Embracing digital learning with Google for Education

How The Warehouse Group Business helped one school establish a more creative and collaborative learning environment.

Challenge

When a dynamic new Principal at Carlton School took the IT reins, it was a great opportunity to help. They had a single, dusty computer room with clunky PCs that didn’t foster collaboration, creativity or engagement among teachers or students and their families. The school didn’t have any local examples to follow and turned to The Warehouse Group Business to help them up their classroom technology game.

Solution

Through our relationships with educators around the country, we were able to look further afield for a digital model Carlton School could replicate and over the years, moved them to a 1:1 Chromebook with Google Workspace for Education set-up. This has significantly helped to deliver positive student and teacher engagement. It has also helped them bring extended whānau into their children’s learning journey. In addition, we leveraged our partnership with Using Technology Better (UTB) to support Carlton School’s teachers, students and community in getting the most out of their new technology stack.

Result

Carlton School became one of the few fully digital schools in the region. They enjoyed a significant increase in learning engagement across all grades, along with a reduction in IT support costs due to being more autonomous with Chromebooks. The school was also able to nurture stronger relationships with families who now communicate more easily with teachers and feel part of their child’s learning journey. And to top it all off, security was enhanced students via a power dashboard system integrated with Google Docs and other Google products.

“Give a child the option of writing a story with pen and paper vs on Google Docs and 90 percent of the time they will choose Docs. It was simple things that got them hooked.”

Lisa Hulme, Deputy Principal, Carlton School

Carlton’s digital transformation

With no tangible model to follow in their region, Carlton School engaged The Warehouse Group Business to provide IT support and device attribution, then UTB for future support in digital solutions. Through this partnership, the school purchased 250 new Chromebooks over a number of years. They also adopted the Google for Education platform and implemented products through classrooms and management systems. Finally, all learning and teaching was repositioned online so that when home schooling was required due to Covid19, there was a seamless transition.

Upgrading skills to match the tech

Sourcing and acquiring the technology was just the first step in the process. It was important that Carlton School helped its teachers to fully maximise these new ways of working. We helped to incorporate IT fluency within the staff’s professional development sessions, along with weekly support sessions on demand. This ensured that the teaching team was able to help students become quickly familiar with new devices and platforms, as well as making sure they were providing outstanding learning experiences that fully exploited the features and functionality of their new technology.

About Whiteglove+ service

Noel Leeming’s end to end set up process for Chromebooks so they are classroom ready as soon as you ‘unbox’ them.

This service includes:

Register all devices into the Google Management Console saving hours of staff time. Once all devices are registered, the teacher has greater control of users, devices and apps across a number of Chromebooks.
Enrolment of Chrome Education licenses to ensure devices can be managed seamlessly and comply with licensing standards.
Asset tag devices – physically label the Chromebooks and match to the Asset ID in the Management Console to allow easy tracking and identification.
Connect all devices to the school Wi-Fi.
Training – provide staff training and ongoing help desk support after delivery.