Northern Lights
Northern Lights Public School builds an award-winning learning environment with tablet PCs running Microsoft® Windows® Tablet PC Edition operating system and Microsoft Office System
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Company Overview
Located in Aurora, Ontario, the Northern Lights Public School is home to 458 students in grades ranging from junior kindergarten to Grade 8. The school is part of the roster of more than 163 schools overseen by the York Region District School Board, which employs 8,500 staff members to oversee the education of 100,000 students. The school has made technology use a priority — with students across all grades using technology extensively within the classroom and while doing independent research and studies. Mobile technology is used heavily throughout the school, with both students and teachers being able to work anywhere within the school — by making use of the wireless network covering the whole building. The innovative use of technology within the school has been widely recognized, with the York Region District School Board winning the 2004 Public Sector CATA Alliance Canadian Innovation Award, as well as the Learning Partnership award for innovation, for the work they are doing at the school.
Business Challenge
The Northern Lights Public School is an example of an instruction-focused school where technology plays a key role in the student learning experience. The school also serves as a test bed for the philosophy behind technology adoption within the York Region District School Board: technology in the classroom should be sustainable and replicable.
Members of the York Region District School Board have conducted research into challenges with integrating technology into the classroom. The problem board members identified, and outlined in a document titled Technology and the Learner, is that technology tools are not typically taken into account during curriculum planning but are added on later. This often results in an awkward fit of technology and lesson plan, making teachers reluctant to turn to technology tools. The research also identified a lack of systematic and organized sharing of technology expertise between different schools within a school board. Technology and the Learner research found that often a single school within an area may have a number of technology-savvy staff and may make more comprehensive use of technology tools, but the expertise often remains only within that particular school.
"Traditionally, technology was superimposed on the curriculum with select teachers using particular applications but it was disconnected from the rest of the learning tools. We would see teachers conduct class using traditional teaching methods and then perhaps allow for some time at the end of class for students to work on the computer," says Todd Wright, curriculum coordinator - Information Communication Technology, eLearning and Learning Resource Centre, York Region District School Board. "We feel however that computers are part of the instructional tools teachers bring to the class and should be better integrated into the rest of the curriculum."
The school is also actively involved in professional development programs including video exemplars shared with other York Region schools. Northern Lights also hosts teachers and their students from other schools so that those individuals can get hands on training and demonstrations of possible ways to make better use of technology in the classroom.
"Northern Lights gave us an opportunity to create an environment where we can build technological expertise with the teachers and share that expertise with our system partners, our corporate partners as well as the school community at large," says Wright. "We put the school's staff on a three, four or five year rotation so that after they leave Northern Lights, they will move on to other schools, taking their knowledge with them and becoming a resource for the rest of the schools in York Region."
A key objective for the York Region District School Board with the Northern Lights project was to address student learning challenges through technology. Board members believed that if tools which help with information gathering can be provided to students, they will help the students accelerate their speed of learning. Technology was also seen as a way of enriching the learning experience for students by making use of online tools and reference information available on the Internet.
“Technology is making it possible for us to get students really excited about learning by making it fun and cool,” says Jim Forbes, principal of Northern Lights Public School. “Think about the interactivity of something like an Xbox and how that could be combined with learning. Where you could, for example, walk into the water cycle and actually see what is occurring from inside the process. Even a simple animated flash of the water cycle can build a student’s enthusiasm for learning more than a static drawing. The power of technology is phenomenal.”
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Solution
In December 2003, after curriculum consultants within the school board successfully completed a pilot project testing the use of Tablet PCs, Northern Lights Public School introduced Tablet PCs to its teachers and the Grade 8 class. Grade 8 students at the school are now using Acer Tablet PCs running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition for everything from taking hand-written notes to reading to creating artwork and presentations. Teachers throughout the school are also using wireless Acer TravelMate C110 Series Tablet PC computers for recording classroom assessments of student performance, compiling marks, preparing lessons, and communicating with parents. Through wireless Internet access, the school has been able to extend the use of the technology beyond the school building, allowing students and parents to access the school’s network from home.
