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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.
Hi Cathy,
When you right-click in the forum reply box you should get a series of options. ‘Paste as plain text’ is the one you want to select as this will remove all the formatting from Word. Let me know if this remains an issue and I can look into it further.
Hi Amanda,
Thank you for your post and for sharing the successes you have had on your digital journey to date. While you clearly benefitted from the support of the PDST advisor, it’s important that your school takes a lot of the credit. Achieving what you have is significant and requires strong leadership and buy-in from within the school.
I really like the way you broke down your objectives and set realistic timelines for their implementation. The Digital learning Framework has clearly guided you in this process. In terms of digital integration, many of us can be guilty of trying to achieve too much too soon. The importance of small steps and regular, small successes cannot be overstated in terms of implementing an improvement plan.
Hi Samantha,
Unfortunately, the share settings on the Form have not allowed me to view it.
The use of ‘sections’ in a form is very useful for ‘branching’, i.e. if pupils get a series of questions correct, they can skip ahead a section. If pupils are struggling they can move to a ‘section’ that allows them extra practice.
With regard to your query on deleting all sections, anything you do on a form can be undone. The back and forward arrow on the top right of your window allows you to ‘undo’ and ‘redo’ steps. This can be done multiple times (i.e. you can undo up to 20 steps you’ve taken).
Hi Laura,
Knowledge construction is such an important 21st century skill and draws on numerous skills from across the 1999 curriculum. I really like your idea of using a rubric to ensure that the learning process is scaffolded and differentiated by all learners.
Research by Dylan William on formative assessment found that the reason many students fail is due to a lack of understanding of what is required of them. The provision of a rubric sets out clear expectations and allows the children to check their progress against this at various intervals.
Hi Samantha,
When you open Google Forms, do boxes appear at the top? If so, the quiz is directly to the right of the blank form.
Alternatively, you can press ‘blank’ and then settings from the options at the top. There is a ‘make this form a quiz’ button that can be turned on (the first option after pressing settings). This will do the same job.
I hope either of those work – let us know if it’s still an issue and I can look further into it.
Hi Karen,
I’m delighted that you have found the Applied Digital Skills content and ideas useful. It is one of Google’s ‘hidden gems’, and many educators using the Google products are unaware of its existence.
I really like how structured some of the ideas and units are. For a teacher that may have a very limited knowledge of a particular area, it is a real plus. The structured nature guides both you and your students through the learning. The Google ‘CS First’ resource is similar to this when looking at more advanced forms of coding.
