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Use Sway to create a digital story and enhance with copyright free images and video.
Create a 5 question multiple choice quiz
Engage with two Microsoft Learn Education Centre courses
Reflect on the potential classroom use of these tools and how this can impact on the school self evaluation process. Post a reflective piece (150 words minimum) as a reply to this post.
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These are very exciting tools for the classroom. Sway in particular will invigorate powerpoints and create a useful lesson bank per class level. Forms is similar to google forms and jotforms that I have used before. Am I missing something here? – is there anything microsoft forms can offer that google/jotform can’t?
The microsoft learn education centre looks like a very useful learning/cpd portal. Again this is my first engagement with it but I feel it is going to be very helpful both in my own teacher practice and that of the school where I work. Croke park hours can be utilised to do CPD on something like sway or forms etc. There is a global connectedness to the centre as well. Often as teachers we feel disconnected from the learning going on in other schools both nationally and internationally. But this learning centre can help with collegial isolation that some teachers in rural 1/2 teacher schools may experience.
SSE process is all about gathering evidence. Forms is very helpful for gathering evidence from parenst/staff and pupils. One drive will be useful for sharing and collaborating on planning documents. My main concern with all of these things is how overwhelming tapping into this kind of software can be for staff and teams. Some schools have google email – does this mean they can’t use 365? psychologically there can be barriers and confusion – and I’m not convinced what the best approach is for a school to adopt i.e. committ to 365 or google or to use a hybrid of various???
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Hi Niall, welcome to the course. I am more familiar with forms myself but both forms and google forms and jotforms are easy to use, work well in education and offer robust functionality.
Croke Park hours are an excellent way for staff to develop their own CPD, and staff members who are more confident in Microsoft 365 could lead the CPD.
Some schools use both Office 365 and gmail, it would depend on your own school prefence.
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Hi,
just wanted to let you know what we did in our school. We debated the virtues of google and 365 for a long time and decided to stick with just one, for the sake of collaboration using OneDrive and also Teams. We chose 365, and also use that as our email. It made things a little easier and much clearer to work from. We tried keeping our old gmail emails at first and it became clear from an IT Admins perspective that it was going to get complicated, so we went all in and changed everything over. To be honest, it was easy to do. Once new emails were created (took about an hour) we were up and running. Like you suggested Deirdre, we used CPD as a time to introduce it to our staff. Both myself and my principal are taking this course to upskill in 365, and plan to introduce what we learn here to our staff over CPD sessions in september. -
Hi Michelle,
I think your admins made the correct decision in switching everything over to the one platform. I would be an advocate for Google and Pat would have lots of experience with Microsoft and Office 365. The reality is that there is little difference between the platforms in a school setting. As long as appropriate CPD is provided and a school is consistent in its use, they will be successful. It really comes down to personal preferences of those making decisions at the time.
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<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin: 0cm; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;”>I think using ‘One Drive’ in school would really help us with our school self-evaluation process. I work in a two tier school and I love finding new ways to collaborate with the other teachers, especially those teaching the same class as me. Being able to identify strengths and weaknesses in each classroom or the school as a whole in such a simple way brings with it unity; especially in a larger school community. The use of the digital storytelling tool ‘Sway’ also sounds amazing for self-evaluation. Children can create resources and projects in a soft copy that can be brought along with them as they move through the school system. Writing can prove very difficult for some children and being able to provide them with a fun alternative to share their stories will be wonderful. The use of multiple choice quizzes as a self-grading assessment also sounds very effective and allows informal assessment to be completed in a timely manner. I really enjoyed learning about these tools and will look forward to implementing them next year.</p>
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I found the content of this first module very interesting. I am a primary school teacher, we have started using Microsoft software for both staff and students in our school. Traditionally we would have always used Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc as a means of communicating. Learning to use Sway & Forms has definitely opened my eyes to Office 365 and all the options available to us. There are a lot more options and drop down menus available. They are definitely more user friendly and I can really see our students benefitting from them. We have been using a mixture of gmail & office 365 for admin & educational purposes. This has had its own challenges. From a school self evaluation point of view, staff could familiarise themselves with Office 365 during Croke Park time. In my opinion I think Office 365 would be a massive benefit to our school moving forward.
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Hi,
I feel that SWAY would allow both students and teachers to express their ideas in really innovative ways using images video and text to make online presentations. It’s a really user friendly design that focuses more on the content that design which reduces the time spent focused on presentation.
Forms is a quick and easy way to elicit information from different members of the school community. the design templates focus attention on the content similar to SWAY. Sending the link to a form out by email is a quick away of gathering information. I have had issues in the past with the sharing of links but have realised that it is about shared access on my drive more than the forms settings.
I feel that the SSE process is about information gathering to identify areas of strength and areas that need developement. Microsoft 365 offers a platfrom for the information gathering and dissemination. It makes the consultation process more transparent and straight forward.
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Hi Brid,
Sway is a very good way for both teachers and students (and those in the business/corporate world) to express ideas and thoughts. It is slightly more user-friendly than PowerPoint, as it removes some of the additional extras that students can often get bogged down on. The graphics created are certainly aesthetically pleasing and can create a striking image, poster, infographic, etc. With regard to the sharing of links, you just need to ensure that the access on the form is set to just within your school domain, or ‘public’ if you wish to send it to addresses outside of your school domain.
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Hi Niall,
I found the content of this lesson very interesting. I am a secondary school teacher we use Microsoft as our main software for both staff and students. I have used Forms already with my students. It is a very quick and efficient way of assessing a topic or as an engaging piece of homework. It was of particular benefit during the period of school closure. I found the students’ level of engagement was very high using Microsoft Form and as a teacher it is a very user friendly way of finding out who is engaging and who is not with the homework assignment. I haven’t used SWAY yet in school but after seeing how useful it can be I will certainly be trying it out in the coming school year with a TY to use as part of a digital portfolio. As part of the SSE process both will be very useful in the engagement of the 6 step process of SSE. Microsoft Forms could be used to Gather evidence and Analyse and make judgement where SWAY could be used to formulate an improvement plan or monitor actions with FORMS being used again to evaluate impact and identify focus for the future.
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Hi Margaret,
You are vey welcome to the course. You have pointed out a number of benefits to using Microsoft Forms for assessment. A quiz can be assigned so quickly and you can gather a huge amount of data in a short period. The analytics allow you to analyse particular students that may require intervention, or particular questions that may need to be revised with the whole class.
You will be able to offer an interesting perspective as a post-primary teacher throughout the course. I like your idea for using Sway to formulate your improvement plan – some of the graphics you generate could be used to create posters to be placed in prominent locations around the school. This would serve to remind staff and students of what your priorities for improvement are.
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Hi Niall,
I have never used Sway or Forms before and love the way Sway offers suggestions to create an attractive lesson. It is great that you can add photos, video and a wide variety of text styles and visual colour. I will enjoy creating lesson with Sway.
I can also see myself using forms as an evaluation tool to assess the knowledge the children can recall from lessons.
We have Microsoft office set up.. outlook emails etc. but we were using google classroom during lockdown. I would love to know more about the potential of Microsoft office for education and bring the staff along with me. This is why I have chosen this course.
Looking forward to the journey! Niamh Ní Dhúill
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Hi Niamh, welcome to the course, I hope you learn alot from it.
Sway is a great tool and it is great for creating lessons like you said. It is simple to create effective communications tools, there is an ease of sharing information and it is efficient.
Forms allows you to add quiz or survey to your sway and it directly engages with your audience and it also tracks your responses.
Microsoft office has increased accessibility. Teachers and staff can work from wherever they are. It saves time and improve efficiency.
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- Sway is surprisingly easy to use and a very versatile assessment tool within the classroom. It is efficient in providing suggested media content which will save students time when building personal portfolio learning projects. Sway can be used to create reports, presentations and personal stories in a very interactive way which brings learning to life in the classroom and leaves so much room for individual creativity.
- Microsoft Forms is also another fantastic assessment tool which I am excited to adapt into the classroom. Microsoft Forms is a powerful teaching tool which enables teachers to easily create forms, quizzes, polls and surveys in order to collect real-time responses from parents, staff and students. The feature I love the most is the charting function which visually demonstrates where pupils are at with their individual learning and will help in planning lessons based on reliable data.
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Hi all,
I have never heard of Sway until I started module 1. I look forward to using Sway in the classroom. It is very interesting how you can turn a blank page into an interactive and visually enjoyable information page. There are plenty of options and templates to use and make an exciting lesson. I have used forms in the past, for Assessment of Learning and found it very beneficial. Children are very excited when they see they see a quiz appears on their screens. Forms is brilliant! A quick way of finding out what children have retained from the lessons. In my current school, we use forms for a range of things e.g. timing for parents’ meetings, Assessment for Learning, and Assessment of Learning.<I use Microsoft Office on a daily basis, to access my outlook emails. I find Microsoft Office easy to access and it allows me to communicate with my school team and parents. Laura Craig
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Hi Laura,
It’s clear that you value the use of Forms in your school. I am a huge advocate of using Forms / other digital assessment tools (both formatively and summatively). There is scope to gather a huge amount of data in a very short period – it immediately points out the students who require extra attention or the topics that the whole class require extra work on.
The use of Forms for ‘exit tickets’ is something I also enjoy using. t gives the children to opportunity to self-reflect and self-assess at the end of lessons. The data gathered helps me to plan future learning then. Perhaps you may enjoy trying this out in the coming year?
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Thank you for the feedback, Eoghan. Yes, I have also used Entry and Exit tickets and found them beneficial.
This year, my class really enjoyed self-assessing and peer-assessing work. It did take a lot of training but the outcome was phenomenal. I look forward to trying out other digital assessment tools.
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Hi all,
I have never used either of these two tools before. However, having used google forms and slides, I found them quite similar.
Forms would be extremely useful in collecting data and presenting the findings. This can be used at staff, student, and family level. This can help in making decisions about the school in terms of SSE, organisational issues, changes to policies, and also in the classroom to assess learning and help guide planning. I see great scope also, for the children to create their own forms and set quizes for eachtother. This is extremely interactive and a fun way to assess how much they actually know. As it is simple to use (as in I can use it), the children will pick this up very easily.
I used a google slide document I had previsouly created for my sway project. It was great to see how compatible it is with already saved documents. There was still scope to edit it and there were great tools in the desing section with helpful suggestions. This can be used to present the findings from a form for example, but also the children can produce projects to display what they’ve learned in a particulay topic and can share with eachother and present to class, which will develope their IT skills, knowledge in the topic, presentation/oral language skills and hopefully build confidence.
Quick question…..Where/how do we upload our sway and forms creations?
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We use office 365 in our school. I signed up for the course to see how I can fully use it for education purposes. At present we use outlook and teams for staff communication mainly. I haven’t use Sway before. I used it today to create a school newsletter which I think is something I would use it for in the future. I work in a special class so communication with parents plays a big part. Previously I would have printed off newsletters and pictures to send home with the students. Using Sway would save time, money and allow me to share videos. I think more parents would engage with it as we all use our phones so much nowadays. Forms makes gathering information so easy – as you demonstrated through testing and with surveys. The fact that the results are collated and can be shared easily using excel makes it very user friendly. It would be a useful tool for school SSE to gather information from students, parents and staff.
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Hi Jane, welcome to the course. I hope you are finding it useful.
You can use Sway to create engaging presentations about your classroom and their class mates.. Introduce yourself to the class on the first day using Sway. Share information and sounds from different music genres. Create presentations on nearly any and all topics. It is a handy tool.
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<span class=”NormalTextRun SCXO25473650 BCX0″ style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: ‘Calibri Light’, ‘Calibri Light_MSFontService’, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: inherit;”>This was a great introduction module to Microsoft Office. I would use Google at school but I was impressed at the variety of tools and uses. In class, all of the apps are valuable- for teaching, learning and assessing learning. This digital use in education is making learning more fun and interesting for the students, at an earlier age and also making teaching methodologies more achievable for teacher. In regards to School Self Evaluation, Microsoft Office would be highly effective in delivering the Six Step Process for schools. From gathering evidence from teachers, students and parents to analysing feedback, forms, teams and </span><span class=”SpellingError SCXO25473650 BCX0″ style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: left bottom; background-image: url(‘data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhBQAEAJECAP////8AAAAAAAAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAFAAQAAAIIlGAXCCHrTCgAOw==’); border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; color: #000000; font-family: ‘Calibri Light’, ‘Calibri Light_MSFontService’, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: inherit;”>onedrive</span><span class=”NormalTextRun SCXO25473650 BCX0″ style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: ‘Calibri Light’, ‘Calibri Light_MSFontService’, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: inherit;”> would do a lot of the work involved. Sway could also be used to inform the school community of the process, the focus, the targets set and review of the targets/process. When it comes to writing the plan, </span><span class=”SpellingError SCXO25473650 BCX0″ style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-position: left bottom; background-image: url(‘data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhBQAEAJECAP////8AAAAAAAAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAFAAQAAAIIlGAXCCHrTCgAOw==’); border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; color: #000000; font-family: ‘Calibri Light’, ‘Calibri Light_MSFontService’, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: inherit;”>onedrive</span><span class=”NormalTextRun SCXO25473650 BCX0″ style=”margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: ‘Calibri Light’, ‘Calibri Light_MSFontService’, sans-serif; font-size: 26.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; background-color: inherit;”> will enable collaboration between all the shareholders, allowing all to access, review and edit the plan.</span>
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I had not used the subscription office 365 apps before. I had heard of ‘Teams’ as a way of communicating during lockdown but I found most people were using ‘Zoom’. The Microsoft Education Centre courses were very beneficial. I needed to view ‘One note’ before exploring ‘Sway’. I thought ‘one note’ was great for adding multimedia and I can see myself using it for planning and for sharing information. I was very impressed with ‘Sway’ and with the presentation. It was very user friendly and I can see primary school children being able to make exciting presentations. The pre made templates were a help in devising my own presentation.
