Author Archives: J. McLean

Future jobs – are your pupils ready?

Online GLOW session – 20 September 2017 at 16.15

Google, airbnb and facebook have all changed our world by creating new ways of doing things, but did you know that these types of technology businesses also creating lots of highly paid job opportunities?  In Scotland this demand for technology skills and jobs is accelerating, and bringing with it a diverse range of exciting jobs for our young people so it important we prepare them for their digital future.

 Join this session to find out how technology is changing the careers of the future, and what we can do to ensure our young people have the skills and knowledge to take advantage of this wealth of opportunity.

This session is open to all teaching staff working across broad general education in particular we think this session would be useful for Head teachers, subject teachers and guidance staff.

Event description:

Did you know that two thirds of primary school children will have jobs in the future which do not exist today?  It is important that we can open their eyes to the careers of the future and support them to develop the skills they need to thrive in the changing world of technology.

In Scotland Digital technology businesses are booming, continuing to transform the way we live and having an increasingly disruptive effect on business. The tech sector is growing rapidly but it’s not just tech businesses that are affected, this digital revolution is impacting all businesses and organisations across Scotland’s entire economy. As it continues to pick up pace it is creating unprecedented demand for tech jobs and skills from employers and bringing with it a wealth of career opportunities for our young people.

Join Skills Development Scotland in partnership with Education Scotland to find out about some of the technology jobs and careers of the future, and what we can do to help prepare our young people for the jobs of the future.

During this Glow Meet Up you will learn about:

  • How technology is changing future careers
  • What opportunities are available to young people to embrace this change
  • Challenges we face in helping young people realise these opportunities
  • Resources and support available to young people and schools

This is a 25minute session followed by 20minute Q&A

To participate, please register here by Monday 11 September using the password GLOW.

We will email the online details to those registered the week before the session.

Scottish National Standardised Assessments now available

As part of the on-going implementation of the National Improvement Framework (NIF), the Scottish National Standardised Assessments (SNSAs) have now been launched. The SNSAs are a diagnostic tool to support improvement in children’s learning and to inform teachers’ professional judgment on pupil progress.

Information about SNSA is available on a new Standardised Assessments website, there’s also a leaflet for parents and carers. Visit the Scottish Government website for further information about the National Improvement Framework.

MIcrosoft Teams for Education (Initial notice for Academy schools only)

What is it? And why would your school want it?

Many teachers are already familiar with OneNote Class Notebooks, just imagine now the ability to create Notebooks for every class with no initial administration. Modern dynamic conversations for each class that the teacher controls. Teachers and pupils do almost everything without leaving Teams. Set tasks/homework as assignments or through Class Notebook – with the advantages of resources being stored and accessed digitally giving opportunities to reduce. All SEEMiS classes automatically set up as Class Teams from Seemis data Access to apps already used such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint online. Personalised views for all teachers and all pupils of all classes, conversations and work. Membership updated as SEEMiS changes at any time during the school year.

Why does a school need to opt in?

It’s necessary to have opt-in directly from schools for this because of the capacity of School data Sync (SDS) to create Class Teams for all SEEMiS class groups – regardless of the level of engagement by each teacher.

How do I opt in my school?

Here are the steps to have this switched on for your school:

Please contact your SLT  to discuss this  (HT’s have been advised of this proceedure)

Complete the form at this link (note that you need to sign into Glow to complete this form and read the supporting documentation):  here

The Form above is a quick set of questions to confirm school buy-in, engagement with the Local Authority Glow Key Contact (Jim Mclean or Susan Sey) and has a link to a supporting document explaining background, risks and options
http://glo.li/2wB74Mr

Once the form above has been completed the national Glow team will process the switching on of Microsoft Teams for all classes for your school.

What to expect?

After receiving the request, your school data will be briefly checked to make sure it is current. If not, the person identified as responsible for SEEMiS data in the school will be contacted. If SEEMiS data is current, your school will be added to the queue for the next sync. Syncs will be done daily but there may be a delay according to demand. When complete all teachers and pupils in your school will be assigned to O365 Groups as owners/members respectively – you will see these appear in Outlook and OneDrive. At this stage no pupils can access the Class Team. As soon as any teacher signs in to Teams – for any reason – all of their Class Teams will then activate and be accessible to all pupils in those classes.

 

Why opt-in at school level?

The national Glow programme team has decided that there should be an opt-in at school level for SDS. This is primarily because SDS will look to setup all Class Teams for a school regardless of whether or not all teachers are engaged. This will mean pupils having access to the underlying O365 Group immediately and continued access to the Class Team from first use by the teacher. The document linked from the opt-in Form has details of the key risk and what steps can be taken by teachers that don’t want to participate in Teams with their classes.

Support?

Please contact Learning Through Technology with any specific questions/requests, there will also be training as detailed below:

Support for Microsoft Teams will be provided from the Learning through Technology Team ( Dates will be confirmed shortly and sign up via ALDO)

The courses on Learning through Technology Teams Website ( http://glo.li/2wAJSxy )  relating to Office 365, OneNote, OneDrive, Word Online  also include reference to Microsoft Teams for Education.

There is also a free online course in the Microsoft Educator Community (sign in with your Glow email address to gain a certificate, points and digital badges):

https://education.microsoft.com/courses-and-resources/courses/introtomicrosoftteams

And there are guides which can be downloaded and printed if desired from here:

https://education.microsoft.com/courses-and-resources/resources/meet-microsoft-teams

We are currently seeking staff volunteers to be Digital Leaders, and we now have around 60 staff from around Aberdeenshire schools,   if you are interested please email Jim Mclean or Susan Sey. Digital Leader details are on Glow here: http://glo.li/2xv0pj8

 We have an inaugural Digital Leader event being held in Woodhill House on 15th September details for this event are in ALDO.

