Duration: 1:25
Pakuranga College principal, Michael Williams, and Deputy Principal, Billy Merchant, talk about how digital technologies have given their teaching staff more confidence and allowed them to develop good pedagogy.
Michael: One of the things that we see within schools, is how technology’s impacted over time. Simple things like screen casting enables the teacher to move around the classroom with their device, casting it up onto the projector so everyone is engaged to it. So we’re seeing that the new wave of technology’s really opening up how it happens in the classroom. From my perspective strategically, we’ve looked to see if those applications for technology which will disrupt and change teacher behaviours so we get back to really good pedagogy happening within the classroom and it really grows that pedagogy. A lot of that technology’s been here for a long time but we’re really now getting much more sophisticated in how we’re using it in the classroom.
Billy: What’s been really rewarding for us, is to be able to see the actual change in confidence within our teaching staff. We’ve created a culture where actually e-learning is a dynamic, and exciting, and expected part of day-to-day learning here. What we’ve seen over the years, is that people have seen the appreciation and the value in actually including digital technologies in their teaching and learning programmes so our staff now are more hungry for upskilling, rather than having to be convinced to actually use it.