The quiz app was also easy to navigate and as a means of assessment and reflection would be useful in the primary school setting. Further quizzes can be differentiated based on results. Sharing was simple on email, twitter and Facebook wouldn’t be suitable for primary school. I would be interested to know if these applications can be shared to ‘Seesaw’.
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In my own school, we have used a variety of digital tools and some staff have preferences for Google Classroom, while others are Office users. We have a volume licensing agreement that gives all staff and pupils access to Office 365 and it is really interesting how this could be implemented in the classroom and the school as a whole. From using PowerPoint in Digital Storytelling, to creating school/class newsletters using Publisher or Sway are all great, interactive, group projects. Sway, in particular would be really useful to share information with the wider school community and allow pupils to share their work with parents etc, whether on the school website or blog, or simply by sharing the link by email or text message.
Using Forms as an effective tool to survey both pupils and staff as part of the school’s SSE/DEIS Action Planning process is great and produces a clear and informative end product that is very useful to bring to the action plan.
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I was delighted to find this summer course. We set up Microsoft for Education in school last year, and have been using it mainly for emails up to now. However, as part of our Digital Learning Plan, we have chosen CPD in Microsoft as an area we want to improve on and upskill in. Therefore, it has been very beneficial to experiment with Sway. It has a vast array of features that make way for wonderful lesson presentations and for the pupils to create creative Digital Stories. I was amazed by the remix feature and how many options are readily available at the click of a button. I have previously used Microsoft Forms. This is very useful tool for Assessment for Learning and Assessment of Learning. It is also a great way to get feedback from the whole school community, with the added benefit of analysing the results. We used Microsoft Forms to send a Questionnaire to parents and pupils about Seesaw. This fed into our Digital Learning Plan, which was part of our SSE. It supported the gathering evidence part of the 6 step SSE process. The Microsoft Learn education Centre will be an invaluable resource to our school. We targeted CPD training in Microsoft as part of targets in our Digital Learning Plan, so this will help us if we need training in a specific area and will therefore support our improvement plan in SSE.
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Hi Amanda,
Thanks for your contribution. We found ourselves in a very similar position in my school a few years ago. As a staff, we were engaging somewhat with the email and cloud storage functions of our platform, but it was having very little impact in terms of teaching and learning in the school. We moved to try to incorporate it into classroom practice and have children become ‘creators’ as opposed to ‘consumers’. There were plenty of bumps on the road, but we are moving towards a point where these practices are becoming more embedded. With using Office 365 in your school, start small and spread the success stories to others – it won’t be long before people want to come on board if it’s going to make their workload lighter.
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I have to say that the Sway tool looks very good. I have used PhotoStory in the (distant) past but this looks even better. Forms I’d be familiar with. There is huge educational potential with even these two applications in the classroom. What I like is that the children can engage on their own unique educational journey – aided by the MS platforms.
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https://sway.office.com/p5vheH2gzmD9qgfk?ref=Link
<p class=”MsoNormal”>I feel Sway would be beneficial in my particular class as I teach in an AS setting where the children are accessing different curriculums, with the variance being between Junior infants and Sixth class levels. Sway would enable me to quickly create targeted resources for these children. For instance, I could scan texts and link learning pathways for the content to foster independent learning for some children. Whereas I could differentiate the text by adding audio recordings of reading texts, for example, with others. Given the need for home/school communication in an AS setting I think it would also be very beneficial in creating online newsletters for the parents so they are aware and get to see some of the activities that take place each week. I often collate these pictures at the end of the year and create a movie – but this is time-consuming and Sway potentially makes this more manageable by delivering the content on a weekly/monthly basis. I think this is relevant to the SSE process as it fosters the links between home and school; the children could share their work with parents, and the parents can be informed through newsletters of activities. Equally, the forms app also has great potential for self-reflective practice for both students and staff, as well as enabling all partners in education to contribute to topics of relevance. In summary, the sharing and communication elements of these apps support and benefit all.</p>-
Hi Carina,
Thank you for your detailed post and for the many fascinating insights you have shared. Your experience as a special class teacher will be very useful to others doing this course. In this setting, the work is so varied and you have mentioned the huge variance in the difficulty of work you will be assigning. Digital technologies and the Office 365 suite are certainly something that can help lessen the load for you. The use of this platform could be transformative for home-school links. As you mentioned, Sway could be a way of documenting things in your class for newsletters. Social stories and other related content could also be shared for parents to review at home, etc.
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https://forms.office.com/r/0LhzWgbpxb
<span id=”docs-internal-guid-96e76a75-7fff-5b3f-667c-20bb8cb167da”><span style=”font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;”>I feel Sway would be beneficial in my particular class as I teach in an AS setting where the children are accessing different curriculums, with the variance being between Junior infants and Sixth class levels. Sway would enable me to quickly create targeted resources for these children. For instance, I could scan texts and link learning pathways for the content to foster independent learning for some children. Whereas I could differentiate the text by adding audio recordings of reading texts, for example, with others. Given the need for home/school communication in an AS setting I think it would also be very beneficial in creating online newsletters for the parents so they are aware and get to see some of the activities that take place each week. I often collate these pictures at the end of the year and create a movie – but this is time-consuming and Sway potentially makes this more manageable by delivering the content on a weekly/monthly basis. I think this is relevant to the SSE process as it fosters the links between home and school; the children could share their work with parents, and the parents can be informed through newsletters of activities. Equally, the forms app also has great potential for self-reflective practice for both students and staff, as well as enabling all partners in education to contribute to topics of relevance. In summary, the sharing and communication elements of these apps support and benefit all. </span></span>
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For the puposes of SSE, I think that the Sway tool looks very useful. I have used PhotoStory in the (distant) past but this looks even better. Forms I’d be familiar with. There is huge educational potential with even these two applications in the classroom. What I like is that the children can engage on their own unique educational journey – aided by the MS platforms.<br clear=”all” /></span>
The “gathering evidence” part of SSE requires us as educators to gather information and make data-based decisions and both Sway and Forms underpins this process. They can be used by teaching staff, students and parents in our school setting to gather data and make informed decisions.
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Hi Eamonn,
Welcome to the course! Sway is certainly an upgrade from Photostory, and the functionality certainly allows for the integration of more 21st century skills. The word I take from your post is ‘unique’ – the Office 365 products certainly gives us the opportunity to create these learning experiences in a more more efficient manner than would be possible with copybooks and textbooks. The gathering of data is a hugely important part of the SSE process and the use of Forms really is a no-brainer. It can also be extended to gather assessment data and opinions within the classroom.
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Form Quiz: https://forms.office.com/r/WTkmM91YXz
I have had some experience using forms in the classroom. As I had a multigrade level I used sway to help with my Friday tests in Irish and Maths. The children were able to answer the questions/ spellings using forms and it automatically corrected them. The children were then able to self-assess how they did when they received their scores.
Sway looks like a very interesting and fun tool to use with the class. It seems that it is a tool that would bring a presentation to life more than PowerPoint. It would be very useful during SESE topics as the children would create a Sway based on the topic covered over the week and could then present it to the class. The children would then be able to Peer Assess with ‘Two Stars & One Wish”.
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I have to admit, I am completely out of my comfort zone with this course. I had noticed the application ‘onedrive’ on my laptop but had no idea that how it could be used, so even logging into it today and having a look around, I felt I had made a bit of progress! We recently got new state of the art interactive whiteboards in the classroom (where the whiteboard itself can be used the same as a tablet or computer), but I feel I am sticking to what I know and not using it to its full capacity. Hence, why I enrolled on the course. I will be teaching 4th class in September and feel I need to be more current and tech savvy when it comes to resources. Sway could be used with almost any curricular area. I particularly like creating PowerPoints to support my SESE lessons and can envisage using sway to create digital stories as an alternative. Online quizzes with Form would be a fun way of eliciting prior knowledge on a topic or as an assessment tool. The children could answer the questions on school tablets. Using Forms to collect assessment data would be very valuable in relation to the School Self Evaluation process also.
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Hi Gail,
You are very welcome to the course. I hope you find the content useful – there will be lots of it, but taking little nuggets from each module will really help your practice. The new interactive whiteboards really are a gamechanger and negate the need for a teacher ‘laptop’. Indeed, as you mentioned ‘One Drive’, this can be synced with the boards meaning you can access all your files and resources there too.
You have a clear understanding of the different curricular activities that could be completed using the Microsoft tools mentioned. Your 4th class children would love experimenting with the different designs available on ‘Sway’.
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This module has been very helpful in introducing me to all the benefits and hidden options that Microsoft 365 has to offer. To date in school I have only used it as a tool for communicating with others through teams and collaboration of plans and sharing documents with others. The Sway application is great tool to create presentations for children based on a variety of topics to make it as engaging as possible. It would also create an opportunity for children to being actively involved in adding links, media and other documents to the presentation. After introducing it to the children it could be a great source for them to create group projects on topics being thought in the class and present them to their peers in their own way through visual aids such as pictures they have chosen and auditory videos.
In terms of school self assessment I would use the Form tool as a means of targeting the learning outcomes when focusing on a curricular area such as numeracy or literacy. Children could be given a quiz at the start of the learning process and identify prior knowledge and then again upon completion of that target/subject area and explore what has been learnt from there.
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Hi Linda,
Your post has given some really useful examples of ways in which Forms could be used at the beginning/end of a topic to assess knowledge. In addition to this, Forms can also be used to create single-question ‘exit tickets’. This allows you to ask the children to self-assess themselves on how well they understood the content and allows you to plan for subsequent lessons. This is totally optional, but is something I have found useful in the past.
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I really enjoyed this first module. I am already a big fan off Microsoft 365 which we use in our school, but I can see from this section that we are not using it to its full potential at all.
This year we want to get our children using their 365 student accounts and I feel the two apps outlined in this module would be perfect. I love the idea of Forms as they can create their own multiple-choice quizzes for their peers. It would act as a great means of assessment but also enable them to become independent in assessing themselves and each other. The many options available to them in forms, even the maths aspect allows for lots of potential and different formats which I think they would love exploring.
As I am teaching in the senior end of the school, I also feel it would be easier to integrate Sway into the classroom. The simple example outlining Art opportunities would be a brilliant place to start and I would feel confident in doing that until I became more familiar with this particular app. I love how other participants mentioned creating a bank of resources for a particular stream. This could enhance a Plean Scoile and provide additional material to enhance the curriculum.
For these reasons I think that these apps could be essential in the SSE process in terms of highlighting student voice. Once they become familiar with the apps then gathering their feedback and options. As I mentioned already, we are a 365 school but when gathering data, we have reverted back to Google Forms it is great to know that this option is available through 365.
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Hi Emer,
Welcome to the course! I totally understand the feeling of not using the Microsoft tools to their full potential in the classroom. However, regardless of whether you are using Google or Microsoft, this a feeling that all teachers will have. This is purely down to the sheer breadth of resources available and their suitability for use in the classroom. Your suggestion for getting the children to create their own assessments and quizzes on content covered is excellent. This could be especially useful for Gaeilge lessons. When you think about it, children spend so much of their time answering questions, that it may be a challenge for them to formulate a number of their own questions on a particular topic.
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I found using both Sway and Forms very easy once you got into the swing of it. I think using it frequently would really embed it into school practise. Sharing the knowledge that I have learnt here during module 1 with colleagues would lead to collaborative practise. Both resources could be used within individual classrooms as a way of showcasing the childrens’ work and as a tool for useful assessment.
This could be furthered by sharing within a year group so that teachers completing the same tasks and topics could learn from me and include it as part of their best practise.
Furthermore, on a whole school scale, the tools could be used in so many areas to enhance the SSE process. Forms can be used to gather opinions and feedback from staff. Sway could be used as a digital portfolio to gather evidence of the work being done around SSE. For example, if literacy was a focus area in SSE, then each child could have a portfolio where they show their learning across all areas of literacy – oral language, reading, writing etc. Teachers could assess the childrens’ prior knowledge of a literacy topic through Forms and could later do a summative assessment to determine what they have learned. This could all be fed back at staff meetings and used as evidence to show the development of the schools’ vision for literacy as a SSE focus area.
All in all, I think both Sway and Forms have their uses and benefits in school life.
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Hi Laura,
Welcome to the course and thank you for your post! I’m interested in how you have said that you found using Sway and Forms easy once you got the hang of it.
