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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’.
Hi Diarmait,
You have brought up a very important point regarding choice of assistive technologies. Very often, you find that the grant money can be invested in a laptop/chromebook without any thought about the needs of the individual child. As you have stressed, a bad experience with the assistive technology could put the child off using it into the future. I really like how you have integrated the choice with Domain 3 of the ‘Teaching and Learning’ Dimension. Getting the views of all stakeholders is crucially important. Having the Principal and ISM team members on board could also link in with the ‘Managing the Organisation’ domain.
Hi Bernie,
Like you, I have been totally converted to Google Slides over PowerPoint in recent years. As a Google school, it makes sharing and collaborating with staff, and students, so much easier. You clearly have lots of experience using the Google tools, and your school has been making great strides. Hopefully, you will have picked up 1 or 2 fresh ideas to implement over the coming year. What works really well in one school, may not be as effective in another. The ability to incorporate images into the options for Google Form answers could be an effective way of designing assessments as a SET. I wish you the very best for the year ahead.
Hi Holly,
I have approved your post here. It went into the ‘pending’ folder, potentially due to the formatting.
When you are pasting a post that has been typed in Word you can right-click and select ‘paste as plain text’. This removes any of the font and formatting information that Word collects.
I hope this helps and that you’re enjoying the course.
Hi Bernie,
Thanks for submitting your quiz. You have mastered a number of different elements of Google Forms within it. I see that you have weighted the marks to include 2 points for some questions, and 1 point for others.
You have also split the quiz into 2 ‘sections’. These are really effective for differentiation and allowing all children to access the questions / provide a greater challenge for those who require it. The initial section can be ‘easier’ questions before moving onto more challenging ones as the quiz progresses.
There are so many options for how you can assess within Forms. You can go so much further than a simple correct/incorrect answer. You have alluded to this in your post. The ability to provide individualised feedback is one of my favourite features, and I have seen firsthand how it can help to bring children along with you. The feedback you provide can be quite targeted and really address their priority learning needs.
Hi Orla,
Welcome to the course and best of luck for your new role in September as a support teacher. I agree with both you and Kathleen regarding the need for the NCSE to provide supports for teachers and schools looking to upskill in this area.
From my own school, I know children with assistive technologies are not getting the full benefit from them. This could be down to a myriad of reasons, but teacher confidence is certainly an area we could start with. Instead of simply providing grants and money, suggestions should be provided for how the assistive technologies can meet the specific needs of the individual child. Assistive technology only has the power to be transformative for the child if it is deployed and used correctly.
Hi Celine,
I love the way you have managed to integrate the use of digital technologies and an online learning platform into your PE lessons. The FMS are so important, and the research that informed them about how poorly many children move is startling. The ‘Growing Up in Ireland’ study also paints this and childhood obesity as major issues.
Being able to refer back to videos of the key teaching points, and how they are progressing against these is so beneficial. In a PE setting, QR codes may also be provided outlining the particular teaching point you are focusing on at a particular station.
Hi John,
I think the way in which you have stressed the importance of the Digital Learning Framework in your post is very important. It is an excellent document that helps guide our instruction, whilst perfectly aligning with the school improvement standards outlined in Looking at Our Schools. Using this document as your base is an important first step.
The DLF acknowledges that all schools are at different stages of their digital journey – as you have mentioned, ERT helped us to discover many positives around digital learning. Making use of some of these (within your own school’s context) would be a good place to start for your DL plan this year.
Hi Emma,
Thanks for your post – the content of it really resonates with me. I had similar thoughts around how the scheduled iPad/Chromebook time was working in my school a few years ago. Honestly, I knew they weren’t being used to their full potential and far too much time was being spent on games and ‘free play’, which is of no benefit.
The Digital Learning Framework, and following the SSE process to devise the Digital Learning Plan was revolutionary for us. It came at just the right time and we were able to use it to push the use of digital technologies for furthering the exploration and creation of curricular-based content. We devised a series of lessons/topics to be covered (1 per term) at each class level based in curricular content. Each summer since, we have then added one more topic per term. As such, we now have a bank of lessons and a ‘digital syllabus’ as such based on the programmes we use in our school. It is far from perfect, but it has certainly helped move away from the passive and ‘play’ elements of digital technology use that was prevalent.
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.
Hi Mary,
Your post has raised a number of valid concerns. Without doubt, we have all become so much more contactable than pre-pandemic. The safety blanket of parents having to go through the school office before they could contact us has well and truly been removed. There are options within Teams to turn off notifications, etc. I always find not having the app installed on my phone or having school emails only accessible on my laptop to be helpful strategies.
Your post has also outlined the many positives that a platform like this can bring also. It is especially beneficial, as you have said, for those children who may struggle within traditional classroom constructs. The accessibility features, as well as the ability to upload and create work in many different forms is hugely positive for all children.
Hi Eamonn,
Knowledge construction is such an important skill for children to acquire and hone over their school lives. As you have said, we live in an ‘information age’, with news and information available everywhere we turn. Teaching children to use the internet in a safe and ethical manner, and be able to interrogate resources is so important. It also ties in very well with the ‘critical literacy’ learning outcome of the PLC.
I really like getting the children to use ‘DK Findout!’ to research content. This is a safe, child-friendly encyclopedia style resource. In addition to this, it is not possible to ‘copy and paste’ from the website, and as such, the children have to put what they have learned into their own words.
Hi Cathy,
It’s great that this module has highlighted the multitude of ways in which OneNote can be used by teachers. A few years ago, Promethean came to the decision to move away from ActivInspire, and place all their attention on the roll-out of their new ActivPanels. However, they rowed back on this after many teachers raised objections.
Promethean are still putting all their energy into the new ActivPanels (which are fantastic resources) and therefore, ActivInspire is not as relevant as it once was. OneNote has far greater potential for use in both teaching and learning, and admin contexts.
Hi Karen,
Your post highlights so much of what is good about Google Classroom and the Workspace tools. Your post clearly focuses on their use for a flipped or blended approach. The idea of integrating audio recordings to explain Gaeilge vocabulary and reading is excellent. There is a Chrome extension called ‘123Apps’ which allows students to record their voices when reading, etc. The audio file downloads as an MP3 and can therefore be submitted to Google Classroom for your review. It’s a good way to assess reading, as you can listen at your own pace and pick up on so much more than you could ‘in the moment’ in school.
The use of Sites has so much potential in terms of ePortfolios. The ideal scenario would be that students could use last year’s work as an introduction – perhaps they could be provided with a rubric to assess their own work from last year and identify areas for improvement that are specific to themselves.
