[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.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Eamonn,

Welcome to the course! Sway is certainly an upgrade from Photostory, and the functionality certainly allows for the integration of more 21st century skills. The word I take from your post is ‘unique’ – the Office 365 products certainly gives us the opportunity to create these learning experiences in a more more efficient manner than would be possible with copybooks and textbooks. The gathering of data is a hugely important part of the SSE process and the use of Forms really is a no-brainer. It can also be extended to gather assessment data and opinions within the classroom.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Carina,

Thank you for your detailed post and for the many fascinating insights you have shared. Your experience as a special class teacher will be very useful to others doing this course. In this setting, the work is so varied and you have mentioned the huge variance in the difficulty of work you will be assigning. Digital technologies and the Office 365 suite are certainly something that can help lessen the load for you. The use of this platform could be transformative for home-school links. As you mentioned, Sway could be a way of documenting things in your class for newsletters. Social stories and other related content could also be shared for parents to review at home, etc.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Mary,

I love the idea of using the lectern for pupils to present from. It’s a skill that is so difficult, and is something hat many adults find daunting. Having practice at an early age is a huge benefit to the children. You often find that the most outgoing and sociable child can find it difficult to get up and present to their peers. Very often eye contact and enunciation of voices is severely lacking. The incorporation of digital tools, especially within the ‘Speaker Coach’ rehearsal tool within PowerPoint. Perhaps it may be an idea for some children to practice recording their presentations at home and playing them to the class as a scaffold.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Deborah,

From your post, I can see that you are clearly aware of the benefits of using an online learning platform such as Teams. While there is some work and upskilling to be done in the early stages, it certainly pays off further down the road. Content, resources and assessments can be re-used and shared from year to year. It’s possible to share videos of you completing maths sums for the children to follow at home. It opens up a huge amount of new opportunities for pupils to showcase their learning. We are all aware that different children perform and express themselves better through different modes of language – the use of online platforms allows all students to express themselves through a medium that suits their strengths. It gives us far more options than the simple pen and paper.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Catherine,

I am particularly interested with your comment regarding the completion of workbooks and textbooks. Like most other schools I’m sure, we have the exact same problem. It is very easy to become slaves to textbooks. However, this does deprive children of a range of rich learning experiences that they could have.

In terms of Gaeilge, I have made a concerted effort to try to move our school away from a specific textbook or programme towards a more bespoke plan, that focuses on specific vocabulary, sentences, questions for each class level, as well as the use of levelled readers and a PDST-designed grammar plan. While this all sounds great, it is very difficult to get many to part with ‘Bua na Cainte’, ‘Abair Liom’, etc.

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