Good Practice - Case Study

St Lukes School

School No: 635

Handheld Technology

It is estimated that today 95% of young people own some form of mobile technology. This may be a mobile phone, a handheld gaming device, an MP3 player or a combination of all three. It is a technology aimed at young people, that young people know, and that has become a ubiquitous part of their lives, used to communicate, create, record and share.

In general, such devices are banned in schools, but there is now a rapidly increasing interest in the potential of using handheld technologies in education. Various different pilots around the country have looked at the use of different devices, and the data collected from these trials has shown that the use of handheld technologies as a teaching and learning tool has been effective in raising achievement.

This project looks at the potential of using handheld gaming devices in a Special Needs school in Hertfordshire

Uses Across the Curriculum

Maths

The PSPs were used in year 8 and Juniors (yr 5/6) maths lessons together with a software package called Sums Online. This software provides numerous activities aimed at particular learning points. The activities give the pupils the opportunity to practice their numeracy skills in a fun and engaging way.

In Year 8 the maths teacher particularly used the PSPs / Sums Online to practise symmetry, using the Tangrams activity. A device was given to each pupil in the class, and the same software could be displayed on the whiteboard (as Sums Online is also available for the PC) to show the pupils which activity to work on and to exemplify the task.

Every pupil in the class was engaged in the activity, worked quietly, stayed on task and was able to practise at his/her own pace, repeating as often as necessary or moving on to harder activities if they felt ready to do so. As you would expect, they also gave unanimous very positive feedback about using the PSPs.

In other lessons the maths teacher used the PSPs / Sums Online as an add-on activity / reward for those who worked well in the lesson and achieved their objectives. They would then be allowed to use the PSPs to practise their numeracy skills at the end of the lesson.

PE

The PSPs were used in PE for their image capture and display features. With the plug-in camera connected, the PSP becomes a 1.3mp digital camera with zoom, and the 9.5cm x 5.5cm (approx) screen becomes the ‘viewfinder.’ The ability to flip the camera over means you can film yourself as well whilst still being able to view the screen. The PSP is also able to show high resolution images, and has the facility to show them as a slideshow, in a particular order.

In PE, Year 10, the PSPs were used for Orienteering. Placed around the school grounds are a number of orienteering signs. The teacher took 2 photographs of each sign, one close up and one from further back so as to include some of the surroundings.

These pictures were arranged into a slideshow so that they would be displayed in a particular order.

For the activity, the students were required to use the PSPs to navigate their way around the orienteering course. By advancing through the slide show they would first see the image of the sign on the screen, and then have to find it. The more able students used the close-up photographs, whilst the less able used the photographs taken from further back, which made the location of the sign easier to identify as some of the surroundings could be seen.

As the students were largely unaccompanied during the activity, they were given the additional task of using the PSP to photograph themselves by each of the signs, so proving they had completed the course correctly. However, a specific problem arose from the outdoor use of the devices. Being a sunny day when the activity was first run, it became almost impossible to see the screens. The users therefore had to run in and outdoors to be able to see their screens in the bright sunlight.

Once the course had been completed and the students had returned to base they were able to show their evidence on the PSP to the teacher and their peers.

Media Studies

At St. Luke’s, Media is taught as an optional ‘Vocational’ course for years 10 and 11. The PSPs’ multimedia capabilities lent themselves well to this course and provided a multi-use personal learning tool.

The devices weren’t introduced until towards the end of the year’s course, and were first used to accompany the ‘Voxpop’ module in which students were to watch and discuss voxpops1, before making one themselves.

2 example voxpops were downloaded from the Internet and copied onto the PSPs’ memory cards. Students were then able to watch them, using the individual sets of headphones included in the travel packs. They were able to pause the video, rewind, replay etc. at their own pace.

Having analysed the voxpops, students then took video footage around the school for their own films using the video-capture function and the plug-in camera. The individual video clips are stored to the removable memory card.

Once filming was complete, each student downloaded the video-clips to the PC network, where the films could be edited using Microsoft Movie Maker. Downloading was supervised by a member of staff to ensure that the files were copied correctly and to the preferred location. Importing the video-clips into Digital Movie Creator software was also tried. This was possible, but once imported the video ‘stuttered’ badly on playback, which was why Movie Maker was used as this presented no quality issues.

The PSPs were used again for the Advertising module. Again, the students used the video playback facilities. They watched a selection of TV advertisements and used a worksheet to answer questions about them. The module continued with students planning and making their own advertisements, though different hardware and software was used for this.

French

The PSPs were used in Year 8 French on one occasion. In this lesson the devices’ capability to film oneself was utilised. The lesson began with the teacher modelling a simple phrase in French.

The students then used the PSP, with the plug-in camera flipped to face backwards, to film themselves saying the phrase. They could then play this back to evaluate how well they had said the phrase, and they could re-record it as necessary until they were happy with their pronunciation etc..

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