By Sara Dominguez Puentes, Blinklearning’s Country Manager for Colombia
The implementation of the digital project at the school has been a success thanks to the partnership between educational publisher Pearson and Blinklearning.
All digital projects require an adaptation and learning period, and to stand beside the teaching staff throughout this process, providing them with support and tips, is key in the success achieved.
In order to adapt to the new digital reality of education, the Gimnasio Colombo Británico was seeking to introduce digital tools at the school. Following that, Pearson contacted us to present a value proposition where both the editorial side as the technology element were integrated. The goal was to move from a model where the main tools are printed books, notebooks and pencils, to another where the tools are digital devices, all with the same main goal: to improve the teaching being offered to the students.
The characteristics of Blink’s platform, which has evolved through the experience gathered being in over 4,500 schools in 42 different countries, fitted like a glove to British Colombo addressing their every need: ease of use (enabling teachers, students or parents without any computer skills to quickly learn to access content from any device both on and offline, and even the ability to create their own.
In the process of implementing a digital project there is always a key variable: the willingness of the teachers to keep evolving.
Once an agreement was reached, it was simply a matter of getting to work on the two main challenges which lay ahead: the adaptation of school’s teachers, which is key because it is they who have the task of educating using these new tools, and adaptation of the students themselves.
The willingness of teachers to embrace digital change was such that our job was, in the end, much simpler than we might have anticipated concerning the use of the devices and the handling of the software itself.
Regarding the students and since because having ages between 15 and 16, therefore what we might call «digital natives», the process was even simpler and everyone quickly learned how to use resources and helped classmates with some questions.
For me it was especially exciting when, while attending Bogota’s International Book Fair, an eighth grader approached Blinklearning’s booth and was ecstatic to learn that he would finally be able to start working with Pearson and Blinklearning the following year.
Throughout the year, teachers really made use of the tools we had given them, creating their own activities based on the original Pearson exercises. Students overall responded really well to the new classroom tools and made the most of the opportunities that these new technologies offer.
A school predisposed, a publisher of quality as Pearson and committed technology partner are key ingredients in a digital project.
The success of this project was evident when GCB decided not only to continue using Blinklearning with Pearson books in the ninth grade, but it actually decided to extend the project to the tenth grade.
Constant monitoring and timely resolution of any problems were the key factors in this partnership to be counted as a success story and we are looking to replicate it in other institutions worldwide.
This is just one example of how a school predisposed to continue to innovate in level of education, along with two companies, are able to apply all his knowledge and enthusiasm to achieve the simple, yet so many times elusive, objective to further improve education.
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