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Most students look forward to the end of their GCSEs as it means they have more free time to spend with their friends but for Kit Swerdlow (16), a student at Nottingham free school Channeling Positivity, it’s a different story.

Kit currently spends a day a week at XMA, with the rest of his time spent at Channeling Positivity. Channeling Positivity is an alternative provision free school aimed at ages 13-16 needing another option other than mainstream schooling, where Kit has been studying for his GCSEs in English, Maths and i-Media.

Kit attended an Open Day at XMA last September and really enjoyed it. He was very keen to secure work experience at the company and was delighted when he was offered it. Once he has finished his exams, the time he spends at XMA will increase to two days a week and he can’t wait.

So far he has spent most of his time in the marketing department where he has been involved in creating and delivering email marketing campaigns and general marketing duties. In addition, he has also drafted the copy for a welcome pack for new staff when they join the company.

He is now spending time in the company’s commercial department and there are plans for him to go into the sales and customer service departments too.

“I am incredibly proud of Kit and all that he has done to develop his employability and enterprise skills.” said Justine Drury, Founder and Principal of Channeling Positivity.

“Unlike many apprentices, Kit will be work ready from day one as a result of his and XMA’s long term commitment to our work experience programme.”

“I love the work and the people are great – I feel very much part of the team. I am learning a lot and the experience is preparing me well for the world of work. I can’t wait to spend more time at XMA and when I finish school I would love to do an apprenticeship with the company.”

How do you engage your staff in developing learning?
How can teachers amplify the learning with technology?
How can you create and develop your vision for learning?

Preparing and developing your staff is so important. We support teaching and learning, using a bespoke coaching and mentoring model. This can support new staff or continue to develop more-experienced members of your team.

XMA Apple Professional Learning Specialists are our in-house coaching and learning consultants. Our innovative team has experience as senior leaders and teachers, from early years, primary, secondary and higher education.

Education strategic planning is a real strength of our team. A clear vision and plan needs to be in place for the technology to be implemented successfully.

We can offer hands-on sessions that are held at your school, college or university. They are tailored to your specific needs, to make sure you’re using your Apple products most effectively. We can introduce new ideas for teaching, enable co-creation of resources and collaboratively reflect on the learning.

The Apple Teacher programme helps teachers to start their journey with iPad and Mac. Through a series of modules, we can show how the tools can be integrated into daily lessons. As teachers develop, we can support through bespoke sessions, to move their practice forward.

Coding has become a real focus, from early years into primary and secondary schools. We can model effective practice in the classroom, with hands-on lessons and team-teaching with staff. Developing collaboration and team-work, we build confidence and effective problem-solving, with a progressive coding curriculum.

Apple Professional Learning is essential to coach, mentor and support teachers in advancing their practice.

Supporting targeted learning in the UK’s largest primary school with Google for Education

Google for Education has enable teachers to cater to the wide range of individual needs of Barclay’s 1200 pupils, utilising new technologies like Google Expeditions to create more engaging and inspiring lessons.

Using Google Apps for Education at Ormiston Denes Academy

Ormiston Denes Academy are using Google Apps for Education as the backbone for a new way of learning, using a combination of technologies to improve the flow of communication.

One-to-one iPad deployment at Gracemount High School

See how XMA helped Gracemount High School to implement one-to-one iPad deployment in the classroom through the allLearn with iPad programme from XMA.

Chromebooks, Google Docs and personalised learning programmes at Front Lawn Academy

Hear from students and teachers at Front Lawn on how Chromebooks, Google Docs and personalised learning programmes have transformed collaborative working, behaviour and results.

Discovering Chromebook has transformed learning and teaching at pioneering primary school

Southbourne Junior School has introduced over 140 Chromebooks to their learners and teachers encouraging collaboration both inside and outside of the classroom.

When Neil Hall took over as Head of IT at Southbourne Junior School, days were spent wheeling around a laptop trolley from classroom to classroom. As any teacher will know, equipment failings can be one of the most time-consuming and frustrating factors within education.

The school’s IT support resource spent two hours a week on-site and was in high demand. The rest of the time staff were forced to work around IT problems which meant devices were often either abandoned altogether or used to a fraction of their full capabilities. Even when everything was in full working order, IT time in the classroom was minimal. A timetabled activity for an hour a week, IT lessons focused on teaching general office skills such as word processing, spreadsheets and presentations. The internet was used for research and teachers lost confidence in utilising IT within other subject areas.

With the support from Headteacher, Luke Hanna, Neil began researching what other schools were doing. It was on a visit to another school that they witnessed a group of pupils utilising Chromebooks that they decided to research them further.

Having contacted Google for guidance, the school was directed to XMA. Following the success of the pioneering allLearn programme which was already a market leader with iPad, XMA were about to launch allLearn with Chromebook. This was the start of a long-term, collaborative partnership with XMA providing guidance and support on Southbourne Junior School’s mobile device deployment. Through this partnership, Southbourne Junior School has currently deployed over 140 Chromebooks to their learners.

XMA worked with the school to explore their specific requirements.

Some of the main features of Chromebook result in hidden cost savings. With Chromebook web based operating system, regular updates are delivered automatically, saving precious IT resource time manually installing patches. User data and settings are stored in Google Cloud, which means devices can be easily shared. Data is backed up in the event of a device being lost and they don’t need to be imaged after each academic year.

