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The 21st Century skill I have decided to focus on is collaboration. I feel this skill is becoming more and more relevant in education, as students increasingly work in teams at 2nd and 3rd level. Also, working as part of a group is now an integral part of most workplaces. Pupils need to develop skills to be able to communicate and work effectively in collaborating with others. I plan on using the Junior Entrepreneur programme as a platform for teaching and encouraging skills of collaboration. Initially, I think it is important for the teacher to form the groups so as each group has pupils with varying skillsets and levels of abilities. Once children have begun to develop their collaboration skills, they may be given an opportunity to form their own groups in the future as this can be a source of motivation for success. After using Sway to present the concept of Junior Entrepreneur – explaining the theory, steps and past projects – I will get each group to brainstorm their ideas, using the Internet for research. Each group would then use Word / Excel to create a questionnaire in order to conduct some market research before deciding on their final idea. Powerpoint would then be used by each group to present their chosen idea to the panel of judges. Use of ICT would be an integral part at all stages of the project. I would explain the marking system in advance of embarking upon the project, giving a particular amount of marks for collaboration. The rubric would be very useful here in determining which point pupils are at and also in trying to move children along this scale for future projects. The nature of the Junior Entrepreneur programme lends itself to developing collaboration skills and I believe successful groups could draw upon many of the skills on step 5 of the collaboration rubric. A review of how each group worked together would form an important part of the experience.
Digital Technology is an integral part of the modern day classroom. It can be used by teachers to plan lessons, gather resources and as a teaching tool. Digital technology can be used by students to research a topic, present work in different forms and to enhance and express their creativity. I plan to use many elements of Microsoft 365 explored in this course in order to enhance students learning. The use of Microsoft Sway as a digital storyteller has the potential to motivate pupils to engage in the storytelling process through the use of multimedia. OneNote Notebook has a range of tools to engage learners of all different styles. The School Self Evaluation Guidelines have the potential to underpin one’s teaching, as they involve identifying areas which require improvement. Evidence on these areas is gathered. Microsoft Forms would be particularly useful here. The plan is then drawn up, shared and put into action. The monitoring and evaluation of impact is another step which can be easily aided by digital technology, as pupils could be surveyed and tested using ICT. Just as a whole school uses these steps for school improvement, a teacher can use them to evaluate and improve their teaching. One’s own use of technology in SSE then feeds into the school as a whole. The development of different teams at class levels and for different priority areas would add greatly to the SSE process at school level, and information could be gathered and stored centrally using digital technology.
Digital technology has to be an integral part of the classroom in the 21st Century. The recent closures during Covid years show how beneficial technology can be to aid learning. However it is only a tool and cannot replace well planned structured lessons where the technology enhances the learning.I think learning about some of the apps available in office 365 have opened up for me different ways of using technology in the classroom such as assisted reader, quizzes in forms, pupils creating their own sways etc.
School Self-evaluation is a continuous process whereby the school evaluates its own work and prioritises areas for development. In our school we had identified that we need to use technology more in both our own collaboration and in our teaching and learning. The Digital Strategy dovetails nicely with the SSE process and we were looking at both in tandem. Using some of the tools available in Office 365 will make this process easier. It will be much easier to gather information from parents, pupils and staff through forms and analyse this quickly and efficiently. This in turn will lead to more focused target setting for both SSE and the Digital strategy. The recent closure highlighted in our school that we need to have a robust Digital learning plan that can meet our pupils’ needs either in school or remotely if required.I am particularly interested in how the OneNote class notebook can be used to enhance the learning of pupils as it provides ready access to a range of learning methods which can be blended in many different ways. Hence, different type of learners are catered for – tools like the immersive reader and dictation facility provide supports for pupils who may have difficulties with literacy/language. Using the digital world, a pupil now has many different ways of formulating and presenting their learning, which takes them far beyond the traditional pen and paper. Structured support can be easily delivered by means of templates, voice notes, instructional videos, examples of best practice etc. The technology provides alternative models of teaching which might for example, ensure pupils are better informed prior to taking a more active approach during class as suggested by the “flipping the class” model.
The school self-evaluation guidelines provide a structured means of improving teaching; a more scientific approach in that one should identify an area for improvement(what), then plan how it could be improved (how), set a timeframe (when), identify who, and then formative assessment to determine if it has been successful or if modification is required. Strategic prior assessment is first required to ensure the project is doable and practical and must provide worthwhile outcomes – which can largely to be done by focusing on the domains identified in the guidelines.
