Case study - Schools

Essendon North Primary School Makes Learning Fun!
Essendon North Primary School, one of the foundation Navigator schools in Victoria, has established a global reputation as a leader in the planning and implementation of learning technologies. Michael Guilieri, principal of Essendon North and an Apple Distinguished Educator, reflects on the use of BroadLEARN™ Early Learning in his school.

BroadLEARN™ Early Learning is a key resource in our classroom rotations because it engages all of our students and motivates them to think, plan, choose and solve problems in the 300+ interactive activities.

BroadLEARN™ is full of interactive activities, colour, clever characters, animations and sounds that captivate every student in our Prep to Year 2 classrooms. This software program makes students think, guides them into problem solving and allows them to work with partners to enjoy the activities together.

The units are arranged in themes. This makes it so easy to blend the activities into focus areas in the early year’s classrooms.

When “free activity time” is available during wet days, all the kids go for BroadLEARN because they love the activities and become absorbed through the interactive activities and there is always a new challenge.

There is a key role for ICT in the early Years and BroadLEARN is one solution for us at Essendon North. As such, BroadLEARN™ plays a key role in allowing young students to so easily gain independence in using the computer through the inbuilt computer skills.

Our teachers are impressed that BroadLEARN™ has the backing from the respected education experts at the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER), and that confirms its value as a ‘must have’ in Language and Maths programs.” ACER devised six tests that report on the skills and concepts taught within BroadLEARN™ Early Learning. Students and teachers are able to view their progress and print out certificates of achievement.

The program’s focus is on skills and reinforces those skills in a real life, fantasy and fun way.

One of the great strengths of this program is that it builds great relationships between home and school. At our school, many parents have subscribed to the BroadLEARN™ Home Edition to provide their children with unlimited access to the program on the Internet. Our students consolidate work done at school and our parents are able to see what their children are learning and join in from home.

It just makes homework even more family orientated and shows our young students that learning IS fun!

Quotes from children at Essendon
North Primary School:

Owen – “I liked the game when you had to catch the letters, you had to move the mouse and click when you wanted to catch the shape.”
Anna – “I liked listening to the story. She had to think of a pet.”
Adam – “I liked the castle and doing the three blind mice, you had to get all the words on the rocks right and I won something.”
Jack - “What am I? Had to guess which animal it was, if you got it wrong you had to try again”.
Genevieve - “I liked listening to old Mc Donald”.
Patrick - “I liked the funny faces and I did funny hair and a clown nose and big eyes. The ABC was good too”.