I am delivering a face-to-face course this week and the participants were questioning the level of time and work that is required to create a Forms assessment. This is something that I have also encountered in my own school. However, what I always try to say is that the length of time it would take you to source a quiz, photocopy it, staple it, distribute it, correct it and tally the results is far greater than the time it would take to create an ‘online’ assessment. Perhaps, it’s just a little change in mindset that is required to achieve this change. It’s great that you have found it easy to use and I hope you’ll have practical use for it in your classroom.
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Sway looks very interesting and will be a great tool to invigorate PowerPoints and make them more accessible and interesting. It would also be a great tool for the students to use to showcase their learning on topics.
Forms looks very easy to use and could be a great linchpin for the gathering evidence section of SSE. Forms would also be a great tool for both formative and summative assessment and, again, something the students themselves could use for self-assessment and peer assessment.
The Microsoft learn educator centre is a great tool for cpd and to keep on top of new developments and how to use technology to greater advantage in the classroom. -
Sway is an excellent tool for presentations, newsletters, information sheets. I really like the possibility to create slides to edit and share for further editing and the ease with which you can include images, videos and audio is brilliant. I really like to have control over the format of documents and I found this quite difficult with Sway as it did not allow me to move things around in the slides in the same way I can with powerpoint or word….
I would use sway to present newsletters to parents, to create information sheets for homework (I love the stack system, particularly the way you can ask a question and then reveal the answer!). I would embed the newsletters into our blog. I really like that you can also include speech and record audio, this will be extremely helpful to parents who are unable to read…
Forms opens up a world to quizzes and questionnaires that I love. It offers opportunities to develop formative and summative assessments, using pictures and videos. Using the immersive reader element to hear questions etc is also fabulous and as a special school teacher opens up a world of possibilities for our students to be able to fully immerse themselves independently in quizzes and questionnaires. I also like the QR code generator that can be used to access forms. This could be printed off and put on displays to get children to use the corridor displays for learning.
Our SSE this year is well-being and I think we could use forms to develop questionnaires for our community. We could use sway to update the parents on what we are doing in the form of a newsletter to keep them informed.
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Hi Elaine,
Welcome to the course. As a special school teacher I am excited to see what insights and tips you can offer throughout the course. You have correctly pointed out the usefulness of the Immersive Reader functionality in a special class setting. Indeed, it is a really useful tool for all children with literacy difficulties.
Using the QR code generator to access Forms is a real handy time-saver if the children are using tablets. A quick time-saver for creating a QR code for any web address is to use the Chrome browser and hit the share icon on the far right of the address bar. ‘Create QR Code’ will be one of the options on the drop-down menu.
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One drive: I’ve had for years, it’s pretty good however I use it for storage rather than stuff I need quick access too.
Sway: I liked this resource, I had never hear of it before. I’d like to get the children to create a project on sway and then link it in our class blog. I think this would be nice as the children could then look at each others presentations easily. It also would be a good way of using our blog space and keeping the parents updated. I think I would still do my lesson presentations on powerpoint as I don’t see a huge difference other than it being online but maybe I am missing something?
Forms: I really like this and hadn’t used it before. I created a maths quiz and I can see the children getting really involved in these quizzes. I think it would be a brilliant early finisher idea to have a quiz that the children could engage in. Also it would be useful for homework and assessments. I used to do this in a private school I worked in on a paid for website that was quite expensive so this is a good alternative solution for my current public school. My issue is the responses for me are coming up as anonymous. I saw on the module your settings options are different to mine, I don’t see anything on mine about changing the anonymous answers. I don’t have an eductator profile on 365 so this may be the reason for this, Do you know how I can fix this? Does your school have to pay for 365 accounts for this to be effective?
The microsoft learn educator courses would be good for Croke park hours. I like when we use these hours to learn something or get resources that will actually help us in our classrooms so I think this would be good to do for a Croke park session. I find these courses a little boring doing them on my own so I think I would suggest learning it as a staff while one staff member facilitates.
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Hi Megan,
Welcome to the Microsoft 365 course. On your question on 365 licensing, the web based versions of all the 365 apps (including Forms and Sway) are free for all schools, see Free Microsoft Office 365 for Schools & Students | Microsoft Education but this needs to be applied for on a whole school basis using the school’s own domain name rather than by individual teachers. If your school hasn’t already setup a 365 tenant, it is something that your Principal and/or Digital Learning Coordinator can do from the link above. To access the downloadable/installable apps your school would need to upgrade to a paid subscription (either A3 or A5)starting at €2.45 per user per month but this enables all licensed users to install the apps on up to five different computers/devices. See a comparison of the 3 tiers (Free to A5) at Compare Office 365 Education Plans (microsoft.com)
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I think One Drive is extremely useful for sharing documents and plans as a whole school. Having used sway for the first time as part of this module, I found it easy to use and useful for either editing a document or creating a new blank sway. Adding a link for an activity or clip is very useful with a wide variety of options.
Microsoft forms has many benefits and I look forward to trying Microsoft forms in the classroom. Having the option to create a quiz with Microsoft forms is a useful tool for assessing students’ learning at the end of a topic. It is a good alternative to other resources such as Kahoot as it can be easily shared with colleagues. Having the option to preview on Microsoft form as you are creating the quiz is useful. The option to review responses to the quiz as a class as well as individual responses is extremely helpful to identify understanding of a certain topic.
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Hi Orla,
I fully agree with your point around Microsoft Forms being a superior alternative to Kahoot! While Kahoot! is very enjoyable for the children, I have my doubts about the reliability of the assessment data gathered from it. The time-bound element encourages children to rush, and the fact that they are simply pressing a colour can lead to errors. Forms offers a much simpler interface, where the emphasis is placed on allowing the child to showcase their knowledge on a topic in a non-competitive manner. As such, the data can be relied upon when making decisions that inform future teaching and learning.
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Currently in our school we are using one drive which has proven to be an excellent sharing resource for teachers.Teachers are free to upload their ideas for class lessons in the curricular areas to share with other teachers.It allows teachers to impart knowledge from their own particular area of expertise which other teachers can access.
Sway digital in my opinion appears to be an excellent, fun and creative way for teachers to facilitate learning in their classes for all types of students and moreover for the students themselves to express and to voice their opinions in a more personal way. With the option to insert pictures and videos we as teachers can cater to all pupils including children who may find the traditional ways of learning and teaching more challenging than others.Therefore this tool is more than just beneficial , it is a stepping stone in teaching so that the education system itself can grow with the generations and continue to improve.
The tool Forms in my opinion could be a very helpful tool for the classroom. It helps senior class teachers such as myself (a 6th class teacher) during busy exam periods such as Christmas and Summer exams. Traditionally these involve paper waste, energy waste from photocopying and endless hours of correcting but with Forms we can see positive differences which eliminate the negatives of traditional exams by preprogramming answers and stopping paper and energy waste. I really welcome this invaluable online tool and the pupils I believe feel a greater satisfaction upon clicking for their final results when completing quizzes.
As a teacher in her ‘golden years’ I have to admit I am a little hesitant when it comes to using online tools , in this case Microsoft 365 however with the aid of the Microsoft learn education and the courses they offer to help teachers to understand and to make use of these new online tools I find myself more comfortable and more confident with the thought of using these tools when teaching.I feel it is greatly important for senior class teachers to empower their student’s voices and the content such as reflection and growth when reviewing past work and exams are a major component in a child’s holistic development. We can use these in class such as when doing kahoots as there is an option to reflect which is mentioned in the course. I can see myself making use of this in future classes.
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Hi Mary,
Welcome to the course and thank you so much for sharing your valuable experience of the use of OneDrive. The use of a cloud platform such as this is now so important in our schools, and is thought of as such within the ‘Teacher’s Collective and Collaborative Practice’ domain in Looking at Our Schools (2016).
Your post highlights how effectively you are using digital technologies, and you should be commended for this. I find all teachers, regardless of age or experience, can be reluctant to fully embrace the use of digital technologies. However, none of this is a barrier if you are willing to explore new approaches. The TPACK Framework speaks to this when it acknowledges the importance of 3 areas: technological knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge.
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The role of ICT co-ordinator has remained vacant in our school for a number of years and as a result we have yet to decide on one unified approach to digital learning tools as a learning community. As the newly appointed AP2 for this post, I chose this course so as to gain full insight into the potential use of 365 so that a fair comparison could be drawn between that and what Google has to offer. I must admit, upon completion of this initial module I am already far more impressed with 365 than Google and this is mainly due to Sway and the Education Centre.
Sway is a really intuitive resource that doesn’t require the user to reinvent the wheel. I am really looking forward to making use of Sway with my 6th class this year to explore the genre writing process using digital storytelling. I feel that I have only tipped the iceberg with the potential of this tool as this is my first interaction with Sway however already it is quite apparent that Google have yet to create a tool which equals Sway.
The Education Centre provided by Microsoft is undoubtedly the finest jewel in 365’s crown. The ease at which an educator can remain current with their digital CPD is just remarkable. Digital literacy will undoubtedly be central in our SSE this coming year. Due to the constantly evolving nature of technology this will undoubtedly be a somewhat daunting area of improvement for many of my colleagues. There will be quite a spectrum of experience with regards to digital literacy amongst my staff so having an incredible resource such as the Education Centre will allow for differentiated CPD for staff.
I am really looking forward to gaining further insights into 365 as the course progresses-
Hi Emma,
Welcome to the course and best of luck in your new role as Digital Learning Coordinator in your school. It’s a role I know only too well having been that soldier for many years when I was teaching.
And first up is a big call, what communication, productivity and collaboration platform/suite to go with, the eternal Google vs 365 debate.. You’ll find many comparison pieces online, for example Google Workspace vs. Office 365: Which is better for students? | Android Central opting for one or the other but these are all subjective, only at the individual school level can the pros and cons be truly weighed up. It is very much a ‘Horses for courses’ situation, I personally would be very much in the 365 camp but it was the productivity suite I cut my teeth on so again it’s difficult to be objective. Eoghan (my colleague here on this forum) on the other hand would be on the Workspace side, it’s really a question of preference and difference is good!
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Hi Emma,
Welcome to the course and congratulations/best of luck with your new role. As Pat has alluded to in his post, the Google v Microsoft debate is very much subjective. In my experience, I have huge time for the Google Workspace products and feel they bring so much to the classroom. However, this opinion has been formed through experience of using the products – when I joined my school, the G-Suite license had already been secured and we were using the email function. Had the O365 license been secured by my predecessor, my opinion and approach may be very different.
I do really like the One Note function of Microsoft, of which there is no real Google alternative. However, I actually feel like Google Sites and Drawings are better tools than the likes of Sway. However, once again this is clouded by more use of Google products.
The streamlined and consistent approach that you have mentioned in your post is so important. Once a platform ahs been decided upon, it’s important to commit to using that. It’s a challenging role and there are/will be many frustrating days, but it is a huge responsibility and can bring great satisfaction.
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I have never heard of Sway or used it until I started module 1. I look forward to using Sway in the classroom. It is very interesting how you can turn a blank page into an interactive and visually enjoyable information page. There are plenty of options and templates to use and make an exciting lesson. I have used forms in the past, for Assessment of Learning and found it very beneficial. Children are very excited when they see an interactive quiz or form . This is very useful for assessment and finding out exactly what the children know and need more work on.
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I have never heard of Sway or used it until I started module 1. I look forward to using Sway in the classroom. It is very interesting how you can turn a blank page into an interactive and visually enjoyable information page. There are plenty of options and templates to use and make an exciting lesson. I have used forms in the past, for Assessment of Learning and found it very beneficial. Children are very excited when they see an interactive quiz or form. This is very useful for assessment and finding out exactly what the children know and need more work on.
Sway looks very interesting and will be a great tool to invigorate PowerPoints and make them more accessible and interesting. It would also be a great tool for pupils to use. This will really showcase their learning on different areas of the curriculum. The Microsoft learn educator center is a great tool for CPD and to keep on top of new developments and how to use technology to greater advantage in the classroom. As we have seen from covid it really is necessary to constantly be up skilling in terms of our own ICT skills.
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Sorry, when I copy over my answer from Word it brings me to a page that says “A potentially unsafe operation has been detected in your request to this site.” Is this a common error? Do I need to type my post?
Thanks
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Hi Eoin,
Thanks for getting back to me. I’m not given any option when I go to paste my response. I’ll just type it in. It won’t take me that long. I don’t think it’s a formatting issue. It’s when I submit the post that it brings me to a warning page from Wordfence.
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Sway has huge potential for use in the classroom, not just for teacher created lessons and presentation but for the children creating their own content. Towards the end of the year in 1st class, we were doing information reports in genre writing. As part of the assignment for this module, I used Sway to create a simple information report. Whilst I need more practise to become better at formatting the digital stories, it gives an example of how the children could use Sway to present their writing and I’m sure that they would take to it a lot quicker than me! We have Microsoft 365 in school and have been using Teams, outlook, SharePoint, word etc. Without the course I wouldn’t have known about Sway and Forms.
