Camberwell Girls has totally redefined its approach to teaching and learning by implementing exciting technology.
At Camberwell Girls Grammar School, students are participating in learning like never before. As a CISCO Exemplar School, Camberwell Girls utilises a full range of telepresence and collaboration technology that is totally transforming the educational experience to ensure that girls are fully prepared for their future.
Principal Debbie Dunwoody says that Camberwell Girls has totally redefined its approach to teaching and learning. “We wanted to provide educators and students with a more dynamic and productive learning environment by implementing technology common to higher education and corporate environments.”
Camberwell girls are “travelling the world” without leaving the classroom. A regular week can see students speaking with scientists in Antarctica, witnessing science experiments too dangerous to hold in the school, speaking with archaeologists from digs in Turkey and coming face-to-face with sharks while speaking with underwater divers researching the Great Barrier Reef.
“Our staff and students are connecting and collaborating with different communities and industry experts worldwide,” says Debbie. “It’s such an exciting time to be in education.”
“Camberwell Girls is the first school in Australia to be leveraging this suite of collaborative solutions to the point where it is engrained in the learning practice,” says Tanya Hanouch, national K-12 senior business manager at CISCO. “Students at Camberwell Girls are now video-conferencing natives and also becoming confident content creators.”
Ben Jenkinson, the school’s director of teaching, learning and innovation, says that next-generation learning is far more than just using technology in education. “A modern style of teaching and learning, our approach is student-centred, collaborative, flexible and dynamic,” he says. “It’s integral that we have the right technology to facilitate the development of the 21st-century skills of creativity, collaboration, communication and global empathy.”
The technology is also seeing students and staff create and record their own content to be used in a flipped learning model. “Before entering the classroom, students can pre-learn their coursework via the online video repository and when in class they can discuss the more detailed applications of theory with their teacher,” says Ben.
Additionally, a range of possibilities has opened up for students such as using the collaboration tools on their own devices, both in and out of the classroom. Students are creating their own content to extend their understanding through sharing insight and challenging one another’s interpretation/perspective.
“The deployment of this technology has generated enormous enthusiasm for learning and it is also setting directions for future learning models that will see students independently conducting their own online revision sessions and collaborating with peers from across the world on similar learning topics,” says Debbie.