Annual Learning and Technology Conference

KRCS were proud to hold the exclusive Learning and Technology Conference on the 27th of June at the historic National Brewery Centre in Burton upon Trent.

The first speaker of the day was Dan Edwards, Development Executive from the Education team at Apple, who spoke about the importance of keeping abreast of technology and ICT developments.

Whilst it is true, that schools and institutions can easily purchase an “off-the-shelf” iPad solution, fully understanding it and making it work effectively in a teaching environment, is a completely different challenge. Putting technology into the hands of staff wouldn’t raise attainment by itself. Certainly not without the staff being aware of the vast array of apps and online teaching resources that are out there to help them.

The main focus points however, were around the workshops held throughout the day, and the keynote presentations from our guest speakers, Abdul Chohan, @abdulchohan from Think Simple and Gavin Holden, @holden_ Deputy Head of Abbot Beyne School. Both have had different leadership experiences in their schools which brought a breadth of understanding which helped ensure everyone came away having learnt something.

Keynote Presentations

Abdul’s presentation stressed the need for good, solid groundwork, before making any significant investment in ICT and specifically, ensuring the infrastructure was in place to suitably support the technology. A fantastic analogy used within his presentation was that of the humble tap. It sits simply, as a shiny object in a room, and when used, on demand, water comes out, and the operator never thinks any more of it. However, underneath is a huge network of pipes, valves, pumps and operations that all have to work flawlessly for the tap to operate. This is the same in a school with any iPad deployment. Buying an iPad is not enough by itself. It cannot transform teaching as a standalone item. A school needs to ensure that the infrastructure behind the technology has been considered, planned and installed before, not after deployment, as it’s the groundwork which transforms teaching.

Our second guest speaker, Gavin from Abbot Beyne School focused on his school’s push towards paperless education with the use of applications and technologies, such as iTunesU. This enables many ways of delivering lessons and class assignments as well as collecting completed work and connecting students with their teachers.

Workshops

The two workshops focused on specific subjects and topics. Our first was hosted by Darren Tobin of Sphero, with a hands-on coding challenge with the new SPRK+ robot.

Sphero products and the matching app, assist with developing problem solving skills, student collaboration and knowledge of angles, shapes, space, speed, distance and time. The workshop finished with three mini-challenges for the delegates to interact with, exploring sounds and light, and even operating the SPRK+ robot underwater by programming a series of tasks for it, whilst submerged.

The second workshop was hosted by our own Chris Smith, who looked at how to get the best from your iPad in a classroom setting. Exploring classroom management, highlighting good practice with assignment delivery and interesting ways to deal with assessments in the digital age.

Chris also touched on some of the new features that have appeared in iOS 11 which have real-life impact in classrooms and other educational environments. He went on to speak about how the Senior Leadership Team can promote the use of technology by ‘leading by example’. The session finished with another hands-on session, this one focused on how to get teachers to save time, and resources, across the curriculum.

The Learning and Technology Conference was again, a very popular event, with the key message from all speakers highlighting the importance of forward planning and good infrastructure before investing in a solution. This matched well with our early delegate feedback, which highlighted the presentations as being “inspiring” and the location of choice, the National Brewery Museum, proving particularly popular.

We look forward to seeing you at our next event.

To support the event were a number of exhibitors who all have specialist links to the education marketplace, highlighting the width and breadth of products and services available. They include…