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Groundhog Day

brown squirrel

The thing I’ve always loved most during the 15 years I’ve been teaching is the interaction with students; you know, the repartee, the buzz of being ‘out front’, the pleasure from watching students ‘get ‘it!.  I have found lockdown a real challenge.  All these are missing!

The first week or so was fine, what with all the planning of the work for students to do at home, the setting up of new systems to manage it like Google Classroom, the support provided to and by colleagues.  The honeymoon though was well and truly over after the first week!  I felt more isolated, more lonely.  Every day blended into the other and felt like Groundhog Day!

So I stepped into the unknown to try and cope with the ‘groundhog day’ effect.  I needed to ‘talk’ to my students! First I marked some student work by recording audio and sending them the link, then I learnt how to embed a webcam video on my Google Classroom page so I could actually tell my students what I wanted them to do.  Feeling more confident, I then added a video to a PowerPoint that I wanted students to work through and tomorrow I’ll have run my first Google Meet with a class.  It’s not the same but it feels more like teaching!

I still wish I was back in school though!

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Working Together Far Apart – Maths

three assorted-color monkey plastic toys holding each other during daytime

TTRockstars and it’s sister site Numbots are currently free to all schools due to Covid-19.

I wanted to share some tips on one way that we are using this in the Unity Schools Partnership to allow our students to work together during this time.

Firstly setting up TTRockstars is easy.

Go to https://ttrockstars.com/page/covid19support  and sign up for a trial.

Once approved you can begin the process of uploading your students.  I would recommend using the CSV form to do this and entering in your own usernames and passwords.  This will make it easier to share the details with your students.

Once done you are ready for your students to start playing.

There are several bolt-ons available to you during this time, including sessions (being able to set specific tasks) and most importantly tournaments.

Battle of the bands allows you to set up tournaments between classes or year groups within your school.

Top of the rocks allows you to create tournaments with other schools.

Create a group for your trust or local schools and add the schools.  Now you can set up a competition and your group are automatically invited.  Each individual school can limit the classes that take part so you can have a challenge between year groups or across an entire school.

At the end of the tournament, we will present the winning schools with a TTRockstars cup, and the site automatically produces certificates for your top players and top classes for you to print off.

At Unity Schools Partnership we have 3 tournaments currently running.  One for all of our primary schools, and one each for year 7 and 8 at our Secondary schools.

We have made the tournament last for 12 days and so far after 3 days over 1 million correct answers have been recorded between the 3 competitions.  This is a fantastic response and clearly shows the impact that this has on our students.  They love representing their respective schools and get to play against each other in the arena or against the rest of the world in festival.

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Creative Language Learning

Hola LED signage

For many years, I would have considered myself to be an ICT evangelist – I’ve loved the idea of harnessing technology to engage learners, to make the content of what I am delivering more interesting, and certainly more relevant in the modern world of our students.  As a teacher of MFL, and certainly one growing up in the 1980s, my teachers used to tell me to listen to long wave radio, or buy a two day old copy of ‘Le Monde’ in order to access authentic language.  These days, it couldn’t be more different.  The Internet allows access instantly to fantastic resources and information.  So how has that been impacted in my teaching, and more so now when we are forced to teach remotely – here are a couple of the ‘game-changers’ that I have used in face to face teaching, but which are now becoming really useful tools in the virtual class – please feel free to comment on which tools you’ve been using!

Show Me

This iPad app has been really useful in allowing me to teach as I would be if I was at my whiteboard.  I’ve been able to create a lesson, talk over it, and record it, and then upload the presentation to YouTube, and then subsequently embed it into a Google Slides presentation. I’ve used it to try and explain grammatical concepts and it’s given my students the opportunity to watch and rewatch the presentation – they can then use the Google Classroom platform to ask me questions or seek clarification.

Available for Apple devices, free, and a paid premium version, which is 50% off whilst schools are closed

www.showme.com

Socrative

Whilst this has taken some planning, it’s been useful for me to conduct assessments with my students online – I have been able to set up quizzes, and then send students a code so they can complete it on their mobile devices or on a computer in real time.  Most of my students tend to complete the lesson at the time that the lesson would ordinarily be on their timetable, so it has been fun to see students competing with each other to get the most points.

You can see an example of how it works here;

Russell Stannard @russell1955 also demonstrates it here:

Free for individual teachers, with Apple & Android apps and web based access

www.socrative.com

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Primary Micro Recommendations

boy wearing gray vest and pink dress shirt holding book
Book Creator app icon

Book Creator for iPad

A great, easy to use iPad app which helps create interactive and engaging eBooks for pupils. They can contain text, images and videos and be exported as pdf and ePub documents or can be published on the book creator website to be read on any device.

Online and for Apple, supports 6 family members per license, upgrades and support during school closures.

Book Creator – bring creativity to your classroom

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Hello world, how are you?

Firstly thanks to the online EdTech community, and specifically Esam @soslearning for the idea for this first blog post title and KOBU Agency on Unsplash for the image.

This a newly developed site for a community of teachers and school leaders in the East of England to support other schools in their well considered use of technology.

We recognise every time we try something new that we are all learners, but believe in the power of stories and sharing our experiences to help transform lives in schools and the communities they serve.

As this site develops and we start to connect to other schools we would encourage you, whoever you are, and whatever your role in harnessing technology in schools to:

And most importantly at a time of social distancing, please consider leaving us a brief comment below, in response to the question:

How are you today?

And how is your current use of educational technology?!