Imagine being 12 and not having to go to school. All that time on your hands what would you do? You would do your lessons at home of course, on your Virtual Learning Environment!
On the 23rd February 2010, when the rest of Northern Ireland’s 12 year olds sat in school, the Year 8 pupils of St. Louis Grammar School took their lessons from home – on their Moodle (with a little help from Synergy Learning’s dedicated hosting).
Why hold a Virtual Day?
Mr. Kevin Martin, the Principle at St. Louis Grammar School, explains the reason behind the idea:
“We select Y8 to participate in the Virtual day because this allows them to see from the first few weeks in St Louis the range and extent of the learning and teaching strategies deployed in our school.
“It opens up an array of new opportunities for them to learn in their preferred style and illustrates to them the possibilities for future learning and development. Used as blended learning it can compliment and support the excellent teaching and learning that takes place in our classrooms on a daily basis.”
What were the aims of the Virtual Day?
The aim of the Virtual Day was to help encourage pupil’s independent learning skills as well as to hone and improve their ICT skills.
Mr Tim Brown, the school’s Director of ICT and eLearning says:
“We wanted to provide the pupils with a fun learning experience and we hoped that the pupils would gain more experience of using the VLE with reduced help from the teachers, thus improving their independent learning skills.
“Our other main objective was to encourage teachers to see the potential of using the VLE for a part of or whole lesson.”
The ultimate goal is to promote blended learning to the pupils and teachers and fully integrate the VLE into the schools education strategy.
What planning was involved?
This is the second St. Louis Virtual Day, with a lot of lessons being learnt from the June 2009 event. For this year’s Virtual Day St. Louis invested in Dedicated Moodle Hosting, provided by Synergy Learning. The new equipment allows hundreds of pupils to be working online at the same time from home or in school.
To be sure the day ran smoothly St. Louis involved all the key stakeholders in the planning process:
- ICT worked closely with teachers to help them plan their lessons.
- ICT ensured each student had the necessary logins and passwords
- Pupils were involved in pre-Virtual Day activities to prepare them for the day
- Support was enlisted from parents
The only obstacle that arose was the suitability of each pupil’s home internet connection, however interference was minimal with only 7 of the 80 pupils having insufficient access to take part in the day.
What happened on the day?
Based on their experience last year the online lesson where split into three parts
- The start (a short activity)
- The main lesson (the bulk of the work)
- The end (a quiz / summative activity relating to the main activity)
Pupils took part in a broad range of online and offline activities including web quests, interactive quizzes, searching and sorting exercises etc.
Each lesson was allocated a 45 minute time slot with times built in for breaks and lunch. In order to develop independent management skills, pupils were allowed to complete the tasks in any order.
Evidence on the day showed that most pupils approached the tasks in order. However, some pupils were on the VLE from eight in the morning and had finished all the tasks by lunchtime while others were still completing tasks later on that night.
Should technical issues arise, the ICT team and teachers were only a phone call away.
Was the day a success?
Mr Brown thinks so:
“As the first specialist school in Technology with Computing, we feel that it is important to push the boundaries of the use of ICT in education and in particular investigate the role of ICT in helping pupils to learn from home. I am pleased that this years Virtual Day was such a success and I look forward to next year!”
Feedback from the students was also very positive:
‘It was fun being independent with what subjects you do and what time you get to do them at.’
‘I really enjoyed ICT and RE because the quizzes were fun and very interesting. In Geography I enjoyed making the graphs using Excel as this was something I had not done before.’
The future…
The Virtual Day provided a focus for teachers to develop e-learning opportunities that they may use again or which they may wish to develop further in the future.
Tim explains:
“There is massive potential for VLEs in the secondary sector though I envisage that it is unlikely that there would be much development of full e-learning courses. However, there is potential for schools to collaborate on providing certain courses across a number of schools within an area learning community were little direct contact with the teacher is needed. This would be particularly suited to some ICT qualifications or other skills-based courses.
The VLE is an excellent tool for teachers to store materials for pupils to access at any time of day or night. There is also potential for schools to collaborate on joint Virtual Days. This would provide an excellent opportunity for pupils to collaborate and communicate with pupils from other schools and therefore provide a more meaningful and realistic experience of working online. “
Full home learning may not be a part of the near future, but Moodle and other VLE’s are providing options that will continue to push boundaries so who knows what the distant future holds.
For more information on Synergy Learning’s Dedicated Hosting Package, or any of our services email joel.kerr@synergy-learning.com.
