Christ's College

What did they do?

Christs College undertook two proof of concept projects as a part of the trial. The first was a trial of e-asTTle for both Maths and English, and the second involved the distribution of foreign language television programmes captured off satellite.

The online learning and assessment tool, e-asTTle, allows teachers and school leaders to set tests that are aligned to the curriculum when they want and at the level they want; and to measure student progress over time. Currently e-asTTle is available to assess reading, writing, maths, pāngarau, pānui and tuhituhi for years 5–10 and curriculum levels 2–6. Christ’s College has been using the non-electronic version of the system, asTTLe and wanted to explore the advantages of the web based version. The College began the trial with two English classes and four Maths classes of 25 students at year nine and ten , one class at year nine and one at year ten utilising the e-asTTle testing system and the high speed access, KAREN.

Christs College have a large satellite that captures a range of channels from Chinese television through to French TV 5 Monde through to Deutsche Welle German TV. Using decoders and a number of computers they stream these into the classrooms. Christs College found the channels to be such a fantastic learning resource, particularly for languages teaching, that they wanted to share this rich media content with other schools.

Currently six schools on KAREN, through the National Education Network, have taken up the offer of Deutsche Welle German TV. The receiving schools can access a live feed and visit the Deutsche Welle website to look for particular episodes to plan for upcoming lessons.

Learning for students and teachers

The e-asTTle pilot provided significant learning opportunities for staff at Christs.

With pen and paper based asTTle limitations exist such as time consuming assessment preparation in terms of administration and marking plus it the tests are very paper heavy. The beauty of e-asTTle is that teachers can design and review the test, feeling confident they have developed quality assessments. The test can then be administered relatively easily and is self marking on line – not only that but full reports are generated.

Some initial problems relating to logging-in of students, and the fact that the student management system would not ‘talk’ to e-asTTle so details had to be entered by hand, were resolved through the efforts of the Christs ICT team.

As a result of this Students are now able to login and complete e-asTTle tests quickly. They connect with the process and found this form of testing almost enjoyable. Students liked the fact that they sat the test and then could review the report immediately and receive feedback on their progress. Parents are finding the testing useful, as similar areas for growth or development are made visible in e-asTTle. English Head of Department, Julie Peters finds the reports an excellent tool for examining and reviewing progress and teaching strategies with her teachers. The reports and results can then be used to discuss performance and the steps they're taking with students, parents, and boards of trustees.

Capturing and rebroadcasting multi-language IPTV opens up a world of learning to languages students. It means that students are learning languages from native speakers plus exploring the culture and current events of the countries where the studied language is spoken.

KARENS contribution

asTTle, in its paper based format, had limitations to roll out within Christs College due to the demands on teacher time. Access to a high-speed network made accessing and piloting the web-based version, e-asTTle, feasible. On the network e-asTTle tests were quick to load for both teachers and students. A number of students or concurrent users are able to complete the e-asTTle tests. Speed to access is not an issue on KAREN.

For Christs College to distribute IPTV beyond the College it has been essential to be on KAREN, allowing them to put out more data streams without congestion on their network. At Christs College the Internet is coming in one way however it is not the Internet that distributes IPTV. The TV channels are travel out to other schools via a very high-speed one-gigabit network, KAREN, to the national backbone. This means that if schools are connected to KAREN through the National Education Network they can tap into high speed and high quality delivery.

I think the quality particularly for video and for languages is important. Similar sorts of things can be achieved via the internet but nowhere near the quality or crispness and lets face it our students are used to portable devices, high quality television and games at high quality. I don’t think we should be skimping on that quality. I think that is essential, said Paul Rodley, Director of eLearning.

Future Focus

Christs College are hoping to take the results of the e-asTTle trial and evaluate it further. They anticipate that all year nine and ten English and Maths classes will be assessed using e-asTTle. Individual teachers will shape the use of this assessment tool. It does not need to be something that is prescribed for them. e-asTTle has the potential in terms of supporting teachers to design a test to support the development of targeted learning programmes.

We do have a lot of other assessment tools. But lets face it this is assessing in a smart way using technology- Why not? Julie Peterson , Head of English

We in the mathematics department are very excited about it. I think there is huge potential for this, the boys will benefit from e-asTTle. Dirk Gildenhuys, Head of Maths

In the future Christs College would like to explore other IPTV options. Placing set top boxes at home and feeding those streams directly into students’ televisions at home is currently being investigated. The school is aware that sharing video can incur large data costs however where students are connected using a common ISP (Internet Service Provider) as the school this will reduce the cost to almost nothing. There has also been demand for French TV and an application is currently in progress to very soon be able to push out this out to schools on KAREN.

There is also potential to pull rich media resources from other high-speed networks that have effectively paired with KAREN, it doesn't just have to be languages. One thing the school would like to see developed is an educational IPTV system.

English e-asTTle at Christ's College IPTV at Christ's College