Individual staff expertise in the use of any digital technology should be treated as a valuable resource. It is one of management’s responsibilities to facilitate the discrimination of such knowledge out to the whole school staff. It may be beneficial to use technology to do this in some situations e.g. creation of instructional videos online for in-school use. In other situations, face-to-face transfer of skills training may be required – time and resources need to be made available for this to happen.As a teacher, providing pupils with lessons across a wide range of curricular areas while utilising digital technologies as a resource is key to exposing them to the curiosity of ICT. Secondly, allowing pupils to regularly engage in the use of technologies to access information and express themselves creatively through ICT engagement to develop, support and extend their learning gives them a real working sense of the value of digital technologies in the learning process. Using Forms to regularly pre and post assess is a worthwhile tool. Introducing pupils to a skill set that supports their use and access to technologies is also important, while allowing them to explore at their own levels. Teacher individual practice and hopefully collaborative practice with like-minded others, allows for better outcomes and experiences for the learners and teachers involved. This example may spur others towards professional development in the area of digital technologies. Small steps starting from areas of strength and incorporating areas of need will produce results. A Digital Learning Team representing all year bands and SET is a great stepping stone to forward digital learning for all.
I think that OneNote and OneNote Learning Tools seem to have huge potential in supporting and expanding deeper learning opportunities for students. They provide a user friendly platform to accommodate different teaching and learning styles. I found the immersive reading feature particularly impressive. The scope of this tool allows for words to be broken into syllables, identifies parts of speech, has access to a picture dictionary and provides a read aloud function. The immersive reading function would prove particularly useful for the struggling reader and allow the student to engage at their own pace using a number of different tools. I believe it would be of benefit to EAL students also, as it can be used in different languages. The audio function supports auditory learners. The class notebook feature of OneNote allows for information to be presented in an organised way. It supports the creation of templates, thus allowing information to be presented in a similar logical manner across different subjects. This continuity of presentation would be of particular benefit to pupils with learning difficulties. Overall, I found the features of OneNote to be user friendly and of particular educational benefit and is something that I see myself using in the future.
Here is the link to my sway that I created on The American Civil Rights Movement
Eoghan, I have used Forms a lot in recent times but have never used Sway. rom this module i can see that it will be a very valuable tool.
It seems Microsoft Teams has huge potential for use in education, again particularly in the recent years of Covid. Education relies greatly on collaboration these days and there are many different parties involved in a school community. Microsoft Teams provides a platform for collaboration for groups of teachers (SET, 6th class team, IT group, etc), class groups of students and other groups, such as board of management, etc. Groups can work on documents and teaching resources together remotely. It allows for material to be shared and thus potentially reduces workload, as groups of teachers can share the same content with pupils. Pupils can respond to teaching resources and demonstrate learning. Teachers can provide feedback to these responses. Microsoft Teams supports all of this collaboration. It does not come without challenges though, I’m sure. With regards to pupils, it presumes that they have access to technology at home in order to be able to participate outside of school. Also, staff and would need training in using its tools and to exercise caution in sharing information with others to ensure confidentiality. Overall, Microsoft Teams seems to lend itself to teaching and education, and I look forward to using it in the future. I particularly enjoyed the record function in Microsoft Powerpoint and see it as a powerful teaching tool.
Microsoft Sway is an easy to navigate digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its innovative tools help one to create professional designs in minutes. Multimedia is key here as images, text, videos, and other multimedia all flow together in a way that enhances a story. Sway can be used by educators to present content, but also by students to interact with educators and present what they have learnt. It has an collaborative aspect which is especially relevant in the current climate. Teachers and students alike can share in the creation of stories on Microsoft Sway. Teachers can collaborate in creating teaching content and pupils can collaborate in groups for project work so that the collaborative approach we use in schools is not lost through distance learning. Similarly, Microsoft Forms lends itself to collaboration among staff, parents and children alike. Various parties can be surveyed with regard to different school matters, such as opinions on policy, voting for holidays, choosing of books, etc. Microsoft forms would be an instrumental tool in providing information for school self evaluation. It has proved to be an important resource in the roll out of distance learning by providing a platform for communication.
