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Maidstone Boys Grammar School
Maidstone Grammar School, Kent
In Brief:
Maidstone Grammar School, Kent has delivered innovative foreign language lessons using the Samsung digital presenter.
The Challenge:
With the number of students going on to study foreign languages at GCSE rapidly declining, Maidstone Grammar School, Kent, realised it needed to find an innovative way to deliver lessons and inspire students to further their language skills.
Following a successful bid to become a Specialist Language College, the school received funding which enabled significant investment in its language lab facilities - progressing from traditional cassette based learning to a multimedia led approach.
The Solution:
The school had previously invested in a Samsung digital presenter for the Science department and established its ability to enhance the learning experience. Essentially a three dimensional overhead projector, the Samsung digital presenter allows the digital manipulation of and interaction with, any object placed in its viewfinder. For science, this proved invaluable for lessons which involved studying complex objects and live specimens as the digital presenter allows teachers to freeze frame them.
Using the insight gained from the Science department, Colin Philpott, assistant head teacher, brought in Promethean AV Reseller, Network and Cabling Solutions, to implement the Samsung digital presenter on a wider scale.
A total of 15 systems were installed, giving Maidstone the tools with which to inject new life into language teaching. Colin explains: "Foreign languages had always been approached in a traditional way and there were problems of student motivation. A decline in the number of students choosing to study more than the compulsory one language to GCSE and low numbers post- GCSE were proof that the days of slogging through grammar exercises in a text book are gone. We need to develop ways to engage them or they will lose interest."
Since the introduction of the new technology at the school, there has been an increase in the number of students opting to study languages at Key Stage Four, with 70% choosing two languages. The integration of the digital presenter into teaching has supported the school in achieving this, by providing the innovative tools necessary to develop lesson delivery.
Rebecca Morgan, head of French and ICT development has championed the roll out of the technology. Describing how it is regularly used, she said: "As a display tool it is fantastic, because I don't have to worry about whether an image will work in colour on an acetate, or struggle because an object is not flat enough to display. It is so flexible in handling anything which means we're free to place student's work or pages from a book or magazine on the digital presenter to share with the class."
Rebecca has also developed creative ways to combine the digital presenter with a laptop and access the web. Reflecting on one Spanish class, she said: "We played a popular Spanish song through a website and simultaneously displayed the artist's biography on the digital presenter. It's in-built annotation features helped to focus the class' attention, and allowed discussion of specific points when we linked the biography with live footage. We can also keep up to date with the culture of other countries with film trailers and news items."
The strategy for language teaching at the school has received positive reactions from students. Rebecca concludes: "They feel our new approach has quite literally made learning languages fun - the increased number of students choosing to continue their studies, and in more than one language, is evidence of this."
The Benefits:
- Three-dimensional (3D) objects can be digitally manipulated and displayed to the class
- Small images can be magnified
- Moving objects can be captured and frozen to allow discussion of a particular part
- Objects or documents can be displayed in colour
- Any object or document can be annotated using the digital presenter software