Adnan ALHAN

Manager of Ak Umut College

1- Could you please deal with your project, with the name of “Welcome to the Digital School”? How did you decide to work on such a project with your students?

As you know, time is an information and technology time, it is a necessity to adopt and to benefit the rapidly changing technology. It is very important which was also stated in our school’s vision, to place all developments and new technology. We tried to make our education level more efficient and with more quality. With the support of our R&D team, we implemented our project as a digital school which is the first one in Turkey in cirriculum year of 2006 – 2007. Digital School that we worked on is a complex model in which integrated multiple systems works  together.

It is proved that 80% of learning happens with visual tools. So, we have made some researches to make our lectures more visual, to declamate to the childreen of new generation, to speak to them in same language. After the researches, we saw that, it was very difficult to have efficiency in new national education cirriculum, if there were not used any computer. We worked on the project very fast because the main cirriculum changed rapidly.  And also the founder of our school, who is still working in IT sector, empowered us to develop such a project by  using new technologies.

2- Do you know any other project like yours in Turkey and in overall world?

We think we are the first one in Turkey and in World, who uses such a complex systems.Because such a model has some risks on fiscal and implementation phases for a private school. However, if we turn back for 3 month, that is a very short time, we realized we have done a perfect project.

Many educators who are from abroad or from another national schools are coming to our school to have more information about the system we used, that makes us happy. And we are also happy to share all the good things for education to others and happy to be pioneer in its field.

3- In your project, what range of ages were chosen as a target?

Project consist of the students of classrooms of 2th to 8th. Because our kindergarden and 1st classroom’s students do not know to read and write, they were not included to the system. We allowed only to students of 6,7 and 8th classrooms to bring their own iBooks to their home. We keep remaining other students’ iBooks  in school for them.

4- When your students started to use this system, what kind of difficulties were they face with?

If we tell the truth, the most difficult thing were, not to find any reference aplications and programs those we could have used because we could not see any other examples around. We got big support from Apple IMC Türkiye. First of all we are in doubt because the operating system of the computers that we bought were different than the other wintel based computers. However, after we started to use Macs, we understood our doubts were unnecessary. Some trainers from Apple IMC and from a private teaching institution gave some training course for 40 hours. After training our lecturers trained our students. Students fastly adopted to Macs rather than us. Now, the students of Ak Umut are not learning to use a computer, they are trying to make projects and plans by computers they had.  Apple Macintosh Operating system has no virus, iBook series are more portable, which are big advantage for us. We realized all by only one technical staff. When we face with any problem during implementation, we solved rapidly by our solution providers. Suitable aplications and documents were prepared  for Mac OS.

5- What are the effects of the using computers to effort of your teachers when there are in classroms?

Firs of all, the most important advantage that we had, we could use course time more effective and efficient. Our teachers follow the lectures by using the course plans which they were previously preapared in system. Students are more interested in and more concerning on lectures. However, we know the importance of reading a book, and we placed some certain times into cirriculum to reading in order to not be away from a good habit of reading because our childreen were more focusing on information technology. Nobody must be away from reading. The usage time of computer covers 1/3 of total time in school.

6- Nowadays, students can easily reach many information they desired. How do you block your students to enter some unsuitable or illegal sites?

Our R&D Team solved this by using a special software. And Mac OSX also have some aplications in itself, in which you can easily control to access to applications with som limitations. Students can conect to Internet from everywere in compus wireless.

7- What is the benefit of Smartboard in Digital School Project?

Firstly, with Smartboard we  save time. Our teachers can present the writen documents with voice that they prepared in their homes. We also use interactive digital course records in lessons. All the course schedule (cirriculum), writen and with voice were transfered into the data pool. Students can follow the same lesson with voice of teacher and writing, which were done in school, in his/her own home by using Internet. Everyone who enter www.akumutkoleji.com, can follow our all lessons free.

What about the other software which were used in computers?

Dynet English Learning&Teaching Software, a speacil software named Okulistik enriched by questions databank and animasitons and Mobides programs.

8- What are the benefits of this project to parents?

Our Web School system were speacily designed for parents. Each has private password, they can follow their child for attendence, marks and teachers’ metarials. And also they can watch their child with cameras that we placed in some corners.

9- Wha are your remaining targets?

We target to fullfill Macs with all useful aplications. Our target is being a pioneer in education technologies and computer based learning area.

We also want to adapt Podcasting learning tool to the system we used. With podcasting for each students, we want to serve any lesson that student were not good at by using podcast tools.