Blue Hills College is a fully fledged e-learning school which uses:

•  E-textbooks instead of paper textbooks

•  Electronic messaging notices instead of printed circulars and notice boards

•  The intranet as a primary resource

•  On-line teaching and learning tools

•  Electronic collaboration tools for group work

•  On line testing and grading

To fully exploit this technology every student at Blue hills uses his/her own tablet. 
We prefer tablets as compared to laptops or smart phones because tablets:

•  Have a longer battery life

•  Are lighter and more portable

•  Are more robust

•  Have access to many free apps

PHASE 1: E-BOOKS OR E-PUBS

E-books or E-pub is short for electronic book or electronic publication respectively. Since its implementation, it means that instead of using paper printed books, all learners at Blue Hills College use their books downloaded and stored in their tablets in electronic form.

THE PROCESS

EBooks / ePubs from the publishers are downloaded and stored in the school server dedicated for this purpose. All learners purchase these electronic books and store them in their tablets. The textbook fee paid to the school at the beginning of the year is used for this purpose. The tablet requirement and specifications In order to purchase eBooks or ePubs a learner must have a tablet with the following minimum specifications:

• Dual Core or Quad Core CPU at 1.7GHz processing speed

•  16GB or 32GB internal storage space or higher

•  4.GB RAM or higher

•  iOS 12 should be installed. Device: iPad 2 and up

•  Android 7 or higher

•  A-Grade WIFI components

•  Battery life that can last up to 8 hours during video play

•  Please note that it is strongly recommended that branded devices like Samsung, Lenovo, Acer, Apple, to name a few is purchased.

 The school is negotiating with one local supplier who can tailor make our tablets at a very low price. If this succeeds you will be advised.

TEACHER DEVELOPMENT & INTERACTIVE CONTENT

On the school server educators have access to content they can use to enhance the learning process. In the MIEBOOKS application educators are able to upload content which learners can access at no cost as long as they use the school Wi-Fi.

If learners are to do this from home they should be connected to the internet. Blue Hills College has used this platform to transform the teaching and learning process in the classroom. Tablets at Blue Hills College are used beyond the eBooks/ePubs.

They enable learners to receive notes & videos from educators in an electronic form. E-learning has taken away all the photocopying which characterizes the current method of disseminating information to learners.

Learning and teaching at Blue Hills College in the near future will become a paperless exercise except for test & exercise books.