First Field Trip to the Martin Luther School in Marburg
Today, Nov. the 16th, we had our first field trip to the Martin Luther Gymnasium in Marburg. Arriving at our meeting point in front of the teachers´ lounge, we were seperated into smaller groups of 6 students and were guided through the lounge to get a general overview of the different media the Martin Luther School provides to their teachers. On the spot, there are two desktop pcs were the teachers are able to use the internet or to use the booking programm of the faculty to book different media which they want to use in their classes. This programm gives a complete overview of the media which is provided by the Martin Luther School and, to help the teachers planning their classes, of a timetable were they can see, which media is booked at which time by any ohter teacher. The range of media the teachers can book is composed of DigiCams, a portable cinema (a beamer in which a dvd-player already is integrated), separate laptops, the so called "PoWi-Präsenter" (a small laptop, a beamer and a small soundsystem which are fixed into a carrying case), and a trolley which carries a complete class-set of laptops. Furthermore, the computer lab can also be booked through this software.
Room 33
The
computer lab is placed in the rooms 33 und 34 and equiped with enough computers
that the students of a whole class can use one of them in pairs. To make sure
that the students only do what the teacher want them to do, the software
"Master Eye" is installed on these computers. This tool allows the
teacher to see every desktop of every sutdent pc. He also can type in the
internetadresses of sites of which the teacher definitely does not want the
students to surf to, for example www.schülervz.net. By this, these sites are
certainly blocked for the student pcs, until the teacher unlocks them.
"Master Eye" also allows the teacher to show one particular desktop
to all other computers and blocks them to make sure that the pupils only
concentrate on the shown desktop.
According to the rise of importance of new media in education, every pupil has
a Digitale Schultasche, which is an usb-stick the Martin Luther School
makes available to the pupils from the fifth grade on. This stick allows the
pupils to work at home with data from the school, because it has all the
important software on it, like Open Office, etc. To show us how to use the pc with a class, our guide gave us examples of what
she uses the computers for. In her classes, which are mostly languages, she
often makes use of YouTube.com, the online-dictionary dict.leo.org, a questionaire or gives the exercise of a WebQuest
to her students.
One of the installed flat screens
To bring the new media into the classrooms, too, the Martin Luther School has
installed a big flatscreen in eight of the classrooms of the first floor.
Through this, the teachers are able to bring their own laptops into class to
show their pupils podcasts, youtube-videos or stuff like that. Additionally to
the flatscreens, there is also installed a sound system to support the
presentation accustically and all the wires needed to attach a laptop are on
the spot in the cupboard which was build arround the whole arrangement to
protect it against unauthorized use.
