the experience? So for me, I’m a parent, I don’t worry about what my students or my children are using in school, I think parents have a right to be worrying what kids are doing outside of school, because there’s a lot less a lot less safety protocols on the internet, etc. But I only see technology being used well, that is enhancing the learning process.
So taking students to different places, accelerating learning, and allowing collaboration across the world. Ultimately, that makes sense, I suppose, once you have a purpose, then it makes sense as a to taking you to that next level, I can completely understand that and relate to that.
And once again, being part of a network of schools, as I said, I think we have, we’ve got over 80 schools around the world, what that’s doing is it’s allowing students to collaborate with different people from different cultures and different experiences all around the world, I think I think that’s a that’s a really, really amazing sort of aspect of digital classrooms that that shouldn’t be underestimated. It allows worldwide global collaboration on projects that allows you to attend, you know, leadership festivals from all around the world. I mean, these things are incredible. But staff, it also allows professional development to happen cheaply, more frequently, it allows a different diverse mindset to collaborate on projects.
So you know, I think I think we could look at it just happening in our schools, but we can also think about the global impact. And the fact that, you know, you can start to really connect with people in very, very different places very, very easily.
Challenges with Digital Education
CleverBooks: That sounds like a really big, fantastic development in education, the ability to connect with other schools. Yeah, that’s fantastic. And what would you say would be the most common challenges that prevents maybe some that prevents will be success with this integration technology will be just slows it down?
Jak Kearney: All right. So the biggest barriers are, in my experience, one, people throw money at it. And they give people laptops, but they don’t provide training. So I think the first thing is, invest, invest carefully. provide the training to the to the to the staff, so that they feel empowered, to use the technology and not scared of it.
The second thing is a really good network infrastructure. Be prepared that and future proof be prepared. If you’re going to have a doubt, let’s say you got 100 kids, and you’re gonna have 100 laptops, you won’t, you’ll have 100 kids with 100 laptops and 100 phones, and 100 watches. So it’s it’s really think about all of you know, future proofing, where you are making you’re making your network work for you. And with that is where do you want learning to take place in our school, it’s any place anywhere. So the pitch that you can see on the wall behind me that’s got Wi Fi, the corridors have Wi Fi, the the courtyards have Wi Fi so it’s the whole campus is Wi Fi, rather than it just being specific classrooms and specific blocks.
And the last thing for me is you need a great tech team who are on support are on hand to help solve problems because the biggest demoralising thing for staff is that they’ve put a lot of time into into making things work. And when it doesn’t, they need someone on hand to sort that. What we did at our school was, you know, we started small, we asked for, for mentors, we asked for people that were really excited about learning something new. We invested heavily in them, we trained them on what we knew, we gave them time to go and play and experience and explore. And then we use what we would call spotlighting to shine lights on people who were doing great things.
Students are the best storytellers that you can ever imagine. And so students talk about what they were doing in different lessons really brought interest and excitement from other colleagues who wanted to learn more.
And the minute that you’ve got sort of an internal thirst, within sight of staff for wanting to learn more, then you’ve got a catalyst for change. If you enforce if it’s a top down force, I think you get a lot of resistance and that doesn’t work in my experience. And so start small, heavily invest in those people. Get them to do some brilliant stuff. Share that it makes people excited and want to learn more and then use them as mentors to spread that good learn out so that you know that There’s a there’s this there’s a there’s a leadership development for those people. But there’s also, you know, a great win for students, because suddenly, then the good practice is shared across the school rather than it just been focused in Mr. or Mrs. X’s class.
Augmented Reality
CleverBooks: That’s fantastic. That’s awesome. And and I think you’ve touched a lot there in terms of really supporting the teachers. And my other question, as we go into, into the conclusion of the of the podcast episode, is I wanted to look at in terms of the tools, and I want to get your opinion on augmented reality, because this is now one of the few tools that’s coming in, and I wanted to so my question is, what is your opinion on augmented reality?
Like, how do you see that and as a resource, maybe for enhancing because you mentioned enhancing education being being one of the cook key thing having in mindset before going for digital classroom? And so augmented reality as a tool and any other tools that you would say have worked very well for you? So maybe the first one is what is your opinion, when augmented reality as a resource for enhancing and other any other tools that the view that really worked well, right?