Again, I think Forms will be very useful both for assessment and gathering information from staff and parents. Regarding gathering information, the ability to review the responses and interpret the data makes Forms an extremely useful tool to help schools in the SSE process. -
I started using office 365 in my school last year. I signed up for the course to see how I can fully use it for education purposes. I am familiar with word and PowerPoint but we only use outlook and teams for communication with staff, sharing resources, planning ect. I haven’t use or heard of Sway before joining this course. I used it today to create a school newsletter which is something I would use it for in the future. i can see how it is a useful tool for finding out quickly what the children have learned and retained from a lesson. The results are collated and can be shared easily using excel makes it very user friendly. I think more parents would engage with it as we all use our phones so much nowadays. Using forms makes gathering information much easier. It would be a useful tool for school SSE to gather information from students, parents and staff
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Hi Clodagh,
Welcome to the course and thanks for sharing your experience. It’s brilliant that you have dipped your toe in over the last year and managed to experience the use of some of the more mainstream Microsoft apps. Sway and Forms are really useful apps for use in the classroom – Sway is something that students could use themselves to record and communicate the findings of their work.
As you have said, it’s something that parents can use and interact with easily too on their smartphone. You could send images and audio recordings of Gaeilge vocabulary, instructions for a science investigation, etc. through this platform and the parents could actively help their child at home. When used appropriately, it can certainly improve and enhance home-school links.
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I had access to Micorsoft 365 in my school last year as we had a staff subscription, but I have to admit to have being very ignorant of the scope of its use and all the Apps that are available to us for use in the classroom. Due to Covid lockdowns, almost all children have had engagement with online learning and educational technology, so I feel like the Microsoft 365 suite will be of great use in the coming years.
I was very impressed with how easy Sway was to use. It is easy to see how to create interesting and creative content for lessons. Indeed, a super application of it could be to allow children to showcase their own work, and then share it with both their classmates and home.
I am familiar with the use of forms, and have always thought that they are a great way for parents to send in their opinions on school business in a simple and effective way.
The Education Centre is an exciting development for teachers and a space that I look forward to using to upskill myself in the coming years. As mentioned by a previous poster, I feel like this could be a really excellent use of Croke Park hours on a whole school level.
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Hi All,
I have found this module very interesting and extremely beneficial for my teaching in the classroom. I am always looking for new and innovative ways for the children to learn, especially through interactive and IT based resources as we have access to Google Chromebooks in my school and the pupils love using them. This is my first time to use SWAY and I am very impressed with it. It is very simple and easy to use. I think it would be very beneficial for children to create their own picture stories and share them with their classmates. I think the option to insert pictures and videos is integral as it attends to the needs of all learners and makes it more interesting for the child.
I really like the idea of Microsoft Forms, as I think this would be great for the teacher to create quizzes based on the topic they are learning about but also for the children to create their own quizzes and for their classmates to complete them in turn. They could complete them individually on the Chromebooks or together as a class. I use Google Classroom for children to upload projects and then share with the class. I think Forms is excellent for quizzes as I currently use Kahoot and sometimes find it can not suit all children’s abilities with the time limit and the layout in general. I think Forms will be much more academically beneficial for their future learning.
Looking forward to using these tools in my classroom in the future.
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Hi Kathryn,
Welcome to the course. I too am a big fan of the Sway app and see it as a powerful yet simple to use tool for digital storytelling, picture or photo stories as you reference but also great for illustrated narratives. Often teachers (particularly at the senior end of the school) think that when they’ve access to the full 365 suite, PowerPoint should be the tool of choice but particularly with storytelling, I believe, less is more and the simplicity of Sway lets students focus on their content instead of getting distracted by the advanced functionality/bells and whistles of PowerPoint.
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This was a very insightful module. I have held an outlook account for years but I have just used it for the very basics of sending and receiving emails. This module has opened my eyes to the benefit of using Microsoft 365 and the many apps it has to offer including that of One Drive, Sway and Forms. One Drive through the cloud allows for easy storage and sharing. Sway allows the creation of digital portfolios where you can work through certain criteria. I feel children would love to create their own digital stories and share them with their classmates. It is a way of creating a fun, inclusive and engaging environment. The platform of Forms is a convenient way of creating quizzes and assessment to gain instant feedback. Also, It is an information gathering hub and through the use of surveys, it can allow teachers to gain information for their relevant studies, such as a thesis, in an easy and efficient way. Furthermore, the education.microsoft.com site opens up endless possibilities for teachers from lesson plans and resources to offering upskilling courses and modules.
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<span style=”color: #163c42; font-family: ‘Hind Madurai’, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;”>In our school the technological infrastructure is limited. I was hoping to find some useful resources that we could implement this year. We use gmail for staff communication and Aladdin also. . I found sway quite useful adn it can be used to keep parents informed of upcoming events in the school calendar. The old fashioned note in the bottom of the bag can always get overlooked and eveyone has a smart phone these days. Forms might be useful from an assessment point of view. it can be used to record and collate assessment results over a period of time and future class teachers may be able to glean some useful information from it. I work in a special Class setting and this would be of great benefit to me. Is there a large cost involved in setting it up?</span>
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I use Microsoft 365 every day for my emails. I find it the most efficient way to keep in contact with parents and it is also linked with my phone if I get important emails. I never knew you could add on extra apps to the outlook and think this is a useful feature as you aren’t limited. I have never heard of Sway and think this is a fantastic modern way of presenting information to the children. It is also a useful way to incorporate ICT into lessons as children can work together and become creative making their own digital portfolios. The module was useful to show you step by step how to create these portfolios. In terms of SSE, it is a useful way of incorporating more ICT into lessons and making sure that staff and students are getting relevant experience with technology in the ever changing environment.
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Hi Laura,
Welcome to the course. Sway is a great app for digital stories and project work and could be used for digital portfolios as you’ve suggested. However, I would suggest using OneNote (Covered in Module 3) with the Class Notebook Add-in instead for this purpose. This provides a workspace for every student, content libraries, and a collaboration space for lessons and activities. It also integrates seamlessly with Teams. For more information on OneNote and Class Notebook see onenoteforteachers.com.
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I really enjoy using MS Office in the classroom. There is wonderful potential for the pupils to create Sway projects in the classroom. I like the way that you can upload a powerpoint or word document to get started. I also thought that the pupils would really enjoy the picture stack – this is a great way to insert lots of pictures.
I have used the quizzes previously in the classroom – a quick way to find out more about the pupils and their interests. Pupils have also created their own surveys to get feedback from their peers. I have also created quizzes so pupils could self correct their own tables workbook pages – it is time consuming to create but can be reused and saves time in class correcting and you have a record online.
Forms has been updated again since I was in it last and is even more teacher friendly now.
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A Chairde,
I found this module very interesting. I have never used sway before and loved how easy it was to use. It is great for enhancing powerpoints and I can see the benefits for creating useful lessons.It would be a very useful tool for students for creating personal portfolio for learning projects. Sway is very interactive and could be used to create presentations, personal stories and reports. Sway is a powerful tool which will bring learning to life in the classroom.
I have never used microsoft forms before but can see how it can be used as an assessment tool. It is easy to use to create forms, quizzes, polls and surveys from parents, staff and students which would be very usefule when gathering information for self school evaluation.
I will definitely engage more in the microsoft education centre which will help with my technological skills. It is great to have a place that will be helpful and useful for my personal learning and cpd.
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The Microsoft quiz app is a fantastic way to do a quick assessment with the whole class or a small group and you have an instant record of the results. This could be used for any subject at all and images etc can be added so that children could have to view and image and then select an answer, or write their own.
Sway is very useful for social stories. Where I would have used PowerPoint in the past to create these kind of social stories I will now use sway in the future. They would be great for introducing a new topic to children to give a very simple introduction.
Microsoft have so many tutorial videos, it’s fantastic and will be a big help to revise any forgotten content. As we are switching to one drive this year, programmes that are more compatible with Microsoft will make things much easier.-
Hi Celine,
Welcome to the course. As previously mooted on this forum, whilst PowerPoint is an extremely powerful presentation tool it can be overkill when recording simple digital stories. Content is always king, and pupils can focus on this when using Sway rather than be distracted by the bells and whistles of PowerPoint. The adage of ‘Horses for courses’ applies, start with what learning outcomes you want to achieve and then select the digital tool best suited…
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I had never heard of Sway or Forms before so these are completely new to me. I am amazed that I have never found these before. Sway is an excellent resource for children to work on projects and presentations. The templates available are excellent to guide the children. The option of creating a blog would be a great way for children to write about certain topics/events that happened during the month and create a monthly blog for the class. In relation to forms, It is great that the children are not placed under time pressure as a I often used Kahoot! and find they are rushing answers. It would be a great tool to use for both assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Forms could be used throughout the whole school to gather information from teachers and parents and not just in the primary classroom.
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Hi Chloe,
Welcome to the course. I fully agree with your point around the use of Kahoot! I feel that it is a tool that is often overused and the fact there are ‘ready made’ quizzes within the platform is something that draws teachers in. However, how many of these fully assess what has actually been taught and how suitable are they in an Irish context?
The use of Google/Microsoft Forms or a platform like Socrative provides much more reliable assessment data. This data is presented in such a way that a teacher can make deductions ‘at a glance’.
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<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Arial;”><span style=”font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;”>I had never heard of Sway or Forms before so these are completely new to me. I am amazed that I have never found these before. Sway is an excellent resource for children to work on projects and presentations both collaboratively and independently. The templates available are excellent to guide the children. The option of creating a blog would be a great way for children to write about certain topics/events that happened during the month and create a monthly blog for the class. In relation to forms, It is great that the children are not placed under time pressure as I often used http://www.Kahoot.it and find they are rushing answers. It would be a great tool to use for both assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Forms could be used throughout the whole school to gather information from teachers and parents and not just in the primary classroom.</span></span>
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<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Arial;”><span style=”font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;”>I had never heard of Sway or Forms before so these are completely new to me. I am amazed that I have never found these before. Sway is an excellent resource for children to work on projects and presentations both collaboratively and independently. The templates available are excellent to guide the children. The option of creating a blog would be a great way for children to write about certain topics/events that happened during the month and create a monthly blog for the class. In relation to forms, It is great that the children are not placed under time pressure as I often used http://www.Kahoot.it and find they are rushing answers. It would be a great tool to use for both assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Forms could be used throughout the whole school to gather information from teachers and parents and not just in the primary classroom.</span></span>
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<p class=”MsoNormal”><span style=”font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: ‘Arial’,sans-serif; color: #163c42; background: white;”>Hi all,</span></p>
<p class=”MsoNormal”><span style=”font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: ‘Arial’,sans-serif; color: #163c42; background: white;”>I never came across Sway until I started this course. I think Sway would be very beneficial in the classroom. Technology is truly incredible to think you can go from a blank canvas to a visually engaging resource. It appears that there is a broad selection in terms of creating exciting and relevant lesson themes. I also feel that Forms would be a great resource for factual work such as data. Needless to say this could be used for staff meetings, planning and assessment for learning. It is also hugely important in terms of involving the whole school community and involving both parents and non-teaching staff eg; cleaners. Furthermore, I think Sway would be a superb way of showing the everyday realities of classroom life for the purposes of social media and newsletters. <span style=”mso-spacerun: yes;”> </span>It would appear that Sway has huge benefits for all involved and can only be of huge advantage.</span></p> -
Hello,
I hope everyone is enjoying this course so far. I have found module 1 really informative. I had no prior knowledge of sway but will definitely be using it in the future. I think it would be a really engaging tool for the children. The pre designed templates are such a good starting pointing for children of all abilities.
I had some awareness of the uses of google form but never actually used them so the opportunity to increase my familiarity with them was great. I am part of the digitial learning committee in my school & we intend in the new school year to gather a range of information from children/staff/parents so I will definitely be using this tool to do.
The different tutorials available are also really helpful. I have had an Office 365 account for a few years now as it is the platfrom our school use mainly for email so I wasn’t using it to its full potential whatsoever so this knowledge is great.
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Hi Claire,
Welcome to the course. Google/Microsoft Forms are so useful for a number of reasons: quick surveys can be generated to get opinions from all in the school community/self-correcting assessments can be designed to be administered to your pupils.
When you are surveying your school community in September, there is a useful planning website designed by the PDST Technology in Education team (https://www.dlplanning.ie/). This website has a number of good practice videos for each domain and standard of the Digital Learning Framework. It also has sample surveys and questionnaires for some of these, which may be useful for you.
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Like others here, this is my first experience of engaging with Sway or Forms. I was very impressed in the Microsoft website example of how Sway could be used as a class newsletter – this is certainly something that I will look into in future. From a classroom point of view, I am looking forward to exploring a ‘flipped classroom’ approach using both Sway and forms. I think that Sway has potential to be used as a digital portfolio, ticking a lot of boxes from digital literacy, pupil assessment and of course, SSE. I think that Sway would be particularly useful as a portfolio to allow pupils, parents, teachers (and inspectors!) to see the progress made from the beginning to the end of the year, as well as developing pupils’ critical thinking skills and digital literacy. Forms has excellent potential for formative assessment. I really liked the branched feedback option, and the fact that pupils receive feedback in real time, rather than having to wait for a teacher to mark work.
