Wheatley Park School teachers and students collaborate on creative assignments, using Google Classroom and Google Apps Institution Wheatley Park School is a public state school located in Holton, Oxfordshire in the United Kingdom, serving about 1,100 students ages 11 to 18, with 80 teachers offering 200 classes. At a Glance Wheatley Park School • Public school serving 1,100 students • Google Apps for Education user since 2011 • Google Classroom user since 2014 Goals • Provide easier document management for students and teachers • Encourage students to access information via the school’s wifi network regardless of device or platform • Improve teacher interaction with student classwork • Help students communicate more easily with teachers Approach • Google Classroom prompts more creative development of long-term assignments • Teachers provide feedback as assignments are in progress, helping students complete them successfully • Google Apps and Classroom are easy to use and don’t require advanced technical knowledge, so teachers and students can get started on projects in minutes

Challenge Set on the grounds of what was once an ancient village on the coach road to nearby Oxford, Wheatley Park School’s buildings and the surrounding area are rich with history. The school’s Arts Centre is housed in a Regency Manor house built in 1808, and the countryside was home to Roman settlements. “We’ve had students do archeological digs, and they’ve found things like musket balls and old flint tools,” says Roger Nixon, the school’s director of IT and also a chemistry teacher. The school’s teachers set high standards for student achievement, whether learning is taking place in classrooms, labs, or field work beyond school buildings. However, the school’s outdated and hard-to-use technology systems hindered teachers’ ability to communicate with each other and with students, and to manage classroom assignments and provide students with timely feedback. “We were using the RM Learning Platform, and it took ages to explain how to use it,” Nixon says. “To get the best out of it, you needed a certain degree of technical knowledge.” For this reason, he says, teachers did not fully adopt the platform. Likewise, the school had an email system for students, provided by the school district and based on Microsoft, but students didn’t use it. “The email addresses were long and complex, so students didn’t remember them,” Nixon says. “There were no email groups, so it was quite limited in functionality.”

“Google Apps and Classroom transformed how we teach, and have transformed how we work as a school.” —Roger Nixon, Director of IT, Wheatley Park School

Teachers also struggled to manage documents. “We had files on local servers that you could only access from local PCs in our school buildings,” Nixon says. “We used memory sticks to move files around, but they would get lost. We wouldn’t have any consistency in files since different versions of documents were stored in different places.” Solution In 2011, Wheatley Park School chose Google Apps as a replacement for the school’s poorly functioning email and file storage system, as well as the RM Learning Platform. “It’s changed the way teachers share information with students,” Nixon says. “It takes away all of the hassles.” In 2014, the school began using Google Classroom, a unified teaching and learning tool that, combined with Google Apps, helps teachers save time, keeps classes organized, and improves communication with students. Google Classroom also helps automate many of the manual processes associated with creating and managing assignments, and allows teachers to comment on students’ work on an ongoing basis. The school has also purchased about 280 Chromebooks for staff and students to use in classrooms and the school library, along with the school’s existing legacy PCs. “We can have a true bring-your-own-technology policy in the school now, where everyone can connect to their email and documents with our wifi network,” Nixon says. “The great thing about Google Apps is that it doesn’t matter what devices students, teachers or the staff bring to school – they’ll all work.” Benefits Google Classroom and Google Apps offer the ease of use that the school’s old systems lacked, Nixon says. “Classroom looks like the social media networks everyone is familiar with,” he says. “The information stream is similar to Google+, which we’ve been using for a while with the older students. It’s a friendly interface, and gives students a consistent experience from teacher to teacher.” Getting started with Classroom and Apps takes very little time and no special technical know-how, unlike the school’s previous learning platform. “Teachers love the simplicity – Classroom isn’t clunky,” Nixon says. “Enrolling students in a class is easy, since teachers can invite them, or just send them a code that they add themselves.”

About Google Apps for Education A free suite of communication and collaboration tools – including Gmail, Classroom, Docs and Drive – for learning anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Classroom: A tool within the Google Apps for Education suite that allows educators to easily create, review, and organize assignments, as well as communicate directly with students. Chromebooks: A range of fast, affordable devices that update automatically, and are easy for schools to set up and manage. Android: A variety of affordable tablets that are easy for schools to set up and manage, and designed for students to share. Google Play for Education: A content store built just for schools, so teachers can get the right apps, books, and videos to the right students, right away.

For more information visit www.google.com/edu/apps

Teachers love giving students feedback on assignments while they’re in progress, since they can access documents through Classroom. “This guidance is very well suited for longer projects, where students might be working on the same assignment over several months,” Nixon says. The finished product may be very different from what a similar assignment might have looked like before teachers began using Classroom. “We’ll assign students a history project where they’ll look at a local village and how it’s developed over the past 1,000 years,” Nixon says. “A few years ago, students would have ended up with a written booklet, and teachers wouldn’t have seen the results until the booklets were turned in. Today with Classroom, students will create presentations with slides, photos and video, and teachers will play a role in how the outcome evolves.” Students now actively use Gmail and don’t hesitate to reach out to teachers or their classmates. “We have a system that now sends out all homework tasks as emails to students, and puts an entry into their calendars,” Nixon says. “Students receive achievement points updates every week via email, and the headteacher sends them a newsletter every week.” Sharing student assignments and administrative documents through Google Drive and Classroom has also helped teachers work together more effectively. “We’ve said to each other, how did we even manage before we had Google Apps?” Nixon says. “We have staff meetings where we pull out Chromebooks, get onto Drive, and work on documents collaboratively at the same time. Google Apps and Classroom transformed how we teach, and have transformed how we work as a school.”

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