Smart School

How We Brought Digital Transformation to Our School

Our journey toward becoming a Smart School began with a simple goal — to make learning more engaging, accessible, and relevant to every student. We realized that digital tools could open new doors to creativity and collaboration, but only if we used them with purpose.

The first step was training teachers to feel confident and comfortable with technology. We organized regular workshops on using smartboards, learning management systems (LMS), and digital classroom platforms such as Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Instead of focusing only on the tools, we focused on how technology could enhance teaching methods and student participation.

Next, we digitized our lesson plans and resources, allowing students to access materials anytime and anywhere. This shift encouraged independent learning and supported students with different learning styles. We also introduced interactive assessments, educational apps, and multimedia presentations, which made lessons more dynamic and enjoyable.

Another key milestone was involving parents and the community. Through digital communication channels, we kept parents informed and engaged in their children’s progress. The sense of transparency and collaboration strengthened the school community as a whole.

Most importantly, we cultivated a growth mindset among teachers and students. We learned that digital transformation isn’t just about using technology — it’s about changing how we think about teaching and learning. Today, our school stands as a living example of how innovation, teamwork, and passion can turn challenges into opportunities for growth.Knowledge First Television program about the Smart School ConceptWhat are important characteristics of an educator in the 21st century?

Grand Finale of Smart School 2019/2020

Smart School Competitions 2019/2020

To evaluate the progress achieved by these Ambassadors, their peers and the schools overall as well as to recognize and reward those who have shown exceptional performances, the Nenasa Smart School Awards 2019 was organized. After preliminary round presentations in four categories, namely Smart Teacher, Smart Content, Smart Ambassador and Smart School, finalists were selected based on the verdicts of judge panels consisting of officials from Dialog Axiata PLC and the respective Provincial departments of Education. The Grand Finale of the competition was held on 1st February 2020 at the Dialog Axiata Auditorium in Colombo.

Teachers who got selected for the Grand Finale battled it out by showcasing their skills, dedication and resulting achievements through carefully crafted presentations and videos. The winners of each category are as follows;

Smart Teacher Category: 

• First Place: Mr. G. A. Madhawa Udithapriya Wijesekara from St. Anne’s Balika Maha Vidyalaya 
• Second Place: Ms. E.M.K.Udayakanthi from Sri Dharmaloka Madya Mahavidyalaya – Kegalle
• Third Place: Ms. Mala Lalani Rajapaksha from Nugawela Central College – Kandy
• 
  

 Smart Content: 

• First Place: Ms. P.S.Dheepani from Denipitiya Maha Vidayalaya – Matara
• Second Place: Ms. N.L.Wickramarathna – Walagamba Maha Vidayalaya – Kegalle 
• Third Place: Ms. Mala Lalani Rajapaksha from Nugawela Central Collage – Kandy
• 
  

Smart Ambassador: 

• First Place: Ms. I.B.C Imadya from Rivisanda Mahavidyalaya – Kegalle
• Second Place: Ms. Shashiprabha Arunamali Hewanayake from Marassana Maha Vidyalaya – Kandy
• Third Place: Mr. A.M Rajah from Sulaimaniya Muslim Maha Vidyalaya – Kegalle

Smart School: 

• First Place: Nugawela Central College – Kandy
• Second Place: Denipitiya  Maha Vidayalaya – Matara
• Third Place: Marassana Maha Vidyalaya – Kandy

Celebration at school for the winning of Smart School Championship

MIE Experts from Nugawela Central College

I'm proudly introduce, the most number of #MIEExperts #SriLanka representing government schools are from #NugawelaCentralCollege #Kandy with the Principal , Mr.Sasanka Tennakoon and the deputy & vice principals of the school.We can learn and share innovative teaching practices with other educators around the world as #MIEExperts #changeMakers #MicrosoftEDU

To become a MIEExpert is not an easy task for an educator.I guided them along a correct path and the following teachers were applied for to become MIEExperts and eight teacxhers were selected as the MIEExperts.