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https://sway.office.com/1Are68PiKidxacsV?ref=Link
I have to say I found both Sway and Forms very useful and user friendly. It would certainly be easy enough for the kids in the older classes to even create their own quizzes and digital stories- if I could anyway! The forms in particular could be a very useful tool in terms of School Self Evaluation for surveying staff, children and parents on aspects of the school improvement plan and interpreting the data generated to see if the school has achieved the objectives set out. It could also be a good way of identifying areas that would be suitable for future evaluation as well. In my own context, it would be particularly good as digital learning is one of the objectives we have set. As well as SSE, these tools would be very helpful in the process of ongoing assessment, which is a major feature of school life these days. They would be very helpful as a record of both Assessment for Leaning and Assessment of Learning, which can be easily interpreted by teachers, management, parents and the inspectorate. Having such an interactive and engaging medium of assessment is a huge addition to your assessment toolkit.
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Hi Seán,
Welcome to the course. As you have suggested in your post, both Sway and Forms are powerful classroom tools for both teachers and students. They are user-friendly and easy to navigate once the central principles have been explained.
Sway offers huge potential for the publishing of genre writing, the design of persuasive posters, digital storytelling or recording the results of a science investigation. It allows the children to produce their work through another medium, one that offers huge accessibility features for struggling learners. Forms is my ‘go-to’ assessment tool. I can’t imagine returning to handing out tests and assessments with pen and paper. The ease at which Forms can collect the data and give you all the information you need is amazing. Furthermore, once it has been created once it can be re-used over and over again through the years.
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I’ve been teaching 18 years but I’m a real tech novice so I decided to bite the bullet and educate myself!
For me as a SET teacher Sway is a great way for me to connect with parents and to let them see what their children are doing on a weekly basis. It’s also a great way for parents to talk to their children with the aid of a digital portfolio (to jog memories and start a discussion). I feel Sway will provide a fun alternative for SEN children to record their weekly progress and this could be incorporated into targets in School Support Plans. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to navigate and I have created a simple Sway to introduce myself to my new students in September.
Most valuable for me in this module was the forms content. As an AP1 post holder and being charged with a whole school hand writing review, this will be invaluable to me. During a SSE process it is so important to survey staff, pupils and parents. As an ET school, we take this very seriously. I like the way the forms give you calibrated results in a variety of tables that are easy to interpret. I will be using these going forward to gather evidence to support changes in the school and to collect the voice of not just the adults but children too.</p>
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Hi everyone,
I hope you’re all enjoying the Summer holidays and the course. I’m a tech lover so when a friend recommended this course I knew it would be the one for me. The thing about tech is its ever evolving and there’s no way you could keep up with all of the programmes.
I have never heard of Sway and I love it. Copyright is a huge issue in schools but thankfully people are getting educated on it all the time. I’m hoping in August to use Sway to make a newsletter for my parents about what we are going to get up to for the first term. When I taught in the UK we always had a meeting with parents about the upcoming term where we showed a powerpoint of what we were planning. Sway would have been brilliant to lay it all out for the parents, and now especially in Covid times when you don’t want to bring people into the school unless it is vitally important.
In relation to Google Forms I think it would be a great use to help principals (especially in larger schools) to survey their staff on different issues – school calendar voting; introduction of new initiatives etc. I think it would help management appear more transparent and inclusive in the running of the school and help staff to feel like their opinion matters and that they have their say in things. All of that is so important for the ethos, environment and running of a school. I am in a small school and the principal will come around and ask us personally about our opinions on changes but we are growing all the time and this would be a great help and time saver for her.
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FormForms are an excellent way to gather information, consensus, amongst pupils, staff and parents. They are also a very efficient method of (in class) checking knowledge levels on a particular topic or subject; Encouraging further study through the use of stimulating questions and supporting links and multi-media.
Sway is an impressive medium in which to present topics and subjects, and the scope of its presentation with the potential for text, videos, photos and links makes it an al-encompassing software to encourage stimulating learning whilst offering outlets for the differentiated learner who may be more keen to engage with picture, photos and videos as opposed to just text.
SSE has the potential to complemented, in particular, by MS Forms. It provides an excellent, succinct, concise and efficient way to check information, responses, distribute knowledge, which is favourable when dealing with different groups: staff; pupils; parents. It also provides instant metrics from responses – which can very efficiently inform assessment and evaluation for SSE.
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I have little/no experience using either Sway or Forms software in the classroom. I think Sway could be of great benefit in the classroom. As a primary school teacher, Sway could be used in junior classes to bring stories to life. It would have been very useful back when we were engaging in remote learning. Moreover, it would easily be adapted to suit the senior classes in completing homework assignments or project work.
I would normally opt for Kahoot rather than ‘Forms’ as I feel it looks more interactive. Can ‘Forms’ offer anything that Kahoot cannot offer?
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Hi Tomás,
Welcome to the course. Thank you for asking the question around the use of Kahoot! versus the use of Forms.
While the children love Kahoot! I would always opt for either Forms or Socrative when designing an assessment. Forms allows you to add media files and images for each of the ‘answer options’, which is a paid feature within Kahoot! Furthermore, I feel the timed nature of Kahoot! and the fact they can only see four colours on their screen makes it unreliable in terms of assessment data. Children are concerned with answering quickly and getting their name on the leaderboard. In my opinion, there is a place for both, but Forms would be more of a ‘go-to’ in terms of assessment.
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Hi, I am a SEN teacher in a special school in Dublin. My students are all working on the l1LP’ss or L2LP’s of the Junior cycle. Some of modules covered are Communication & Literacy, Numeracy, Preparing for Work, Living in the Community and Personal Care. They also must complete short courses to complete the junior Cycle Program. Both of these tools are something i can use in my class. A record of the students progress is kept while they finish the course.
I had never heard of either sway or forms. I think forms is something that I can incorporate into my everyday teaching as an assessment tool but also as part of the collection of data towards the levelv1 & Level 2 learning programmes all of my students are taking part in. It also allows for self evaluation which is great because it allows the students have more independence which is always something we strive for in SEN.
I found sway particularly interesting for two main reasons. Firstly, it would allow me make short presentations on certain topics that I can then show on the interactive whiteboard in class. The forms assessment could be used at this point for example to see what the students picked up from the presentation. Secondly, as part of a short course we are completing we need to provide an e-portfolio. Sway is ideal for this task. It would along we upload video or photos of some of the practical tasks that need to be completed for the short course.
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Hi James,
From the description you have provided, Sway and Forms would be the ideal tools to use in your setting. Sway has the potential to be used for both ‘content consumption’ and ‘content creation’. As you have said, it could be used as a teaching aid initially, and a Forms quiz could assess understanding of the content.
Moving on from this, you could gradually release some independence and look at adding some of their own content to Sway templates, before working on building their own from scratch. It would serve as the idea tool for an ePortfolio within this setting also.
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The school I worked in last year used Microsoft office and although I used the basic of it throughout the year, I did not realise it has so many extra features which can provide resources to make lessons more engaging for the pupils. This is the reason I chose this summer course this year. One Drive is the aspect I used most often last year and it is great for storing all your resources in one place. As well as this, being able to share resources between the whole school community is beneficial for all and really promotes unity within the school. Sway will be a great tool for making powerpoints and storytelling more colourful, fun and interactive for pupils. Forms will be a great tool for gathering information which will lead school self-evaluation. It is also useful as a quiz to consolidate learning. I have used kahoot with older classes but I think forms will be more useful in the future as it also has the element of inserting imagery which will help differentiate questioning and allow more access for pupils. The Microsoft Education Centre is a fantastic resource and provides great detail on how to use all the resources. This will be very useful when first starting to use a new tool but also as a refresher on certain things during the year.
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Hi Louise,
Welcome to the course. There are so many resources and tools available within the Office 365 suite, and one is always learning. Most schools will start out at a very basic level and gradually word will spread of another great tool they can use. I am also a big fan of using Forms over Kahoot! as I find the assessment data you get much more reliable. The ability to insert images, videos, recordings, etc. are great tools for differentiation and accessibility. As you have said, the Microsoft Education Centre really is a ‘go to’ resource. There are so many excellent courses available and one could easily spend months upskilling and learning new features.
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I can see lots of scope in both the classroom and SEN room to use forms and sway. I have never used Microsoft office before so this is all new to me. I am an SEN teacher so I can see that the use of sway will be beneficial to the pupils. We have used photostory lots last year. Sway will be a nice change. They will love adding their own photos, videos and editing it, using different backgrounds and fonts. The younger children love making personal stories which could incorporate lots of sight words etc to help with reading skills. It will be useful for the older classes to make presentations for project work. We have used kahoot before with the older classes and I can see some similarities between it and forms. Again it will be great to use in the SEN setting. Children could devise their own quizzes using multiple choice etc and then use it in the classroom. It will also be useful when gathering data.
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<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>The use of onedrive for saving files would create an amazing bank of easily accessible resources for any teacher and a shared drive would be a great tool to enable collaboration between teachers to share and build upon resources. </u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>To date, Powerpoint is the only office tool I have used in the classroom. I have been using other sites for creating quizzes however at times logging in and out of various sites can be off putting, especially with younger classes. To have all of these tools in one place makes it more accessible and user friendly so I am looking forward to engaging with the Microsoft Education Centre to develop my awareness and skills in using the tools available through Microsoft 365!</u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>I used powerpoint as a way of ‘presenting’ material to my class and to minimise the use of textbooks in the hope of making my lessons more tailored and relevant to my class. I am looking forward to using Sway to make lessons more accessible, engaging and interactive to students. The templates will be very useful as starting points. </u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>I have also been using powerpoint to make multiple choice quizzes which had to be used as a whole class activity and completed in copies or on pages! I look forward to replacing this practice with Forms! Forms seems very user friendly for both teachers (creating quiz) and students (when answering questions). The automatic ‘self grading’ features makes them an ideal form of assessment that children can complete independently. The overview of responses provided is a very clear way to show what areas of a topic may need to be revised. Print outs of these response overviews will be definitely be included in my assessment folder for assessment of learning and assessment for learning going forward! </u></span>
<span style=”color: #0000ee;”><u>In terms of SSE, a school could use one drive to compile a shared bank of resources in whatever area is being looked at in SSE. Also, the use of forms could be used to gather and analyse data across many aspects of teaching and learning in the school. These tools could be used during Croke Park hours to present SSE info (using SWAY) and to survey staff, parents and students (using Forms).</u></span>
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Is there a way that I should show I have completed the following steps of the module:
- Use Sway to create a digital story and enhance with copyright free images and video.
- Create a 5 question multiple choice quiz
- Engage with two Microsoft Learn Education Centre courses ?
(I have posted reflective piece in forum)
Thank you
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Hi Michelle,
Welcome to the course. Thank you for submitting your forum reflection – you have highlighted a number of Forms and Sway features that would be highly suitable for use in your classroom. Very often, a change of tool can be really effective at generating interest and enthusiasm about a topic. Alternating between Sway and PowerPoint may do this for you and your class. Forms is such a comprehensive assessment tool, and the ability to provide feedback on each question allows students to get that bit more out of it for their learning.
If you wish to share you Form quiz and Sway digital story, you can share the links on the forum. They are not compulsory elements of the module assessment.
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I work in SEN and have been looking for ways to make my sessions more interactive. I think Microsoft Sway will be perfect. It is very interesting how you can turn a blank page into an interactive and visually enjoyable information page. There plenty of options and templates to use and make your lessons come to life! I like that I can present information in a concise way using a shareable link. It is a great happy medium between PowerPoint slides and a Word document. You can share more in Sway that you can reasonably fit on slides. I think it’s quite easy to get started with,it is very simple and straightforward to use. I feel anyone on my staff could quickly learn and use it. I really like the presentation mode in Sway and how it also offers users templates to start with instead of creating things from scratch.
Forms will be very useful for gathering evidence as a whole school. A great assessment tool also as it will allow for students to create their own quizzes and reply to assignments with feedback available to students and parents.
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Hi Denis,
Welcome to the course – thanks for sharing the above link to your Forms quiz. From viewing it you have a very good grasp of how it could be used as an assessment tool. There are a good variety of questions, and require the students to really focus on the ‘detail’ within the questions. For those with literacy difficulties, images can be added to both the questions and answers to assist.
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I am moving into SET next year and I think these tools will be extremely useful for myself and children with additional learning needs it will make the lessons more accesible to them, I also will be able to show to the class teacher exactly where they are struggling with the statistical analysis it offers. Assessment has something I have struggled with to keep on top of with the forum, its all in one place, takes 5 minutes to create a quiz and it’s there to share to other teacher, or print for parent teacher meetings. I also feel some children benefit and enjoy answering questions on the iPad or computer. It’s beneficial to have the option for both.
I enjoy cooking with my class and last year I wanted to make Rice Krispie buns with them and wanted them to follow instructions and make them themselves. Sway really enabled me to make the recipe simple, clear and legible which would be accessible to any child. I also had a few children that have difficulty reading. The video feature makes the lesson very accessible to these kids. The share feature makes it so easy to share with other teachers, we use class dojo so it would be very easy to share with parents also.
Thanks!
Link to digital story
Link to Questions
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Hi Laura,
Welcome to the course. Thank your for submitting both your Sway digital story and your Forms quiz. These tools have the potential to be used extensively in any setting, including SEN. Your Forms quiz is well constructed, and as you said, it collates all the data in one place. It makes it extremely easy to keep on top of things and track student progress. The breakdown of performance on each question can also prompt the teacher to go back over some elements with larger groups again.
