Wearable Tech Policy for School

At Berkhamsted, we are committed to pupils using mobiles devices to support their learning through appropriate use in school and at home. Alongside this, we believe that we have an educational responsibility to help young people manage how and when they use new technologies and thus have always taken an approach that we would rather 'educate' than 'ban',

So working within this context, the Senior Leadership Team this afternoon grappled with the thorny issue of how we approach the issue of 'Wearable Technology' (such as the Apple Watch) in school. It was a thoughtful and lively debate:

On one level, it would appear that there is little difference between having a fully connected mobile device in one's pocket and on one's wrist, so why the fuss?

Well, we decided that there are two reasons why a watch poses additional issues:

1. First, from a teacher's perspective, wearable technology is very difficult to police.  When necessary, it is relatively easy for a teacher to say 'your phone needs to be in your pocket/bag', it becomes much more difficult to ask the class to remove their watches.
2. Secondly, from a pupil's perspective, wearable technology is less easy to ignore. The buzz of a phone on vibrate mode in a pocket or bag is out of sight and sometimes earshot - whereas the temptation to catch up on a text/ or social media update is almost impossible to ignore when it's on your wrist.

So, we took a middle way: not banning, but discouraging wearable technology in school: our mobile device policy now has an additional paragraph as follows:

Berkhamsted School Wearable Tech Policy:

1. If Wearable Tech is worn in lessons or in public areas around the school, the ‘Do not disturb’/’flight mode’ should be activated.
2. Wearable Tech must not be worn in exams as this will result in disqualification. Exam Regulations do not allow any device capable of mobile communication. 
3. Our strong advice is that pupils should not bring Wearable Tech devices to school, because they are likely to be a greater distraction than other mobile devices. 
4. If a Wearable Tech device is deemed by the teacher to be causing a distraction around school, it is liable to confiscation until the end of the school day.

A personal tribute to a Wartime Headmaster and those Berkhamstedianswho died in WW1

Any Headteacher who has been in a school at the time of the death of a pupil or of a recent leaver will know the sense of loss and helplessness that grips a community.  Every headteacher dreads the time when they have to stand up and announce to the school that a pupil or former pupil has died. Death is an alien concept to young people, who on the whole still think that they are immortal. The young are not equipped to cope with death - and rightly so. It is different for the Common Room - death in a community hits them hard.  Teachers, with the distance that comes both the age and role, know how to mourn and grieve, but grapple with the 'why?'s and 'what might have been's more than most.  Schools are no place for the dead.

So when I reflect on the impact of World War One on Berkhamsted School, my mind turns to what it must have been like for Charles Greene, who was Headmaster at that time . . .

Charles Greene (Headmaster 1911-27) had the unenviable task of reading out to the school in chapel the names of those former pupils who had died throughout the course of the war - and indeed beyond. Some 232 Old Berkhamstedians died in those years. He almost certainly knew personally the majority of the boys who died, as had been at Berkhamsted since 1889 as a teacher, Housemaster of St John’s Boarding House and Deputy Head, prior to becoming Headmaster. 

Charles Greene annotated the Prefects’ Book, which each prefect signed on taking office, in red ink recording the military career and when each boy fell. No one can read those words without feeling his pain and that of the community that he led.  

Those of us who have had on occasion to lead a school through the death of a pupil can only imagine the pain that Charles Greene felt as week after week he walked to the lectern to deliver more tragic news. Furthermore, there is little doubt that this will have had a significant impact on Charles Greene's home life and thus on the formative years of his youngest son, Graham (b. 1910), Berkhamsted's most famous Old Boy, growing up as he did in the Headmaster's accommodation in School House.

It is perhaps no surprise that Greene's is the darkest gloomiest portrait that hangs in Old Hall.  The shadow of WW1 falls over 

This week I started a personal tribute to the Old Berkhamstedians who died in WW1. A hundred years on, like Charles Greene before me, I shall be announcing the deaths of OBs in the assembly following the day they fell. 

We have set up a Berkhamsted School WW1 Twitter feed @BerkhamstedWW1 to commemorate individually those who fell on the anniversary of their death in the instances where the details are known.
And so "we shall remember them."