Science teachers at Melbourne's Glen Waverley Secondary College don't need to get out a big ruler and protractor to teach students about refraction and reflection in physics. They just open up their school's intranet on the interactive whiteboard, use their index finger like a mouse to select the right Java application and up pops a digital tool to show the effect of light through convex and concave lenses. When a humanities teacher starts a debate about the controversy surrounding the 'stolen generation' of aboriginal children, who were taken from their families by the Australian authorities and church missions, instead of asking pupils to write a dry essay, he sets them working in teams to make YouTube videos. And when English teachers want to demonstrate how a story pivots on choice, not character, they ask an audiovisual assistant to prepare a clip from last night's Home and Away, the TV soap opera, and flash it up on screen. 'We are catering for the screen generation,' said humanities teacher Daniel Strauss. 'I think we are brave to say this, but kids today get bored just looking at their teachers. What they like is for their lesson to be broken up with multimodal text, video and audio, and we do that using interactive screens.' But it is not all about having fun. It is part of a long-term strategy to encourage pupils to become independent active learners who think about how they are learning. In some ways, Glen Waverley is an unremarkable school. Situated in a comfortable but not wealthy east Melbourne suburb, its 2,000 pupils come from a wide range of backgrounds, although about half are from Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan immigrant families. But it is highly innovative in the way it has relentlessly reconfigured itself into a school where the walls are movable, the lessons are rich in resources and students are trusted to go off during lessons and work independently in foyers, on pods of computers dotted around the building. 'Schools are often way behind the game compared to the way businesses are using technology,' said principal Gerry Schiller. 'And we are trying to prepare global citizens who will go on from university, travel the world, working in different places where technology is ubiquitous.' Glen Waverley was selected by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nine years ago as a model for using information technology to raise the quality of learning. It has been a consistent top performer among government schools in Victoria ever since, with some students getting the highest marks in the state in the past couple of years. As a 'navigator' school, it spreads its philosophy by providing professional training to teachers from other schools. 'We did not want our students going to class, just sitting there listening to teachers and taking notes,' said Mr Schiller. 'We wanted our students to be very active in constructing their own learning. 'We wanted them to learn to work collaboratively, learn from one another, learn how to solve problems, how to research and how to critically reflect on how well they had learned something or, if not, why not.' According to international education expert Brian Caldwell, the pursuit of this vision at Glen Waverley was made possible by its inclusion in the Schools of the Future initiative launched by the Victorian government in the 1990s. The initiative involved the devolving of 90 per cent of the state's education budget to schools and heavy investment in IT. Mr Caldwell, a former dean of education at Melbourne University, says this type of self-management of schools, replicated in Britain and other countries, is a critical factor in empowering principals to innovate. Glen Waverley staff recognised very early on that just putting computers into the school was not enough and that considerable effort had to put into training teachers. Colin Warner, deputy principal in charge of IT, said: 'When we began, 40 per cent of teachers had never turned on a computer and we wanted them to help students learn in ways that traditional teaching methods wouldn't allow.' The key, he says, was paying the handful of teachers who were whiz-kids on computers to train the others. Today new graduate recruits bring with them knowledge of new technologies popular with young people - from iPods to editing software - and new ideas to enrich teaching. The idea is to use technology for difficult tasks such as planning, designing, creating and applying principles, rather than the lazy option of cutting and pasting text that bypasses learning. 'For example, students can use Crocodile software to simulate a whole range of chemistry experiments,' said Mr Warner. Another key aspect is how pupils demonstrate their learning. For instance, if you allow pupils to use animation software to show how cells form, although the software makes the animation easier, they have to already understand the concept of how cells form to create the animation correctly. Teachers routinely create internet resources for their students - made easier by recent software - and use Freak video cameras, which connect directly into a teacher's laptop. 'The moment I took those cameras into class and asked students how they would use them, they immediately said in sport, music and English. It was about getting feedback on their performance,' said Mr Warner. 'So they analyse what they were doing well, what they need to improve. They are thinking about how to improve what they are doing.' The use of video cameras to make short documentary assignments allows students to produce work for an authentic, worldwide audience, generating real feedback, rather than red ticks from a tired teacher in an exercise book. Mr Strauss, who has taught at four schools, says the difference at Glen Waverley is that technology is not an add-on. 'It's integrated into students' lives in every way every day.' Even geography statistics can be brought to life - for instance, using animation to show UN development indicators changing over time or to test the impact of variable factors on climate change. It is not pitfall-free, however. If schools are opening up use of the internet, they must also ensure they develop critical Web literacy, he says. These days, thanks to software developments that enable anyone to set up nicely designed pages, it is harder to distinguish an amateur fanatic's site from that of a major university. Another problem, Mr Strauss says, is teaching children to examine a range of authoritative sources. 'The traditional way in history was if you find a fact, make sure you verify it from a number of sources and verify the validity of those sources. But if they go to a linked page from a holocaust denial website to sister site, they are travelling through a closed circuit propagating the same position,' said Mr Strauss. Glen Waverley's other great innovation is the use of an intranet. Two teachers are employed full-time to develop it into a resource-rich digital learning environment, providing stimulating resources for lessons and a means to store grabbed TV clips. The intranet also enables pupils to share ideas and collaborate with each other or with teachers, post blogs and join in discussion forums. 'Students will often submit work online and reflect on it,' Mr Strauss said. 'So we do a lot of metacognition - thinking about thinking. They are required to talk to us about the process by which they came to those positions. And we organise those reflections so that they can use them over time.' Pupils also get to mark a lot of their own work - and comment on each other's - and through justifying it, they think about what they did well and what was challenging. The intranet also opens up school life to parents. Gone is the mystery of what happens inside the school walls or the need to rely on a five-minute chat with a teacher at parents' evening twice a year. They can see what their sons and daughters are doing at school every day, read the teachers' marks and add their own comments. This kind of learning revolution comes at a cost. By early next year, A$20 million (HK$126 million) will have been invested in rebuilding the school for the age of IT, part of a federal government investment programme running into billions. The school already has a high computer to pupil ratio of 1:4 at a cost of A$300,000 a year to run and update - and will be increasing it. About half goes toward updating a third of the computer stock annually, the rest on putting electronic whiteboards into every classroom, continually upgrading servers and developing wireless capability. There are also three full-time technicians and the audiovisual specialist to pay for. Further time and money is spent sending staff to other countries to look at how other innovative schools - such as Hong Kong's Discovery Bay International School - are using technology to keep ahead of the game. The key to Glen Waverley's approach is the way it has built up a culture of trust in the pupils. With the technology spread all over the school, each child is not under direct supervision every minute of the day. 'When we bring teachers from other schools here to see what we are doing, they will say we can't do that at our school - we'd have no computers left after a month,' said Mr Schiller. 'But we have generated a culture where the students understand that the technology is there for their use and they can act independently. That is probably more powerful than the provision of lots of computers.' Brendan O'Malley is former international editor of The Times Educational Supplement and works as a freelance consultant for Unesco. brendanomalley.journalist @googlemail.com