‘Sway’ would be a great tool for the children to use as part of a ‘write-up’ for procedural writing. This would tie in really well with any form of cooking or baking done with a class/small groups.
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I’m familiar with Microsoft Forms as I’ve used them this year to maximize engagement with surveys for parents, staff and children for our school’s SSE process. I found it especially effective to analyze results and present them in a visual format. I had never considered using Microsoft forms as a form of assessment before but I absolutely will use it to aid my teaching and assessment methods with the children this coming year.
I will be teaching 6th class again and I’m especially looking forward to using Sway with them as a means of teaching something to the children but also as one option for the children to present their own project work. We will be lucky enough to have an iPad per child available in the class and I think they will love the freedom of designing their own work in the style they would like most, using Sway.
I also really like the branching option in Microsoft forms as I often find it hard in the classroom to avoid obvious differentiation techniques among the class group, and branching will allow for a much more discreet and targeted differentiation approach. I also think I might use Forms while setting homework assignments.
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My school uses Office 365, so I thought this course would be a great way to explore it further.
Sway was wonderful to use to create an interesting lesson about classroom rules and information for my pupils for back to school in September. It’s something I never used but I will definitely use it again. It has excellent visuals and text styles and I know my students will respond well to it. It can be used to make a number of vibrant lesson aids. I also think my students will enjoy creating their own stories, posters etc. from it. A nice alternative to imovie also.
My school regularly uses forms to gather information from staff for whole school planning and policies. I myself have never used in the class as I use mentimetre but I now see how it could be useful for assessment of learning and I will try it too on a whole class level. I also like the idea of using it for parents to gather information. I am in an ASD class so this will be very effective.
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I am familiar with Microsoft forms as a means of assessment and setting online work for my class. Last year my class really engaged with it as they saw it as a ‘fun quiz’ whereas for me as the teacher it was a fantastic assessment tool and I was easily able to identify the students that needed additional support. Microsoft forms has also been used in our school for teacher and parent surveys and data collection. It is a very efficient and useful tool for our school community.
I have never used Sway before but it seems like a very handy tool for the classroom. I am looking forward to creating some presentations across all subject areas and also allowing my class to create their own presentations on topics.
In our school we have a central network box to save teacher notes, resources etc. Over the past year there have been instances where the box has gone offline and we have not been able to access any of our saved files. Using onedrive would be much better for our staff to save their files to and it would get rid of the worry that our files could be lost forever when the box dies.
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Personally, I have little/no experience using either Sway or Forms software in the classroom. I think Sway could be of great benefit in the classroom. It in an interactive, well-presented program which is guaranteed to catch the attention of any class age groups. As a primary school teacher, Sway could be used in junior classes to bring stories and picture-books to life. It would have been very useful back when we were engaging in remote learning. Moreover, it would easily be adapted to suit the senior classes in completing homework assignments, end of year Graduation presentations or project work.
Moreover, I feel that Forms looks like a very useful resource. It is simple to use, and I had my own 10 question quiz completed in less than 10 minutes. However, I would normally opt for Kahoot rather than ‘Forms’ as I feel it looks more interactive and engaging, especially for the Junior classes. Can ‘Forms’ offer anything that Kahoot cannot offer?
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As a primary school teacher I found this module very useful. We predominantly use Google classroom and all the google elements. However, having looked at Sway and the quiz options through Microsoft, I find this to be a lot more user friendly. The forms elements especially would work as a great assessment tool in the classroom. Like many others I tend to use Kahoot but I will definitely be using this forms option in the future.
As well as that, I think the children in my class would love to use Sway. It is very easy to use and would allow for a lot of creativity. As we will be using netbooks for each child, I think Sway is going to be an excellent resource for project work and takes away the over reliance on power point for example. Thanks for introducing me to these great resources.
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As teachers we are always engaged in a battle to keep students engaged with topics and are looking for ways to make lessons and assessments more interesting for the students. These tools are a great way to supplement the lessons we do every day and encourage greater engagement in the classroom.
I had never used Sway before starting this course and found it very user-friendly and an excellent way of creating visually impressive presentations that could be used to draw students into topics. The bright themes and easily accessible copyright-free images available at the click of a button helped to save a lot of time when creating the project.
Likewise creating the quiz on Forms was really straightforward and is a great tool for assessment. Children these days seem to be very competitive and multiple choice quizzes are a great way to assess what the children have learned while also being a bit more accessible for those children who find it difficult to express their knowledge through written assessments.
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Hi Donnacha,
Welcome to the course. As you have said, we are in a constant battle to keep children engaged and to keep learning ‘fun’ in the classroom. I like the way you have acknowledged how these tools can ‘supplement’ the learning. It is not about replacing old pedagogy, but rather using the digital technologies to extend and deepen learning.
Multiple-choice quizzes are a great way to assess knowledge. Forms does also allow for longer responses to be provided for more open-ended questions if you wanted to vary to tasks over time.
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Like so many of the other contributors here I have yet to experience the use of sway and forms within a classroom setting but I feel both have significant benefits which will certainly aid my teaching in the future. Initially, when I engaged with Sway I wondered was there actually much difference between it and PowerPoint but clearly there is. I find it very easy to use. The ability to access a variety of media and input them into a presentation or digital story is the way forward to keep students engaged. It would be a fantastic way for students to become creative with projects and to be able to share those projects with other classes and parents alike. The feature which allows you to ‘Remix’ in the design section is very clever. Often you don’t know what style you like until you see one picked for you.
With regard to Forms, again this is probably the immediate and future for assessment in most modern classrooms. It removes having to correct endless copies or multiple-choice exams. It also provides you with immediate data that can be used to provide teachers/parents with accurate feedback.
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Hi Patrick,
Welcome to the course. It is clear that, from engaging with the module content, you have a good idea of how both Sway and Forms could be utilised within your classroom. You have highlighted the main advantages of Forms there – I often get told that ‘it must take a long time to make one of those’. However, when you take into account the time spent at a photocopier, stapling, collecting, correcting and inputting results into a book, I can guarantee that there is no difference in the amount of time taken.
The beauty of the Forms quiz is that it can be re-used each year and that the data is so much easier to interpret.
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Module 1
I personally found this module very useful and worthwhile. I am coming from a primary perspective. We have recently been given a Deis status so Forms will be a very useful tool for us to gather evidence for our Deis Plan. It is a quick and easy way to do this and results can begiven very promptly.
I have never used Sway before but it seems like a very useful tool to have. I plan to use it in my classroom in September.In our school we use one drive for teachers to share resources and to access school policies and information easily. It has proved very useful and beneficial. We have created different folders so teachers can access documents or resources very easily. We also upload our cuntas míosúil each month so therefore you can check what the previous teacher thought the children the year before. I look forward to continuing to use it.
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https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rkHPdAvgsAxysQ5ePL9Jcxw3m-UMlPtfLhSutcFPQ0I/edit
Module 1 Google Form-
Hi Patrice,
Welcome to the course. Unfortunately, I’m unable to access that link to the form due to sharing permissions but no worries as this part of the assignment is optional. Going by the link, the form appears to be a Google and not a 365 one, both share the same name and indeed functionality so are equally useful in the classroom, particularly for formative assessment.
From what you’ve outlined, your school is already using OneDrive very effectively for teacher planning and collaboration. The next step I would suggest is to integrate OneDrive with a Staff Team in Microsoft Teams if you don’t already have one setup? The benefit of this is that you can then use this not just to access shared files/resources but also as a hub for all staff communication, collaboration and digital productivity, keeping everything together in one place rather than having to move between apps like Forms, Outlook, OneNote etc. More on Teams in Module 2…
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We have been using Microsoft 365 in our school as a portal for communication and sharing resources over the past three years. It is used effectively for teacher planning and the sharing of school policies and resources. I had not considered the educational value of Sway and Forms.
After engaging with Sway and Forms in this module I now see the value of these in the classroom. I regularly download powerpoints from Twinkl. Sway will allow me to customise these powerpoints to better suit the needs of the pupils in the class.Forms can also be a useful assessment tool. The feature which allows anybody with a link to fill in the form would make it easier to share the forms with colleagues and teachers in other schools. One Drive will also allow me to share these Forms with other staff members and build up a store of assessments for that can be used in the future.
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Hi Brendan,
Welcome to the course. From what you’ve outlined here your school has been using 365 for communication and collaboration effectively now for some time. However, with so many additional tools like Sway and Forms as mooted. Coupled with ongoing upgrades and additions, it’s hard to keep up to speed with what Microsoft 365 offers. I’ve been using the Microsoft suite extensively for over 20 years and yet have only really gone beyond PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook in recent years. That’s really the primary aim of this course is to get , people to look beyond these staples and start to explore tools like Sway, Forms, OneDrive, Teams and OneNote…
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I found this module to be very informative and easy to follow. Whilst teaching from home during school closures we used apps such as seesaw. We also set up an office 365 account for emails and information sharing. However, I was not aware of the extent to which office 365 can be used until I started this course. The one drive app is a great way to store school work in an accessible place and where it can be shared easily.
I love the sway and forms apps within office 365. I found the Microsoft education centre to be very clear and it makes using sway less daunting for those who would not have a broad knowledge of technology. I love how it outlines a step by step approach. It is very visual and being able to link YouTube videos and create colourful and vibrant slides makes it appealing to children and grasps attention. I love how it can be used across the curriculum.
I also think that forms is an excellent tool that would be very beneficial with regards to assessment. I love that it has a self correct tool which makes assessment instantaneous. It is also a fun way and interactive way for children to participate in classroom assessment.
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I am a great fan of Microsoft but totally guilty of not using Forms or Sway before and actually thinking they did not come with my office package until I followed the instructions and found under other apps. What amazing resources. I cannot wait to use it for school newsletter what lovely formatting, insert photosetcand video files and clips. The cards are very easy to use and the children will enjoy creating their own class newsletter for their family and rest of the school. I had used Powerpoint when learning about the sun and the children chose the facts, the pictures, the details they wanted to include but next term it will be exciting to do this with SWay. The forms I intend to use as class assessment at the end of the topic, a quick way to recap knowledge, easy to make and easy to store for next year. I have loved reading the ideas for using forms for the entire school and school evalutaion and quick way to find out answers.I will continue to experiment with them both.
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Hi Shirley,
Welcome to the course. As mooted previously on the forum, I’ve been using Microsoft’s productivity suite in the classroom for over 20 years but only up until relatively recently, focusing on the staple apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. However, there’s so many more tools we can use like Sway, Forms and my own personal favourite OneNote. I agree, the Sway app is a powerful yet simple to use tool, ideal for digital storytelling and picture or photo stories. You’ve mentioned how you might use it instead of PowerPoint for project work and sometimes less is more. The simplicity of Sway lets students focus on their content instead of getting distracted by the bells and whistles of PowerPoint.
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I have really enjoyed engaging with the content of module one and can already see huge potential for its use in my classroom the coming school year.
Sway
I was really surprised at how easy Sway was to use. I found the inbuilt feature to add photos a real time saver – previously I would have made powerpoint presentations and had to google images, save to my pictures and upload! Sway presents information in such a fun and exciting format. I hope to have the children in my class use it to create projects and presentations during the year. These can be saved and used as resources for future classes. I would also hope to set up a committee to create a class/school newsletter using Sway – this could begin as an end of term one (a Christmas Special) and progress to a monthly edition as the children become more familiar with the app. The print feature means hard copies of presentations can be displayed providing a record of learning and attractive classroom displays.
Forms
I have used applications similar to Forms before but really liked the ease of use of this one. I will certainly use it this year for termly assessments and end of unit testing. The self-correcting nature of it will be a great way to save time and I really liked the hint re keeping scores (to 100 points to see percentage scores). The children could also use this feature by creating short quizzes for each other based on topics being covered.
SSE
Forms would be an excellent tool to record the baseline and improvement in children’s achievements following the implementation of interventions targeting improvement in the chosen subject for SSE. It could also be used to collect feedback from staff on how the SSE process is going – particularly helpful when frequent feedback is required as it means staff doesn’t have to gather physically to give their input. This also provides a record of work completed by staff on SSE which can be printed and stored in the school SSE folder.
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Hi Sarah,
Welcome to the course. You have really hit on some of the main benefits of using Sway. The beauty of it is in its simplicity. Adding images directly is a huge timesaver, as we all know the pain of searching images, copying them and then having to resize, etc. within our document or presentation. I really like your idea for a seasonal newsletter than could evolve into a more regular publication. The great thing about this is that you will have time to plan and work on it as a type of ‘trial’. By not committing to publishing a monthly newsletter through Sway initially you give yourself the opportunity to see how the children can work with it, and if it’s something they would be able to keep up with.
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I originally learned about Sway during my Digital Learning modules in college and immediately knew it would be a practical resource I could use in my classroom. Since qualifying I have used Sway in my class on multiple occasions. I find it very versatile, easy to use and it can be easily adapted to work for different age groups. I’ve used Sway for project work where children in 4th class have worked in small groups to research their chosen topic over a few weeks then at the end they presented their work in the form of a sway presentation. A different way I have used sway is with infant classes we were working on the Artic for SESE, we inserted a variety of pictures of work children had completed then the children did a voice over with information on certain slides. The finished result was a great display of the children’s learning.
