Horsley Park Public is a small primary school, situated in the semi-rural outskirts of Sydney. It attracts a diverse cohort, including families from rural properties and those from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The school consists of eight classes, four mainstream and four providing support for children with autism and intellectual disabilities.
Out with the old, in with the new
Horsley Park has used smart boards in the classrooms for some years, but these were getting very old and the school was looking to replace them. “We started investigating, to see what was out there in the market”, says Leearna Borg, STEM coordinator and teacher at Horsley Park. “It had been such a long time since we bought our original boards and we knew that technology had moved on considerably. We wanted to make sure we were fully informed before making a decision.”
The school had already engaged with ASI in the past and knew they were experts in educational technology, so they went to Shantel Wilson for advice. “She told us all about the Clevertouch”, says Leearna, “and it sounded like the perfect match for our requirements. We were sold.”
Engaged students, happy teachers
The teachers are delighted with the way that the Clevertouch boards allow them to engage students more in their lessons. One example is the screen share feature where the teacher can do something on their iPad and show it to the students on the big screen. Or the students can see the content of the wall-mounted screen on their own iPads.
“Seeing the teaching material on their own iPad, rather than having to look up at a board, helps the students interact more with the lesson”, explains Leearna. “That makes our job as teachers easier and delivering lessons more effective.”
Overall, choosing Clevertouch was a great decision for Horsley Park Public. “If I had to sum up the three best things about the technology”, says Leearna, “it would be the way we can annotate our teaching materials, the way that everything from the screen can instantly be saved to the Google drive, and the screen sharing between the Clevertouch and iPads.
Horsley Park prides itself on providing a high quality of education to its very diverse cohort of pupils – and Clevertouch is helping to keep all those pupils engaged and wanting to learn.