Category: School Closure

Lessons from lockdown

So, schools will begin to reopen in England from June 1st 2020, starting with primary schools and — more specifically — Years 1, 6 and Reception. There is controversy out there about how safe this is for children and teachers, whether it’s the right time to do this, and indeed how many parents will be confident in sending in their offspring to school at all. Whatever your position on that, this reopening still marks a watershed moment where we move from schools only being open for vulnerable children/critical worker kids to schools welcoming an increasing number of children and distanced home learning drawing to a close.

As we begin to move towards this ‘new normal’, I think it’s worth reflecting on the last two months of school closure and home learning to identify if there are some useful lessons we can draw from it. It’s difficult to know what lasting changes we might see in the education sector following coronavirus, but here are my main takeaways.

1. Technology can help with learning

I’ve believed this for a long time, but it’s been encouraging to see many other schools come to this conclusion too (in practice if not in articulated thought). It’s not necessarily been in all the snazzy ways that the EdTech proponents sometimes promote, but rather in the mundane but vital things like distributing learning resources via your learning platform, or providing digital tools to complete tasks, or allowing interactive communication between students and teachers via video conferencing or text chat. I wonder what kind of correlation there is between the amount of learning that has happened during lockdown and to what extent schools have made use of technology in their approach.

2. Kids need computers

With all of the benefits that technology can offer with home learning, it’s only possible if children actually have access to computers and the internet. That the UK government has put in place a scheme to provide these devices to families in need betrays the reality of a digital divide. At my school we have sought to provide loaner iPads for families who need them, which has definitely helped.

Once children are back in schools, the problem still stands though: if you’re going to use technology as a learning tool, it works best when there is ubiquitous access to it. We are incredibly fortunate to have a 1:1 iPad programme at my school, but it saddens me that this still is so rare in the state sector. I dream of the day when giving every child a computer is as obvious as giving every child their own pencil and exercise book.

3. Teachers need decent computers too

Our teachers are all assigned a modern iPad with a keyboard and Apple Pencil. This could have been considered excessive, but was has been so helpful during lockdown. Need to write your end of year reports? No problem – type away on that Smart Keyboard. Need to create PDF worksheets for your learning platform? Just use the PDF creation features built into the share sheet. Need to add the answers on top of a digital work sheet? Simply use markup tools and the Apple Pencil. Need to screen record an explanation to help students? There’s the built-in feature or something like Explain Everything.

4. There’s lots of options out there

A recent study in the US showed that 52% of students were using Google Classroom as the platform for home learning. Which means that Google must be doing something right (although not everything). But that means that nearly half of the students were using something else! We use Showbie, but I know that Seesaw, Microsoft Teams, Tapestry and Purple Mash are widely used. This is heartening in many ways, showing that there is still lots of innovation in the area of learning platforms and that schools are willing to find the best solution for their context.

5. But choose your technology carefully

Not all technology is created equally. If you’re in a position to evaluate and implement a technology solution, you need to have a clear idea of the problem you’re trying to solve, a vision of how technology can help and then a plan of you’re going to make that happen. You can then evaluate a potential technology stack with that in mind.

6. Technology can help with learning once we’re all back at school

My hope is that schools, having been plunged into the deep end of implementing a learning strategy with technology during school closures, will not file away the experience under ‘crazy things we did during lockdown’ but will actually implement some of it in the ‘normal’ classroom (i.e. the one where teachers and children can share a room unhindered…perish the thought!).

Sure, there’s probably no need for Zoom lessons once the teacher is standing in front of the class, but could video conferencing come in handy in any other ways? Maybe to link up with another classroom from across the globe? Or record explanations for children to refer back to?

And whilst printing, photocopying and physically handing a paper resource out to a class has many benefits, perhaps digital workflows and PDF annotating has a place? As a school, we’ve basically gone to zero photocopying whilst the school has closed , saving time, money and paper. Could much of this usefully continue?