Smart School2017/2018

Microsoft Educator Center

Professional development courses to follow to acquire knowledge and skills for learning and teaching as a smart educator and to obtain certificates and badges.

Some lessons created by me using o365-PowerPoint Presentations

A video lesson created using PowToon App

An activity done using Kahoot

Using FlipGrid

 

Knowledge First Television program about the Smart School Concept

Grand Finale of Smart School 2019/2020

5th & the final Meetup of Smart Ambassadors in Kandy on 12th July 2019

The session started with a lecture by Mrs. Madara Nuwarapaksha about child rights & the cyber security..It was a very important session and a timely topic.Then Mr Kanaka from Dialog gave a speech about Gender Equality- Sustainable Development Goals.              .

Then Mr.Ruwan from guru.lk ended his training with the experinces of Virtual Reality, Aumented Reality and a description about Interactive tools,Lifelique,Sensavis,Phet and introducing some sites for kids.And finally introduced how to apply to become MIEExperts.

4th Meetup of Smart Ambassadors in Kandy on 28th June 2019

The session started around 8.30 am as usual and the first event was to find out the number of badges and the points earned as MIEs @Microsoft Educator Community. There were number of teachers who earned many badges, but the 9 out of the best 10 were from my school, Nugawela Central College.I'm so happy as all of them are from my group. 

• 1st Place     -Mala Lalani Rajapaksha 

• 2nd Place   - Mallika Piyaseeli

• 3rd place    - Sankalpana Ekanayake

• 4th Place    - Kalpani Rajanayake

• 5th Place    - Iresha Maruddana

                     

The most interesting session was the Creating Videos using Powtoons by Mr Nimesh.It was a very interesting session as we learned it for the first time. and we uploaded the lessons prepared to Youtube.

                                   

Then we created Teams as Mr. Dulpa introduced the Microsoft tool Teams. Created forms to collect data too.Then there was a video lesson about cloud computing and one drive.And how to scan a page using a smart phone.

And a time allocated to talk about Sustainable development goals by Mr.Nawaka under environment pollution and how to prevent in one earth giving a helping hand to protect it for our future generation.

I conducted sessions to create office 365 accounts for the teachers and the students.

Mr.Ruwan from guru.lk visited our school and conducted a session about the Learning Management System(LMS).
  

                       Smart School 3rd Meet Up Held on 17th May

Google Maps/Google Earth for smart classroom teaching

Digital Story Telling- Sway Presentations in O365

After grouping gave an opportunity to spin the wheel by a click and selected a topic to prepare a Sway Presentation in a group by sharing.


Sending emails,sharing embed code and to view and edit a sway were very interesting activities and it was a day full of  many activities.

Conducted group sessions to introduce how to make sway presentations, sending emails , how to use Google maps etc

Smart School Program -2nd Meet Up

The 2nd Meet up  was held on 22nd of April at ICBT Kandy and we participated for that successful training .

Introduced  the Learning Management System

• What is an LMS?

• Benefits of an LMS.

How to create O365 accounts for teachers and students to log in to the Guru Smart School LMS.

We're not hesitated to get a selfie during a break while we were doing our group work.

 

Our custom plan for implementing Digital Education Transformation.

Finding solutions to create an intelligent environment, smart integrated security, facilities management etc

I conducted Ambassadors meetings on every Tuesday to discuss schedule of work for the week

Discussed about the LMS & the custom plan for implementing Digital Education Transformation.

We conducted sessions for small groups of teachers

1st Smart School Program in Kandy on 14th Feb 2019

Teacher Training session was started at 8.30 @ICBT ,Kandy by the Headstart team.Mr. Ruwan initiated the program by introducing the Smart School Programme to the Central Province.Assistant director of Education (IT & Planning)Mrs.Priyanthi Kodithuwakku addressed the gathering.Miss Hasini from headstart introduced the digital education transformation of Education and tools and technologies provide by Headstart,Microsoft and dialog.

