Case Study | Baldwin School

The Baldwin School Finds New Ways to Learn with Google’s Nexus Tablets About Baldwin School

• http://baldwin.cpsd.us/ • Cambridge, Massachusetts

Goals

• Encourage independent learning through the one-to-one use of tablets in the classroom

Approach

• Provided students at Elementary level with a Google Nexus Tablet

Results

• Empowered students to take a more independent approach to learning and research • Improved the quality of project work through diverse use of apps

Learn more at google.com/edu/tablets

Background The Maria L. Baldwin School is an elementary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts that fosters a cooperative environment, nurturing children’s natural intellectual curiosity, while helping each student achieve high academic standards. It aims to encourage children to become lifelong learners who will excel in a global society. Challenge As part of its efforts to help students become responsible global citizens, Baldwin enables children to take responsibility for their own actions. Educators encourage independent learning and research from a young age. The school saw the use of the internet and educational apps for sourcing information independently as important for this. With only a single computer lab for all their students, they hadn’t yet found a way to maximize the potential of online learning resources. To address this, Baldwin began investigating the possibility of “going 1:1,” providing each student with their own tablet for classroom learning. “If students had tablets on their desks, then internet resources and learning apps could become an organic part of any lesson,” explains Gina Roughton, Assistant Director of Technology for Cambridge Public Schools.

Solution When it began its search for a cost-effective, practical way to use tablets, Baldwin discovered that some tablets would require substantial time for IT management. For instance, some devices stored apps locally so IT administrators would need to add and remove apps manually. “With a part time ICTS team, we knew that any tablets we invested in would need to be easy to administer,” explains Roughton. With this in mind, they turned to Google’s Nexus 7 tablet. They introduced the devices in two fourth grade classes of 36 students. Benefits “Nexus tablets solved our administrative issues and offered huge potential for flexible, independent learning in the classroom,” explains Roughton. Since every Nexus tablet took only a matter of seconds to set up, each was ready to use in no time. The devices were then assigned to individual students. The technology specialist gave a preliminary lesson to introduce the children to the new tools. In the past educators had experienced solutions that were more difficult to manage, requiring a lot of manual effort. Engagement The tablets, with their easy to use touchscreen interfaces, provide simple access to the web and educational apps. “There was a lot of excitement when the Nexus tablets arrived. The children intuitively understood how to navigate the touchscreen and within no time they were familiar with how to login and request any apps they wanted to download to help their learning,” explains Michelle Frazier, fourth grade teacher for Baldwin.

“Nexus solved our administrative issues and offered huge potential for flexible, independent learning in the classroom.” —Gina Roughton, assistant director of technology for Cambridge Public Schools Teachers also found the devices easy to use and now feel confident researching particular apps, brainstorming how they could use them in class, and sharing their feedback on what worked well with one another. “I’d never used a tablet before but the Nexus was so easy to use that this wasn’t a problem. As well as sharing ideas amongst ourselves, there is a very active online community of teachers who we turn to for inspiration on using apps in class,” Frazier says. In particular, the tablets have been used to enhance math lessons, with the use of interactive games to help improve basic addition, multiplication and subtraction. A recent project in one class involved the students researching and sharing their views on the four seasons, using an app to record their thoughts on the Nexus. This made the task more fun and interactive, as students enjoyed listening to the recordings and, without realizing, were also improving their own presentation skills.

Collaboration and Creation Nexus 7 tablets have also allowed the classes to get more out of Google Apps for Education, the free suite of collaboration and productivity tools that includes Gmail, Calendar, Sites and Docs. The school rolled out Google Apps three years ago, and they knew that with tablets they would be able to give students even more access to the services. Classes could use the tablets for writing and sharing as needed during lessons, rather than just being limited to appointed times in the computer lab.

“We’ve found that the quality of the students’ projects has improved overall where the Nexus is used. The kids enjoy the freedom of choosing which type of multimedia to use to enhance their projects, such as pictures and audio. They also take notes on them and they are ideal for ‘show and tell’ presentations.” —Michelle Frazier, fourth grade teacher, Baldwin School “Using Nexus 7 tablets has made it much easier to get the most out of Google Apps. One successful project involved having my students use Google Docs to keep a journal about the books they read. I then added comments and questions for students to respond, enhancing the quality of their overall work and teaching them collaborative working skills,” explains Frazier. “In fact, we’ve found that the quality of the students’ projects has improved overall where the Nexus is used. The kids enjoy the freedom of choosing which type of multimedia to use to enhance their projects, such as pictures and audio. They also take notes on them and they are ideal for ‘show and tell’ presentations,” Frazier adds. Frazier was particularly impressed by the results of one project in which they used a mindmapping app to map out a plan for a non-fiction book they wanted to create. “Usually they hate to plan but through using the Nexus it became something much more exciting and their plans were much more thorough than I expected,” she says. Based on the positive feedback from the fourth grade teachers and students, Baldwin hopes to extend the use of Nexus 7 tablets to other grades. Roughton concludes, “A key part of our approach to education is encouraging children to take responsibility and make their own choices and the Nexus has really helped empower children to do this in the classroom. We’re excited to explore other opportunities for tablets with Google Play for Education for our district. Even children in Kindergarten could experience educational benefits from such simple to use, durable devices with so many exciting educational apps.”

© 2013 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. 131112