Context
The International School Breda is a K-12 international school in The Netherlands. It opened in August 2011 and is still very new and in its formative stages. The secondary school curriculum works within the Middle Years Programme of the International Baccalaureate and the Diploma Programme. Our student body is very small in the secondary school and is composed of many Dutch students or students with some connection to The Netherlands. The majority of the instructional staff is from the Dutch education system and the teachers work both at a Dutch school and at the international school.
The school has a 1:1 laptop program with Google Apps for Education, a WordPress multisite blog network and ManageBac as a learning management system. There is an open wireless network available to teachers and students and any device can connect to it. The classrooms are also equipped with interactive white boards, iMacs and speakers. The students use Google Apps for email and teachers are on Outlook, however the secondary school will be moving to Google Apps for email and calendars in the fall of 2012.
The technology at our school offers many affordances. We can easily share documents, create digital products and incorporate technology into the teaching and learning process. The open wireless network allows us to access any and all websites. We can easily communicate with students after school and on the weekends through Gmail and google chat.
However, the constraints of this school are that it is still very small and the teachers are wearing many hats. There is not a lot of room for professional development and reflection. Most teachers are pulled between both the Dutch school at which they work and ISB. Our weekly staff meetings are usually filled with pressing matters characteristic of a new school (developing policies, interdisciplinary planning, etc.). There are no expectations put on teachers for professional development. Anything the teachers do for professional development is by their own initiative.
In addition to the lack of time, there seem to be cultural differences to navigate between how American, English and Dutch teachers view teaching and learning. This is something that can be a block to further improvement because we are not all on “the same page” in our ideas and philosophies.