Digital Technologies

At Whenuapai School, we strongly encourage tamariki in Year 4 to 8 to bring their own devices (BYOD) to school to support their learning. A higher ratio of devices to students means that teachers can use digital tools effectively throughout the day to aid learning. Whenuapai School strives to have devices available for tamariki who are not able to bring their own.

There are so many great tools we can use to support children’s learning and creativity. As a school, we are always looking for new technologies and innovations that will extend the abilities and skills of our tamariki both with and without devices.

Devices at school are currently being used for:

• Teaching the Digital Curriculum – digital citizenship and safety, digital fluency, computational thinking, and designing and developing digital outcomes.
• Using Google Workspace (Google Docs, Slides, etc) and Classroom to support students to access the learning programme (the Google licenses are provided by the Ministry of Education).
• Be part of the process of using HERO to view and set Maths, Reading and Writing goals, and to post evidence of learning.
• To enable collaboration between students within the class, across the school, and beyond the school gate.
• Communicating with a wider audience by sharing the products of student work.
• Accessing online learning resources. Examples include:
  • Writer’s Toolbox
  • Math Pro (digital platform for PR1ME Mathematics)
  • Coding programmes such as Scratch
  • Reading and math activities
  • Publishing work for sharing
  • Basic design programmes – 3D printing etc
  • Online standardised testing, such as e-asTTle
  • Research

Protect and Security

• The school internet connection via Network for Learning (N4L), which is provided by the Ministry of Education. This connection is filtered to the Ministry of Education’s requirements.
• To provide extra security and safety Whenuapai School:
  • has partnered with Linewize to provide an extra layer of internet filtering and greater teacher and student oversight of internet usage. We are able to limit the webpages students have access to to ensure they are on task.
  • manages all devices on our premises between 8.30am to 3.10pm through Classwize. This is a condition for students being allowed to bring their devices to school.
  • requires students to sign onto their devices using their school login credentials – not personal Gmail accounts. 
  • provide plastic boxes for devices to be stored and transported. These are kept in locked cabinets when not in use, e.g. break times, before school, during offline work, etc.

Link to Online Safety Hub – https://whenuapai.onlinesafetyhub.nz/

Preferred Device

As we use the Google suite for Education, we prefer that students use a Chromebook because they:

• Have a low purchase price
• Provide access to all of the necessary learning resources that we require
• Are simple to operate
• Are lightweight to carry to and from school
• Have a long battery life
• Are designed to operate efficiently with Google apps
• Are supported by our network and independent IT provider.

If you would like your child to use another device, that is fine. If you have any questions before purchasing a device, please contact the school and we can recommend devices that will suit our needs.