During the tea break prepared an origami creation of a bat and wrote hints about me and sent it to the friends in other schools.The friend I met was Adeepa from Girls High School.

The session on ICT Basics, how to create blogs using blogger,sinhala typing e.g.Unicode,helakuru and speech typing were conducted by Senal.
Final session was to register at MIE Community and to earn badges through the courses in the learning path.

Highlights of the event

Five pillars of Educational transformation

I shared my experiences as a Smart Teacher with the media and the representative from Dialog Axiata.

Group sessions were conducted at school after creating accounts at MIE community.

Introducing to teachers in groups

 

Smart ambassadors of the school

Then we started creating Microsoft accounts  and the Office365 accounts with the teachers

The teachers are under the groups of ambassadors and they were assigned for the following tasks.

• Conducting awareness programs for the teachers about Smart School Program

• Create Microsoft accounts

• Create office 365 accounts

• Introducing Microsoft Educator Community to to the teachers

• To follow courses, earn badges and certificates

• How to use office 365 tools in the classroom teaching

• Prepare lessons using power point and sway

• Prepare questions for the question bank+++

Created accounts at o365 and at outlook.com

Creating accounts for the staff

After the big event one representative from Headstart visited all the schools to see the information and facilities available at schools and our school Nugawela Central College was selected as one.

My initial step was to introduce about the program to the sectional heads of the school with Mr .Gihan, the ICT in charge of the school.After the 1st Meet Up we conducted a meeting with the sectional heads of our school and introduced the program to them.

I Introduced the the main objectives of this program to the staff of our school

The principal of the school organized a staff meeting to introduce about the program to the school.

SMART SCHOOL PROGRAM

The smart School Program was introduced to the Central Province at a grand event organized by Headstart,guru.lk and Microsoft Sri Lanka @ Queens Hotel,Kandy..The officials from the Provincial Education Department ,the principals and the teachers were invited to the event.Mrs.Champa Rathnayake and Mrs. Lalani Rajapaksha were also invited by them as pioneers to the event.

Provincial directors,Headstart team and other officials introducing the smart school concept

The principals and the ICT teachers of schools

Smart Teachers participation

Filling the details of schools

Expected project time line

Transformation Plan

As a Smart Teacher

Participated at the Women in IT Forum conducted by FITIS 

Participation at Hour of Code session conducted by Ministry of Education

Sharing teaching learning environment with smart educators in foreign countries

Students are preparing Ms PowerPoint presentations

Receiving a certificate for the work done as an Microsoft Educator ambassador at school

Winners of Smart School /Smart Teacher Championship

https://www.dailynews.lk/2017/04/26/business/114147/gurulk-partners-combank-microsoft-create-65-smart-schools

Microsoft O365 Tools

Microsoft Excel for results analysis

Results analysis of government examinations and term tests are done using the workbooks in Microsoft Excel.

One Note for classroom

Basic Personal Computer (PC) Tutorial - To Know PC Componets System Part...

Learning Management System (LMS)

What is an LMS?

Learning Management System is web based platform which allows educators to store, arrange and share the teaching , learning materials with the students in a systematic manner.
ඉගෙනුම් කළමනාකරණ පද්ධතිය යනු වෙබ් පාදක වේදිකාවක් වන අතර එමඟින් ගුරුවරුන් හට ඉගැන්වීම්, ඉගෙනුම් ද්‍රව්‍ය ක්‍රමානුකූලව ගබඩා කිරීමට, සැකසීමට හා බෙදා ගැනීමට ඉඩ සලසයි. 

 

SDG Projects with Educators - Collaborative Projects

Project 1 - Climate Action By Koen Timmer, Belgium

100,000 students  
100 countries  
1 mission

To be launched in October 2019 for the third consecutive year.
Imagine a world in which youngsters across 6 continents connect virtually and solve one of the world's most pressing challenges: Climate Change. In October students aged 6-22 will collaborate on climate change topics over the course of four exciting weeks: they will study causes and effects, will try to solve issues and take action. Their and societies' mindsets will be changed.

