Mr Potter (Director of Digital Strategy)

As an Apple Distinguished School, BGS had the pleasure of welcoming over 100 international visitors from France, Denmark, Hong Kong and Finland last week to share best practice on how to integrate Apple iPad technology into the classroom.

Before the visits started, Miss MacKenzie gave a keynote on the importance of understanding what counts as an educated 19 year old in the 21st century, and how technology can help make the BGS vision for this a reality. Key employability skills such as creativity, project based working and problem solving can be hugely enhanced by the way in which we use technology.

The delegates listened to a presentation on how teachers use technology in the classroom, and Ms Davies, our Digital Design Creator, explained how BGS author their own bespoke interactive textbooks for the girls to enhance their learning. The visitors also met students to further understand how they use iPads in their day-to-day life at BGS.

It was interesting to hear people from different countries talk about how our way of educating girls differs from their own country. Teachers from France were wanting to move away from an instructive approach. They were interested to see how we used technology to give the girls more choice over their learning.

The teachers from Finland were amazed to see the girls using such a variety, often two or more apps for each piece of work, in order to get it exactly how they envisioned it.

The government of Hong Kong are giving each family a grant to buy a mobile device of the school’s choosing, and they were keen to see how we integrated our iPads with the learning.

As a leading school in the use of educational technology, it is fantastic for the girls and the staff to have these opportunities to meet educators from different countries to swap experiences and ideas.