“Our county gives good ICT advice,” says Doug McElroy e-learning director for King Alfred’s school in Wantage, Oxfordshire. “Every year we have a conference which includes innovative practice demos. In 2004 Atomic Learning was there.”
Doug’s job is to promote e-learning across the whole school, and having seen this presentation he felt Atomic Learning fitted the bill perfectly. “We decided that rather than spend all our money on software solutions that would then need upgrading and might have problems with compatibility with our RM network, we would spend the money on website subscriptions - such as Atomic Learning - that were media rich.”
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Atomic Learning is a web-based, learning-on-demand resource, which provides thousands of bite-sized tutorials on dozens of software applications covering most of the common classroom applications for Windows and Apple Mac computers, from the likes of Adobe through to classroom favourites like Crick Software's Clicker.
The tutorials are in QuickTime video format, last a maximum of three minutes and can be watched again and again until you fully understand the topic or skill you’re viewing.
Another Atomic Learning convert within the same county is Dr Roger Higton, ICT co-ordinator at Lord Williams's School in Thame, “We’ve been using Atomic Learning for three years. I was concerned about staff skill levels. I run a yearly skills audit and wanted to put in place something that could be used in teachers’ spare time and also fill the skills gap. Atomic Learning provided an ideal way for me to reinforce the training sessions.”
Doug concurs: “It’s a great tool for professional development and to help those with less ICT confidence gain it, and then bring it into the classroom. A perceived lack of skill is one thing that still blocks many teachers from using ICT.”
According to Atomic Learning this is a fairly typical implementation for the company. It starts with teachers using the site to improve their own technology skills, and then spreads as they use it with their students as a resource that allows the teacher to focus on content with Atomic Learning providing the technology support.
Easy to access
Being web-based means it’s easy to access. In both schools all the pupils and teachers use Atomic Learning, either directly from a desktop icon or through the county’s Digital Brain learning platform (by-passing the need for a password). They can also log on from outside the schools’ intranet/extranet – but if they do this they have to remember the password, which both Doug and Roger agree can cause a few problems.
The county’s learning platform has been instrumental in sparking collaboration between Doug and Roger and they have been sharing ideas on how they use Atomic Learning both inside and outside their classes. Doug hints at a friendly rivalry with Roger who has used the system for longer and publishes ICT courses through the learning platform which students and teachers from any school within the e-community can link into if they are invited.
“With only one hour per week on the timetable for ICT, Atomic Learning enables us to make as much as possible of personal study time,” explains Roger. “I can set homework and embed a video clip from Atomic Learning that shows the skill needed to complete the task, so children don’t have to spend time searching out exactly the right clip or hunting things down in text books. This takes out the surfing element so it’s a much more focused approach.”
He does the same thing for worksheets and revision prompts. “We’re not using Atomic Learning as a teaching course in the curriculum,” he continues, “it’s more of a quick way to demonstrate the skills required, focusing on context, suitability and selection.”
Doug agrees: “I use the website a lot for advanced skills in Excel and Access with my A-level students. Whereas text books pool skills and help children to build solutions, Atomic Learning is very good at either extending solutions or reminding students of the skills required to build that solution. It’s electronic learning on a need-to-know basis, giving an almost bullet-point approach to ICT skills.”
Personalised learning
In these days when we are focused on personalised learning and encouraging students to drive their own learning, Atomic Learning does just that. “You can use Atomic learning at your own speed and you are not judged by the website. All the skills are there and these can be shared between students once they have learned them,” says Doug.
Roger expands: “Once students are pointed at the site they are free to follow their own interest, whether that be website construction or database building. It’s pro-active learning for all abilities.”
A strength can often also be a weakness, and although Atomic Learning covers a wide range of topics, making it suitable for Year 7 through to Year 13 students getting to grips with ICT right through to A-level advanced skills databases, this amount of information means students have to be right on task to get the most out of it. “Some of the younger pupils can find the site a little daunting, so you need to control their resources a lot more heavily,” says Doug.
Even so, Roger is keen to point out that at Lord Williams's is averaging around 400 hits a month on the site. “Another great thing about Atomic Learning is that it gives us feedback to see what areas of the site have been visited. If we then look at what various classes have been covering we are able to get a fair indication of the student/staff breakdown. For example, when we were doing web design with Year 10 there were a lot of hits for Flash and Dreamweaver.”
Both Doug and Roger said that when they first started using the website all the clips were narrated with an American voice-over and students were initially deterred. However, Atomic Learning has updated its clip bank and most now have British voices which, says Doug, makes it more effective as a tool in UK classrooms. “At the end of the day this is a unique resource. It’s not just about teaching and learning it’s about software skills and delivery. It’s almost like video-conferencing and it’s in a form that kids understand and can relate to.”
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Atomic Learning into the future
The Atomic Leaning service is subscription-based and you can get this to cover the whole school - staff and students. The costs vary depending on size of school, and it’s also worth speaking to your LEA as some authorities are getting subscriptions for all their schools.
For those concerned that QuickTime is not the most readily accessible format for viewing video clips, Flash versions will be added this summer. In the meantime, to download QuickTime player go to www.apple.com/quicktime/mac.html or www.apple.com/quicktime/win.html
Also in the pipeline are several features and products that will enhance the websites offerings in terms of curriculum resources. The forthcoming DiDA content and alignment is one (www.atomiclearning.co.uk/dida). Another will be the adding of key numbers to each tutorial on the site which will allow for direct linking to specific tutorials. This will enable teachers to create their own lessons by selecting individual tutorials and ordering them as they wish. The company is also developing its own Lesson Accelerators which are project-based lesson plans with tutorials embedded in a step-by-step approach.
www.atomiclearning.co.uk |
