“These devices are changing the face of education across our school.”

Frédérique Diependaele, principal at Belgian secondary school Athénée Royal La Roche-en-Ardenne, is talking about her school’s recent transition to a 1:1 learning model where every student is given a device to enhance their learning experience.

“Our students can come from many different social backgrounds, much like any school in the Wallonia-Brussels Education (WBE) school network,” she says. “By giving every student their own device, our goal was to breathe fresh air into their education and offer everyone across the school the same opportunities for digital learning.”

The school had already implemented an internal Wi-Fi network in 2018, putting it ahead of many schools in the Wallonia region who often have poor internet connectivity. Now with a more stable network in place, a pilot project was put in motion in 2020 to see how students would react to each receiving their own device.

“Fluid learning has always been very important to me,” says Diependaele, “and bringing these devices into the classroom was more than just giving students another tool to use – it was a pedagogical channel that could bridge learning a subject between the teacher and the student.

“If the project was a success for a small school like ours, it would show how any school in Belgium could do the same and transformation education across our country.”

Situated in the southeastern region of Ardennes, Belgium, Athénée Royal La Roche-en-Ardenne is a small rural school that has always valued innovation and saw switching to a 1:1 learning model as its next step in enhancing the education experience for every student.

“We had already chosen Microsoft 365 to be our core platform for learning and communication across the school,” explains Jean-Christophe Dron, project coordinator and geography teacher at Athénée Royal La Roche-en-Ardenne. “Now to get our pilot project right, we needed a device that would integrate well with our existing infrastructure and decided that a Windows-ready tablet was our best option.”

The school was keen to be very hands on for its pilot project and chose one of Dron’s geography classes to test its 1:1 approach in March 2020. “We went through the Microsoft platform step-by-step to understand how to make Windows 10 meet our needs and what applications were available,” he says.

“How virtual maps could replace a traditional geography atlas to reduce paper textbooks, or how we could remove the need for print-outs by sharing content on screen. We quickly saw a change of mindset towards education from the students, which was great not just for our learning model, but for other teachers and principals to see across the country.

“Then COVID was at our door and we had to put the project on hold until May 2020, when we needed more devices to help facilitate remote learning for the whole school. That’s when we made a switch to the Surface range.”

Athénée Royal La Roche-en-Ardenne had previously explored and tested a range of devices for its students back in 2019 and saw value in Microsoft Surface Go 2 for its range of pedagogy features and synergy with Microsoft 365.

With its 1:1 pilot project proving a success and COVID-19 social distancing restrictions now coming into place, the school needed to rapidly deploy over 400 Surface Go 2 devices to facilitate remote learning. A device management challenge that was simpler than expected for Matthieu Delvaux, IT coordinator and teacher at Athénée Royal La Roche-en-Ardenne.

“I used to work at a small company alongside three other people to manage a similar number of devices to what we have at the school now,” he says. “With Microsoft Intune and Autopilot, I didn’t need a team to support me as these tools make it really quick and easy to set-up each Surface device and manage them from my own workstation.”

To help onboard teachers and staff, the school created a selection of learning path courses that explored how to use the Surface devices and different applications that could enhance learning in the classroom. “The courses took a lot of time to create,” says Delvaux. “But we quickly needed our colleagues to start using these devices, and providing this kind of content was a great way to help them see what’s possible with the technology.”

“The Surface Go 2 was a device and learning solution that worked hand-in-hand together,” adds Diependaele. “It gave students the perfect interface for pedagogy content and a number of ways they could communicate with teachers and other classmates from home. The platform also offers great inclusivity options such as Immersive Reader, which are very important for the students to make everything available and accessible at any time through the device.”

Now as Athénée Royal La Roche-en-Ardenne enters 2022, many pedagogically basic practices have been recreated through the Surface Go 2 devices to enhance the digital experience of the entire school.

“Surface is being used every hour of every day,” explains Diependaele. “For instance, 90% of courses are now managed through OneNote Class Notebook in Teams, enabling teachers to push relevant content to students or colleagues and have that information available to access through a Surface device.

Dron adds, “my geography class was recently discussing natural catastrophes across the world and I asked each student to create a short visual story using their device. Everyone then published what they’d created on Flipgrid so we could watch them all together on the whiteboard.

“We also used virtual reality glasses so the students could experience a real natural catastrophe situation, which was really amazing and just some of the ways were now able to make learning much more immersive.”

Adopting these devices has also offered the school more accessibility tools that is allowing it to help support diverse learners – a big step for inclusion that is very important to Diependaele. “Having more inclusion for students with disabilities is a big change for Belgian schools, and the digital tools that Microsoft and these Surface devices offer have been a game changer,” she says.

“Things like using a touch screen instead of a pen or Immersive Reader to help understand a subject are making the learning experience equal for everyone. And as each student has their own device that they can take home, there is a sense of autonomy where you can choose to use the tools that make life easier for you – not the ones that the teacher tells you to use.”

As Athénée Royal La Roche-en-Ardenne now looks back over its transition to a 1:1 learning model, the school’s fresh pedagogy approach has become a leading example in digital education for schools in the WBE school network to follow.

“Over the last two years we’ve seen a big evolution in how these devices are being used, which is a real pillar of success for this project,” says Delvaux.

“From a content perspective like how my informatics class can now study C++, Python and many languages in a way that was never possible with the classical pedagogy. But also how having a digital presence in each classroom has changed the students’ mindset and opened new ways we can offer deeper learning experiences.”

“Our students can now learn the 21st century skills that are a necessary part of life nowadays in any profession,” Diependaele says in summary.

“In the past you only learnt digital skills if they were part of your subject. Now it's a totally different experience as we’re relating these skills to everyday life – and that’s going to be important in shaping the future for these kids.”