[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Elaine,

You have certainly outlined the main benefits of OneNote and highlight the ‘utopia’ for its use within a school. It is an amazing resource with so many amazing features and it really lends itself to becoming a ‘digital staffroom’. The challenge lies in getting buy-in and ensuring that all staff view it as the ‘go to’ for information and for sharing relevant content.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Niall,

Thanks for sharing and creating your Sway. It is a brilliant resource that can provide an interactive and engaging way for pupils to showcase work, and for communicating items to members of the school community. The idea of using this for the creation of a book that can be shared with children in younger classes is a lovely idea. Pre-Covid, we used to do a lot of cross-age peer tutoring and it was great experience for the older children, especially those who may have a shy disposition. It’s also something that the younger children love, and I’m sure listening to these great stories would be memorable for them.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Laura,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. The colour coding can be an effective accessibility tool. Another effective tool to assist dyslexic learners is to change the background colour of the document to yellow. This can be easily done through the page setup settings. While it is proven to help those with specific learning difficulties, it does no harm to any learner and is generally well received by all pupils.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Amanda,

The key point you have made in your post relates to the importance of ‘small steps’. While a few giant leaps may be the ideal scenario, the only way that we will be able to bring everybody along with us is through small, incremental steps. I understand how difficult it may be to get buy-in to move from Seesaw to Teams. Perhaps, you could outline the advantages of the Office 365 offering and the way in which it overcomes the limitations of Seesaw. It may also be useful to bring Teams in on a trial basis for 6th class next year, 5th the following year and so on. This may help scaffold the change and ensure that it is not pushed on people with little notice?

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Elaine,

Welcome to the course. As a special school teacher I am excited to see what insights and tips you can offer throughout the course. You have correctly pointed out the usefulness of the Immersive Reader functionality in a special class setting. Indeed, it is a really useful tool for all children with literacy difficulties.

Using the QR code generator to access Forms is a real handy time-saver if the children are using tablets. A quick time-saver for creating a QR code for any web address is to use the Chrome browser and hit the share icon on the far right of the address bar. ‘Create QR Code’ will be one of the options on the drop-down menu.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Carina,

Thanks for sharing your Sway with us. What I really like about this problem is that it is embedded in a real0life context and is something that the children would get very invested in. The decision-making elements of the task will place a premium on both skilled communication and collaboration. An added bonus is the scope to integrate this with the ‘decision making’ strand unit of the SPHE curriculum.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Laura,

Welcome to the course and thank you for your post! I’m interested in how you have said that you found using Sway and Forms easy once you got the hang of it.

I am delivering a face-to-face course this week and the participants were questioning the level of time and work that is required to create a Forms assessment. This is something that I have also encountered in my own school. However, what I always try to say is that the length of time it would take you to source a quiz, photocopy it, staple it, distribute it, correct it and tally the results is far greater than the time it would take to create an ‘online’ assessment. Perhaps, it’s just a little change in mindset that is required to achieve this change. It’s great that you have found it easy to use and I hope you’ll have practical use for it in your classroom.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Andreu,

You have given a few good examples of how OneNote can support and deepen learning experiences. Using it as a hub of checklists and a way of setting expectations is a very practical idea. It is also an excellent tool for promoting staff collaboration. Immersive Reader is such a fantastic tool and is wonderful for making content more accessible for struggling readers. This feature has been extended to the Google platform and can be accessed through a Chrome extension called ‘Helperbird’.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Gail,

I agree with you when you say that Seesaw has its limitations. I think it is an excellent option for younger children, potentially up to 2nd class. However, after that, I feel that the offerings of Microsoft or Google are the way to go. There are so many more options, and children can explore various avenues of responding to tasks. As you said, Teams really is a ‘one stop shop’ when it comes to an online classroom. The work is far more ‘live’ than it is within a copy or workbook, and there is huge potential for provide opportunities for collaboration outside the classroom through shared assignments.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Linda,

Your post has given some really useful examples of ways in which Forms could be used at the beginning/end of a topic to assess knowledge. In addition to this, Forms can also be used to create single-question ‘exit tickets’. This allows you to ask the children to self-assess themselves on how well they understood the content and allows you to plan for subsequent lessons. This is totally optional, but is something I have found useful in the past.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Deborah,

Much of the content of your post really resonates with me. The establishment of a Digital Learning Team is crucial for the success of your Digital Learning Plan. This is especially true in larger schools, where the workload is significant. It needs to be spread out among other people – doing this also heightens the chance of success as you have advocates for the plan dotted around the school. The Digital Learning Framework is an excellent guiding document that allows you to create a plan that is bespoke to the needs of your school and allows you to plot your school at whatever stage of your digital journey you are at.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Gail,

You are very welcome to the course. I hope you find the content useful – there will be lots of it, but taking little nuggets from each module will really help your practice. The new interactive whiteboards really are a gamechanger and negate the need for a teacher ‘laptop’. Indeed, as you mentioned ‘One Drive’, this can be synced with the boards meaning you can access all your files and resources there too.

You have a clear understanding of the different curricular activities that could be completed using the Microsoft tools mentioned. Your 4th class children would love experimenting with the different designs available on ‘Sway’.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your post. Like you have said, Teams (or any other learning platform) takes some time for the children to become used to and to be able to navigate. However, once this is done it opens up so many possibilities for all within the classroom. If your school has access to digital devices, a lot of this familiarisation can be done in school under your watch – this allows you to help individual children who are struggling and also allows you to show children exactly how you want them to access, work on and submit work. Using Teams on a weekly basis in school really helps to embed it as a hub of home-school linkage.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Emer,

Welcome to the course! I totally understand the feeling of not using the Microsoft tools to their full potential in the classroom. However, regardless of whether you are using Google or Microsoft, this a feeling that all teachers will have. This is purely down to the sheer breadth of resources available and their suitability for use in the classroom. Your suggestion for getting the children to create their own assessments and quizzes on content covered is excellent. This could be especially useful for Gaeilge lessons. When you think about it, children spend so much of their time answering questions, that it may be a challenge for them to formulate a number of their own questions on a particular topic.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Carina,

Each child in your class having access to their own device unlocks huge potential for the design of rich learning experiences for your students. It makes personalising the learning of each child much easier. Indeed, the choice of iPad’s is very good for the special class setting. Apple have a number of built-in accessibility features as well as tools such as ‘guided access’ that can be very useful for independent work if you were engaged with another pupil.

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