Staff and students at Northern Lights take advantage of Tablet PC-specific tools within the Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system. A superset of Windows XP Professional, Tablet PC Edition has all the capabilities of Windows XP plus additional features which allow users to handwrite and draw directly onto the Tablet PC screen. This allows them to interact with the PC in a more natural way by incorporating the convenient and intuitive aspects of pen and paper into the computing experience.
The advanced digital ink technology within the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system makes writing on the Tablet PC a natural experience for the students. A product of years of research done by Microsoft, the digital ink is stored as a compressed file, allowing it to have a small file size and facilitating efficient storage.
Writing on the Tablet PC is also made easier by the Tablet PCs screen which has been designed to operate with an electromagnetic digitizer instead of a resistive-touch screen such as those typically found in PDAs. Unlike a PDA screen which is touch sensitive, a user can rest their hand on the Tablet PC screen the same way they do with a pen on paper, enhancing the writing experience. Microsoft Office OneNote® 2003 note-taking program also helps the students to electronically capture, organize, and reuse notes on a laptop, desktop, or Tablet PC. OneNote 2003 provides students with a single place to collect and customize notes, allowing them to capture lesson notes or research information in multiple ways and organize it according to their needs.
The note-taking technology treats the information students input using the Tablet PC’s digital pen as regular text, allowing them to convert handwritten notes to typed text. Students within Northern Lights are therefore able to handwrite homework assignments and presentations and convert them to a typed Microsoft Word-based format when handing it in to be marked. OneNote 2003 also includes tools which make research easier to manage; the software allows students to date stamp screen captures of online research material and automatically stores the Web address of the information.
“OneNote is very effective at capturing student handwriting and drawing. The software quickly showed us its ability to allow the student to search their handwritten notes for a specific word or phrase or convert their handwriting to text. The program is now the tool students turn to most,” says Kevin Rice, manager of Integrated Solutions Information Technology Services, York Region District School Board.
Collaboration, whether it is on IT initiatives for the school’s technology staff, or on group assignment projects the students work on, is facilitated with Microsoft SharePoint® Services based on Windows Server™ 2003 operating system. The solution allows the staff and students at Northern Lights to work on projects through Web-based team sites. The version control tools contained within the software allow the students to ensure they are working on the most recent version of research projects and homework assignments, while staff members at Northern Lights are able to ensure up-to-date instructional information is effectively maintained within the school.
“SharePoint Services have been a big hit with the students. They use the space to carry on discussions about school work, share research and work on assignments together,” says Rice. “SharePoint Services have also proven very useful to the class instructor who can post notices about upcoming activities or assignments onto the site. Since parents can log onto our network from home using their child’s Tablet PC, the sites have become a primary way of communicating with the parents. We even post our school newsletter to the site now.”
The school ensures the network the students rely on is more secure using Microsoft Software Update Services. The free update management software automates the update management process and allows the Northern Lights IT team to help reduce the amount of time, effort, cost, and risk associated with the process.
“We can effectively prevent our network resources from being compromised with the help of Microsoft Software Update Services,” say Rice. “The service automatically downloads any security or other software updates we may need as soon as the students or staff log onto our network. This is especially helpful with ensuring the security of the student Tablet PCs and making sure they have all of the necessary updates.”
Business Benefits
The introduction of the Tablet PCs to the Northern Lights school has had a positive impact on the learning environment the school has been able to create for its students. With the mobile technology used within the school, Northern Lights staff has been able to create a richer, more interactive curriculum which makes it easier for staff to engage students in learning. The school has also been able to find a new and effective way of including parents into the learning process. Most importantly, the Northern Lights project has provided the York Region District School Board with a knowledge base on which it will be able to build many other positive learning environments.