I am sure that teachers at my school are looking forward to the option of using a wider range of apps with students – Book Creator, Clips, Keynote etc etc – rather than just Showbie. But you can sure do a lot with ‘just’ a combination of PDFs, voice memos, text annotation tools and the pen tool. I am hoping these competencies and confidences will not be lost but rather built upon in time.

Using Slack in a pandemic

We have been using Slack at my school for about four years now. It has generally worked really well as way for our whole staff team to communicate together effectively beyond email, helped by the fact that we provide all staff with a device and because it works across a range of platforms (iPadOS, macOS and web etc).

But as I reflect on the last few months of pandemic school closure, Slack has definitely made remote working a lot easier for us an organisation. I can sit on my kitchen table and easily flow between a range of different tasks: solve an ICT problem for a teacher; glean valuable feedback from teachers on an aspect of home learning; schedule a Zoom meeting with senior leaders; stay in the loop about activities happening for critical worker children still in school. Each task might not seem hugely significant by itself, but the fact staff from across the school can get this sort of work done without getting buried in endless email threads helps make school life feel at least a bit more cohesive.

Here’s a few things that have helped us make it work:

  • The more channels the better. Sack works best when there are channels about a specific tasks or project. We had lots of existing channels that worked well for us during ‘normal’ school opening, but with the change to distanced working, we needed some new channels to reflect the new tasks at hand. For example, we set up #who-is-in-school for posting rota details, rather than them getting lost on our general channel. Having a dedicated channel means that people who want or need to know that information can find it quickly.
  • Pin important posts. Once you have made specific channels for the specific topic/project, it’s very helpful to ‘pin‘ key documents or information. As well as making the information stand out for those already in the channel, those joining can just scroll up and find it too.
  • Turn group discussions into private channels. Sometimes an existing channel doesn’t have quite the right people in it for the information you want to share, so you create a new new direct message to those people. But creating a private channel instead (or converting an existing message group into a private channel) clarifies the ongoing conversation topic and makes it simpler to return to the conversation.
  • Use ‘reacji’ to keep track of tasks. Slack allows you to react to a post with an emoji (e.g. 👍) something Slack cloyingly call a ‘reacji‘. This can be used as a great way of to both let people know that you’ve received a message and be a note to yourself that you’ve dealt with it.

Connecting and engaging learners with Showbie Class Discussion

It is the law in the UK that children have to go to school, unless they are being home schooled. Which means, barring attendance issues and the inevitable follow-up of penalty notices and court action, children generally come to school. A teacher has to put the work in to make their lessons engaging so that children pay attention and learn, but they don’t usually have to worry if kids will show up at school in the first place.

With home learning and COVID-19 school closures, things have changed: we can populate our virtual learning platform with as many learning activities as we like, but we can’t actually make children log in and do them every day. To counteract this, we’re doing the following:

  1. Phone calls home. We have asked teachers to make phone contact with each student in their class (it’s a primary school, so this is up to 30 children), to check up with their general wellbeing but also to encourage them to be logging into Showbie and doing the learning activities.
  2. Troubleshooting technical problems. Before the school closed, we emailed home children’s Showbie login accounts. The majority of children were then able to log in and start the learning, but not everyone. Through responding to support emails from parents, texting home login credentials and even phoning parents to talk through problems, we’ve seen 85%+ able to login at least once.
  3. Providing a device. Because we’re in phone contact with families, we’ve been able to identify those families who just don’t have enough computer access for their children to learn. We’ve been sending home some ageing iPad Airs and are now scraping together some 5th Generation iPads to go into homes too.
  4. Making tasks engaging and accessible. We are designing three 30-minute learning activities for children to do each day. These are mostly recapping existing topics in English and maths and then introducing new learning for the rest of the curriculum. If learning is accessible to children, they are more likely to want to come back and try it the next day.
  5. Feedback from teachers. Showbie has lots of great feedback options, such as voice notes, text comments and annotation tools, so we are encouraging our teachers to make good use of these. If a child has put in the work to log in and do their learning, it’s important that they know that someone has been looking at it as it will motivate them to try again the next day.