Google’s Online Management Console, included for each Chromebook, allows teachers to react instantly, whether it be introducing or changing firewalls and filters or deploying Apps to devices. Google Apps for Education allow users to work collaboratively on the same documents at the same time from multiple locations. School staff have also found it much easier to manage multiple user groups and updates can be made centrally.

Since introducing Chromebooks, use of IT across the curriculum has increased significantly.

Due to their relative ease of use, teachers have embraced them quickly and are using them in lessons across the curriculum. Further to this, Chromebooks are helping to facilitate communication between the school and parents. Pupils create their own web pages to store homework and information, which can be seen by parents as well as teachers in the classroom.

Southbourne Junior School plans to become an IT specialist school. They will be one of the first schools in the UK to have three of their existing teaching staff accredited as Google Educators.

Children leaving Southbourne Junior School will be equipped with basic knowledge and understanding of the very latest technology, placing them at an advantage for further education and their future career. A high percentage of the jobs that our children will be doing in the future don’t currently exist and one way to skill up children for these roles is to give them access to the very latest, cutting edge technology and encourage them to use this technology productively to aid learning.

XMA remain on hand to help, support and advise. Through two in-house educational experts, Dr. Steve Bunce and David Ryan, both educators themselves – XMA offers first- hand knowledge of how technology can enhance the learning environment and support both staff and learners in the pedagogical application of Chromebook in the classroom.

Improving results with iPad

St Cyres School increased their Level 2+ results by over 20% with the support of iPad and XMA.

Bosworth Academy and allLearn with iPad

Bosworth Academy used XMA’s allLearn with iPad to transform the way their students learn, and the way their teachers teach.

XMA in Partnership with outstanding specialist school

Making a difference to learning

Dorothy Goodman School is an Outstanding (Ofsted 2016) Special School serving pupils from 3-19 and supporting parents and guardians. It caters for pupils with a wide range of special educational needs. In recognition of the diversity of their pupils, the School tailors their curriculum to meet the needs of each individual pupil. This is supported by the School’s extensive equipment and facilities, such as Soft Play Room, Hydrotherapy Pool and Sensory Room, which are all used to support and educate pupils.

The School awarded XMA the contract for the design, supply, delivery, installation, testing, commissioning and ongoing support of the ICT infrastructure. XMA worked closely with Dorothy Goodman School and SEND Specialists, iansyst, to deliver state-of-the-art devices, systems and support.

Exceptional ICT for an exception student body

Pupils and staff use ICT to enable rich communication and expression. “For example, in one class, two pupils with profound communication and physical needs were able to confidently express their choices and engage in meaningful communication with the adults.” Ofsted Report 2016

Sensory rooms and sensory spaces use light and sound or even darkness to enable children with various abilities, including Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties to develop skills such as switching and cause and effect to colour or hand eye coordination skills, additionally, it supports learners with Autistic Spectrum Disorders to relax or be engaged in their environment. Music linked to light has found to be supportive for either calming pupils or raising their attention levels.

The most common device for pupils is iPad, typically with a ‘voice box’ to ‘speak’ for pupils. From this, many pupils run an application called Grid Player, made by Smart Box. Grid Player is an Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) App that helps people who cannot speak or who have unclear speech to communicate. Pupils create sentences on their iPad that speak aloud.

Pupils with motor disabilities are able to utilise Grid Player and other Smart Box applications using Eye Gaze, which mounts on iPad or Windows tablet.

The range of input devices is as diverse as the pupil population. These include a huge variety of switches (USB, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth), joysticks, trackballs and special keyboards. The goal always being to provide the best possible interface for pupils to express themselves and control their environment.

Google’s speech to text enables other pupils to create documents using speech within Google’s GSuite for Education.

In short, together with the School and XMA’s SEND specialist partner iansyst, the School is able to rapidly draw upon thousands of IT solutions for the needs of each and every child.

ICT challenges and resolutions

The School faces many daily challenges that arise from the variety of needs within an All-through

Special School. They were looking for a partner who can provide flexibility in the delivery of service and one with the expertise to respond quickly to their many needs. We demonstrate this below through some examples of the challenges we have resolved together during our six-year partnership:

The School’ split network made it difficult for information to be accessed and teachers had to navigate around this issue by carrying dongles across all sites to access the network and complete their work.

XMA resolved this problem through clear communication, detailed planning and a thorough execution.

By working with the School’s previous on-site engineer, XMA was able to analyse the issue and build a secure configuration for the ICT systems. This allowed us to join the networks into one unified collaboration platform. Our solution enabled teachers to have easy and instant access to the network regardless of the site and without the provision of dongles, which is better for data access and security. This meant that all educators were able to work more efficiently to create and deliver engaging lessons.

With difficulty logging in across different sites for pupils and teachers due to different systems,

XMA consolidated all usernames and passwords across all sites on one domain, which allowed for a more streamlined and secure logging in process.

The School site spreads across five different locations, two main sites – the upper school and a lower school – with three inclusive satellite bases located on the sites of local mainstream schools.

The School’s XMA Technician Tom is involved in liaising with all existing stakeholders, across all 5 sites and those of the mainstream schools. This means that Tom has to be organised in documenting and reporting his conversations and agreements so that he can relay accurate information and advice for all interested parties. He is responsible for coordinating the relevant departments at XMA and updating the Service Desk system for the purposes of resiliency and escalation.