If you have any questions about this then please contact JIm or Susan from the Learning through Technology Team

Thanks

Microsoft Teams for Education

The update to Microsoft Classroom, Microsoft Teams for Education is now available from the App Launcher (Waffle) via O365 in Glow.

We would encourage teachers to wait before setting up classes because:

  • The integration with SEEMIS will not be in place until the end of August , so any Teams  created before then will involve you manually adding pupils.
  • If pupils were allowed access now,  then  some of the current functionality in Teams could potentially be used inappropriately. By the end of August the additional admin settings will be inplace to reduce any risk.
  • If you try to use Teams at the moment you may get an error message asking you to contact your ICT personell (Please do NOT log any calls with ICT)

The SEEMIS integration will allow your classes to be populated with the correct students, and this list will dynamically change as pupils join or leave your class. The classes will automatically be correctly named in fitting with the systems you have in place at the school.

We will be providing twilight sessions in the next few weeks to advise on how to use Microsoft Teams so please look back here regularly for updates and links to twilights.

Please direct any questions you may have on Teams for Education to:

James.mclean@aberdeenshire.gov.uk
Susan.sey@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

 

 

 

iPad sets

Here at H2L2 we have renewed the sets of iPads we use for training with teachers and pupils.

We now have 3 x sets of 10 iPad Minis to give to schools, and it is very easy for your school to get one of these sets, just email me with a request.   STOP PRESS The iPad sets are now all gone.

The catch?

There isn’t one, but we would hope you would keep us informed on how the devices are being used, and maybe you would want to sign up for some of our iPad and iOS twilights that will shortly be available on our Online Technology Support Session Website

STEM Survey

You may be aware that Government Ministers launched a consultation at the end of 2016 on a National STEM Education and Training Strategy for Scotland. The many responses received clearly articulated the importance of having a coherent strategy for career-long professional learning for practitioners in STEM subjects (Sciences, Technologies, Engineering and Mathematics).

Education Scotland and Scottish Government are currently undertaking further engagement with key stakeholders to help shape the actions for career-long professional learning to appear in the final strategy to be published later this year.

We’re very keen that these considerations are guided by the views and experiences of practitioners across the country. We’d like to gather practitioners’ views about their professional learning needs and the most effective way for them to access professional learning.

I’d be grateful if you could  complete the following online survey: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7YF22GR

We’re keen for this to be completed by practitioners at all levels in early learning and childcare, additional support needs, primary and secondary school settings.

The survey should only take a few minutes to complete but will be of enormous value helping us to support practitioners more effectively and to improve outcomes for learners in relation to STEM.

The survey will remain open until Thursday 22nd June.

Corporate Office 365

Corporate O365 is now available to all corporate users.  You should not notice any changes in the way you are currently working,  however once you register, and details are below, you could start taking advantage of the many online and collaborative features available in O365. The message below is from Nicola Graham HoS ICT

“You can now start using Microsoft Office 365 (O365).  It offers opportunities for better ways of working and allows us to make a real change to how we work together as an organisation.

O365 gives you access wherever you have an internet connection.  There are online versions of the applications you currently use, such as Mail, Calendar, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  But there are also new applications like OneDrive and SharePoint that will allow you to store, share and work more effectively on shared documents. Nothing is being taken away, all of this is in addition to your current Microsoft applications.

In response to your requests, O365 will also be available from personal devices in the very near future and we will be in touch shortly with more details.

Getting started with O365

You need to complete the short registration process – this should only take about five minutes.

There is a full programme of launch events over the next few weeks, details of these and a video message from Chief Executive, Jim Savege, on why you should register and start using O365, are on Arcadia.

You will have access to online O365 support and FAQs once you have registered and there will be updates on O365 events on Arcadia, Yammer, email and directly through your service. We also suggest you join the Office 365 Users Yammer group to access and share advice and information.

There are also around 85 digital champions across all locations and services – search for digital champions on Arcadia to find people who will either be able to answer questions, or point you in the right direction to find out more.

Once you have registered, your web browser will automatically open a second tab so as well as opening Arcadia, it will also take you to the O365 sign in page (you will be prompted to register the first time you use this page – see above).  You can also access O365 by typing portal.office.com in your browser, or by clicking the Office 365 quick link on the front page of Arcadia.”

Your Digital Champions in ECS are:
Jim Mclean, Susan Sey, Anne Henderson and Andrea Buchan

Corporate O365 from Aberdeenshire Council

On Monday 15th May 2017,  Microsoft O365 will be rolled out to all those  Council employees with an ….aberdeenshire.gov.uk email address.

O365 brings to the workplace many advantages with an online 24/7 access to the latest Office Productivity tools including  Word and Excel.  You can access files anywhere via your online O365 OneDrive and you can share files, work collaboratively in real time on documents with colleagues, on any devices.

In ECS we have had access to O365 for many years via GLOW and many teachers and students have been using the features in O365 , such as Office documents, OneDrive, OneNote , Mail, Sway, Delve and many more .

if you are using a Corporate (not curricular ) computer then we recommend that for Corporate O365 your access is via Microsoft Internet Explorer , and for any GLOW work you use the Chrome browser, by keeping access to the 2 different O365 accounts on separate browsers you will avoid any ‘sign in’ conflicts.

Please remember to continue to use GLOW for any educational purposes and Corporate O365 for business purposes.

Myself and Susan are the O365 champions for this rollout of O365 to Corporate users, so if you have any questions please drop us an email.