This week I had the privilege of attending an Apple Leadership Summit in London alongside a Trust-wide team that included our CEO, Graham, and the Heads from some of our other Trust schools, Laura, Pierre and Toni. The summit gathered together school leaders from across the world to explore how technology is being used to transform education in their schools.

It was a truly inspirational day, filled with incredibly positive people with a passionate focus on improving the outcomes for their children. This was captured beautifully in the keynote speech given by Doug Beck, one of Apple’s Vice Presidents, who expanded on the company’s aim to enrich lives through technology:

We are here to enrich lives. To help dreamers become doers, to help passion expand human potential, to do the best work of our lives.

Throughout the day we had the opportunity to attend workshops exploring aspects of embracing technology to support teaching and learning. In my morning session, we considered the question “How can we make sure that all our students have access to meaningful and appropriately challenging learning experiences?” This is an area we’re particularly interested in at New Bridge as we believe that technology will not only help us to increase pupils’ access to learning, it will also support our teaching teams to further personalise the learning experience of each pupil. Ultimately it came down to 3 key principles:

• Varying the learning task – using technology to allow children to work on different tasks or different pathways in the same task at the same time.
• Student choice – using technology to provide different activities so that students can choose how to complete a learning task.
• Equitable access – using technology to ensure that all students can access learning whatever their need.

In the afternoon I joined a session in which we looked at managing the process of change involved in bringing technology into schools. It highlighted that as well as those individuals who embrace change and ‘dive right in’, there are those who are equally reluctant. Meanwhile there are those in the middle who see the need for change but also recognise the need to consider the challenges that lie in our way and how we might tackle these (I’d put myself firmly in this camp!). The takeaway message was that all three have valid viewpoints which need exploring for successful change to happen.

Having come back from the day full of excitement and enthusiasm, I’m conscious of the challenge that lies ahead in implementing our One to One iPad Project. However, I’m equally conscious of the potential to transform teaching and learning across our school and further unlock the potential of our children. It’s with this in mind that I found great inspiration in words taken from Apple’s enriching lives campaign:

We find courage.
To try and to fail,
to learn and to grow,
to figure out what’s next,
to imagine the unimaginable,
to do it all over again tomorrow.

This week we have some pictures from Mrs Holland’s English lessons to share with you. Her Year 7 class have been reading the story of The Killer Croc and had a lot of fun creating their own crime scene and reporting on the breaking news..

Her Year 10 group have been studying language and looking at the way rhyming is used..

They have also enjoyed a spot of role play (just look at these faces!)

Travel is this term’s topic for Mrs Holland’s Year 11 class and they had a wonderful time following instructions to make their own mocktails, as you can see!

In Mrs Hobson’s enrichment sessions, the group are busy making costumes and props for our upcoming production of ‘The Greatest Showman’. This week they have been creating pieces for the fire scene..

I couldn’t finish without sharing this fantastic picture of Callum looking proud as can be in his smart new uniform complete with the New Bridge School tie designed by our very own Zeina Din and voted for by the pupils..

If your child is wearing the old school uniform of a poloshirt and jumper, please remember that you can order a new tie from the school office when they outgrow their current uniform.

See you next week,

Gavin

You can find Dawn’s blog for the Learning Centre here

For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square please click here

Click here to read this week’s news from Graham

You can find my previous blog posts here