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The 21st century skill that I have chosen is collaboration. The task that would be assigned to 5th and 6th Class would be to create a team obstacle course for all classes to complete on our Annual School Sports Day, where members of the wider school community would be present. Firstly, the pupils would generate an Excel Sheet of the equipment we have in the PE shed. Based on the equipment in the Excel Sheet, the pupils would create a Padlet or Microsoft Form to get feedback from other classes to see what activities they might like to be included in the obstacle course. The pupils would then, based on the feedback, decide what activities will be part of the obstacle course. Then the pupils would make up the obstacle course and show and explain it to the other classes. This could be presented to the other classes in the form of a Powerpoint Presentation, including photos and explanations, with the pupils presenting the Powerpoint in groups. The pupils would then collaborate with the other class teachers to decide on times and days to practice the obstacle course before Sports Day.
I feel that this module of the course will be extremely influential in my future teaching, as I will be able to refer back to the 21st century skills and their associated rubrics as I plan future lessons. The concept of lifelong learning certainly applies to us all.
Undoubtedly, Digital Technology enhances students learning on a daily basis. We couldn’t imagine a classroom without online resources such as Bua na Cainte, Folens Online, the CJ Fallon app, etc. It’s amazing to see how competent the pupils in our school have become with Seesaw, digital portfolios, Beebots, Chatterpix, Adobe Spark, Book Creator and Microsoft 365 over time, and essentially because these were targeted as part of our Digital Learning Plans. We applied for and subsequently availed of support from a PDST facilitator to guide us in our SSE journey, with embedding Digital Technologies in teaching and learning being our focus. This gave us the opportunity to get together as a staff and reflect on our strengths and then select dimensions and domains and standards and statements from the Digital Learning Framework. We worked together to set very clear, measurable and achievable targets and because everybody knows who is responsible for implementing, monitoring and reviewing our plan, it is easier to record achievement of targets and also to continue the process. The support of the PDST facilitator was invaluable to us, as I think we would have otherwise set too many targets which may have been unachievable. We set some of our targets over a 2-year period, e.g, Book Creator and further developing our School Website to enable pupils in the Senior Classes to publish their own work, which means that skills can be mastered over time. The impact this is having is hugely positive and rewarding.
After completing this module and the OneNote Class Notebook course on the Microsoft Learn Education Centre, I can’t wait to utilise the app to support teaching and learning in the future. At the moment, I have lesson content and related resources, e.g. videos, images, powerpoints, etc. stored on different folders on the laptop or uploaded to my OneDrive. This means navigating between folders and uploading and downloading material, which can be quite time consuming and it can be difficult to even find what I’m looking for! OneNote offers the facility to store lessons, resources, plans, whole school policies, etc. in the one place, but in a very systematic way, under chapters, tabs and pages and with content colour coded for easier use. Through time, a bank of lessons and resources and plans can all be stored in the one place and added to and built on over time. The material can then be distributed among staff members and pupils, with everyone being able to avail of the added tools such as a digital whiteboard, adding text, digital ink, highlighting, annotating, etc. Also, it is a great platform for assigning work to pupils and giving feedback to pupils. The teacher has control over how pupils can use and edit the material and what material can be shared and with whom, either individually or collectively, which is very useful. Being able to insert files, videos, audio, links, etc. means that all necessary content can be stored and accessed easily. The Immersive Reader feature will be invaluable to me as a Special Education Teacher, ensuring that all learning styles are catered for.
Microsoft Teams seems to be a wonderful platform for sharing resources, interactive lessons, interactive presentations, files, assignments, feedback. etc. and for collaboration between pupils and staff. It has so much to offer and provides many opportunities for teachers and pupils and staff to engage with each other in a very efficient and productive way. I think it would be very worthwhile for our school to consider upskilling in Microsoft Teams and perhaps to begin using it to collaborate as part of our Digital Learning Plan this year. We used Seesaw as a platform during remote learning, so it may be a challenge to get all staff on board with Microsoft Teams and indeed it may also take a while for parents to adjust to Microsoft Teams. However, with small steps, I feel that we could advance on our Microsoft Teams journey and that the benefits, by far, would outweigh the challenges.
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.
