[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Tara,

Welcome to the course! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on both Sway and Forms. As you have mentioned, Sway goes further than simply allowing children to show off their attainment of learning objectives – it allows them to express themselves and be creative in their response to a given task. Forms (again, as you have said) is really effective when used as an AoL and AfL tool – very often people simply think its main purpose is to gather attainment at the end of a unit of work. However, it is possible to use it as an ongoing assessment tool through the use of exit tickets, which helps gather feedback and inform your planning for the next stage of the lesson/unit.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Catherine,

Welcome to the course. Thank you for your post and for sharing your Form and Sway. I have seen some schools using Sway to create their newsletters, and it really does create a nice, polished finish. As you have said, it is cost effective and included as part of your school’s Office 365 license. Having the names recorded is a great feature of Forms, and can be so effective in tracking progress across various learning outcomes over time. As principal, Forms can be a great tool for gathering staff feedback on initiatives, or getting them to log tickets on any issues or problems they’re having.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Alan,

Welcome to the course. Thank you for your post and for sharing your earlier Forms quiz. Sway is such a versatile and interactive tool that can be used to great effect in school administration, and teaching and learning. Children have the opportunity to creatively respond to tasks and showcase their imagination when using Sway. The addition of audio recordings provides another medium through which students can respond, and supports a UDL approach. Forms is a super assessment tool, and you seem to have mastered the central features of it, from looking at your geography quiz.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Katie,

I fully agree with you regarding the class stream. While it is a useful tool, there are probably too many potential negatives to offset any small positive benefits its use can bring about. Classroom has such an accessible interface, and experience with various other social platforms will certainly be beneficial. Classroom would be well suited to children at 4th class level – they are at an age where they will benefit from the additional depth in tasks that Classroom, and its related tools, lends itself to.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Megan,

Thank you for sharing your Sway with us. I really like a number of the ideas you have listed, and it is clear to see how collaborative work would be enhanced as a result of this. The use of OneNote is quite creative and innovative, as it allows for both individual and collaborative work. Providing children with responsibility for one area, but then getting them to critique and proofread each others work may be very beneficial for improving their ability to ‘edit’ and critique their own work in time.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Emma,

Thank you for your post and for summarising some of the digital tools which will inform your teaching next year. Given that you are working in a special class, the tools you will use will be quite varied to the individual needs of the 6 children in the class. You clearly have a wide repertoire of digital tools that can be used with the entire group, and then with individuals. The Seesaw library is an amazing resource, and has numerous filters that can allow you to find the activities you want much quicker.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Fionnuala,

Immersive Reader is such a powerful tool and one which really does take your interest when you see it for the first time. Its integration with the Microsoft tools is seamless and it really does offer up so many opportunities for those who struggle with literacy. There are other alternatives available through Chrome extensions for schools without a 365 license. It really is a tool which can level the playing field, and allows pupils to achieve and access content at the same level as that of their peers. The ‘Dictate’ tool within Word offers the opposite function (speech to text) and can be used in conjunction with the Immersive Reader.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Maria,

Welcome to the course! The SETT model is an excellent framework, and you will have the opportunity to practically engage with it in subsequent modules. The importance of looking at the entire picture of the child (academic, social, emotional, cognitive as you have put it) when devising a plan. It is important that all those involved in working with the child are consulted about this plan, and that it feeds into the overarching targets in his/her School Support Plan. In terms of AT, the level of intervention is really important, as you have alluded to, and the teachers knowledge of the child and the particular tool will be essential in this regard.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Annmarie,

Thank you for your post. I have heard of Olus and skimmed their advertising in school last year. It is great to hear some positive feedback and there is certainly a broad range of areas and topics which they offer support in. With each child having their own profile, it is easier to differentiate instruction and ensure that children are being adequately challenged. The evaluation stage of the SSE cycle is so important, and I’m delighted that you have highlighted this. We need to think of the improvement plan as a multi-year project, rather than simply ticking a box each year. We need to monitor the interventions and decide what steps need to be taken to improve upon what we have already done.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Emma,

Thank you for your post and sharing your SETT plan with us. The SETT plan allows you to be really specific and think critically about what exactly you will need for a particular child. You have been able to identify a specific learning focus – to construct a sentence asking for something, using the digital device. This learning focus takes the child’s specific needs, as well as the classroom environment that they are learning in. It is fantastic that the course content and discussion forums have highlighted some additional tools which you may find useful.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Emma,

Welcome to the course! We hope that you will be able to take away some useful nuggets to use in your teaching over the coming year. I love the way you have placed an increased emphasis on the use of digital technologies, and how it is being used to forge really strong links between school and home. Given the setting you teach in, it is clear that you have a great deal of knowledge and experience with assistive technologies. However, as you have said, the lack of training can be extremely frustrating. As educators, you find yourself trialling different apps and programmes with little guidance, meaning the experience of children will vary considerably from school to school.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Myriam,

Thank you for your post. An online LMS works so well in larger schools, where there are multiple classes at each stream. Teachers can share resources and collaborate with one another in real time. If all classes are doing this, there will be a considerable bank of resources for teachers to inherit when they move class levels. The challenge you have outlined is one that we have also had some experience with – to get around this, all classes were set up by a school administrator with the name of the teacher included in the name line. This ensured that there was no confusion when assignments were being sent from third-party sites such as WordWall and EdPuzzle.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Katie,

Welcome to the course! Applied Digital Skills is a real hidden gem within the Google Workspace toolkit. I like the particular lesson you have chosen, as it highlights another use of Google Drawings. I have used Drawings so much over the past year to create classroom posters, drag and drop activities, labelling activities and much more. It’s a tool that has huge scope for creating more interactive content for children to engage with. Drawings allows children to showcase creativity – one activity I assigned this year was to create a poster to advertise the novel ‘Holes’, and it really is amazing to see what the children are capable of coming up with.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Elaine,

Thank you for your post and for sharing your notebook with us. It is such a powerful tool and is so useful for teachers. It is especially useful for classroom teachers, as a notebook can be reused each year (with minor revisions). It may be slightly more difficult in SET if you are working with different children, but many of the same principles will apply. As you have mentioned, it really is an infinite canvas, with revisions and improvements coming each year. The ability to add audio feedback onto a child’s notebook is another noteworthy feature.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Myriam,

Welcome to the course and thanks for sharing your Sway with us. I really like the multi-modal approach that you used. The incorporation of video, images and text affords more opportunities for children to access the content. It is such a useful tool for creating engaging and interactive content. Children can really show their creative side when they are making their own Sway’s. However, I have found that it’s important that clear guidance is provided on the content that is expected in the Sway (as time can often be spent trying to experiment with different features rather than getting down to the core of the task).

[Author]

Posts