ITI Articles

The Natcoll Education Trust (NET) was established by Natcoll Design Technology in 2001. NET’s objective is to enhance education in New Zealand by extending and deepening children’s and teachers’ educational experiences in a creative and exciting learning environment using digital technology.

The NET programme is free and designed to support the use of ICT in the classroom through collaborative classroom projects. Natcoll provides a teacher, who designs the programme around the school’s and children’s needs and curriculum objectives, leads the class programme and does the teaching. Natcolls also provides a fully equipped lab for a maximum of 10 students, using iMacs, digital cameras and video cameras. Software is also made available, including iLife (iMovie, iWeb, Garageband, iPhoto, iTunes, iDVD), and Photoshop. Internet-based projects make use of the latest web 2.0 tools available online.

Natcoll views working with primary school teachers and their students as a non-profit making venture in support of the profile and charter of the college, so the programme is free of charge, although, depending on the nature of their project, schools may pay for printing, laminating, CDs, DVDs, etc..

All curriculum learning areas are relevant in the programme, with values and key competencies featuring strongly throughout the creative challenges the students are given. Many schools use this as an extension opportunity for able students, or for a class or mixed year level group to work on a special project related to an Inquiry. Learning skills are developed in conjunction with ICT skills.

Teachers and students who have participated in the NET programme have provided extremely positive feedback – students are excited and challenged by the experiences they have; teachers are amazed at what their students can achieve. Evaluation results have indicated that the learning from the NET programme gets taken back and shared with friends, parents and other family members. “The NET programme exceeded what I had hoped,” said Springston teacher, Allana Taylor. “The children are independently using a variety of tools and thinking carefully about their writing... they were so motivated that they kept working at school and home... This was a brilliant opportunity.” 

Examples of projects undetaken:

Podcasting - oral and visual language extension

Blogs - written language extension, use of web 2.0 tools

Music composition/sound track creation

Advertising (posters, jingles, video, audio)

Digital photography/image manipulation (e.g. Surrealism)

Movies/DVDs - related to class enquiry

Class web pages

New ideas being added all the time!