Appleby Primary School

What did they do?

Appleby School utilised KAREN to access google applications and e-asTTle. They have created eportfolios including assessment summaries from e-asTTle, summary sheets from the school management system plus student work and videos. These tools delivered via KAREN enable Appleby to communicate between school and home including their parents more deeply in their school learning community.

Learning for students and teachers

A key benefit for teachers at Appleby is the reduction in time spent setting up and marking learning assessments using this tool. e-asTTle tests are marked online relieving individual teacher interpretation therefore gaining more consistent, valid assessment data. Teachers at Appleby commented that their students enjoyed this type of assessment because 'they like anything if it is on the computer' and results are used within their e-portfolios to establish learning outcomes and set future goals. Specific data can be shared with parents and used as a tool to communicate students' development and ways that they can be supported to progress their learning, both at home and school. By using Google applications, student portfolios can be accessed anywhere, anytime, from any computer that has Internet access. The Google-based portfolios provide a way of communicating frequently with both the learner and their parents.

We have educated parents on how to read the e-asTTle data and parents enjoy being able to get specific feedback and share in their child’s learning. In a way it is like holding ongoing student led conferences, says teacher Ian Lambie.

KARENS contribution

During the pilot Appleby staff and students have 'hammered the system' to see how many concurrent users they can have accessing e-asTTle. And it has passed the test for their school, with whole classes accessing the e-asTTle tests at one time. They would not be able to utilise Google applications for all of their word processing, presentations and spreadsheet work without the network capacity provided by KAREN. They use Google applications for their e-portfolios too, including swimming assessment videos, school reports, summary sheets from the Appleby school management system, e-asTTle pdf result forms plus other learning artefacts. Both students and parents use the school's Google accounts intensively after school from home.

We have had high speed internet access for twelve months and use google applications for all of our word processing and presentations and xcel and it has been no drama. We use Google applications for portfolios too - kids drop in swimming videos, art work, student management summaries, e-asTTle pdf results and a lot of other stuff, says Lambie.

Future Focus

More of the same! Appleby wants to continue to make use of the bandwidth they have and increase the community relationships being developed.

They have also redeveloped their schools assessment plan and e-asTTle has become a standard part of that. Teachers regularly use pre and post-tests with students in English and Maths using e-asTTle tools.

Our next step with google portfolios is to educate parents on how to drop comments on to those portfolios and reports and start to encourage teacher interaction with parents commenting digitally. So in effect rather than have two student led conferences a year we can have multiple a year - digitally, Lambie says.

eAsstle assessments at Appleby Google Portfolios at Appleby