In 2008 Southwell School started negotiation to install fibre broadband into our school. At this stage the closest fibre was about 1/2 a km away. We decided we needed to make this happen, thus ensued a fantastic leap forward for the school. But let me take you back a couple of years.

Back in 2004 we started on an ICTPD cluster run out of the Ministry of Education. I cannot emphasise enough how critical it was to have this funding and training for my staff. Through the ICTPD cluster we became exposed to new pedagogies and the technology of the 21st Century. It would be fair to say that the professional learning that took place changed the way we viewed education and the way it was to be delivered into the classroom.

As the teachers continued to develop their craft, we quickly started to notice that the network in the school and the speed of access to the outside world had become a problem. During these three years we tried a number of solutions but with limited success. The situation was becoming critical as teachers were becoming frustrated with the level of connectivity. Alongside this there was also an increased demand by teachers for access - which meant the number of devices on the network was also climbing.

Changed forever

So getting fibre into the school became the only solution. Working closely with Velocity Networks, who were incredibly supportive, it laid the necessary fibre to get the school onto a fibre connection. From that point on, the reality of connectivity changed for us and what we could do has changed classroom practice forever.

In Years 7 and 8, we have netbooks for every student, with a further 200 laptops across the school. Today we have over 600 devices on the network, including interactive whiteboards and various multi-media machines. All of this has developed due to the speed of the connectivity and its reliability. We extensively use Google Apps and have single log-on for all of the children's Gmail accounts, docs and network authentication. Students can access docs or email from anywhere in the world provided they have an Internet connection.

In the classroom, children's goals are stored on the school social networking site, Elgg and access to LMS Moodle is via the web. The teachers can access all the documents the students are working on just the way we could look at an exercise book. Access to high-quality web repositories such as YouTube and Flicker can happen in a class on 25 laptops simultaneously with no loss in connectivity or delay.

Lack of training

Ultra Fast Fibre Broadband is the future and we have started to see it for ourselves. So it is really exciting to see the Government rollout moving forward. This is critical for New Zealand and its children. However, I am concerned that there seems to be a lack of training and professional development preparing schools for the coming of the fibre. This is a real concern as I have tried to explain having the fibre will make no difference at all without significant changes to the way learning and teaching happens in classrooms. Changing pedagogy and practices in schools is really the biggest challenge facing the sector, not the installation of fibre.

 

Regarding the two forces at work, I would remark:
1.. Are secondary teachers being asked to move from a content-based curriculum to a process-based one? There seems to be a lot of focus on students learning how to learn, and being equipped to deal with the ongoing life-learning skills to cope with rapid changes in their working environment. In this fundamental change, teachers are themselves having to retrain in what and how they teach. Is there enough resource going into this area to ensure a successful transition?

2.. There is much evidence, which relates levels of disengagement to the competing media available through advances in technology. Schools are beginning to address how these media are used in the learning process, but while access is broadening to technological hardware it is very difficult for schools to match access to the expertise necessary for students to creatively and constructively utilise that hardware in a meaningful way. This is a challenge that no amount of end-user access can address without investment in content and programme development.
Stuart Grant

And then there is the question of the provision of netbooks and laptops for
all children in all schools regardless of family or community circumstances.
J Mclellan