I’m a primary school teacher, passionate about digital learning but by no means an expert. This is where I am in our class learning journey with Microsoft Teams after 8/9 weeks of lockdown. I am now using Thinglink as an interactive classroom, below is an image of my example to show my interactive classroom, the …
by Cathy Mackenzie, Acting Depute Head Teacher and P6/7 Class Teacher
This video demonstrates Troqueer Primary School’s approach to using Microsoft Teams to support learning at home. Troqueer Primary School have used Microsoft Teams alongside other communication methods, such as our school website and the ‘ConnectUs’ school app, to support children to learn at home. A sustainable model was developed in which the school, which has 10 classes and a Nursery class, was split into 3 large cohort teams with groups of teachers supporting learners. The Nursery staff support learners through their Learning Journals app.
Every week staff work together to create a weekly learning grid for each cohort Teams group across P1-P3, P4-P5 and P6-P7. This has enabled collaborative working across the school whilst also taking account of the varied roles staff are undertaking, including supporting childcare in hubs. We have made use of other Office365features, including Microsoft Forms, within some of the learning grids. The weekly learning grids encourage children to take part in activities that support wellbeing, life-skills and independence alongside their curricular tasks. A group of staff have collaborated to create whole school interdisciplinary learning activities that are progressive and engaging, linked to a theme of habitats, followed by food. A whole-school learning context was adopted to help families that might have children learning at home across different age groups to learn together. These grids are posted on the school app, website and Microsoft Teams. Children are encouraged to share their learning or ask questions about their work on the weekly learning grid channel on Microsoft Teams.
Wellbeing and supporting interaction between learners and staff has been a major focus of our approach. We have created a range of welcome videos which are frequently shared on our school app and Microsoft Teams. We have also developed other videos to enable learners to see their teachers, such as story videos for younger learners and a series of ‘Around the World’ videos for P4-P7. The playground blether channel enables learners to chat online in a safe environment which is monitored by staff. There are several live chats each week and we are starting to include the use of audio features for these. Children can come along to these to take part in fun discussion tasks, quizzes and other activities with their teachers and peers.
I have learned a lot of digital skills since becoming a MIEExpert in 2016, however I had not had the opportunity to explore Microsoft Teams fully with a class. When we found out that pupils would be learning from home I refreshed my memory of Teams by using the courses on the Microsoft Educator Community. …
Being a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE) has allowed me to develop my digital skills over the past five years. However before this current crisis I had only used Microsoft Teams with a few classes. One of the first things I did was review some of courses on Teams and Forms on the Microsoft Educator …
This is a blog post about how you can use Microsoft Whiteboard with Teams. (https://whiteboard.microsoft.com/) This video shows some of you the choices that you currently have for using Microsoft Whiteboard. There are two options main options, firstly to share a Whiteboard from a Teams meeting and secondly to create a Whiteboard and then share … Continue reading Microsoft Whiteboard →
This is a blog post about how you can use Microsoft Whiteboard with Teams. (https://whiteboard.microsoft.com/) This video shows some of you the choices that you currently have for using Microsoft Whiteboard. There are two options main options, firstly to share a Whiteboard from a Teams meeting and secondly to create a Whiteboard and then share … Continue reading Microsoft Whiteboard →
Practitioners from across Falkirk have collated examples of how they are using digital tools for distance learning. The document contains examples from primary and secondary educators and the tools and strategies that they are using to engage learners.
St Mungo’s High School in Falkirk have produced a Sway illustrating what distance learning looks like in the school.
“We have shifted the emphasis during this period to digital applications that can be accessed and engaged with easily using a smart phone or tablet. We have also moved more towards creating videos as a way of communicating with our pupils and sharing content.”
The Sway has a number of short video examples from across the school faculties including Creative, Modern Languages, Health and Well Being, Science, Technologies and Pastoral.
Practitioners from across Falkirk have also contributed to a document illustrating what distance learning looks like in the authority. Find out more here.
This year we received an Education Scotland CLPL grant to train staff in digital skills; for part of the project we have been learning computer science and technology to do with robotics. A grant from the DigitalXtra fund has also allowed us to purchase robotics equipment from early years up for the cluster, and has …
Continue reading "Robotics- Learning New Digital Skills In Context"
