School Description
Huseby school was
built in 1976 and is located on the outskirts of Trondheim in the middle
of Norway. The school has approximately 320 students at the age of 14 -
16 and 34 teachers. Our students come from three different primary
schools, and one fifth of them speak minority languages. The district
where the school is located scores very low on sociometric criteria, in
fact lowest in the country.
It is evidently
important to our students that the staff all speak "one mind";
that we have a "Common Platform" of understanding. We
therefore use a lot of time to reach consensus on important matters of
school policy. Important issues are choices of organizational structures
and working methods when we deal with children at risk and their needs.
In this perspective it has been important to us to develop strong
traditions within the area of giving the students responsibilities, both
for their own learning processes, the learning processes of their group
members and also responsibilities for their learning environment, that
is the tidyness of the school building itself as well as the decoration
and the activities that take place both during school hours and in the
afternoon and evening.
There is also a
strong emphasis within the school on students personal development
in self-confidence and ability to take responsibility. When students
first enter the school their parents are expected to take 30% of the
responsibility for their childrens learning and the school 70%. However,
the students responsibility for their own learning is expected to grow
eventually to 100%.
The school also gives
the students, in very practical ways, opportunities to
share responsibility for the learning of others, for the social
environment of their peers and
for the running of the school. It maintains that, no-one is
perfect but a team can be.
We think it is
important that the students participate actively in planning and making
choices for themselves, that they are active in their learning processes
and the evaluation and assessment processes. It has become natural to
highlight working with Projects and Problem Based Learning, with focus
on the student as a creative and innovative participant and producer of
knowledge and culture. As a result of this Huseby school has developed
strong competence within Arts & Crafts, Theater & Drama, Student
Factories and the Project Method as we understand it in our tradition.
A new curriculum,
that was adopted by Norway in 1997, has a statutory central core with an
option for deeper study. In Huseby there is also a time commitment of
4-6 hours per week for one or two months in which pupils set up small
businesses (baking, candle making etc) and take different roles in the
businesses. Quality is a key aim and core curriculum criteria are linked to these activities.
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The teachers are
organised into teams for Norwegian, Modern Languages, Science and Arts,
with a Teacher Team of between three and five associated with each
Work
Unit of 60 pupils.
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The Teaching Teams always
include an Arts and Crafts teacher and almost all students learn to play
a musical instrument.
Equipment
Huseby Skole is
connected to the Student Net which is being developed by Trondheim
City. The city supports and runs the server for all the schools. The
network is fibre optic and incorporates a CD ROM rack. In Huseby Skole 34 teachers and 320 students are
email subscribers. There is one PC in each classroom for this purpose,
search on the internet etc.
Two of the classrooms
in the school are equipped with Macs. There is also a data
room containing 6 older Macs, used by pupils who book into it for specific work agreed with their
teacher, mainly word processing and data work.
In the library are approximately 12 computers, primarily for the use of
pupils with special needs but available to all. A new iMac room has now been set up. To use this the student
has to be sertified, and this is for more advanced purposes, using
Adobe, Microsoft Office -98, etc. Here they are editing videofilms,
power-point- performances etc. In addition the school owns an overhead
projector, a video projector and top-desk projector.
ICT Incorporation
Trondheim has been
named Norways Capitol of Technology. The University of
Trondheim (NTNU) is known not only for technology, but also for its
large education department and
its pedagogical contributions. Huseby Skole maintains
a close relationship with the university and has collaborated with
it in all the projects in which it has taken part, both as a national
pilot school and in a
programme at a regional level.
When we were facing
the ICT perspective, we started out like most schools by using the vast
possibilities of finding information. But we soon realized that the
students were spending a lot of time just "browsing the net"
without really doing anything but reproducing what they could find of
information. It then became important that we also in this perspective
should introduce the same view on learning processes that we had already
established. That is we wanted the students to be producers of knowledge
and culture and create their own texts.
The new Norwegian
Curriculum (L97) also emphasized the use of multimedia (film,video) in
the plans for Arts & Crafts. Our earlier strong position in this
field made it natural to combine this with the new technology in the ICT
area. So we reached to make the students produce what we now call their
own Multimedia Texts.
The students now work
with focus on the curriculum for Natural Sciences, using the Project
Based Working Method and express their knowledge through ICT and
Multimedia. This is also an arena the students of today are familiar
with, maybe more so than their teachers. They clearly state that they
"learn more about Science by making introductory or instruction
films than by reading books and listening to teachers".
However, the teachers`
role is still important, and we have therefore started an inservice
training programme for the teachers , so that they will be comfortable
using the technology as an everyday tool for initiating and following up
the students` learning processes
ICT is supported in
the school by a half-time external coordinator and by 3 internal
coordinators who are all members of the staff. 30% of the teachers have
their own PCs at home and there is the usual range of ICT capability
amongst the staff. Staff have regular meetings on technology and
curriculum integration and for a long time have encouraged
cross-curriculum projects.
ICT is used in all
subjects with currently about a third of the staff making regular use of
computers in the curriculum. This number is expected to rise as training
for all staff started in September 1999.
Activities
Seven projects are in
progress within the school. These are viewed as one major project ,
working towards the same ends of developing the curriculum but with
different people taking responsibility for the development of different
aspects. One of these is a multimedia project, which involves10 students
and has been making extensive use of art and graphics software.
In May (1999) the
school took part in the Norwegian Conference for Education and Teaching
(NKUL) exhibiting the pedagogical results from the projects in which
they have been involved.
An example will be
the students` work with a chemistry laboratory experiment, f.i.
electrolysis. They videofilm the process with the camera on time
intervals - they make an animation film that explains what you cannot
see - they edit the film bits using ICT tools - and make a presentation,
using an ICT-projector to improve the performance.
But it is important
to know that this is one out of many different working methods and
presentation methods. Huseby school has recently become an "Apple
Distinguished School" for Norway and as such a member of the
European ADS-Network. This now give us the opportunity to share our
understanding and experiences with our colleagues in Norway and
elsewhere in Europe. And more important, we will have access to Apple
Computer`s expertise of ICT in Education and the experience of the ACOT
project. This now will aid the development of projects in Norway, and
also enable us to share our experiences on a wider and more regular
basis in the future.
Future activities in
ICT include focus on:
- the development of
subject skills with help from technology
- presentations on
the Internet
- development of multimedia
productions and presentations
