2013 NEC Fellowship

Awarded to Greg McDonald
Deputy Principal, Batemans Bay HS.

The NEC Fellowship is a joint NEC/SPC project funded by NEC.

The Fellowship will be awarded to an aspiring Principal who is currently a substantive Deputy Principal’s in a NSW government school. The award will be presented during the NSWSPC’s Annual General Meeting. The Fellowship aims to encourage technological innovation in the recipient’s current and future school.

The NEC Fellowship comprises: one delegate registration to the QUESTnet Conference; a half day learning experience with the NEC Leadership Team in Sydney, and; a grant of up to $2000 to defray costs associated with conference travel and accommodation, the learning experience and school relief.

Greg’s innovation was ….

With the imminent end of our one-to-one laptop program, we are now looking at ways we can develop a BYOD environment at the school. We want to stop fighting a proliferation of mobile device and acknowledge that they can have a place in schools and be an aid in student learning. This involves changing both student and teacher attitudes and in creating a safe, supportive environment for BYOD.

We already have systems that utilise mobile technology, but the mere existence of these systems has not been sufficient to encourage adoption. There is little benefit in creating systems that duplicate the work of existing applications, such as displaying student timetables, tracking homework and accessing learning management systems. This idea revolves around providing students an incentive to BYOD in a fun way but still linked to learning and the needs of the students.

This proposal is to create a school-specific geolocation app for Year 7 students. It will be written in HTML5 and hosted on the school web server or wrapped as an Android or iOS app. The app will require year seven students to complete a series of tasks over the first couple of weeks of high school. Successful completion of the app will result in a reward using the school’s student recognition system.
The app is essentially a trial. If the technology is successful, the app concept can be expanded to further scenarios of benefit to the school, such as helping new casual teachers navigate their way around the school or providing an online integrated staff handbook on a mobile device.

We would then hope to write additional apps for student use, as needed, in an effort to engage them and their own technology in our school.

Greg McDonald
3 June 2012

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