Celebrating our Strategic Themes
Technology Integration
Theme Statement:
Technology Integration will be a focus of our curriculum and program development, as well as our campus infrastructure development, with an emphasis on innovation.
Setting the Foundations
New roles were created at the beginning of this period to facilitate the integration of technology into the curriculum. These included the hiring of two full time Technology Integration Facilitators. The library was also brought into the technology department and a librarian hired with technology integration experience. This team put together a long term plan for the development of technology at ISY including a schedule of professional development. As with many schools around the world, the successful use of technology by students and teachers was vastly accelerated by the challenges caused by the need to teach virtually.
Professional Development
Before the pandemic forced learning online, ISY was already on a fast track to improve the technical ability of staff and introduce new technology to the school. Teachers from both divisions attended a Google training course which allowed them to become Google Certified Educators. All teachers participated in an intensive three-day workshop led by technology consultant Kim Cofino. Additionally, Technology Integration Facilitators attended the 21st Century Learning Conference, an annual event in Hong Kong where teachers, staff, and school leadership come together to learn, share, and discuss current and emerging topics in technology for education.
Initially, the pandemic forced the closure of school but many teachers were able to teach from their classrooms, albeit to students in their homes. This in itself led to a wide range of professional development in the use of video cameras, audio equipment and video conferencing. Professional development became a weekly event with teachers sharing their experiences while trialing different platforms. The move to the Zoom platform, for example, came from one early adopter ISY math teacher.
Over the summer of 2020 a whole platform was developed using the online learning platform called Moodle. ISY branded it Chinthe Learning Online. This allowed students who could not attend classes synchronously due to their time zone to learn at their own pace with regular check-ins from teachers. The program continued using this technology for the first half of the following year.
Classrooms in every grade level were kitted out with high end video and audio equipment to allow teachers to teach to students both in the classroom and synchronously with students not at school. This has been vitally important when students were both on and off campus.
Professional development for faculty in the area of technology has been constant since that time with the Technology Integration Facilitators organizing teachers to provide training to other teachers as they discovered and became experts in new pieces of technology to improve the learning experience.
Technology in the Classroom and out!
The ISY technology team has developed a PK-12 scope and sequence for implementing the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards for all grade levels and subject areas. Students in Grades 1 – 5 started using Google Drive, supported and monitored by their teachers, and the use of Google Classroom was expanded in Grades 2 – 12. ISY introduced the concepts of digital citizenship encouraging responsible use of technology and fulfilled the requirements for the internationally recognized Common Sense Education Certification for digital citizenship.
A new High School course in design technology started to make optimal use of ISY’s state of the art maker space which was also established as part of this theme. This equipment was constantly added to over the period and now boasts 3 3D printers and a CNC Router among a host of other equipment. Maker space use was not limited to the high school by any means. From elementary students making bird boxes to drama students making props with the 3D printers, to solar panels being made for environment projects, the maker space was in use at all levels.
In keeping with a technology integration model, ISY stopped using computer labs and simply started integrating computers and technology in all subjects in all grade levels. ISY’s Continuous Curriculum Review process requires teachers to review the effective integration of technology in the curriculum. Computer sciences continued in the High School with crossovers to the Service Learning program where students designed programs to track and store carbon footprint data and an IB Computer Science course was also added. More recently a formal media course has been added following the success of the Chinthe Roar media club.
The worldwide phenomenon of the hour of code was taken up enthusiastically by students across grade levels at ISY where elementary students learned the basics and middle school students learned more complex skills from high school students. This photo shows Elementary School students joining in the learning experience.
In the Middle School (Grades 6 – 8), all students took part in a Learning Journey. This was a year long to engage in a passion of their own. Each project had to be documented and then presented on a public website that each student created.
Technology learning in action occurs both in the classroom and outside as ISY participates in a range of STEM activities (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). These can take the form of work in the classroom demonstrating anything from solar powered cars and water filtration systems to volcano protection systems! As early as 2018, Myanmar hosted the Lego Robotics Myanmar STEM Competition but since that time has had numerous Maker and STEM fairs hosted in our gym.
Technology features in the After School Program as well with activities for coding for elementary students, and media clubs focussing on video production and robotics in the Secondary School.
Technology Hardware and Infrastructure
To make sure technology functions as seamlessly as possible, ISY implemented a more robust firewall and expanded our wireless coverage throughout campus. We increased bandwidth significantly and initially launched a Chromebook program in Elementary School consisting of seventy-five devices on mobile carts which then expanded to a full 1:1 program prior to the pandemic. This was crucial when we went virtual as student technology support benefitted from all Elementary School students using the same devices.
Measurement
Feedback on ISY’s use of technology was gathered in our yearly climate surveys. We saw a marked recognition of the work we have done in this area. In addition, a survey of alumni found that recent graduates of ISY felt they were generally better prepared than their peers in the use of technology.
The International School Yangon
20 Shwe Taungyar Street
Bahan Township
Yangon, Myanmar
+95 (0) 9 880 441 040