Macleod College

Macleod college is a school with distinguishing school results and a strong music program. With rich traditions and an impressive range of extracurricular activities; the school has grades from prep to year 12. As well as this, the school caters to individual learning styles and provide a diverse curriculum in order to help individual students.

The school also recognizes that students of the 21st century grow up with diverse technology and therefore understand and respond to their students as "digital natives". Students within the school are exposed to using computers from the start of primary. Their response was recognized during my school observation where the school would cater the artistic and creative needs of the students by imposing MAC computers around the school. Students are able to use technology in order to finish tasks. In a grade 2 class i observed, students used laptops to type up their own plays for their own fairytale play.

Students were also able to learn to cooperate with each other and working in groups in order to foster a friendly and motivational environment. In senior classes, I noticed that students were willing to help each other although tasks for each student were different. The environment and setting the school has created has allowed students to help each other. The school has imposed a spacious environment for students to work, allowing students to do their tasks freely. With the spacious environment, I was very impressed by the way teachers conducted their lessons. In all the classes i have observed within the school, teachers made use of the setting by conducting lessons around different areas of the classroom, instead of using the traditional classroom setting. Because of this, i would expect there to be a lot of off task behaviour, but because the teacher is continuously moving around the classroom, most students seem to be very focused on their work in discussions. Although there are pro's and con's about the setting, i think that Macloed was able to take advantage of the spacious classrooms and their setting, which has greatly influenced the students education.

When i compare Macloed to Hong Kong schools, i feel that Macloed's use of communicative learning approaches and cooperative learning would greatly benefit students in Hong Kong. Their acknowledgment of students as "Digital Natives" have made their students more interested in their studies and have created a more innovated learning environment.