[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Owen,

Thank you for your contribution here and for outlining your use of many different educational apps and websites in the classroom. You have really painted the picture of technology being used to improve the learning experience of the pupils in your class. YouTube is a powerful educational resource that often gets a bad reputation – the advertisments that can pop up are often inappropriate and this can turn people off using it in the classroom. However, by simply putting a ‘-‘ (dash) between the ‘t’ and the ‘u’ in ‘youtube’, any video will play in full screen with no advertisements.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Alan,

One of the key benefits you have listed around the integration of digital technology is the fact that it can create ‘higher levels of engagement’ and ‘memorable learning experiences’. As educators, this is all we can hope to provide for our students. Your attitude of continuing to build on initial successes is commendable and will certainly steer you on the right path in the years ahead. The key is to try to make incremental improvements and additions to practice each year. The best thing about SSE is that it can be specifically tailored to your school’s needs and allows you to plan for your own interventions and CPD.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Ellen,

OneNote can certainly be used as a space for the creation of student portfolios – these can be multimodal and incorporate embedded documents, images of written work, audio files, etc. It also offers the potential for teacher feedback to be provided and acted upon in a meaningful manner and allows for collaboration and co-operation with other students in the class. Learning material can also be made more accessible through built-in features such as colour coding and Immersive Reader.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Karen,

The fact that your school has prioritised digital technologies and is seeking to put a plan in place to get the most of them is an important first step that really puts you on the road to success. Having a dedicated team is crucial, as it is too vast an area for just one person to be driving. This will also help keep the message consistent and ensure that it is multiple people pulling towards certain tools, rather than just one. In many ways we can be ‘sheep’ in schools – the more people we have travelling in a particular direction the more likely we are to increase the numbers following.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Marie,

Thank you for your contribution here. You have listed a huge number of benefits of digital technology integration in classrooms. Your point around how the ‘teacher’s individual practice’ domain is the responsibility of all teachers is an interesting one. While I agree with you, it can often be difficult to get teacher’s to undertake their own CPD / ask questions of others to further their own practice. Work on this domain is probably best done through the provision of structured in-house CPD that focuses on specific elements of practice and attempts to move all teachers from ‘A to B’.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

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.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Robert,

I think you have captured the essence of Teams within your opening sentences. There is so much that you can do on it, and there is rarely a time when you could say you know everything about Teams. Microsoft are constantly updating and upgrading the interface and the functionality. Your post outlines a number of benefits of setting up a class team and using it as an extension of the physical classroom. Being able to set and grade assignments, as well as embed Forms quizzes is a huge bonus. It’s also easy to differentiate content and interpret assessment data when planning for future lessons / interventions.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Marie,

OneNote is an amazing educational tool, but as you said it is not overly suitable for use in lessons with an infant class. It is much more suited to the senior class and second-level students. There is some potential for using it to share content with parents that can be revised at home. This could specifically relate to phonics and early mathematical activities. Given your experience as an SET, it’s great that you have identified the benefit of the colour-coding of pages and topics for students who may lack organisational skills.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Suzann,

While we obviously teach in different contexts, our school also places a significant focus on literacy, particularly from a support teaching point of view. This is at the detriment of numeracy and we have very little (if any) support offered in numeracy throughout the school. It is clear that a balance is so important in the provision of SET support.

The use of the Immersive Reader function to make word problems more accessible is a great idea and it shows how you can incorporate digital technologies into support for both literacy and numeracy.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Michelle,

I think you have really create an excellent activity around a subject that will be so topic during the first term of next year. Using an event like this as a stimulus for delving deeper into the geographical and sociological study of an area is so effective. I really like the design of the Sway you attached also. Given that I’ll be teaching a senior class in an all-boys’ school, I plan on using the World Cup as a key theme throughout November and December.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Declan,

Thank you for your contribution. You have highlighted some of the many collaborative benefits of using Teams, especially with relation to video calling. It could be a great alternative for staff meetings that would allow staff to travel home first, especially on darker winter evenings. It is something that could certainly be considered within schools. However, there are many other benefits to Teams that could also be utilised within the school setting. It could be used to create a ‘digital hub’ of resources that could be shared between classes. It could also be used as a noticeboard for staff communication, etc. It really has a myriad of uses in a school setting.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

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.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

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.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Kevin,

I like the way you have mentioned the feature of Microsoft Teams that allows you to limit the permissions of those who can view certain content. Sometimes this can be very beneficial when dealing with confidential files or school support plans within an SEN setting. This is equally effective at being used for ‘teacher only’ files within a class team. This feature extends into the teacher-only folders in OneNote. This has been something we have largely brushed over on the forum to date.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Laura,

As you have said, there are a multitude of uses for OneNote in an SEN setting. The ability to colour code sections and pages greatly assists  a child who may struggle with organisation. Having a numbering system for pages (1.1, 1.2, etc.) may also help children find material in their ‘content library’ easier. The in-built use of Immersive Reader is also a huge tool for use in an SEN setting or with EAL pupils. The ‘ease of use’ of the tool within OneNote is one of the primary benefits.

[Author]

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