By the end of September, schools need to be ready to provide seamless remote education.
THE CHALLENGES
This expectation is outlined by the DfE on Section 5 of the Guidance for full reopening of schools, but to summarise, (on top of everything else!) by the end of September 2020 schools are expected to;
- set meaningful and ambitious work each day in a number of different subjects;
- provide frequent, clear explanations of new content, ideally with interaction from the teachers;
- gauge how well pupils are progressing through the curriculum;
- adjust the pace or difficulty of what is being taught in response to questions or assessments;
- of equivalent length to the core teaching, pupils would receive in school
WE’RE HERE TO HELP YOU OVERCOME THESE CHALLENGES
There is a growing range of tools and opportunities available to schools to support you. An example is the Oak National Academy service which provides hundreds of curriculum videos and resources for home learning. Its use is being encouraged in the event of remote education, although this still adds to workload as it’s addressing classroom and remote learners separately.
The DfE Catch up fund plays an essential role in funding these solutions. View our recent webinar on tackling the impact of lost teaching time, then contact us for more information.
In the meantime, the following is a snapshot of the growing numbers of solutions we’re supporting schools with as they prepare for remote education.
Conference Classrooms for Remote Education
Teachers are at their most comfortable, and their most effective, when being expressive and enthusiastic about what they’re teaching. When they can engage, when pupils can see them and when they’re directly interacting in real-time.
Remote education, where pupils are in a different space, directly challenges this.
The likes of Oak National Education Academy, uploading documents to Microsoft Teams and sharing pre-recorded content on YouTube are ok – they just about tick the ‘remote education’ box. They also increase workload though. They fragment your pupils into groups, they make the curriculum less engaging and they reduce the quality of your teaching. They also make provision of feedback more challenging, collation of attainment and improvement data tricky and formative assessment almost impossible.
Our conference classroom solution helps – teach remote learners and those in the classroom concurrently. The same lesson and the same content at the same time. One set of planning, one block of assessment and one set of feedback, with a list of additional benefits besides.
The result, as you can see in a demonstration by clicking the above, is pupils learning and teachers teaching from different spaces, in real-time.
When accompanied by a visualiser and some good, affordable, audio technology, it does a lot more than tick the remote education box. Used with other solutions outlined below, it enables your school to provide a seamless teaching, learning, assessment and feedback experience.
Click above for brief remote demonstration from our Customer Experience Centre – we’re the teachers, you’re the pupils.
SMART Learning Suite
Better outcomes begin with better ways to teach and to learn.
SMART Learning Suite is the global leader to support schools with this journey, and Elementary Technology is the SMART Partner of the Year 2019 and a SMART Platinum Partner. It’s a winning combination.
SMART Learning Suite, which includes SMART Notebook, is the only software for educators with interactive lesson delivery, collaborative workspaces, game-based activities, formative assessments and more. Even better is with SMART Learning Suite Online, blended learning and remote formative assessment become a doddle.
Watch a brief snapshot from our colleague here:
Contact us for a free trial and a free remote training session – whether or not you choose to work with us.
Learning by Questions
The Learning by Questions platform is set to revolutionise how teachers measure attainment and manage their time.
Furthermore, it is being used by hundreds of schools to support remote learning.
Measure the impact of lost teaching time with soft assessment first, then target areas which need improvement with precision learning. Then, assess the results of this, live during teaching time, whilst recording results as evidence of improvement. Bring with that a set of good value tablet devices for pupils to use remotely if required, and you have an outstanding teaching, learning, workload reducing, assessment tool.
Using over 70,000 curriculum-aligned question sets covering KS1 to KS4, Learning by Question (LbQ) provides teachers with an effective tool to measure pupil understanding, in real-time, in class or remotely. Use Learning by Questions to guide an entire lesson, or else towards the end of your lesson to test learning, to intervene where it has not been effective and to avoid delaying feedback until work has been marked.
Visit our Learning by Questions page for more information.
Digital Learning Platforms
Microsoft Teams and Google for Education are the two leading platforms for school to store content, share resources, communicate internally and with pupils and to gather feedback and response.
There are however several more so please contact us for advice.
In themselves, they bring value and efficiency to your school. While some pupils are learning remotely though, they are game-changing.
We work with both DfE-approved and more local/regional ICT Support partners. Together we will support you to succeed with what is a large shift in your school’s digital infrastructure. Crucially, we will also ensure your school, staff, pupils and potentially parents utilise it properly to get the best value.
Contact us for an initial conversation.
Visualisers
Classroom visualisers are a low-cost high impact teaching tool. They support remote education as shown in the video below, they enable social distancing for the teacher in the classroom and they can reduce marking. Furthermore, they can be used to gather evidence of impact and improvement.
Elementary Technology has supplied hundreds of visualisers since the beginning of school closures for several reasons. A particular appeal is how they enable social distancing within a school.
Our video here showcases how a visualiser can be used for remote education.
We are the largest supplier of visualisers into education, directly and via our specialist website thevisualisershop.com.
To support schools at the moment, we’re also providing schools with significant discounts and free remote training on larger orders of certain models.
Contact us for details.
Of course, whilst schools are under these new, immense pressures, the old ones still exist!
Limited funding, the need for effective training, a lack of accurate advice, the worry whether there’ll be ongoing support and more.
Here are some ways we help address these:
- Many of these solutions can be supplied on a compliant operating lease – a conference classroom solution to enable remote education costs from just £85 per month over 3 years
- We can easily have a chat on the telephone, a Zoom call or a video chat at your school to see the spaces being considered
- We can provide you with an online demonstration of any technology so you make an informed choice
- All solutions are provided with setup and pedagogical training
- We’re happy to come for a COVID-Safe visit to your school to provide independent advice, consider options or perform a site survey
Now more than ever, schools need to embrace the benefits EdTech brings. We’ll help you do so, ensuring you continue to flourish as your school reopens.
For an initial discussion to see how we can support, complete our contact form, chat online or call our team on 0844 357 5197.