There are not many secondary schools in the UK where Apple computers vastly outnumber PCs. ICT at St Ninians in Douglas, Isle of Man, is one such school powered by Apple computers. The overall impression you get at the school is of ICT being used confidently and creatively: blogs, music creation, teachers integrating ICT into their work, podcasts (video and audio).
In his role as Head of ICT at the school, Jim Hunter is keen to ensure that students acquire a basic competence of the subject which crosses over into many other subject areas: "We don’t see ourselves as training students to learn a particular piece of software. We are teaching them to apply a set of principles to any situation," he explains.
Raising standards
Jim Hunter points to the work. “The standards and the quality that students achieve are answers to why we use Apple computers. When you look at the strategies and see what the students are expected to learn, the Mac interface is the best to meet those requirements."
Maff Long, who is responsible for ICT in the lower school, is keen to exploit the creative side of ICT: "We are not constrained by the National Curriculum as schools are in the rest of the UK. Eventually though, our students will be judged against others when they do their GCSE’s. We will move to DIDA and we are already teaching how to keep their work in an eportfolio."
Students have been making video podcasts using iMovie and Garage Band. An interview with Apple UK chief Mark Rogers can be found on the lower school's website. “The great thing is that the kids can produce work that looks as though it comes from a media company and they can do that with ease. They get instant pleasure from it. It’s friendly, the programs are integrated together, and they link in a very satisfying way. They are also easier to teach,” adds Mr Long.
Music to our ears
“Recently we made a pop video from scratch in collaboration with the music department. We spent two days on that looking at how you can market music to particular audiences."
All this does not happen by chance. There has to be confidence to back the creativity. Graham Kinrade, school improvement adviser at the Isle of Man Department of Education, is responsible for technical issues across the island.
“To be honest our technical issues are limited. The hardware is very reliable and general failure rates are very low. The hardware failures I see are down to wear and tear. My personal view is that it's down to good build quality and the tight integration of hardware and software. Each computer is robust and well designed for its purpose. We have a very high percentage of machines that have been in the field for 2 or 3 years and never had to be repaired by an engineer! This says it all. We never have compatibility issues with hardware and software.”
In total Graham is responsible for 3,900 client computers (desktop and laptop). As well as 115 servers, 40 networks, 300 wireless access points (Apple Base Stations) and numerous other pieces of equipment. This is all done with just two technicians. I talked to a head recently who boasted that she ran the PCs at her school with three technicians!
Graham argues: “This is possible because of the tight systems we run. All the networks are the same, both kit and configuration wise. Apple Remote Desktop enables access to any computer on any of our networks at any time. This means a large amount of support can be offered directly to users without any engineers having to attend site.
"Finally, we are now managing all our client computers with a piece of software called Filewave. This is an excellent software package that allows me to manage all the clients remotely! I can install or remove any software or apply system upgrades on either individual machines or our entire stock.”
Links
Podcast Interview
Video and Song (Is This Love?)
The Mhellia (The first podcast)
