The Carl Orff School Selected for Pilot Digital Learning Project

Dießen – The Carl Orff Middle School (COS) on the way to becoming the “digital school of the future”. The Bavarian Ministry of Education selected them for the promising pilot project. And that makes the school in the market town a pioneer in the field of digital education. Under the direction of teacher Mario Zahn, the project will be introduced in the 7th and 8th grades of the coming school year and promises to prepare the boys and girls even more for the digital future.

“After a successful application, we received good news from the State Ministry for Education and Culture in July,” reports Rector Michael Kramer. The COS is thus one of around 350 state special needs schools, middle schools, junior high schools, business schools and grammar schools in the Free State that have been selected for the pilot project for the next school year. There are 29 secondary schools in the administrative district of Upper Bavaria.

The COS is looking forward to the implementation of the project with great pleasure, says Kramer. It aims to promote digital skills and the use of modern technologies in education. “The aim of the project is the implementation of modern concepts for learning with mobile devices, for teacher training, to strengthen the educational partnership between parents and school in questions of media education and for a suitable procurement process.” The students participating in the project receive a ,1:1 -Furnishing’. The end device is subsidized by the Free State with 300 euros and becomes the property of the parents.

Mario Zahn, who was one of the first teachers to teach an iPad class from grades 7 to 10 at the COS, will accompany this innovative educational project at the Carl Orff Middle School and contribute his expertise to the implementation. “Our goal is to offer the students a modern education that prepares them for the challenges of the digital world,” describes the teacher. The pilot project will make it possible to deepen innovative teaching methods and to integrate the use of modern technologies into lessons in a meaningful way. Zahn: “I am confident that this will increase the learning motivation and performance of our students”.

Dual digital

The “Digital School of the Future” project correlates very well with the “DigitalPakt Bayern”, which has an order volume of around 151,000 euros in the Dießen elementary school and around 162,500 euros in the middle school. 90 percent of this project is financed by subsidies from the Free State of Bavaria. The planned infrastructural measures – including WLAN expansion, laser projectors, interactive board systems of the latest generation – are to be started this year, Kramer announces.

The headmaster is convinced of the advantages of the project and sees it as an opportunity to turn the Carl Orff School into a “flagship project for digital education in the region”. “We are very excited about the opportunity to be part of this groundbreaking pilot project,” said Kramer. “Digitization offers immense opportunities for education, and we want to offer our students the best possible conditions to fully develop their skills.” We are very excited about the results and are sure that “our students will benefit from this project in the long term. “

By the way: This school year, the COS has already taken part in a study “Digital Media in Schools” by the LMU Munich, the findings of which will also flow into this project. Rector Kramer concludes: “With its commitment to digital education, the Carl Orff Middle School shows that it is willing to adapt the educational path of its students to the requirements of modern society.”