I started doing the above SDG projects with my co-educators and students for the year 2019-2020.

• Climate Action

• Your Voice is Ours

• WE School

Climate action project is by Koen Timmer from Belgium , Your Voice is Ours by Angeles Soriano from Spain and WE school from Canada.
Project 1 - Climate Action
Project Coordinator : Mrs.Mala Lalani Rajapaksha

• Ms.Nimani Basnayake

• Mrs.Mallika Piyaseeli

• Mrs.Sandhya Samarawickrama

I introduced about these projects at first and had  a discussion to follow with.

This project is supported by H .Dalai Lama, UN Foundation, Dr. Jane Goodall and world leaders.

During the past years it was featured by National Geographic, BBC and 40 more national media.

This year, as part of the project, we will do a global tree planting. Will you join PlantED?

•  ICT of Learning

Students will use tools like Office Mix and phones to create videos and will use several tools to create short articles (Eg: Sway, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, etc). During one specific week they will use one specific new tool (Minecraft, Lifeliqe, etc) so they will discover a new tool. During this week all participating countries will discover the capacity of many new tools.

Quick start guides are available for all tools used during this project:

·       Sway

·       OneNote

·       Minecraft

• Real world problem solving

About two thirds of countries in the developing regions have achieved gender parity in primary education.

Lots of countries have been building walls or are planning to. What causes wars? The rate of children leaving primary school in conflict affected countries reached 50 per cent in 2011, which accounts to 28.5 million children, showing the impact of unstable societies on one of the major goals of the post 2015 agenda: education.

• Self-regulation

Although this project lasts no more than 5 weeks, the learning activity is long term. Students are allowed to assess their own work and the work of peers.

• Skilled communication

The communication are guided to produce well-developed and organized communication on local and global scale. They will communicate in local language with each other in their own group, between groups and in English with the other participating countries: communication on 3 different levels.

Climate Action Project

Week 1

Exploration causes

During the first week my students have to focus on the causes for climate change. At the end of the week they have to create a small video in which the students explain what they learned. It's always great to hear in which countries they live during the introduction of the video.

Students are discussing about the causes for climate change

Drawing arts to show the values of environment.

Holding posters to show the causes of climate change.

Week 2

Climate Action Project

Students are discussing about the causes for climate change

Drawing arts to show the values of environment.

Holding posters to show the causes of climate change.

1.   Videos

Please make sure videos are created in landscape mode (not portrait) and are no more than 5, max 7 minutes. They don't have to be really professional.

Once finished we suggest to publish videos on YouTube and publish the YouTube video on our Climate Action Project website. https://www.climate-action.info/user

Watching videos from students living in other continents/countries is a crucial part of this project.

How to publish a video to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30cXjHMAKro

How to publish a YouTube video to the Climate Action website: https://youtu.be/AbhT1oj06fg

 2 . photos

We'd love to see what's happening in your classroom. Please take some pictures from your students while they are discussing, creating, working. Pictures can be published here:

 https://www.climate-action.info/impressions

Week 2 Effects   - What are the effects of Climate Change?

Week 3  Solutions - What are potential solutions? Students try to create prototypes

Week 4  Action!- Interaction

 

Students take Action and have live Interactions with global peers.

 

Project 2 - Your Voice is Our Voice #YourVoiceIsOurs

A Global Project Focusing On Gender Equality and Equality Education SDGs –By Angeles Soriyano, Spain
Learning Objectives:

·       Learn how to develop 21st Century Skills through the use of digital tools.

·       Discover the types of educational systems in your County

·       Explore the educational and work opportunities 

·       Activity Description

 The Our Voice Is Your Voice Project will focus on SDG4 Quality Education and SDG5 Gender Equality. Students will be able to brainstorm, discuss, explore, create, reflect and share their findings through the use of different digital tools. With the mentoring of Gloria Enrique (@MissGEnrique) and Àngels Soriano (@Angelssoriano74) Learning Intentions To Investigate and to describe the educational system of your country. To discover the educational and work opportunities, To analyse the importance of gender when deciding educational and professional paths.

