Brookfield Community School, Missouri

The significant growth in both the breadth and depth of ICT resources is an exciting development in education. However, for many teachers this also brings the additional challenge of how to manage and control these technology resources.

At Brookfield Community School, ICT Head John Pritchett found a way to manage a broad array of ICT assets and capabilities, harnessing them to deliver an effective and compelling learning environment.

“In today’s multi-media environment, it is vital to enrich each student’s visual experience to stimulate their learning. The commitment we expect from children should be reflected in our presentation of their learning experience,” Pritchett said.

Pritchett had a vision of what he wanted in the classroom. He foresaw that one could enhance the educational benefits of ICT by providing teachers with the ability to take control of classroom computers, refocus the students’ attention at a moment’s notice, post and launch files on each child’s PC and view each child’s online activity where appropriate.

When managed correctly, the use of ICT devices in the classroom enriches and enlivens the conventional lessons. “Because so much of a students’ experience is shaped and surrounded by imagery, highly visual interactive activities have truly become the new currency of learning,” Pritchett said. “However, with this in mind, significant consideration of the learning focus of any learning activity must be given. Wanting our children to be immersed in a digital learning experience and then expecting them to switch, on request, to turn back to face the teacher is naturally quite a high expectation.” 

To achieve Pritchett’s vision of a rich visual experience in the classroom while focusing learning, Brookfield chose to use Netop Vision classroom management software. “Vision has certainly helped our teachers save time in the classroom and teach more effectively with technology,” Pritchett said. “It gives our teachers an unprecedented level of management in the classroom and improved interaction with student computers.”

Holding children’s attention is a challenge for all teachers. In today’s highly visual ICT learning environments, this has become even harder to achieve. However, when teachers at Brookfield want their students’ attention, they simply use Vision to lock classroom computers from their own PC and instantly unlock them when the discussion has finished.

Vision also enables Brookfield teachers to display information from their PC to each student’s screen. 

The majority of the classrooms at Brookfield have interactive whiteboards. However, in some particularly large or long rooms, it can be difficult for all students to see the displayed information. By displaying the presentation on each student’s PC, everyone can see the information, wherever they are seated.

“Historically, there were times when I would want the students to work on a specific document or learning activity that was not on the network,” Pritchett said. “I would therefore have to go around the class with a USB stick downloading the information onto each PC.”

Today, Vision enables him to load a learning resource on his PC, and then, fire this out to each student’s PC in one go.