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

More from Education

Chicago Public Schools are supposed to open for some special needs and pre-K students Monday

The Chicago Teachers Union is now threatening to refuse to return to work in person.

https://t.co/MgDgNe6REj


Meanwhile
https://t.co/FIij8J3r7z

Dr. Fauci: "The default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school [...] if you look at the data the spread among children and from children is not really big at


UNICEF: "Data from 191 countries shows no consistent link between reopening schools and increased rates of coronavirus
** Schools have been getting ready for this: a thread **

In many ways, I don't blame folks who tweet things like this. The media coverage of the schools situation in Covid-19 rarely talks about the quiet, day-in-day-out work that schools have been doing these past 9 months. 1/


Instead, the coverage focused on the dramatic, last minute policy announcements by the government, or of dramatic stories of school closures, often accompanied by photos of socially distanced classrooms that those of us in schools this past term know are from a fantasy land. 2/


If that's all you see & hear, it's no wonder that you may not know what has actually been happening in schools to meet the challenges. So, if you'd like a glimpse behind the curtain, then read on. For this is something of what teachers & schools leaders have been up to. 3/

It started last March with trying to meet the challenges of lockdown, being thrown into the deep end, with only a few days' notice, to try to learn to teach remotely during the first lockdown. 4/

https://t.co/S39EWuap3b


I wrote a policy document for our staff the weekend before our training as we anticipated what was to come, a document I shared freely & widely as the education community across the land started to reach out to one another for ideas and support. 5/
https://t.co/m1QsxlPaV4
Time for some thoughts on schools given the revised SickKids document and the fact that ON decided to leave most schools closed. ON is not the only jurisdiction to do so, but important to note that many jurisdictions would not have done so -even with higher incidence rates.


As outlined in the tweet by @NishaOttawa yesterday, the situation is complex, and not a simple right or wrong https://t.co/DO0v3j9wzr. And no one needs to list all the potential risks and downsides of prolonged school closures.


On the other hand: while school closures do not directly protect our most vulnerable in long-term care at all, one cannot deny that any factor potentially increasing community transmission may have an indirect effect on the risk to these institutions, and on healthcare.

The question is: to what extend do schools contribute to transmission, and how to balance this against the risk of prolonged school closures. The leaked data from yesterday shows a mixed picture -schools are neither unicorns (ie COVID free) nor infernos.

Assuming this data is largely correct -while waiting for an official publication of the data, it shows first and foremost the known high case numbers at Thorncliff, while other schools had been doing very well -are safe- reiterating the impact of socioeconomics on the COVID risk.

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