EdTech that unites the whole school community

I wrote in April about the home learning resources that we had developed as a school. This was when we were in the depths of lockdown and partial opening. We are now as of writing fully open, not knowing whether we are facing individual absence, partial closure or lockdown. There has been much talk of a ‘circuit breaker’, but if it is to be believed that it will come during a scheduled holiday, it should have limited impact on what we do. Either way, we will go full MacGyver with EdTech to make it work.

One thing I have come to realise since the school has returned is that you can’t beat good, old fashioned, face-to-face communication. I have learned so much about the anxieties and the concerns of parents by getting out and speaking to people. Similarly, I have been told that this approach helps people to better understand our actions and motives as a school.

Recently, I have had to share complex information regarding COVID. I have learned quickly that a short video helps to explain much more than a letter. The ability to show the tone and intention with facial expressions and body language. Nothing fancy is used for this. Most of the time I use my phone camera because it allows me to stick it straight onto Facebook via the pages/business suite app. If you have a school Facebook page and don’t use that app, then DO. It allows you to keep work and personal profiles separate.

When I need to record and edit things in a little more detail I have a cheap HD webcam and USB mic set up in my office. There is a nice video editor built into Windows. It isn’t brilliant, but it does the job. I keep a template for collective worship and any other videos I need to make. That way I can drop in the video that I need to record and you can be rendered and posted within minutes.

We are choosing to complete our parents evenings this time.  Although this use of new technologies can be tricky, it adds up later on top of a phone call where parents are maintaining the face-to-face contact with teachers. 

Going back to lockdown, our four stage plan really helped, using a range of online and offline resources that parents and children can access. That was great for lockdown as parents and children could attempt the work at their own pace. They could choose how much (or little) of the work they wanted to engage with.

Now the world has changed…

As schools, we are required to have blended learning in place from the 22^nd November.  By law we have to provide blended learning from the children’s first day of absence. Now we not only need to provide home learning, but it needs to mirror closely what happens in the classroom.

As our home learning via Google Drive is set up, we will continue to use it as our school community has already learned how to do so. Where we will differ is to upload the staff’s planning directly onto there with any resources they prepare for the week as part of their usual routines. We will not be asking staff to create additional resources.

Some teachers will be recording videos if there is a large proportion of the class missing from school. We have continued to decide against live Zoom lessons as there are still some doubts over safeguarding. For those interested, this will be through laptop webcam or via PowerPoint narration. This allows you to record the show as you run it and then either save as a show or more usefully a video. 

We haven’t bothered with Google Classroom, not because it isn’t good but because the children are used to sharing one login per year group. They also have personal folders as part of that login. It becomes an online drive, and nothing more. Keep it simple. This has enabled most parents to access it. We hope that this will be the case when we need to make it available to them again. The one change is that we are going to ask that any work that can be completed online is dropped into their own folders by the end of the day so the teachers can assess. Where they are working on paper we will ask that it is returned so that we can quarantine it for 72 hours before taking a look.

What about those without access to devices and printers, I hear you ask?  

We always have print and prepare packs of work for children in this position. We have in the past delivered these to some families, though this depends greatly on the level of need and restrictions. 

The hardest thing about this all is building on shifting sands. I talked in the first article about “failing to prepare, was preparing to fail”. However, how do you prepare, when you don’t know what you are preparing for? Will it be one child, a class, a year or everyone? We just don’t know.

This is why I am using the Google Drives as a mirror for the excellent work that is happening in school already. We can ensure that families are exposed to the same planning and resources as they have in the classroom. Sadly, the experience will never be 100% the same unless we can find a way to clone and transport out teachers to 30 houses. 

One final thought. Maybe the future of teaching will be holograms. It may sound like some kind of sci-fi pipe dream, but the tech already exists in a form. At Bett in 2017, I experienced Humagrams:

You never know, we could all be beaming into a living room near you soon. Mind you, the thought of me appearing in living rooms may be enough to put people off blended learning for life!

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Tim Head
Tim is an acting Headteacher in a large Nottinghamshire primary. He has taught for 19 years across the primary phase. He is an SLE and part of the team behind #PrimaryRocks.
@MrHeadPrimary