Forum Replies Created
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Hi Diarmait,
Thank you for your post and for sharing so much valuable information with us all. Your use of Immersive Reader and Dictate showcases just how useful these accessibility tools can be for learners with a specific learning difficulty. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution for the problem you have identified. I have ran into the same problem when recording digital videos and podcasts in my own class. The only workarounds are to ask the child/group to step into the corridor, record with a support teacher or ask the rest of the class to remain silent. While these are suitable for ‘one-off’ occasions, they are far from idea for a pupil using Dictate regularly, Potentially, some others on the course will have suggestions?
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.
Hi Thomas,
Thank you for you post. I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment of it. I am trying to roll out our online platform in the way you have outlined for Teams on a whole-school level. I think the days of printing out reams of paper and sending them home to learn, or students taking material off the board for homework are numbered. When you think about it, it is a waste of the precious time we have in school. This is especially the case now that we have a viable alternative that has been road tested over the past few years. While some students may not have access to a PC or laptop to complete assignments, almost all will have access to a parent’s phone at home for accessing or viewing content sent home. This could be as simple as the teacher giving an audio voiceover of the new Gaeilge vocabulary / reading and allowing the children to practice after listening to it. It also has huge potential for getting parents more involved and keeping them abreast of what is being covered in class.
Hi Grace,
I think the key message you get across in your post is the importance of ‘ownership’ being taken as part of a whole-school approach. Strong leadership is essential for any school improvement plan and is key to effective SSE. I often feel that we can go ‘gung-ho’ when starting off with a new initiative but we lack the same intensity when we are reviewing the plans and making required amendments. Furthermore, we need to ensure there are regular meetings and review to keep everyone on task. This is of importance for all improvement plans, but particularly if you are looking to facilitate a blended or flipped approach.
Hi Claire,
This is a great way to attempt to integration collaboration into your practice. It is clearly more challenging as an SET, given that some of your day may be spent with ‘one on one’ teaching.
The idea of the baking task is very good. Depending on ability, you could go a step further and allocate a budget to the groups – this will certainly allow for discussion, dialogue, disagreements and substantive decision-making as they plan for what ingredients they will prioritise and what they will make.
Hi Chloe,
The Immersive Reader is probably my favourite tool for inclusion and accessibility. The ‘Helperbird’ Chrome extension also means that it is now available on Google products too. The colour coding of the background is very useful for all learners, not just those with dyslexia. I change the background of my word documents to yellow in ‘page setup’ for this reason. The ‘Helperbird’ extension also allows for this within Immersive Reader, which is particularly beneficial when it is reading the text aloud.
Hi Greg,
Thank you for taking the time to create such an engaging and interactive activity. I would encourage anyone on the forum to use the login credentials in your post to view this assignment. There is such genuine real world problem-solving and collaboration happening in this project, not to mention the digital skills that it is building. You have managed to incorporate the use of video, Google Drawings and Google Docs seamlessly.
The fear of mistakes within maths is a reality on the ground. We have tried to create a classroom culture where ‘mistakes are valued’ and where the ‘struggle is productive’. This, coupled with a focus on ‘trial and improvement’ has helped, but there is still progress to be made.
Within your assignment, I really like how you’ve included a rubric. This gives the pupils a clear idea of what the success criteria is and how they will be graded. This rubric can be shared with other teachers using ‘Sheets’.
Hi Diarmuid,
Thanks for submitting this comprehensive data assessment. What strikes me immediately is the use of images within the quiz – for data, the visual representation is everything. It’s clear that this Form assesses a broad spectrum of the data strand for 5th/6th class, particularly student’s interpretation of data.
It’s a real hands-on topic that involves lots of active participation for the children. https://www.meta-chart.com/ is an excellent website that the children can use to create a range of graphs and charts after they have collected their data.
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.
Hi Val,
I agree that it would be hugely beneficial if digital technologies were a core subject within the curriculum – if this were the case, we would also need much funding (which is never a bad thing). Given that it is not, we need to be inventive in our approaches. It goes without saying that technology ahs the potential to enhance learning experiences when used correctly. As a school, it is a useful exercise to sit down and discuss what curricular areas you wish to integrate technology with. Starting small and building gradually is key here. As such, you are developing digital skills and competencies, whilst also covering curricular content in a more comprehensive way.
The SSE process and DL Framework are great guides which allow your school to prioritise this area for improvement.
Hi Liz,
Welcome to the course! I really like the lesson you have picked from the Applied Digital Skills repository. This is a great lesson for children who are new to the Google apps – many of the skills they learn through this project can be applied when they are also using Docs, Drawings, Jamboard, etc.
One of the best things about the Applied Digital Skills lessons are the way in which they are broken down. It makes using the Google apps so much more accessible and much less daunting for teachers. There is nothing stopping a teacher from playing the tutorials on the IWB and ‘learning with’ the students. The fact they are self-paced and allow students to submit work ‘s they go’ is another major benefit.
Hi Val,
I’m certain that the Covid pandemic was the first educational experience of Microsoft Teams for many more also. The functionality of Teams makes it a powerful tool for both remote and blended instruction. I also find that there is a false narrative going around that the pandemic has left teachers highly competent in whatever online platform (Seesaw, Office 365, Google Workspace) that was used. In my own school, I can also see that this is not the case. I feel it would be a very prudent and forward-thinking move for schools to prioritise CPD in this area. It opens up so many avenues for supporting pupils, differentiating work, communicating with home, extending learning, etc.
Hi Orla,
I fully agree about the importance of collaboration, however it can often be used as somewhat of a ‘buzzword’. By using the collaboration rubric and ensuring that substantive decisions have to be made before and during the project, you are ensuring genuine collaboration is taking place.
It is a particularly effective skill to develop during STEM lessons. Both ‘predicting’ and ‘evaluating’ are skills of the science curriculum – often we can be guilty of placing too much focus on the content of the curriculum and negating the skills. I wish you the very best in trying out these approaches and using the collaboration rubric in your lessons next year!
Hi Orla,
Immersive Reader is a fabulous resource to support learners of all abilities. As you have said, it is an effective tool to support comprehension. However, it can also help with fluency for struggling or emergent readers, as they can hear a sentence/passage aloud and then read it.
In terms of a whole school approach, OneNote and OneDrive would be hugely beneficial. However, the caveat here is ensuring that there is buy-in and that all staff members are using it. From my own experience, monitoring what (if anything) is being shared is an important role to assign to somebody.
Hi Lauren,
Welcome to the course! Your year as an SET will stand to you in this course – you will be better placed to pick out some specific things that you can take with you. There are so many assistive technologies out there (too many, being honest). It would take a huge amount of time to delve into all of these – finding a core bank that you can use to meet different needs is a good place to start. You may have to research further if a new child with a different need comes onto your caseload, but at least it will be more manageable. Within the DLF, you would certainly be looking at standards from the ‘Teacher’s Individual Practice’ and ‘Teacher’s Collective Practice’ domains. Potentially, each member of the SET team could demo one piece of AT they are using each month at a meeting?
