The value of what we do in preschool and school is determined by how well prepared the children and students are to face new challenges in the future. Students acquire new knowledge and skills and set them against past experience, which in turn creates context and entirety. It is our professional responsibility, based on school laws, the curriculum and other guiding documents, to provide continuous knowledge and personal development for each child and student.
Vittra Schools have nearly twenty years experience of working with Individual Development Plans (IDP), an invaluable tool for documenting and evaluating each student's development and achievement. We call it the Vittra book, and all of our 8500 students have their own Vittrabook which follows them throughout their schooling.
Next school year we will raise the level of ambition by ...
1. The Vittra book will be web-based with the aim that you as a student and parent require a more constructive, direct and clear feedback about the work done in the school. All essential information becomes available when you want and need it through a personal "log in". This increases the opportunities for interaction between the home and school.
2. All compulsory school educators will have their own laptop computer to increase the quality and efficiency for them to fulfill their educational assignments. It may seem a given to many in today's society, but the fact is that only 46% of the Sweden’s compulsory school educators have access to a personal computer (Source: The Teachers' Association).
In the lower age groups the figure is probably even lower.
We think that this is unacceptable and want to challenge other school leaders, both municipal and free-schools, to follow our example. We want to facilitate our educators' daily lives so that their maximum energy and creativity can be put on delivering high quality education for the increased benefit of our students.
3. The rule of law increases for our students, in that the web-based Vittra book contributes to increased transparency regarding assessment and achievement, both for those who work at a high tempo and for those who sometimes need more time and support. We welcome the new Education Act's increased focus on a preventative and helpful student health system and we believe that good communication is a prerequisite so that every student is able to find themselves.
We know through contacts and collaboration with universities and organizations that our teaching idea is in line with current educational research and a social change in skill requirements. However, the quality and competence concept needs to be expanded, and we have chosen to use the EU's eight key competences for lifelong learning in the development of our educational work.
During the next school year we will go even further...
4. "One-to-one" (one computer, one student). Vittra schools are far from being first with this idea but our educational model has proven to be an excellent platform for the introduction of student computers. After consultation with national and international contacts we decided a year ago to implement a research-based pilot project with student computers in five schools.
Thanks to Professor Thomas Kroksmark's commitment this has enabled us to ensure quality aspects and access to external comparisons that would otherwise not have been possible. The project has received national and international attention, such as when Vittra was last winter invited to the Swedish IT Minister’s (Anna-Karina Hatt) Roundtable on IT strategies in education issues.
5. Even more "one-to-one-schools". Our collective experience from the pilot project is very good, and we are proud to expand the initiative with another seven schools for the 2011/12 school year.
Overall, we will have twelve "one-to-one schools' during the next school year.
However, if everything is so positive, why not implement it in all schools at once? We have simply taken experience from previous large "one-to-one projects. An example of this is from Maine in the United States where close to 100 000 computers were distributed to all its schools, at the same time, regardless of the development phase each school was in. The implication was that "one-to-one" for many years instead became a dedicated IT project and education fell behind. We want to avoid this from happening.
What we have taken from the pilot project, that we still continue to develop, has been that the introduction of student computers must be in line with the respective school's development and goals. By gradual implementation of "one-to-one" we also get the opportunity to learn from each other's mistakes and achievements in the quest for continuous improvement.