This is one of the innovative aspects of Northgo that impressed the principal and colleagues of St. Cecilia’s College, Northern Ireland, when they took part in a P2P project visit in November 2005 with the aim to observe the use of ICT in teaching, learning and the school administration. The P2P Project was about sharing knowledge and learning from each other through peer learning.

Northgo College is a public (state funded) upper secondary school situated at Noordwijk, the Netherlands. The school has 950 students and employs 66 (full time and part time) teachers as well as approximately 35 support staff. The principal is employed by the school 2.5 days per week and works for the Government on the other days. This provides her with the opportunity to develop links with external agencies and hence spearhead innovation as well as influence.

Drive to improve the pedagogical use of ICT
For the moment, ICT is mainly seen as a subject in itself and not as a cross curricular element integrated into other disciplines- e.g. Geography, Maths, Languages - as is the case in St. Cecilia’s College. Yet, there is a shared conviction that that ICT is of increasing importance for the context in which pupils (will) learn and it should be thus incorporated in other fields of study.

Within this framework, Northgo College and a number of other Dutch professional development schools have established a network  jointly to explore the didactic implications of the application of ICT in education. In 2004, they launched the DIGIDAC project(1), with the aim to ‘train teacher educators and coaches at school to become competent users of ICT for educational purposes’. The project is targeted at competence development of practicing teachers and educators so that they can arrange ICT-rich subject learning and are able to coach students in the teacher’s roles involved. The project also aims to provide more knowledge about the relevance and appropriateness of ICT-use in specific learning contexts and the effectiveness of specific coaching strategies.

The benefits of a virtual learning environment
The school has also developed a virtual learning environment- Northgo Web-which has proved to be an outstanding tool for exchanging information, sharing learning materials and assessing both pupils’ and staff’s competences. This initiative began with 8 teachers working together but was not very successful. However, increased ICT infrastructure along with improved competence and confidence from staff resulted in the second VLE (Northgo Web) being more user-friendly and tailored to the needs of the College. Approximately 25% of Northgo teachers are currently using this tool on a regular basis. 89% of parents also access Northgo Web via a password identification system. Northgo Web also serves as a communication tool and enhances collaboration between parents and students from different schools. Kennisnet(2), the internet organisation for primary, secondary and professional education in the Netherlands, is currently working on the development of online assessment schemes for pupils using digital portfolios.

ICT in the school administration
The school does not have an Information Management System –as is the case for most Dutch schools and has developed the PDA project to monitor and record pupil attendance. This aims to automate the student registration process in order to reduce student absenteeism, save administrative time, and improve efficiency. Teachers and support staff are provided with PDAs with wireless connection that they use to report attendance in every lesson and to keep parents informed of absences. The N. Irish Delegation found the use of PDAs remarkable and suggested to adopt a similar system in St. Cecilia’s College by making use of the C2K service(3).

Almost a year after the completion of the school visit the principal of St. Cecilia’s College in Northern Ireland points out that ‘we are still learning a lot from our visit to Northgo College’(4).

If you would like to highlight innovative ICT practices in your school, do not hesitate to contact us by sending an email to the Insight Team at: insightteam@eun.org .

For further information see:
P2P School Visit Reports: St. Cecilia’s visit Report on Northgo College
P2P School Gallery: St’ Cecilia’s College
P2P Project website

Notes:
(1)The project is financially supported by the Dutch Ministry of Education’s 2003-2004 action programme ‘School based teacher Education’.
(2)See http://corporate.kennisnet.nl/international/about
(3)http://www.c2kni.org.uk
(4)See P2P closing Conference: http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/policy/policy_briefings/brief_p2p_final_conference.htm