Improving Remote Education - A Thread.

Over the last couple of weeks, the discussion has been about what primary schools are offering to their communities and how we can improve on it.

I'm relistening to the sessions, so points may not be in order as I add them... 1/

1. Non-teaching SLT are not experts on remote learning, what can they base any judgement on?

2. Facilitating staff discussion and sharing is likely to be far more effective to develop practice within your school. /2
3. Increasing access to devices/internet is a step towards making offers more equitable, but it is only part of the process.

4. Entertainment and engagement are different things.
5. Pre-recording should not be perfection, perfection wastes time and energy.

6. It is scary being beamed into someone's home, but having your home on show is also stressful. (perhaps something for Ofsted to consider, we are guests in other people's homes)
7. Giving over staff meetings to staff discussion and sharing is probably a better use of the time than other stuff you have planned.
8. Feedback doesn't have to be written. Mote is a chrome extension that allows voice recordings to be added. Children hear their teacher's voice, which is massive for wellbeing.
9. Loom is a useful tool for more visual feedback where appropriate.

10. Give staff the option to invite SLT to sessions, not to observe but to participate.
11. Learning clinics for parents help them to understand what is going on. Education can be mystifying if you haven't been in it for a while.

12. How to video guides to support parents are useful too.
13. Make sure that parents have access to resources such as pens, paper etc. Consider giving out the exercise books you haven't used this year.

14. Encourage parents to feedback to you through appropriate channels. (You will have to manage expectations, but you need their view).
15. Carefully designed google forms are good for this.

16. Try and find out how many actually have access to proper devices and not just phones.
17. Sharing staff discoveries - what tech, tips and ideas have they used that work?

18. Don't reinvent the wheel - if Oak do your lesson with full resources - don't record a new one just introduce it.
19. Use expertise. If there is someone who can bang out 10 music videos in the time it takes you to do 1 - get them to do yours, offer them something you are good at in return.
20. Share your lessons with others. (this is don't reinvent the wheel again, but this is so important).

21. Have an overview of what you are teaching, and record who is accessing it and completing work. This will help in the future. It doesn't have to be complicated.
22. Keep it simple. Effective teaching is better than entertaining teaching.
23. My cat is a pain in the arse, everyone's cat is, if they crash the session, go with it. I'm typing this because he wants feeding and is interrupting the flow... I'll be back

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The outrage is not that she fit better. The outrage is that she stated very firmly on national television with no caveat, that there are no conditions not improved by exercise. Many people with viral sequelae have been saying for years that exercise has made them more disabled 1/


And the new draft NICE guidelines for ME/CFS which often has a viral onset specifically say that ME/CFS patients shouldn't do graded exercise. Clare is fully aware of this but still made a sweeping and very firm statement that all conditions are improved by exercise. This 2/

was an active dismissal of the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of patients with viral sequelae. Yes, exercise does help so many conditions. Yes, a very small number of people with an ME/CFS diagnosis are helped by exercise. But the vast majority of people with ME, a 3/

a quintessential post-viral condition, are made worse by exercise. Many have been left wheelchair dependent of bedbound by graded exercise therapy when they could walk before. To dismiss the lived experience of these patients with such a sweeping statement is unethical and 4/

unsafe. Clare has every right to her lived experience. But she can't, and you can't justifiably speak out on favour of listening to lived experience but cherry pick the lived experiences you are going to listen to. Why are the lived experiences of most people with ME dismissed?
OK I am going to be tackling this as surveillance/open source intel gathering exercise, because that is my background. I blew away 3 years of my life doing site acquisition/reconnaissance for a certain industry that shall remain unnamed and believe there is significant carryover.


This is NOT going to be zillow "here is how to google school districts and find walmart" we are not concerned with this malarkey, we are homeschooling and planting victory gardens and having gigantic happy families.

With that said, for my frog and frog-adjacent bros and sisters:

CHOICE SITES:

Zillow is obvious one, but there are many good sites like Billy Land, Classic Country Land, Landwatch, etc. and many of these specialize in owner financing (more on that later.) Do NOT treat these as authoritative sources - trust plat maps and parcel viewers.

TARGET IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION:

Okay, everyone knows how to google "raw land in x state" but there are other resources out there, including state Departments of Natural Resources, foreclosure auctions, etc. Finding the land you like is the easy part. Let's do a case study.

I'm going to target using an "off-grid but not" algorithm. This is a good piece in my book - middle of nowhere but still trekkable to civilization.

Note: visible power, power/fiber pedestal, utility corridor, nearby commercial enterprise(s), and utility pole shadows visible.

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