Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009

STUDENTS AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN HALLE ARE LEARNING WITH THE HELP OF INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARDS. BILFINGER BERGER HAS BROUGHT THE DIGITAL WORLD ONE STEP CLOSER.

No more wiping the board, no more smelly sponges flying through the room during break times. Paul, 13, and Paula, 12, are happy about that. And for Vanessa, 12, there is one less errand to run: “We don’t have to fetch chalk from the staff room any more!”

The Giebichenstein high school in Halle near Leipzig has done away with chalkboards. Instead the classrooms are now equipped with high-tech whiteboards on which students and staff can write with special pens or even with their finger tips. They can also use the boards to surf the Internet and display films, photos and charts. The boards are connected to a computer and serve as a huge interactive screen. Eighth grade students Paul, Paula and Vanessa reckon they are “really cool”—not just because they don’t squeak when you write on them.

Paula remembers how last year she could only show a painstakingly prepared PowerPoint presentation on a small laptop because the beamer and the laptop were not compatible. “No one saw any of it,” the disappointment is still raw. That doesn’t happen any more. The whiteboards alone have taken over from laptops, beamers, overhead projectors, TVs and DVD players. With a display that measures 174 by 135 centimeters, every presentation is clearly visible, even from the back row.

The school has 31 of these boards: “That must make us one of the best equipped schools in Germany,” says principal Thomas Gaube, 46. There are still a few glitches with the new technology: “One of our teachers recently managed to delete the entire board by mistake,” Vanessa giggles. The class had a good laugh, but then it was the students who put the desperate teacher out of her misery: “One click and it was all back again!”

On the other hand, 47-year-old Uwe Mielke, the eighth grade German teacher, aims to keep a knowledge step ahead of the students, even in the digital age. After lessons he stays behind to explore what else the whiteboards are capable of. “I’m a long way from understanding all of it,” he says. “The whiteboards have been very well received by our staff,” principal Gaube agrees. “The teachers can save everything on the board, take it home on a USB memory stick and call it back up for their next lesson.”

NO CHALK, NO WASHBASIN
Chance may have played a small part in introducing this new technology, but it was mainly the result of intelligent project planning. Last year Bilfinger Berger completely redeveloped one of the school buildings, renovated another and built a large gymnasium. The €3,000 whiteboards weren’t actually included in the specification. But because the school expressed a desire to have them, Bilfinger Berger project manager Lutz Löhn sat down and reworked the figures. It occurred to him that: “If you don’t want chalkboards, you don’t need water pipes and washbasins in the classrooms.” As a result Löhn saved enough on the modernization to convince the school authority to spend the money on whiteboards.

Over the past two years Löhn has been responsible for a total of nine modernization projects and new construction at eight sites in Halle at a cost of some €55 million. A sum that the cash-strapped city would have been hard put to find. Which is why Halle opted for a public private partnership (PPP). Bilfinger Berger has not just planned, executed and financed the works, but also remains responsible for managing and maintaining the buildings for the next 25 years. The city pays for the service in monthly installments.

AN EXAMPLE TO FOLLOW
According to Mayor Dagmar Szabados, the efficiency gain for the city amounts to 19 percent. Or, to put it another way, if the local authority had contracted the work out in the traditional way, the project would have been almost a fifth more expensive. “With the help of excellent partners in the private sector, we have succeeded in providing better learning conditions for our children,” Mayor Szabados says. Both preparation and implementation were exemplary and may well “substantially influence future projects at state and federal level,” the Mayor believes.

STUDENTS DESIGN THEIR SCHOOL
“It was a special project for us as well,” says project manager Lutz Löhn. With five elementary schools redeveloped as part of the PPP project, Bilfinger Berger has since entered into an educational partnership and provided the schools with technology packs. With the tools, wood and other materials now available, the children can learn by experiment and discover for themselves what makes a tower stand up—or fall down. At the Giebichenstein high school, students were even allowed—under the guidance of Bilfinger Berger—to design the exterior of the new gymnasium. The graffiti-influenced facade was penned by 15 students, with the help of their art teacher. The idea was that if students were allowed to design their school for themselves, they would be less likely to damage it afterwards. Now Vanessa, Paul and Paula hope that their school will remain as nice as it is now. “We used to have scratched mirrors in the toilets and graffiti smeared everywhere,” says Paul. “And there was mold growing in the corners,” Vanessa adds. Not a fit state for this venerable school building with its imposing facade and broad staircases, on which the students dash up and down on their way to and from lessons in the classrooms with their “cool” whiteboards.

NO CHANGES TO THE LESSON PLANS
The curriculum, on the other hand, remains unchanged. Paula stands in front of the board and scrolls through her notes on the plot of Gottfried Keller’s novella “Clothes make the man.” Summing up the 130-year-old story in her own words is something that digital technology cannot do for her. Understanding and retelling the plot is rather more complicated than operating the board, as her teacher Uwe Mielke readily agrees.

(Text: Asmus Hess, Photos: Kathrin Harms)
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009