Redbridge Primary School becomes National Content Provider

On October 21st 2013, pupils from Redbridge Primary School in the LB of Redbridge, prepared to present live via secure video conference to Year 2 pupils all over the UK about their Tamil culture and traditions in a conference they called "All About Sri Lanka". They travelled live via video link over 3500 miles to schools all over England in just over 3 hours. Using AVer ClassHD video conferencing hardware and Janet VC Services Redbridge Primary School were able to link securely and interoperably to schools in Thurrock, Shropshire, Havering and Devon.

Redbridge pupils, whose parents and relatives are originally from Sri Lanka, spoke about and displayed traditional foods and clothes and taught their peers hundreds of miles away how to greet in Tamil. They preformed a traditional Sri Lankan dance for the other schools to watch and took questions from them about their presentation.


Parminder Kambo, Assistant Head Teacher at Redbridge Primary School said "The video conference has put a huge emphasis on  our pupils speaking and listening skills and in particular presentation skills.
For the schools across England that we have connected to - their pupils were provided with real life experiences from children their own age who wanted to share their culture with them.  The aim was for us to help children respect each other through understanding and learning more about each other - what better way to do this than via a secure, high quality, audio and video link"

Lynn Bailey , School ICT Technician & HLTA, said - "We have been using VC for over a year now and I have been using other hardware products.  What I particularly liked about AVer ClassHD was that it is easy to use - the zoom function suits the classroom environment really well because I know I only need to press the button once or twice to position it in the correct view. The quality of video and audio is much clearer and better than our previous equipment too ."

Comments from the pupils at Redbridge Primary School:
"I liked it when everyone was watching and listening to me, it made me feel happy and excited to show the Sari I was wearing to the other children" (year 2 pupil)
"I learnt to speak louder" (year 1 pupil )
"Learning to speak in front of others helped me build my confidence in front of lots of classes, and it made me feel happy to be a role model, for my school" (year 5 pupil )

Benefits to the Primary curriculum:

The benefits for the pupils at Redbridge Primary were that they were able to improve their speaking, listening skills and learn to present to live audiences. They learnt to reply to questions asked by other pupils about their culture and in turn teach their peers to learn to respect each other.

Unit 3.5 : ICT SOW Rising Stars
We are Communicators

Key Stage 1 : PSHE & Citizenship

• Developing good relationships and respecting the differences between people
• Preparing to play an active role as citizens
• Developing confidence and responsibility and making the most of their abilities

SMSC : Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development
Regulation (2e) Assist pupils to acquire an appreciation of and respect for their own and other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions

 

What Redbridge Primary School did to become a National Content Provider:

The school wanted to video conference using a secure high quality video link, one that they could use regularly and reliably to connect with other schools across the UK and beyond.

1. They used an affordable VC codec (for the cost of only 3 ipads) the AVer ClassHD
2. With installation support from Aver and their local Council School's IT unit. The school installed the hardware onto their network.
3. With support from VCfL the school registered with Janet VC services and promoted their VC opportunity "All about Sri Lanka" to over 7000 registered schools with VC hardware on the JVCS booking system.
4. The school planned a 15 minute interactive presentation and rehearsed with the children.
5. Schools across the UK emailed Redbridge Primary to sign up to take part in the conference.
6. Redbridge Primary plan to repeat the VC sessions once a term with a different focus around the Tamil community each term.

 
What your school needs to share good practice via video conference:

1. VC hardware - affordable, secure and providing a high quality, reliable connection.
see. AVer ClassHD
2. A broadband connection that supports VC - see DfE guidelines here
3. Registration on JVCS

Click here to find out more about AVer ClassHD
Click here to find out more about Janet(UK)