Student Ages

Ages 8-10, Ages 14-18, Ages 18+

Category

Careers and Management, Safe & Civil Schools, World Languages

Languages  : English

ISTE Standards

ISTE Standard 7a: Students use digital tools to connect with learners from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, engaging with them in ways that broaden mutual understanding and learning.

Learning Activity 1: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Introduction of the project. Students will introduce themselves and share their future plans using Flipgrid.

As an initial activity the teacher will introduce the project to their students through a presentation about their educational experiences and professional choices and will pose the initial questions of the project:

·       What do they want to be when they grow up?

·       What are their expectations regarding future employment plans?

·       How is their education system?

·       What will the educational systems of other countries be like? (Students will answer these questions on Flipgrid.)

Learning Activity 2: Your Educational System

Presentation of the educational system of your country using a digital tool.

In pairs or teams of four, the students will investigate the educational system of their country and prepare a presentation using an edtech tool of your choice (for example PowerPoint, Sway, Video Editor, ...). The presentation will show the characteristics of the educational system of their

country.

Learning Activity 3:

·       The Voice of Our Mothers and Grandmothers

·       Research activity creating a survey in Microsoft Forms

 

Students will plan and create a survey in Microsoft Forms. They will have to distribute it to about 10-15 people if possible (not just family members).

·       Do you think that our mothers or grandmothers could have studied what they wanted?

Learning Activity 4: Listening to All Our Voices

Analysis and presentation of results using a digital tool.

With the data from the survey and their initial research on the educational system, students will analyze the results, concentrating on the differences consequence from the different time periods and the influence of gender on their educational and professional choices.

 

Through a digital tool (for example, Sway, PowerPoint, Video Editor App, Flipgrid, ...) students will present the conclusions bearing in mind that the project is global and that education is a powerful weapon transforming lives.

 

Learning Activity 5: Share Your Voice

 

Project Conclusion: Skype connection during the week of May 8.

 

The week of May 8th, the date on which International Women's Day is celebrated, is a good time to connect with other classes around the world and share your projects using Skype.

 

Share the experiences of your students on the blog and find other schools with which to exchange the results and stories that students have found during this global project.

 

Project 3 –WE School ,Canada

You have successfully signed up for the WE Schools program. We have received your application for WE Day Toronto, and you have been placed on the waitlist for tickets.

 

Our WE Day Team will do our best to accommodate your school/group as tickets become available. We will be in touch shortly and will keep you posted on the status of your application.

 

We look forward to your participation in the WE Schools program - the 2019/2020 school year will be an exciting one! We are eager for your group to investigate and learn about local and global causes and take action on their passions. For example, join us in learning how to create an impact with WE Walk for Water!

 

Every day girls must walk hours to collect clean water. When communities have access to clean water, girls can attend school, parents can run sustainable farms and families can break the cycle of poverty.

 

Join us for our international one-day fundraiser, just $25 gives one person clean water for life. We are the generation who can make a difference!

 

WE can’t wait to share and celebrate the impacts your WE Schools group will accomplish in the year to come!

 

Start taking action now and check out our kit on Microsoft OneNote to access our service-learning campaign resources.

 

Your WE Schools Program Manager will be reaching out to you soon. If you have questions about how to reach them, please contact weschools@WE.org.

 

Thank you,

The WE Schools Team

WE Schools 2019/2020 Registration Summary

Name           Lalani Rajapaksha

Email           ramlrajapakshabcc@outlook.com

Phone          0718201064

Name           Sri Lanka (Central)

School                   Nugawela Central College

                              School Lane

                              Kandy, Central

                              21000

                              Sri Lanka

                              9481491374

Principal                S.Tennakoon

                              sasankatennakoonncc@outlook.com

WE Day Application Summary

Event           WE Day Toronto

Status           Wait List