Jak Kearney: So easy answer, yes. I like augmented reality. But the question the answer is maybe more why. So for me, I believe in experiential learning, which is to take learning not to be heard or told, but for students to live and breathe, learning, the minute you live and breathe something, you’re going to learn something so much better, because it’s not only your your ears or your mind, or your nose, that is in that learning experience, it’s every single part, it’s all your senses, it’s your muscle memory, etc.
So immersing students in a learning experience, which really engages every part of aspects of their body, I think is critical. And what augmented reality does is allows that to happen, when you’re talking about the solar system, you know, being able to sort of actually visualise what those planets look like, and how they align is really difficult when it’s on a two dimensional book. And also, when you see something on a TV screen, it doesn’t quite connect you in the same way is when you can maybe interact with it better.
So I also feel that learning happens when you get a wow factor. And you will have known some you’ve seen it yourself, you would have seen to me, I love that. That’s what you want to engage kids, because the minute they go, then you’ve got them an augmented reality, I think opens up opportunities for that to happen. So they act as a trigger that allows you then to dive into different content, other tools that we use, we’ve used quite a lot of virtual reality.
So with headsets, those are great ways of transporting you to very different places all around the world. They allow you to see things that are no longer there and explore things like, you know, ruins that before they were ruined, what did they look like and interact with them, they also allow you to experience different culture. In a matter of moments, you can be transported from, you know, a classroom in Spain, to Venice, and having you know, walking around St. Mark’s Square, I think that that it allows it allows something to occur and learning to occur without a cost.
It’s still not the same as going to St. Mark’s Square and walking around in Venice, but you can’t go everywhere all the time. So I think it really allows students to again immerse themselves and experiential learning other digital sort of profiles and projects and kit that we use.
Were a Google Classroom school. So Google Classroom is fantastic, allows collaboration from all over really good that kids learn how to how to use different programmes early, especially things like Excel, we’ve got lots of things going on with SketchUp. And CAD CAM design. Again, it’s allowing that sort of skills of technical drawing that then goes on to things like architecture and engineering to happen in terms of classrooms. We’ve got the then build on from that looking at 3d printers. So students are creating their own projects and own products, and then seeing them be created in real life. Lots of stuff on robotics and coding, app development.
Looking at how coding works, not only in in development and creation of an application that can then be brought to market but actually also in terms of something tangible. So we’ve got kids Eight, seven, programming drones to fly around us on horses, and then all the students obviously exploring things like Lego etc. And how to make robots and then taking that to compete in competitions.
So I think for me, you know, there’s lots of fun things that can happen with with technology. As a maths teacher, you know, I think it allows you to really engage kids Understanding how things like graph shifts happen, how transformations of curves occur, what differential calculus actually means how can you really understand it in different aspects. So it goes back to that concept of, for me making that, you know, that tangible thing tangible, the invisible thing visible. And wherever that is used really well, and it helps students to not be confused, I think it’s a very powerful addition.
Concluding the Interview
CleverBooks: That is awesome. I agree with that. That’s fantastic. And as you come into the conclusion, I would love to continue, I would love to continue hearing these stories. For me, it’s been a personal, I’m enjoying this a lot. And I think I think the audience is also enjoying understanding how technology has been shifting how the experience is being impactful for your students and for yourself there. And my final question is, what would be your top three tips for our audience if they want to enhance their own digital classroom experiences, or maybe just digital learning for their students at home?
Jak Kearney: All right, if we take all the other things about knowing how to use your kit, and networks, etc. First thing is don’t be afraid to make a mistake. It’s not going to be perfect, I think, enjoy it. Think second thing would be think about yourself as a learner. How will? How would How would using the technology enhance the experience for you? And I think the last thing is have some fun with it. Take it to different take it to different levels. You you’re only ever safe in your own comfort zone. And therefore you only get what you’ve always got. So by pushing that boundary by by thinking outside the box, I think you get much more incredible experiences in classrooms. I think there’s been my top three.
CleverBooks: That’s awesome. And where can people learn more about your school? What website will they have to go to if they wanted to learn more about your school?
Jak Kearney: Our website is www.sis.com? We are if you just search international school in southern Spain or best international school in Spain.
CleverBooks: Thank you so much, Jack. And for our audience. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Education Technology practical podcast. We’ll see you on our next episode.