Teacher’s Pet
Teachers at the Northern Lights school have been able to use the combined mobility of the Tablet PC and the powerful Windows XP operating system to turn Tablet PCs into a mobile teaching resource center — allowing them to track student performance, mark assignments and prepare lesson plans using a single tool.
Northern Lights has also been able to develop a database which tracks the performance of each student within the school. Teachers can access this database using their Tablet PCs, allowing them to better provide support for children in the areas the students need most help with. Northern Lights staff can also access some of the online teaching resources through their Tablet PCs, including curriculum aids and software provided by the Province of Ontario, allowing them to present learning material in a richer, more interactive format that students are more likely to get enthusiastic about.
“All of our teachers have Tablet PCs and we could not wrestle them back if we tried at this point,” says Forbes. “The teachers have really benefited from the personal productivity and teaching tools they can access through the Tablet PC, we’re also receiving great feedback from them about the potential they see in the collaboration tools within Microsoft Office System.”
Connecting parents to the classroom
The remote access capabilities the school provides its students have also allowed parents to find a new way of getting involved with their children’s education.
With the use of the Tablet PCs, parents are able to log onto the Web-based sites using SharePoint Services the Grade 8 students are using to get updates on the projects their children have been assigned, find out the schedule of upcoming tests or exams, as well as communicate with teachers at the school.
“Children in Grades 7 or 8 can be a bit reluctant to share school documents with parents, but our parents know that if they use the Tablet PC and log onto the site they can have access to the children's work,” says Wright. “We’ve heard great feedback from parents who are excited to have an easy way to stay on top of their children’s progress.”
The Web-based communication environment that the Northern Lights school has created is also allowing parents to ensure their children stay up-to-date with school work should they fall ill and have to miss school. Parents can log onto the network, download the day’s learning material and work together with their child to ensure they are up-to-date on their assignments upon returning to class.
The Cool Factor of Learning
The school has noticed marked improvements in the way students in Northern Light’s Grade 8 class are responding to school work since the introduction of the Tablet PC. Information presented to the children in a new way has captured their attention and imagination. The teachers are helped along in their teaching efforts by the “cool factor” of technology. Students are responding much more enthusiastically to learning with a Tablet PC and the technology is proving to be an effective way of engaging even the most difficult to reach students in the learning process. Northern Lights staff has noticed that students who have trouble reading and would typically have a more difficult time retaining information are overcoming those challenges, helped along by a curriculum which includes video, sound and animation.
Giving students access to the wireless-enabled Tablet PCs has also allowed the Grade 8 class to undertake some more challenging course work. For example, students are using their Tablets PCs to design robotic assistive devices for people with disabilities. Using their Tablet PCs during class and at home, students are conducting research on a particular disability to create a plan for a robot. Students will then build that robot with their designated requirements.
“This technology is allowing us to tailor the way we teach to the needs of each student. By having the information they need right in front of them, the students can move through classroom activities at their own pace, while still ensuring they understand the learning material. We could not do that with traditional teaching tools. At best you could have groups of students moving at their own speed,” says Forbes. “Because of the new way the students are interacting with the learning material, we are also noticing a change in the role of the teacher. The teacher now becomes more of a learning facilitator.”
Looking forward to the future
Although already noted as a leader in the work to enrich the learning process with technology tools, the Northern Lights staff is already looking ahead to future projects making use of technology to improve teaching and learning.
The school is planning to integrate the student performance database with Microsoft SharePoint-based technology, allowing for better information sharing and collaboration among teachers within the school. The school is also planning to integrate Microsoft InfoPath™ 2003 information gathering program into their administrative systems, allowing their staff to spend less time filling out administrative information and more time focusing on doing what they love — teaching.
Microsoft Products
Microsoft Office is the business world's chosen environment for information work that provides the software, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.
For more information about Microsoft Office System, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/office/
Microsoft Windows Tablet PC Edition provides a more versatile computing experience, enabling you to use your PC in more places and more ways.
For more information about Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Northern Lights Public School, call 905-727-1170