Forms:
I had never used Forms before this module and as others have previously mentioned I really like how simple and straightforward to use it is. I like the idea using forms as a method of assessment. I also think it would be a nice group work activity as a consolidation activity at the end of a period of work. That children could create questions for another group to answer.
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<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;”><span style=”font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: ‘Times New Roman’,serif; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;”>Sway is a presentation and communication tool included within Office 365. It’s user friendly, practical and can be used by students to present information on a topic. Sway lets students focus on visual, content-rich presentations. I would use Microsoft sway as a presentation tool with my students to create engaging presentations on different topics and subjects.</span></p>
<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;”><span style=”font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: ‘Times New Roman’,serif; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;”>Sway’s features such as images, videos, audio recordings and text would be used to add some level of interactivity and allow students to express ideas in new ways.</span></p>
<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;”><span style=”font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: ‘Times New Roman’,serif; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;”>Sway could be used as school self-evaluation process in sharing reports, presentations and team updates in a safe manner. Sway presentations can be viewed by certain groups by settling a password for viewing and editing. Children would receive feedback through peer assessment with teacher facilitation.</span></p>
<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;”><span style=”font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: ‘Times New Roman’,serif; mso-fareast-font-family: ‘Times New Roman’; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;”>Sways exist online and can be shared via a URL or embedded into a website or blog rather than uploaded or emailed.</span></p>-
Hi Robert,
Welcome to the course! You have clearly shown how Sway could be used and utilised within the school setting. As Pat mentioned in a previous post, Sway can often be a better tool to use in the classroom, as it removes the distractions and ‘bells and whistles’ of PowerPoint. Students can often become more concerned with backgrounds and transitions, which takes focus away from the content of the work. Sway has a simpler interface that allows students to create work that is more focused on content. You have also made a very important point about how secure it is once it is created within the school’s domain.
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After engaging with this module it is clear that I have not used office 365 to it’s full potential in recent years and have seen numerous examples and benefits to it in my classroom going forward.
The Sway was so easy to create and the initial use for it in my class that jumped out to me was weekly news letters to showcase what has been happening in the classroom. Since the various periods of homeschooling I have found more engagement through different online apps and this is a useful way to keep parents informed about what is happening in the class. It also allows the children to showcase projects or areas of work they will have taken pride in. The ease to which the themes are already created takes away time restraints that might be associated with formatting and allows the content to be the focus which is really helpful.
Forms can be a great asset and a chance to hear the childrens voice during pre assessment. It may even shape the direction that lessons go when their prior knowledge is collected. The forms can be used at the end for a very easy and authentic assessment tool. I feel children will really buy into this form of assessment as it is more engaging and entertaining for them. There is also the added possibility to make it fun and competitive and even have them collaborating and working in groups engaging with the different forms. The instant feedback from the form quizzes can be a huge source of evaluation for the teacher moving forward with the topic.
I chose to create a simple multiple choice geography quiz with more lower order questioning with the idea that the class will get more use to the idea of these forms and progress to more complex areas.
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Hi Alan,
Welcome to the course. The beauty of a platform like Office 365 (or Google Workspace) is that there will always be some new feature that you have been unaware of. We are constantly learning how these new tools can be applied within our own practice. One of the great things about the instant feedback and ‘live’ results are that you can tailor how you support the children in that moment. Feedback can prompt children to complete extra activities if they are getting all questions correct, while your interface may show that you need to go over certain concepts with individuals who are scoring poorly. This can be done ‘immediately’ and allows for interventions to be acted on much quicker than traditional assessments that require you to collect them and correct/grade after school.
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Hi everyone,
I hope you are all enjoying the summer holidays!
I have found this module very beneficial thus far and have used the time to familiarise myself with applications on Word that I was unaware of, ie. Sway, forms, etc.
I particularly enjoyed exploring Sway. I find the lessons created here very visual/colourful/attractive and therefore believe it would be a great way to engage the children in my classroom. Also, from a teachers point of view, I love how it gathers relevant resources for the lesson you are creating: videos, pictures, etc. It is also a relief to know you are not infringing on any copyright laws.
I also think the children would have loved using Forms quizzes during lockdown; a great assessment tool for the teacher. I will, however, use forms quizzes as a fun assessment tool for a group quiz at the end of each topic (AOL). It would also be beneficial to gain prior knowledge of a subject you are about to teach, allowing the teacher to know what the children already know about the topic, and therefore, what is left to teach/fill in the gaps (AFL).
With regard to SSE: both Sway and forms are a great way to convey/gather evidence from teachers, parents, learners and school staff.-
Hi Mary,
Welcome to the course. It is great that this module has afforded you the opportunity to explore some of the Office365 apps away from the staples of Word and Powerpoint. There is so much potential within the Microsoft apps for designing engaging learning experiences and allowing pupils to present and create work in a number of different ways. You have made a great point around Forms and how it is equally effective for both AfL and AoL. We should be making every effort to pull from both sides of the assessment continuum. Digital assessments has certainly helped me to do this. Designing a one/two-question exit ticket is an easy way to gather data on a pupil’s thoughts of a particular lesson or concept.
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Wow, what exciting tools to use in the classroom!
I had never heard of Sway before today and have found it challenging to find new digital resources that allows children to demonstrate their learning. I can see myself using Sway in the classroom and with colleagues to share classroom resources, create blended learning resources, and communicate with the school community.
I have used Microsoft Forms before but refreshing my memory on its potential today allowed me to see just how useful this tool can be in the classroom. I like that all data gathered can be easily exported to Excel, shared with Teams, and most importantly shared with the children.
I think that both these tools are collaborative and inclusive. They enable teachers to identify, analyse and make judgements about their students’ learning and plan for how they will enhance teaching and learning.
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Sway:
I had been unaware of Sway previous to partaking in this course. I found it easy to use and could see many uses for it amongst children in the classroom. The blending together of audio, images and video in one neat place gives Sway huge potential for creating projects on any topic. I think Sway would also be beneficial for children who struggle with literacy and who find typing difficult. The audio tool to create projects could be of massive benefit for such children. The ease of access to images and videos from the web is fantastic.
Forms.
I think using Forms/Quizs offers a fantastic means of assessment and evaluation within a school. Creating quizes/surveys is quite easily done and the collection and analysis of data tools makes the information very practical. As a teacher in a senior cycle class, I envisage using forms as a end of topic assessment, tests and surveys/questionaires. There is an endless link to the curriculum as every subject can be utilised using Sway. The reduced use of paper is an added bonus. The tip of keeping marks to 100 is useful as each score giving is then used as a percentage. From experience, I think children enjoy learning online and do not have as much of a negative connotion with ‘the work involved’ in comparison if it had to be written.
I will be using both tools in my class this year.
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Hi Shane, hope you are enjoying the course.
Sway is a very useful tool to have in the classroom. It allows students to collaborate on projects and share learning. Like you say the audio tool is a fantastic feature.
The idea of Forms is that they can create their own multiple-choice quizzes for their classmates. It would act as a great means of assessment but also enable them to become independent in assessing themselves and each other.
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This module has given me the opportunity to examine a variety of tools which would be beneficial in my role as SET next year. One Drive is a great source to share documents and support files with my colleagues, especially working in the role of SET where collaboration with mainstream teachers is key to ensure everyone is aware of targets.
I wasn’t familiar with Forums as a tool until now and going forward I would definitely use it as part of my start of year assessment and again at the end of terms to assess what has been taught. It allows all the data to be stored and referred to at a later date.
I can see Sway being a very useful resource when differentiating for children within literacy. For example, you could teach the children how to use Sway in report writing by allowing them to choose their topic and design a leaflet with key points and accompanying pictures.
As part of the School Self Evaluation Process Forums would be a great way to collect data from the whole school community such as parents and teachers. This could then be analysed and discussed together as a staff where key areas could be decided upon for SSE.
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Module one
I have found this first module very interesting and informative. I work as SET in primary school and we do not use Microsoft as a school. I was a bit apprehensive at first as to how to go about using Sway or Forms as I had never come across these Apps before. I found both interesting and was really surprised how straightforward they were to use. The results are impressive, and I can see how beneficial it would be to use them in my own setting. We have in my school, as a staff, discussed the need to improve how we collaborate and share information and employing Microsoft 365 Education as a tool to do this would be great. It is good to have this opportunity to get an idea as to how I can use the different Apps to enhance my own teaching and the benefits it could have for my school.-
Hi Karen,
Welcome to the course. I’m glad you are finding it useful. This course will help you set up Microsoft 365 Education with your staff and it can help you share information and resources.
Office 365 Education is a collection of services that allows teachers to collaborate, share resources and schoolwork with your students and fellow teachers.
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<span style=”font-family: Georgia, serif;”>Hi all,</span>
<span style=”font-family: Georgia, serif;”>Great first module! I use Microsoft Office myself quite often. However, I have always stuck to Word, PowerPoint and Excel so it was refreshing to see some new apps and how they can be used in the classroom. As a sixth class teacher, I feel Sway will be hugely beneficial for myself to things like demonstrating new SESE projects, art lessons and even the day to day procedures of the classroom at the start of the school year. The children could use it as an additional way to present a project or to display a written story in a new and exciting way, <span style=”background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;”>or even to record their findings from a science experiment. </span></span>
<span style=”font-family: Georgia, serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;”>I feel Forms is similar to Kahoot in some ways which I have used. It will be a great tool to access the children’s learning of a topic. I will be able to use the information given, when all the children have completed the quiz to form the basis of my next lesson. The children would also enjoy using it to create their own quizzes to peer assess. </span>
<span style=”font-family: Georgia, serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;”>These apps would be great tools to use to gather information for the school self-evaluation process. The information gathered using Forms can also be analysed on the app itself. </span>
Looking forward to the next module!
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As I’m moving up to the senior end this year, I’m really looking forward to exploring different ways of integrating technology into my classroom. I really enjoyed using sway, I found it very straightforward and user-friendly, which will encourage me to incorporate it into my lessons. I think it will be a great alternative/addition to projects and presentation of work in literacy and across other parts of the curriculum. I like that there are plenty of options for students to choose from and that they can personalise their stories to reflect their own creative process.
I think Microsoft forms is a really useful tool to aid not only in assessment and student self evaluation, but also as another tool that students can use to represent data/information, as part of projects and assignments and can easily be integrated into a variety of lessons in the classroom.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>Both of these tools can be used to support the self evaluation process in highlighting, representing and sharing data collected, both in school and potentially with parents, stakeholders, etc.</p> -
<span style=”color: #163c42; font-family: ‘Hind Madurai’, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;”>Module 1:</span>
<span style=”color: #163c42; font-family: ‘Hind Madurai’, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;”>Reflect on the potential classroom use of these tools and how this can impact on the school self evaluation process. Post a reflective piece (150 words minimum) as a reply to this post</span>
I have found this module very interesting and found out about a lot of new resources that are readily available to me. Before this I was unfamiliar with sway but I now feel that this is something that I can definitely see myself using in the classroom. I teach Junior Infants and often create powerpoint for lessons such as Phonics, number stories. I was finding that I was becoming quite boring in my presentation of topics but Sway will now allow me to revamp my teaching style and allow more options and easily accessible materials.
Again teaching Junior Infants I feel that the tool to create multiple choice questions will be invaluable to me as it will allow for fun quizzes without reams and reams of complicated text that the children would not be able to read.
Self Evaluation is something that is very prominent in every classroom but it is also something that can become quite stagnant and a thing that I know I need to make more interesting in my classroom. By using these digital tools it will add variety and an element of interest in the classroom. It will also be easily transferred from one class to the next.
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I really enjoyed this first module on Microsoft 365. I am just coming back from maternity leave and will have sixth class this September, so I wanted to get familiar with more ICT tools, as we now have access to class sets of both iPads and laptops and I want new ideas on how to engage the children with new learning. I’ve just finished my quiz and I really enjoyed creating it! I’m going to do it with my class on the first day back…hopefully 🙂
My new class are quite tech savvy and I know they have presented projects in the past using PowerPoint, so I think using those projects as a starting point to introduce them to sway, will be a good starting point for them. They can update the titles, text, their information, their content, change the colour and design of the background and embed videos.
As many other participants have already noted, forms would be very helpful for gathering evidence from staff, parents and pupils for SSE. Then OneDrive would be very useful for sharing the information collected. I used survey monkey during lockdown (just to find out from parents what they expected from remote learning, what’s was/wasn’t working etc.), but I like the way that everything can be stored in the one location and accessed by everybody on the staff.
Going back to the quiz, it would be great for assessment, particularly at the end of a unit of work, to see exactly what the children learnt. Or at the start of project work, to establish prior knowledge. I’m really looking forward to using both this coming year. I also think the children would enjoy creating quizzes for their class…after they present a project using sway and then using forms to give their peers a multiple choice quiz based on their project. So many possibilities.
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Hi Michelle,
Welcome to the course. Congratulations on the birth on your child and hopefully the return to school will go smoothly from September. It is certainly exciting to be going back to a school that has such good access to digital devices. This course should certainly equip you with some ideas for using the Office 365 tools on the school laptops. It’s great that you enjoyed creating your quiz on Forms. It is probably the one tool I would recommending prioritising, as it is so easy to use and you can get so much information and assessment data from carefully created quizzes.
