Schloss Neubeuern

Schloss Neubeuern is one of Germany’s leading boarding schools, and has placed strong focus on IT since the early 1990s. The entire campus was fitted with a comprehensive fibre-optic network in 1995/96, thus enabling our pupils to access the intranet and internet in both teaching spaces and their own rooms. All classrooms are equipped with dedicated data projectors and computers. The summer of 2007 saw us set up an additional, sophisticated Wi-Fi network which complies with the most stringent of security requirements and allows entire classes to go online in all classrooms. We have long kept an electronic marking database, and in 2008 launched the “Marks Online” web application. The app enables parents and pupils to not only gain an up-to-the-minute overview of the latters’ marks, but also choose from a range of detailed notification options. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Project: Digital Ink It was against this backdrop – and further to extensive research – that we took the decision to initiate a nigh-on revolutionary change which was unique within Germany and perhaps beyond: We switched our school to digital ink from Year 9 upwards. Since September 2009, all Schloss Neubeuern pupils in those years have therefore been given school-owned tablet PCs which are preconfigured according to our requirements. As they represent our pupils’ core tool, the Digital Ink programme naturally uses the latest generation of tablet PCs. Handwriting recognition and a highly sophisticated multi-touch screen enable the tablets to replace note pads, exercise books, file folders, vocabulary cards and sheet music. The networking of all school information ensures that it is not only structured, stored and made available across all years and subjects, but also searchable at all times. The use of tablet PCs and tablet-specific software in lessons opens the door to processes which would be unthinkable in combination with traditional frontal teaching. Microsoft Outlook is used to gather together all information pupils require. Their guild meetings, Horizon activities and weekend excursions – all of which can be selected and booked via the secure section of our website – are automatically entered in their calendars using vCal files. Teachers can also upload homework assignments to the homework app via the secure section of our website, from where they can be accessed by our pupils and marked as completed. Pupils with smartphones can also access this information “on-the-go” by synchronizing their mobile devices via a cloud-based exchange server. May 2013 saw Schloss Neubeuern pupils successfully pass the first digital Abitur (university entrance qualification examination) to be taken at a German grammar school. In 2013 Schloss Neubeuern was selected as a Microsoft Mentor School, an elite circle of only 70 schools worldwide. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Project: Inverted Classroom Initiated during the 2013/2014 school year, this new programme for Years 9 and above aims to use digital media to not only rethink lessons and learning, but also give pupils more responsibility for their own learning. In an inversion of traditional methods, pupils themselves are now responsible for acquiring new knowledge outside of conventional teaching time. The requisite “learning blocks” are made available on a web-based learning platform which they can access from anywhere and at all times. The blocks feature educational videos as their central component, and allow our pupils to work through the year’s key content at their own speed and in whatever order they choose. They are naturally accompanied on their learning journey by their teachers, mentors and parents, who can access the learning platform in order to gain a detailed insight into the progress being made by their protégés. Lessons aim to apply the content learned outside the classroom as practically as possible, with emphasis placed on collaborative learning. In some cases, pupils work in international teams with fellow learners from partner schools in Croatia, Brazil and South Africa. This sees teachers adopt the roll of a learning supervisor and essentially take a back seat from a teaching perspective.

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