Individual education
Our earliest education is through play and exploration. It is a process limited logistically only by waking (alas not daylight) hours and the facilities with which one finds herself presented. By following our curiosity at a pace that suits us, our mood and emotional priorities, within a very short space of time most of us learn to walk, talk, create, discern and befriend. It is remarkable the progress of which we are capable with the right level of freedom and flexibility.
At the very core of St Augustine’s Priory is our vision to ensure girls’ lifelong happiness and success. In order to achieve this for each girl, by definition our approach recognises the differing needs of those individuals, and therefore the necessarily responsive nature of our work.
It seems to follow then that we strive to provide our girls with this flexibility in as many aspects of their schooling career as possible. To this end, our ICT Department has been working diligently to remodel our digital facilities for the purpose of girls enjoying the freedom to access their work, curate, create, share and deliver in a way that breaks free of traditional technological constraints.
In the Head’s last newsletter Mrs Raffray alluded to the significant benefits to girls of using Microsoft Office 365, the platform to which their email accounts were recently migrated. To summarise, girls now have access to their emails at any time and from any mobile device or operating system. In addition to the latest online versions of familiar products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, pupils will be able to collaborate through the virtual notebook OneNote, and collate their work on their personal storage area, OneDrive.
As an integral part of the school’s digital strategy, these new facilities provide girls with 24/7 access to resources, information and the latest applications. Complementing the VLE, these changes encourage our girls to discover new ways to manage their work and to do so in a way that fits their individual needs.
In light of the continuing shift in attitudes toward working hours and flexible working arrangements, the ability of our girls to explore this technology and experiment with new methods of working means that the benefits to our girls are tangibly life-long. This is essential to fully realising our vision of ensuring girls’ lifelong happiness and success and is an example of the innovative approach taken by staff to deliver a truly individual education for our girls.
Contributor: TFarmer
Categories: Junior Nursery Prep Senior Sixth Form Whole School