Parramatta Marist High School embraces hi-tech classroom of the future

Mar 13, 2015

By Deborah Fitzgerald, Parramatta Advertiser
PARRAMATTA Marist School is bringing education into the 21st century, ditching the traditional classroom layout in favour of open spaces, couches, and sliding glass walls.

The school has implemented a project-based learning method modelled on similar education programmes in the United States, where students work in groups of five or six and use technology to connect with children across the world.

The modern teaching method is possible, thanks to the school’s $7 million learning and administration building at the Westmead Education Precinct, which it shares with Mother Teresa Primary School and Catherine McAuley Westmead.

In the classrooms, clusters of students sit on the floor with their laptops and engage in animated discussion, while some stand in front of the sliding glass walls where diagrams are drawn, wiped and redrawn.

Except for the youth of the participants, the classrooms have the look, feel and buzz of an adult working environment in the big end of town.

Principal, Brother Patrick Howlett, first came across the teaching method in a small school in Napa, California.

“With project-based learning ... the students pull their weight, they have to solve something together, each raising issues before they come to a consensus,” he said.

“Then they have to prepare and present their findings. It’s deeper learning; not just learning the material, but using it to take a position and argue a case.

“In the past, the emphasis was on content and passing exams, about rote learning and memorising the material. We are preparing students for the information era.”

Bro Howlett said technology allowed the students to connect with peers overseas.

“We are saying the world is not Parramatta,” he said.

“There’s a whole global approach, particularly with video conferencing, although time differences are an issue.

“We are living in a global community and our students are not stopping at the boundaries.

“One school had a project with a school in Turkey and they Skyped one another, discussing 1915 Gallipoli.”

Bro Howlett said under the new model, students were more engaged and motivated to learn.

“Teaching hasn’t changed in 100 years and this didactic lecturing model occasionally has a place but it should not be the norm,” he said.
“Under the previous method, the students were disengaged, bored and couldn’t see any relevancy in what they were doing half the time.”

Catholic Education Office Executive director of Schools, Greg Whitby said, education was vastly different in today’s world and schools needed to respond to new ways of learning.

“The learning spaces are designed to be responsive to the changing nature of learning and teaching,” Mr Whitby said.

The school is in the running for the $10,000 grant in NewsLocal’s classroom of the future category of the Champions of the West competition.