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For me I have chosen communication as my 21st century skill and my Sway. I work with SEN children and found creating a simple Sway a lovely way to introduce myself to my new children in September. SEN children by there very nature find it harder to communicate. I found this course to have some very useful tips from sway, to one note, to forms (more for SSE though than working with SEN). I look forward to seeing some Sway presentations from my children which i plan to set as tasks and use as a form of assessment.
There is huge scope to use ICT to help our SEN children communicate better both independently and as a group. I envisage using ICT in my numeracy lessons which focus on living maths (money, time, etc) as I can design my lessons with my students in mind and make for example a Sway to suit the stand or concept. I can see ICT as an extension of my SEN children’s’ ability to communicate with me and their peers. I focus alot on social skills and ICT opens up a plethora of resources to help teach good, safe social skills and social stories.
I found the Forms tool very informative and plan to use it in September as part of our SSE into Handwriting. I think it’s a great way to collect information that can be shared easily with staff, parents and children. The more information on something we have which involves change, the better prepared people are to work towards that change. One Note and Forms are a very good way to communicate and collate ideas and information.</p>
I too have been involved in SSE in other areas of school and can see the huge benefit to be gained from it. I agree a team needs to be in place to assess and evaluate the digital framework and that team should encompass all areas of staff from Senior Leadership, to class teachers, SET and SNAs. We had some training on Microsoft Office 365 but only a handful of staff could make it. Hopefully we will get some more training this year as I think all staff need it and the support we could offer each other would be invaluable. Some staff are amazing in their knowledge and creativity and others (like myself) could do with support.
We have ipads for our SEN children to use while in SET and chrome books that are shared between classes. We are a big school and the need for greater access to ICT is becoming ever apparent. As a SET teacher I have requested an interactive white board for my room. There are so many resources out there that my SEN kids are missing out on. I’ve made a Sway presentation to introduce myself to my new kids this year and it would be great to show it on an IWB.
I’d like my school to carry out an evaluation and establish a team this year that can support staff, report back from training, present at Croke Park hours and advise and apply for new technology needed.
I have zero experience of One Note so I am amazed at what can be achieved using it. I’d image it would be beneficial for children in primary school to begin to use this or be exposed to it on some level (senior end of school perhaps) as so many secondary schools use for example ipads only and no books. I could see how using One Note would be great for project work – linking websites and clips; sharing information on joint projects or ideas from the likes of the Students Union or Green School committees. I think the immersive reader looks great and I’ll be trialling that in September in SET. There’s great scope for versatility which is what I need when working with SEN kids. I like the use of different colours for dyslexic readers and I think One Note will work great with our new spelling programme we are starting this year -Brendan Culligan. It’s also another great way of sharing plans and lessons. As a job share teacher it’s great to be able to access the plans etc at home rather than waiting until my days back in school on the class PC. It will also help with handovers -being able to read notes in advance will further help with prep. I really enjoyed the into to this tool and hope I can put it to good use!!!
So far I myself have only really used Micro Soft Teams to create a team with my colleagues or department (SET). I find this a great way to share my plans, resources and assessment tools and visa versa. I like that I can access them from my home laptop and I don’t have to be in school at my desk to update plans etc. It’s a great way to encourage and foster collaborative practice. I find this a simple, effective way to work. The Teams I work within are small so everyone contributes: I wonder would this be the case in a larger whole school setting?
The challenge I would find if using Teams more (as stated in module one) is I’m not great with technology and would fear I’d over whelmed or I would miss an alert or something important. However therein lies the opportunity for me to upskill! This coming school year we hope to move more towards Micro Soft Teams and utilize it more – daunting for me and possibly others.
In terms of working with students via Microsoft 365, there is always the issue of access to devices at home and whether they will log in daily/ weekly or not. I can see the possibilities though.
I’ve been teaching 18 years but I’m a real tech novice so I decided to bite the bullet and educate myself!
For me as a SET teacher Sway is a great way for me to connect with parents and to let them see what their children are doing on a weekly basis. It’s also a great way for parents to talk to their children with the aid of a digital portfolio (to jog memories and start a discussion). I feel Sway will provide a fun alternative for SEN children to record their weekly progress and this could be incorporated into targets in School Support Plans. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to navigate and I have created a simple Sway to introduce myself to my new students in September.
Most valuable for me in this module was the forms content. As an AP1 post holder and being charged with a whole school hand writing review, this will be invaluable to me. During a SSE process it is so important to survey staff, pupils and parents. As an ET school, we take this very seriously. I like the way the forms give you calibrated results in a variety of tables that are easy to interpret. I will be using these going forward to gather evidence to support changes in the school and to collect the voice of not just the adults but children too.</p>