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The Microsoft quiz app is a fantastic way to do a quick assessment with the whole class or a small group and you have an instant record of the results. This could be used for any subject at all and images etc can be added so that children could have to view and image and then select an answer, or write their own.
Sway is very useful for social stories. Where I would have used PowerPoint in the past to create these kind of social stories I will now use sway in the future. They would be great for introducing a new topic to children to give a very simple introduction.
Microsoft have so many tutorial videos, it’s fantastic and will be a big help to revise any forgotten content. As we are switching to one drive this year, programmes that are more compatible with Microsoft will make things much easier. -
I had never used Sway or Forms before starting this course. It took me a little while to get used to Sway but now I can see how useful it could be in the classroom. It could certainly be used in place of powerpoints which I find children can find quite boring in the classroom. Video and audio are easily added to make the presentation much more impactful. I can see how Sway would be a great way to present a school or class newsletter, telling stories through video, images and audio of how, lets say a school sports day or school tour went. It is easily shared and can be viewed on phones so would be a very good way to communicate with busy parents.
Forms is very easy to use and would be so useful to use to assess knowledge in the classroom. It could be used in any subject from SESE to English comprehension. It would also save on correction time which would be very useful to teachers.
I will be using both in my classroom next year
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My name is MarieI teach primary school junior infants. I really like how sway is so visual and very easy to use. I think it could be adapted to any age group a recap on language lesson using visuals or as a resources for EAL students.
Children at the young age also like when we show pictures of what they have created. A great resource to share work in class with parents in a fun and quick. Also for writing it would be good visual prompt for children.
I like forms and how quick and easy it is to use. As a resource in might be something more to use with other teachers eg gain info or survey about something or with parents.
As part of school self evaluation I think that forms could be a great way to obtain feedback from parents and identify what areas people are interested in developing.
As a staff we could use forms to figure out areas which staff feel confident in are working well or whats working well
Questions?
Does sway/forms give premade presentations on topics. eg can you get one made about spring or shapes. Are sway from other people available to share on topics. Be very helpful also iif forms on topic were available for assessment
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Microsoft Office was utilized in the school where I worked last year, and although I used the basics of it all year, I was unaware of its wealth of additional capabilities, which can help make learning more interesting for students. This played a major role in me selecting this course to do this summer. The feature I utilized the most last year was One Drive, which is wonderful for keeping all of your resources in one location. Additionally, sharing resources with the entire school community is advantageous for everyone and actually fosters cohesion within the school. Sway is a fantastic tool for enhancing PowerPoint presentations and storytelling for students by adding colour, fun, and interactive elements. Forms will be an excellent instrument for obtaining data that will help with school self-evaluation. In order to reinforce learning, it can also be used as a quiz. Although I’ve used Kahoot with previous classes, I believe Forms will be more useful going forward because it also provides the option to integrate visuals, which will assist distinguish questions and give students more access. A terrific resource that gives great detail on how to use all the resources is the Microsoft Education Centre. This will be incredibly helpful while learning how to use a new tool.
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Hi Owen,
Welcome to the course. It’s great that you have had some experience of using Office 365 and I’m sure last year helped to ‘dip your toe in’ to it’s capabilities. One of my motivating factors for using digital technologies in lessons is to make content more engaging and to motivate students to go above and beyond in their work. You seem to have a similar approach and the Office 365 applications will certainly help you in this regard. Your comparison between Forms and Kahoot! really hits the nail on the head – Forms offers so much more, whilst also offering more reliable assessment data.
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I was really impressed with forms and sway I had never really used sway and only used forms myself. Last year I think we over used Kahoot as a tool for assessment but as Eoghan mentioned it became just a game to the children where they wanted to answer fast and get to the top of the leader board. I plan on using forms regularly in the class from September as a means of assessment and this will give me a great insight into the children’s learning. I will also get the children arranged in groups and they will be able to use forms to make a quiz on units of work covered- they can then challenge each other. Sway also seems fantastic and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to use. I love how visual it is and I will use this with the children during our i-Pad time. I have 4th class this year and I think they will be able to do a lot of project work on sway.
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I haven’t used sway or forms before with my students but I’m looking forward to introducing it to them when we return. I like the way sway makes it so easy to create and share interactive reports by using their suggestions. It makes it easy to begin reports and presentations with images and text styles and colour. They can then share them with myself or with each other.
Forms should be fun to use in class as it will allow them to create surveys, quizzes and polls and invite their classmates to respond to them. When they are filling in the quiz on Donegal’s top 5 tourist attractions (10 points for each correct answer) I can see their results appearing immediately as they are being completed.
I engaged with the sway and forms course in the Microsoft learn education centre and was impressed with the array of courses available.
I look forward to showing my teaching colleagues the benefits of using sway and forms in the classroom which would be a productive use of Croke Park hours.
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Hi Orla,
Welcome to the course. I’m delighted that the content of the module has encouraged you to give both Sway and Forms a go with your class next year. They are both excellent tools from both an assessment and content creation point of view. The immediate feedback and data collection that Forms offers is it’s clear selling point. It can give you so much information in such a short space of time and can greatly increase productivity.
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Sway is something I am new to. This will be my 2nd year in a row teaching 6th class. I found that they have gotten very bored of using PowerPoint, as they have been doing them for a number of years now. Sway will be something new that will bring a different dimension to my teaching. It is also a way that will bring their stories to life, in a digital form. The ease of doing this will be great and I feel my class will be able to run with this in ways I wouldn’t even think of.
I have used Forms and many other types of quiz and questionnaire programmes before. I find forms very useful in a classroom setting for a more formal purpose. They are good for keeping track of scores and progression. If I am using quizzes for a more fun learning approach, I would use something like Blooket or Kahoot. All of them have a great place in the classroom.
Microsoft 365 was brought into our school about 3 or 4 years ago. It was mainly as platform for storage and files. Using the other apps could be great for SSE. It would take some time to upskill staff members, but having the Microsoft Learn Education Centre would be of great benefit for this.
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In our school the technological infrastructure is limited. I was hoping to find some useful resources that we could implement this year. We use gmail for staff communication and Aladdin also. . I found sway quite useful and it can be used to keep parents informed of upcoming events in the school calendar. The old fashioned note in the bottom of the bag can always get overlooked and eveyone has a smart phone these days. Forms might be useful from an assessment point of view. it can be used to record and collate assessment results over a period of time and future class teachers may be able to glean some useful information from it. I work in a special Class setting and this would be of great benefit to me. Is there a large cost involved in setting it up? Since the pandemic we also have increased need for use of these assistive technologies to enhance communication among staff and parent and the wider school community.
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I have mostly been a Google user using google forms and email I feel forms are similar to google forms. I work in a special school and although my students wouldn’t benefit from using forms I feel I can still use them in other areas. I believe forms can be a very useful tool for management and teachers. For management it can be used as a tool to gather data from staff and parents for SSE, feedback from staff or parent training, confirmation of completing compulsory courses or reading important documents. For teachers it can be used for consent of trips or outings from parents. Forms would be better than paper consent forms as afterwards they can be downloaded and stored online rather than taking up space in paper form. They can also be used to organise meetings with parents and getting feedback from parents on priority learning areas. I believe both staff and parents are more likely to engage in surveys etc… if they are in digital form as most people own a smart phone which makes completing these forms a lot quicker and easier.
From playing around with Sway I feel it could hold a place in my classroom in making resources such as social stories for students or visual task analysis. They can be viewed by students on an iPad or laptop which they are very good at using and it may be more appealing when presented in a digital form.
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Hi Sandra,
I also have more experience of working with Google Forms, but can confirm that there is very little difference between the two programmes. Both of them are equally adept at gathering information, assessing students and providing instant data on strengths and weaknesses. It is difficult to find specific tools that will meet the very specific needs in a special school setting. With some groups, there may be some scope for using pictures, videos or audio files as the central question and as the possible answers.
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These tools will be so helpful to me going forward as part of my methodologies. Working in the area of SET and having pupils with assistive technology and learners who find traditional teaching methodologies challenging I feel I will be better able to meet their need. I regularly compose social stories to target pupils’ priority needs, using Sway will be a fantastic way for me to this more efficiently as opposed to the word, copy and paste I have been using. The multiple choice activity will allow my more independent learners to complete work in a way that suits them better and also provides self evaluation. Microsoft Learn is a new experience for me but seems to be a wonderful support network that will help me achieve my own personal goals that will improve my teaching and my pupils’ learning.
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We are planning to use Office 365 in our school this year. I am familiar with ‘Word. and ‘PowerPoint’ however that is as far as my knowledge extended, hence why i chose to participate in this course this year. Prior to taking part in this course I had never heard of ‘Sway’. Having trialed it over the past number of days I can see its many benefits for using it in the classroom with the pupils. I feel that this tool can also be used to assess the children’s knowledge within a particular lesson, as well as enabling the children to create picture stories to share with their peers further enhancing their presentation and IT skills.
i am familiar with the use of forms and I feel that they’re a great way of communication between parents and the school, and I also feel that forms is a great tool for completing quizzes with the kids. I am really looking forward to putting these tools into practice in September.
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I found the content of this Module very useful for both staff and also for students.
As a school we have recently engaged with Microsoft 365 but are not realising its potential as a tool for planning and cooperation between both staff and students.
Like Michelle above, I am a 6th class teacher who has been fervent user of powerpoint for many years. Initially this was a novelty for students who had been learning simply from wallcharts and books but it is no longer the case for 21st Century students.
I can see huge potential in the use of Sway. What appeals most to me is the fact that multiple folders, sub folders and presentations can all be saved in one location and accessed very quickly for easy classroom access. I also really liked the colour coding which was used across all subject areas to highlight the homework, language etc.
We have been planning over the past year to introduce the 5th and 6th class children to Microsoft 365 and following the introduction to this course I can see the huge potential that is untapped in this area in our school. When this is in place, I could see the potential use of google forms not only in gathering information from parents for the purposes of SSE but also from the students.
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Hi Caoimhe,
Welcome to the course. I’m delighted to hear you found this module very useful. Microsoft 365 has huge potential for both students and teachers alike. We have being using it in our school for a number of years now. Students adapt to it very quickly. Forms is very useful in gathering information as you say from parents and students.
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This has been my first introduction to Microsoft 365. I had not used Sway before and found it quite easy to use. While I feel I will still need more training in this area I can see how the templates would be helpful for the children to use Sway to create their own work.
Working in a Special Class I communicate with parents daily. Sway would be a nice way to send home class news or newsletters. I think it would be helpful for parents to click on links for services they may need to access.
Using Croke Park hours to help staff navigate would be a good opportunity for our staff to build on what they are currently using.
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<span style=”color: #163c42; font-family: ‘Hind Madurai’, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;”>Reflect on the potential classroom use of these tools and how this can impact on the school self evaluation process. Post a reflective piece (150 words minimum) as a reply to this post.</span>
I am a primary school teacher, and in relation to this module there are some excellent tools available to enhance the school self evaluation process. In my school we have started to engage with Microsoft 365 a little but not realising its potential as a whole if I am honest. This module has really opened my eyes to its potential in many different ways.
These tools are very imaginative and exciting. As and avid user of PowerPoint, Sway is an enhanced version that can be very handy in creating a work bank and lesson plan bank.
Forms is an excellent way to keep all staff members on the same page and can be very useful within an SSE process. Teachers can fill in combined forms and use it has a working document.
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Hi Mary,
The problem here is that Word‘s formatting is being copied across. To avoid this, once you’ve copied the text from Word right click in the post window and choose ‘Paste as Plain Text’. Alternatively, you can first paste the content into Notepad (Or similar) and then copy it from here to the topic window. Either method should remove the excess formatting…Existing posts are fine, we will fix the formatting. -
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Hi, I’m having a problem replying to the original thread. I can’t click into the reply box to type, but I can when I reply to another reply. I hope this is ok to add my work to.
Sway… as a user of powerpoint forever, I can’t believe that I’m missing out on Sway. I love how easy it is create, how simply we can embed content and information and indeed, assessment into it. The children we are teaching are so used to swiping and scrolling that this is right up their alley. I usually teach 5/6th classes and teaching them powerpoint has always been part of our September. We use it for projects with them, while I use it for presenting information. However, I am completely convinced that I could use Sway as a better, more interactive way to present information and have the children use it to so much. As a school, our SSE priority is Wellbeing. Presenting information to our pupils, parents and staff using Sway seems a great way to communicate. We send newsletters, updates, information etc to our school community and this tool would be a wonderful way to get it across, given that it is so easily manipulated to do so much.
I also think that the use of forms would be brilliant for our SSE. Gathering information and opinions is a vital part of SSE and playing around with forms this last while has shown me the potential of gathering this info in such an easier, more effective manner. Long gone will be the days of sitting at home and reading and compiling data from the surveys some children brought back in. From a classroom perspective, I can’t believe I’m not already using this tool! This year I will definitely take advantage of this. From simple wellbeing check ins, to creating differentiated work, to assessing the children’s learning, this will become a staple in my teaching. I can’t believe I didn’t use it during TeachingFromHome!
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