Category: West Partnership

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Tinto Primary & Nursery Classes – Digital development with Google for Education and G-Suite

Digital development with Google for Education and G-Suite


Over the past year I have been developing my digital skills as a teacher and as ICT coordinator by taking part in Google for Education training. This has been a key part of our digital journey throughout our school. We identified digital literacy as a priority in our school improvement plan and as we had recently moved to Chromebooks in our refresh we had already decided we should uplevel staff and pupils skills in using G-Suite through Glow. 

My local authority South Lanarkshire Council offered the opportunity for ICT Coordinators to take part in Google Educator bootcamps at the end of last year and I was really excited to get this opportunity. They were led by Ian Vosser, Faculty Head of Digital Literacy & Enterprise at Larkhall Academy who is a Google Trainer and Innovator and Karen MacLeod, Digital Support Officer for South Lanarkshire Council. I hadn’t really appreciated how transformative this training would be and over four (long, hard, rigourous!) days of training in a really supportive and positive group we got our Google Educator Level 1 and 2 and then Trainer qualifications all within a term! It’s hard to explain the level of technical expertise and confidence I have gained but I went from google novice to trainer in the space of a few months. 

The impact in my teaching has been immense, in my P4/5 classroom we use google tools for everything, from using voice typing on docs, to creating slides to share our research, to building our own websites to showcase our learning, making data using forms and sheets, we have embraced it all. My class has really become independent too with technology and are happy to use Google Classroom to access materials in class, or at home and then create responses in docs, slides and jamboard. The Chromebooks have been of enormous benefit to digital literacy, we now have 14 in our school of 88 pupils over 4 classes and they are  used each morning across the school and then pooled in the afternoon and used on a timetable. The accessibility tools have been of particular benefit and all the children have been trained in using voice typing and screen reading. 

This practice has extended across the whole school with all children now using G-Suite and Google Classroom which has been invaluable during lockdown. Every child P4-7 used Glow and G-Suite every week in school and at home and they were able to train P1-3 in logging into Glow and navigating classroom in March so we could smoothly transition to online teaching this term. 

But the greatest impact has been training staff across our learning community. Starting with sharing Google training sessions with our learning ‘trio’ of local primaries this session, I quickly opened this up to our whole learning community across 12 associated primaries and our local high school. We are planning to offer Google Educator level 1 bootcamps as soon as we can but in the interim I have taken my training online and offered sessions to introduce Classroom and G-Suite supported by our own training classroom which has been fantastically well attended. I’ve also taken part in some live YouTube sessions sharing Jamboard, primary Google classroom and our digital journey story with the greater education community. The support and interest from Google Educator groups nationally and internationally has been really developmental to my practice and I am really enjoying training other educators and sharing practice across the world. 

Further Infomration
email: gw14rodgerannabel@glow.sch.uk
twitter: @annabelrodger

 

all saints schhol logo and teacher bit moji

Adapting to Teaching Online – Gillian Gillen, All Saints Secondary School, Glasgow

 

Since lockdown kicked in my main concern as a teacher has been – how do we reach our learners? Pupils had all been given their Glow logins and passwords before the school closed, so we all created Glow groups and started sending tasks online. People rose to the challenge, sending fun, modern meaningful lessons with variety and structure.  

Then the reality of Digital Literacy kicked in – many young people struggled to access their work and for those who did see the emails and reply, attaching a document was not straightforward. It is often taken for granted, Digital Literacy. There is a general expectation amongst adults that young people are ‘whizz kids’ with technology. In my experience, across a number of schools, that is not the case.

 

Our Council is providing iPads to learners – this plan was in place well before Covid19. It is a staggered rollout, so some schools already have their devices, and some are still scheduled to receive theirs over the coming months. Being an active member of the Digital Working Group, I had already started preparing. I have a Student Digital Leaders of Learning group and they were creating resources for use across the school. We had iPad training events where we promoted the use of OneDrive so that lessons were readily accessible on staff iPads. I started a Digital Newsletter to smooth the transition to Apple: 

 When staff were issued iPads earlier than planned it looked like we were all going to have ample time to prepare ourselves to support learners with their iPads. But now we aren’t in school. Collaboration and development opportunities have been lost and our priorities have swung towards doing the best we can with what we have, and adapting rapidly to the ever-changing needs of our learners. 

Most of our learners have a device of some sort at home (some don’t, and they’ve been sent Home Learning Packs). I did a short video on how to access Glow, showing learners how to add to their Launch Pad and which Apps they would need. As my first wave of lessons went out, I quickly realised that pupils who would normally embrace the tasks weren’t responding to the emails. The Glow groups default meant that emails to the Group weren’t going to their Inboxes and instead could only be viewed if the pupil went into their group. If you access Glow from a browser like Safari or Chrome on a mobile, you can’t even see the Groups menu. I filmed a short video on how to access Glow Groups from a mobile, and I changed the defaults on my groups. We put it on the school’s Facebook feed and waited. Gradually, there were more responses coming in, but still not as many as we’d like. 

I had screen recorded some of my lessons, doing a voiceover and taking my virtual learners through PowerPoints. I also downloaded my class novel and audiobook, and screen recorded my Kindle as it read the first chapter of the book. I sent these out and settled into some semblance of a routine. My younger learners really enjoyed the videos and were taking photos of their work and sending it in. I used Mark Up and my Apple Pencil to correct and offer feedback, drawing sparkly stars on their work and sending it back. It was when I was chatting to teacher friends on WhatsApp that I discovered that this, too, wasn’t common practice. I recorded a short video showing how I Screen Record a PowerPoint lesson, then sent it to my WhatsApp group. The questions then came back thick and fast – but where is my screen record button, how did you get Kindle to read the story etc. I responded, adapted my videos and sent more. I then started to drop them onto a YouTube channel so that they would be easier to find. I’ve improved them a bit, using iMovie to edit out passwords and adding a little background music to the ones for learners. I’ve since added clips on sending Word documents, logging onto Glow in Word, and using the dictate and Immersive Reader on Word. I have plans for more. 

These have all been in response to questions sent to me, both from pupils and colleagues. I’ve had some lovely stories sent by pupils since, all carefully typed into Word then shared links on Glow. Still not as many as I’d like.  I’m hoping that once we are all back at school I’ll gradually be able to show my other learners face to face how to do these things, so that they can continue to build on their digital literacy skills and really make the most of all the fantastic resources available to them online. If learners have the technical ability to access and respond to the lessons, it will improve their blended learning experiences. We are now gradually introducing Teams to learners, and using it for lessons; I think this will be where the fun really begins! 

Gillian Gillen 

 

 

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Pupil and Parental Engagement at St Mark’s Primary School, East Renfrewshire

Increasing Pupil and Parental Engagement at St Mark’s with Twitter

 

In St. Mark’s, we have been working hard to increase parental engagement and maintain relationships with our families during school closure. Twitter has been a great tool for us to celebrate the achievements of our pupils and stay connected to our families.

Teachers have shared examples of good work that has been submitted on Google Classroom and we have tweeted them from our school account to celebrate their success. Mr Hutcheson used examples of tweets from parents in his virtual assembly to highlight the excellent work that was taking place at home to all pupils.

PE, STEM and art challenges set by teachers on Google Classroom have been some of our most popular tweets, the creativity and enthusiasm of our pupils has been exceptional. We have also set a variety of challenges for our pupils and families and have observed a noticeable increase in engagement with these over time. The most recent Getty Museum Challenge has been fantastic and has again highlighted how creative our pupils and staff are:

Feedback from parents/carers regarding the use of Twitter to stay connected with our learners has been extremely positive and, in some cases, has helped to increase engagement with Google Classroom. Sharing examples of their learning in this way has helped to motivate pupils to attempt more activities and has had a positive impact on their confidence and enthusiasm for learning. 

 

 

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30 Days of Creativity

Glasgow Education Services CREATE was set up in 2016 to raise the profile of expressive arts and creativity as a means to raise attainment and achievement across the curriculum. Our focus is on supporting schools to think differently and creatively in order to equip children and young people with the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to thrive in our interconnected, digital and ever-changing world.

 

30 Days of Creativity is a partnership between Glasgow CREATE, Glasgow City Council’s digital learning project; ‘Connected Learning,’ and Apple. This project encourages children and young people to use technology as a platform not simply to consume digital content, but also to promote creativity in learning.

 

Apple launched a ‘30 Days of Creativity’ challenge worldwide a number of weeks ago and have now partnered with us to deliver a short creative challenge each day for 30 days which is fun for children, young people and their families to complete. New challenges go live at 1pm each day on the Glasgow CREATE Youtube channel, https://bit.ly/2YA4seP, where you will find video demonstrations for all our challenges so far.

The project was launched on 4 May and will run until 18 Jun, however, the challenges can be done in any order or revisited at any time.

 

We have seen a tremendous uptake so far from children, young people, families and teachers across Glasgow who are taking this opportunity to develop their digital literacy and creativity skills!

 

You can see what others have been doing during Glasgow’s 30 Days of Creativity by searching on Twitter for #CreativityForKids #GetGlasgowCreating and #GCCKeepsSafeKeepLearning.

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Digital Registers at Mearns Primary, East Renfrewshire

Digital Registers at Mearns Primary

Our class teachers set a question on the assignment tab asking if the pupil is present or not. This allows the SMT team to easily see who has engaged with the learning that day and who has not. 

They followed this guide made up by one of our teachers:

Members of SMT take this information and complete this Google Sheet for each classroom. 

 

This form is set up to provide an overview of the school statistics and percentages of pupils completing the digital registers. We then use this information to contact pupils who have not been engaging and see if there is any reason for this and if we can provide support. 

 

 

Google Forms for Hub Provision 

We have been using Google Forms to allow parents & carers to communicate what pupils require provision in the hub and for which days they require this. We use that information to populate a Google Sheet which we use for our daily register. It provides our office staff with the information they require for FileMaker. 

Similar to the digital registers, our hub daily register generates statistics which we use for our records. 

digital learning for all logo from glasgow

Remote Learning in Glasgow

To date 81% of teachers and 41% of pupils now have 1:1 managed iPads through our Connected Learning Programme. The deployment has now restarted remotely firstly to teachers which will be followed by remote pupil deployment. All iPads are managed to ensure safe usage by pupils at home.

In response to the imminent closure of schools GCC created a remote learning site for teachers to access teacher, pupil and parent support materials for the main platforms used successfully in schools to engage with pupils, parents and each other: Seesaw, Showbie and Teams.

In addition we have been hosting webinars each week by teachers for teachers: Apple teacher Mondays 3.00 – 4.00 and Coffee – Break Learning 10.30 – 11.00 Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

To date we have over 1100 teachers signed up for the webinars with between 150 and 250 teachers tuning in each day. All webinars are recorded for watching at a suitable time. The Remote Learning support materials and webinars can be accessed at:

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/gc/remotelearningglasgow/ 

Twitter @DL_for_All    

#DigiLearnGla   #GCCkeepsafekeeplearning 

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Photography Competition at Hillview primary School, East Renfrewshire

 

Photography Competition 

During this period of closure it is more important than ever to have families involved. Our photography competition invites all our stakeholders to enter and be part of something creative.

The final exhibition will be online but we hope to host it in a virtual art gallery using artsteps.com and allow our visitors to take a virtual tour where they will be able to admire and comment on our entries.

It isn’t quite the same as being in the gym hall but being in the same ‘virtual’ room is a step in the right direction! Creativity and connection are both good for mental health, which is a priority at this time. 

Twitter https://twitter.com/HillviewERC  

 

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Online Learning at St John’s Primary School, East Renfrewshire

Online Learning at St John’s Primary School 


St John’s, in Barrhead, have created their very own free-to-use website for teachers, parents and pupils to support learning from home during isolation periods of the Covid-19 outbreak. 

https://sites.google.com/view/homelearningsite

 

The purpose of the site is to support pupils and families by offering a wide variety of: 

  • Daily Challenges
  • Activity Ideas
  • Useful Websites
  • Useful Apps
  • ‘How to…’ videos
  • COVID-19 Support Resources for Children
  • YouTube links to support learning
  • Articles
  • Google Drive Resources
  • Discussion Groups 

There are a wide range of resources available across a number of different curricular areas in line with Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence. It is live and dynamic and is updated regularly. 

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Case study on student engagement in virtual classrooms.

In just a few short months the entire education system has changed, not only within Scotland but across the world. In response to the current COVID-19 crisis teachers have had to drastically alter their teaching practices to meet an entirely new set of challenges.

Prior to the outbreak of this pandemic I was completing my NQT year at Williamwood High School in East Renfrewshire. Although I am a Microsoft Certified Educator and have a strong background in digital technology switching to entirely remote learning was uncharted waters. I frantically began searching for any guidance or advice when making this transition. Through my great network of support on Twitter I was recommended a course by FutureLearn called ‘How to teach online: Providing continuity for Students’. This course brings together a global network of educators to share ideas and ask questions on how to best support students during this period of remote learning. I decided to focus on the very first question posed:

What do you think is the biggest challenge in online teaching?

As you can see from the results of this poll nearly half of the 10,000 course participants, including myself, selected ‘Keeping Students interested and engaged’ as their chief concern.

Having already identified a lack of engagement from my S1 Google Classroom I decided to make this my primary focus for my upcoming Professional Inquiry. Using the knowledge I gained from the FutureLearn course as well as guidance from my network of support in Williamwood I chose to alter my approach to online learning in order to boost engagement among my students. I presented my findings in the form of a Microsoft Sway and used a mix of quantitative and qualitative data to support my conclusions. I have attached the link to this report and hope that you find this useful.

Although we are living in unprecedented and uncertain times it has provided us as educators a unique opportunity to re-examine our own practice. By continually assessing and altering our own pedagogy we are giving our students the opportunity to become 21st century learners and gain the skills required to succeed in an increasingly virtual world.

Fionnuala Glover is a teacher of History at Williamswood High School in East Renfrewshire

Twitter @MissGlover19

https://sway.office.com/s/MOKG0mh8iXxs2yse/embed

Gauging Engagement at Our Lady of the Missions Primary, East Renfrewshire

Using Google Classroom Data to Gauge Engagement  

Each class uses Google Classroom as the vehicle to support learning and teaching. The teachers set up a ‘task chart’ of activities as an introduction each Monday. Children and families have the flexibility to complete lessons and assessment across the week to suit their individual circumstances. A ‘learning log’ is then completed by each child to reflect the ‘task chart’ contents. This ‘learning log’ is a Microsoft Form which provides a useful report for teachers and SMT to analyse in terms of planning for the following week and Google Classroom engagement. 

Any children who have not engaged are then flagged up to SMT. This will entail a cross-reference with a school Google Classroom usage report which we receive weekly from our Google Classroom Administrator showing who has logged in and the volume of activity for each child in the school.  

Class teachers are consulted by SMT and a decision is then made to contact those families via Groupcall – a generic ‘We’ve noticed your child has had minimal engagement with their Google Classroom content this week. Please contact the school if there is anything we can do to support…’ type communication. For the most part, this is sufficient for the families to re-engage or let the school know in which ways they require support.  

The next level up of contact would be a phone call from a member of the SMT. This personal touch is sometimes necessary and beneficial to reassure families and agree a more personalised support strategy for their child. The use of the ‘learning log data’ ensures a weekly touching base with all departments, stages and classes to allow us to target support and assistance for our school community. 

 

Our Lady of the Missions have also created these handy guides for adults to help learners access Classroom:

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/er/OurLadyMissions/parental-involvement/parents-2/ 

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/er/public/OurLadyMissions/uploads/sites/96/2020/05/12161644/Google-Classroom-Help-Guide1.pdf