Digital Year 10

"If you do digitisation right, you turn a caterpillar into a butterfly. If you don't do it right, at best you have a faster caterpillar."

Our goals:

► Promote individual and differentiated learning
► Better illustration of learning content
► New ways of developing, transforming and presenting knowledge
► Strengthening media competence

Our summarised experience of the past years:

  • Positive feedback from students and teachers from the 2021/2022 pilot project underlines that we are on the right track.
  • The Thinkbook are to become an integral part of learning from grade 10.
  • Our result from this school year shows that it only makes sense, both technically and pedagogically, if all students have the same digital model.
  • From 2022/2023, the project Microsoft- Surface in grade 5 will start. If the class is in grade 7 (2024/2025), then start of the ThinkBook from grade 7 (digital competences/media education).
  • The IT support from our IT team, very strong WIFI and new charging stations guarantee stable use.
  • The one lesson of additional ICT lessons for the safe mastery of the ThinkBook, Microsoft 365, MS Teams and the apps is very important so that all students have a comparable level of knowledge.
  • Expansion of the IT offer (compulsory elective lessons, clubs) by employing a further teacher specializing in ICT is another important milestone.
  • The new working facilities in Y11 on the new third floor are optimally adapted to the use of the digital device as a permanent learning tool.
  • Phorms SE introduces the Digitalization department for all Phorms schools in order to support a professional exchange of experience and support among the Phorms schools.

Types of digital devices we use:

After careful consideration, we chose the ThinkBook 14s Yoga ITL 20WE from Lenovo as our model, as these devices combine performance (full HD display (IPS touchscreen 1920x1080), Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7 2.8 GHz QuadCore, 512GB NVMe SSD, 16GB RAM, Iris Xe Graphics, Wi-Fi 6 etc.) and robustness. In addition, our students can work purposefully on these devices, as the screens are sufficiently large and bright at 14 inches.The test results for this device are also above average.

Experiences from school year 2021/2022:

  • The additional ICT lesson per week proved to be successful in the first half of the year, so that the students learned how to handle the device safely as well as how to use the software safely. In the second half of the year, the compulsory lesson was changed to a voluntary coding offer.
  • Discussing and learning behavioral guidelines was an important insight step, as hiding behind the screen, secretly playing computer games or other non-instructional use of the digital device had to be discussed and practiced first.
  • By October, all WIFI challenges had been fully resolved so that a very stable network was available to the students.
  • The purchase of charging stations for the ThinkBooks was an important step in January, but unfortunately the supplier's promises did not hold up, so we ordered new ones.
  • The teaching staff received an additional lesson of preparation time to try out and plan the digitally supported lessons and met as a project group at regular intervals to exchange ideas under the guidance of a project leader.
  • The realization that not every pedagogically useful app complies with data protection guidelines was a further step of realization, so that here the use of apps has not progressed at the same pace in all subjects.
  • Students use the digital device on a daily basis.
  • Copying costs have decreased significantly.

Experiences from school year 2020/2021: