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West Lothian Early Years Learners Blog

Our ELC blog was set up to support and maintain relationships with our children and families while spending time at home.  It is vibrant and updated daily to provide opportunities for children to be curious, creative and inquiring.   

We offer a variety of: 

  • Activity Ideas  
  • Daily Challenges 
  • Useful Websites  
  • Useful Apps 
  • YouTube links to support learning 
  • COVID-19 Support Resources for Children 

During this time, Digital Technologies have been the core to learning with ELC staff sharing ideas and activities to their families through the use of Sway, Twitter and Microsoft Teams, embracing a sense of community across West Lothian.  

 

You may also be interested in previous blog posts sharing practice from primary 1 and ELC digital learners:

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/digilearn/2020/05/21/p1-transition-support-strathburn-primary-aberdeenshire/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/digilearn/2020/05/22/flipgrid-in-the-remote-p1-classroom-riverbank-school-aberdeen-city/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/digilearn/2019/12/11/early-years-digital-learners-at-bathgate-early-years-centre/

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/digilearn/2019/12/11/staff-digital-skills-development-at-bathgate-early-years-centre/

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Let’s all “Meet” up – in a virtual learning environment

Our school community are, on the whole, fairly confident and upbeat just now. To understand why I receive such positive views from across the parents, pupils and staff, I have to give a bit of background “pre-Covid”. Argyll and Bute Council have a great IT Team that have been promoting the use of G-Suite (Google Apps through Glow) for a few years now. We in Oban High School had a number of really enthusiastic staff who saw the potential of Google, ran with the training and led peer CLPL.

Around the same time we built a new school and added a Promethean Board to every classroom and gave every teacher an iPad, which they were trained to use alongside the Google Apps. This led to an explosion of online learning via Google Classroom.

The necessity to use the new technology and Google apps, along with regular training, ensured some of our staff were ready for the next step on our journey: live learning and teaching between two schools. As I lead both Oban and Tiree High Schools, it was fairly easy to merge the timetables to allow for the delivery of live lessons to and from each school. This increased the level of subject choice available to senior pupils and ensured effective leadership across the sea; consistent curriculum development and a wealth of shared CLPL.

Admin; Art; Biology; Business Management; Computing; Computer Games Design; Geography; Music Technology; Physics; and PE. Yes, PE! Theses subjects have all been delivered between our schools as part of the merged timetable or, as in the case of PE, to cover a staffing issue.

How does it work? Well, the experience gained by staff in Oban as a result of the introduction of the new technology and mainstream use of G-Suite certainly helped reduce much apprehension. All our teachers were used to setting up and using Google Classrooms (GCs), how to uploading assignments, marking work and conversing through GCs. Colleagues were used to creating Google Docs, Slides or Sheets and to saving and organising onto Google Drive. The only add-on was the move to live learning through Google Meet.

The  “new normal” our teachers faced was that some of the children’s smiling faces were now on a screen; their voices on a speaker. A class is still a class though. The exposition, the tasks, the Q&A and the plenaries are all shared experiences. When doing group work, the Tiree pupils can join an Oban group on the screen using a smaller speaker or vice versa. When they wish to ask a question, the teacher responds one-to-one over their headset. The cameras and screens allow the teacher to see every child in their (expanded) class at all times.

Concern with anything new is natural; safeguarding is a must. To begin with, we only used this with S4-6 classes. No class can exceed its SNCT maximum. IT support is on tap; a line manager is only a call away in the event of a behavioural issue; the office for a medical issue. We have now expanded this across the whole school at our teachers’ request.

What makes it work?

  • Investment by the Local Authority.
  • A core of experienced staff, keen to support colleagues and provide on-going training.
  • The purchase of good cameras, teacher headsets and pupil speakers to capture the whole class “look and feel” to make the pupils in the remote location feel genuinely part of the class.
  • The consistent and coherent use of one software suite of Apps: Google or Microsoft,
  • A safeguarding protocol to give confidence to staff engaging in live delivery.
  • Pupil buy-in – achieved by capturing the essence and experience of being in a larger traditional class environment, leading to an increased feeling of belonging to that class.

Learning and teaching from home has proved remarkably similar to what we already deliver, with the caveat that it has still been a very steep learning curve. The key difference is the need for safeguarding guidance to both staff and pupils; and a relaxation of accepted norms. We must be professional at all times in the way in which we interact with our pupils; we must have support in place for when the rules are not followed and we must keep stressing  that we’re all in a “class” when on online… but we also have to accept our four-legged friends may still appear on screen at times.

Equity for children? A recurring theme in this discussion but just as important for our staff. If there is not a device available or there are not enough devices in the home, every child, and every member of staff, is given an iPad, Chromebook and/or data Dongle. IT support is available to ensure every child can access the devices; teachers take children through getting onto Glow, Google Classroom or how to use any of the Apps. Each child is in a Clan (House system) and a pastoral team member liaises weekly with every vulnerable family or any pupil or parent who asks for help. We do Welfare and Engagement checks weekly. Those not engaging receive a call or a visit to the house where we offer pastoral, IT or curricular support for those who are reluctant to ask but need support; whether online, over the phone or on the door step – two meters distant. We’re here to help.

Delivering a virtual learning experience is not easy for anyone but it will get easier. As each day goes by we learn from our experiences and accept that change is good; or at least necessary. The “new normal” of remote learning in the future will not be new; just normal: the normality a consequence of us investing in both technology; from supporting and training our colleagues; and from teaching our children well in whatever manner we can. It works now; it will work even better with practice.

All support materials are uploaded and shared on the school website below,

http://www.obanhigh.argyll-bute.sch.uk/

 

 

whiteboard app download from teams

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

Read more

whiteboard app download from teams

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

Read more

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Flipgrid in the Remote P1 Classroom, Riverbank School, Aberdeen City

Aberdeen City CouncilFLIPGRID IN THE REMOTE CLASSROOM

Flipgrid, a video discussion platform, is used for different purposes in the remote classroom. Among them, to mention a few that we use in P1 at Riverbank school, are the following:

● As an engagement tool. In my P1 class in Aberdeen with 17 pupils, we have started using Flipgrid in Google Classroom, in today’s literacy assignment, children were to show their favourite book and tell us why. They show up, talk about their book and express their emotions. They improve their oratory skills, the possibility of adding stickers, backgrounds and other aesthetic enhancers is also an attractive feature to them.

● As a prompt: in Registration I upload directly from Flipgrid to Google Classroom as a short video (called shorts in Flipgrid) which is used as a conversation starter and mind engaging with the learners. Next week they will be having again prompts during registration: Things that they have learnt during confinement, even and odd numbers, using the connective “but”, using the connective “and”, something I did was it a subtraction or an addition, can you represent it graphically? They watch the video and they can choose to answer with a video back or in writing.

● As an assessment tool: Another Flipgrid they had last week The instructions were to tell us about their favourite book, mention the title and the author and tell us the function of an illustrator. The two key resources which support teachers to plan learning, teaching and assessment are experiences and outcomes and benchmarks. With this Flipgrid activity, the children should be exposed to, recognise. Describe, and make use of:

○ Recognize book words: cover, author, illustrator, theme, title etc

○ Share likes and dislikes

○ Enjoy choosing stories

Finally, let me tell you that for language teachers it is a great tool as well. It allows for fantastic feedback on pronunciation. But not only that, it can be used for presentations, acting, interpersonal communication, making connections, language and cultural comparisons. It is the perfect space for the students to practise their speaking skills and share their thoughts. The teacher can set goals and reflect on progress. Moreover, the teacher can use language to develop critical thinking, investigate, explain, and reflect. Flipgrid allows for the 4 Cs of education in the 21st century to be developed and encouraged in the activities you set. It enriches the learning experience greatly.

Flipgrid has got many other uses and functions. I would be very interested in hearing your experience with this tool.

Pilar Arqued

gw18arquedpilar@glow.sch.uk
@pilararqued
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Removing Barriers to Learning Computing Science at Speyside School

As a teacher of Computer Science I’ve always looked for ways to remove barriers to learning and make the curriculum more accessible. One of the biggest hurdles to this has been the complex nature of managing the installation and use of IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) to teach computer programming. Without a burning passion for the subject, you can forget getting a young person to download something like Microsoft Visual Studio or Eclipse at home.

A few years ago, whilst looking for a solution to my concerns I switched to repl.it to teach computer programming with the language Python. Repl.it is an online development environment which is completely browser based and requires no software installations on the user’s device. It is device and operating system agnostic, so it will work on desktops, laptops, mobile and tablet devices.

An example of the repl.it programming interface (Python 3.8)

An example of the repl.it programming interface (Python 3.8)

Over this period, I have transitioned from using repl.it to teach software design, to using repl.it to teach all practical elements of the course with support for creating rich web content using HTML, CSS and JavaScript and interrogating databases using SQLite. Students can easily share these projects with each other and with me. There are even tools to allow students to work together on the same project, allowing for latency free peer programming through repl.it’s “multiplayer” feature.

Repl.it provides tools for assessment, through their Assignments tool which provides the student with a set of instructions, a pre-populated piece of code as a starting point and a console window. The student can then submit the assignment to the teacher for written feedback and receives a notification when this is sent to them. Repl.it assignments also allow for test conditions to be set to provide some level of instant feedback to the student.

 

 

An example of an assignment in Repl.it showing student code, instructions, console and feedback area.

This has enabled my students and I to make a smooth transition from classroom teaching to remote learning for National 5 and Higher Computing Science during the COVID-19 lockdown. Although using online tools for home learning has always been a part of my pedagogical practice at this school, I’ve adapted my methods slightly. At Speyside High School, learners are currently using a combination of Google Classroom, Scholar, repl.it and YouTube videos that I have created to begin their new Senior Phase courses.

To create learning materials, I am using OBS Studio to capture my screen and webcam, which means I am then able to explain concepts to the students as if I was teaching a class and seamlessly flip between my course material and my live coding environment on repl.it.

The tools mentioned in this blogpost are all free to use for teachers.

Repl.it can be found at www.repl.it
OBS Studio can be found at www.obsproject.com


Marc McWhirter
PT Computing & Technical / Speyside High School
@SpeysideCS

Speyside High @speysiderector


 

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P1 Transition Support, Strathburn School, Aberdeenshire

 

We have used a variety of technology to support Transition for our new Primary 1 pupils.See-Saw Screen shot

 

See-Saw Screen Shot

We obtained Seesaw consent using Microsoft Forms, set up a P1 Transition group using avatar names and invited all new parents to it. Through this group we have uploaded puppet pal videos which include a school tour, delivered parental sessions on emergent literacy using sway, allowed P6 pupils to read out letters they have written to P1, used QR codes to create a treasure hunt round the school building that pupils can carry out over the Summer period as part of their daily walk, started to introduce HWB aspects of the curriculum to pupils via video and used the forum for sharing messages, introducing staff and ensuring parents/carers receive regular up to
date messages about plans and next steps. We are also considering using home learning codes to allow pupils to upload pictures of any transition work they might have done to begin engagement with them.

Sock Puppets Video