On top of all of this, we’ve been experimenting with using the Showbie ‘class discussion‘ feature. Within each Showbie class, a teacher can turn on class discussion to allow students to have real-time text conversation together. As the lockdown has continued, children are increasingly desperate for contact with their classmates and so class discussion will help them stay relationally connected in, but also provide a meaningful ‘pull’ mechanism to encourage children to keep on logging into Showbie.

We trialled it initially with Year 6, adopting the same model as #AppleEDUchat Twitter chats with the class discussion open for an hour and the teacher posting a new a pre-prepared question every 10 minutes. It was generally a big success, with a good number of children logging in and participating. After getting feedback from teachers, we made the following adjustments:

  • 30 minute discussion, as an hour was too long
  • Starting and ending with 5 minutes for ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’, as children really wanted that space to just ‘chat’
  • Four questions posted at five minute intervals
  • Teachers to pause class discussion after posting the question, to give a chance for children to read and consider before responding

We also discovered that Showbie had helpfully released an update to their software, allowing teachers to pin posts in class discussion. This allowed teachers to keep their question at the top of the discussion, rather than it being lost in the flow of conversation. Handy!

This was my favourite unsolicited feedback from a child:

The EdTech Demonstrator School Programme

Back in October, I absent-mindedly posted a little Twitter flurry about the vital importance of professional learning with technology for teachers and how schools can support each other in this, but if schools don’t have enough money to even buy computers there definitely isn’t any to pay for such training.

Unbeknownst to me, the UK Department for Education — that very day — announced what they called the EdTech Demonstrator School Programme. The idea for this was that the government would identify schools who are doing effective things with educational technology and then provide funding for them to support other schools in developing their own EdTech strategy and approach.

As a school already both doing innovative things with technology and supporting other schools as well, we registered our interest and then formally applied for the programme. After a brief purdah hiatus (thank you Brexit!) we were then invited to interview for the programme where we had to present our plans for spending the funding. Our proposal was basically to run a 5-day course throughout the year for computing leads and senior leaders, helping them explore all the elements required to make EdTech work in a school. The majority of the funding was to go on paying release costs for schools for delegates to attend, plus providing a baseline of technology to use through the programme (hello iPad!). The course would culminate in a celebration event, where each school would present about what they had learnt over the year and how their vision and strategy for EdTech had developed.

Then coronavirus hit.

Suddenly schools up and down the land realised that maybe they did need EdTech after all, starting…right now!

In light of this, the DfE repurposed the EdTech Demonstrator Programme as a way of supporting schools with distanced learning. It turns out that my school was one of the successful 22 applicants and now join 20 schools in being part of this revised programme.

If your school is looking for some support at this time, please visit https://edtech-demonstrator.lgfl.net to register your interest!

The Lowest Common Denominator

We are fortunate to have a 1:1 iPad programme in my school. As a Primary school, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) wasn’t ever really an option, mainly because I am not sure how many parents would be willing or able to provide a computer/device for their child to use at school. But this is also to our advantage: because we provide the computers, every child in the school has the same device and so teachers can plan and teach with a confidence that all students will be running the same operating system (baring the odd iPadOS hold-out), with the same apps and hardware that supports all the same features. This is incredibly helpful because it reduces the potential friction/annoyances of technology not working as part of the learning process.

Joining schools across the globe, we have now moved to home learning in response to the current COVID-19 crisis. Our approach has been to leverage the existing experience and confidence of teachers and students in using Showbie by using it as our remote learning platform to deliver learning resources to students, provide tools for students to complete the work (i.e. through annotation tools, voice memos etc) and submit it back to the teacher who can then give some sort of feedback (either individually or as a class) and use it to inform future planning. This seems to be working well, with 82% of children logging in at home so far.

But because we are relying on whatever computer devices children have access to at home, Showbie to all intents and purposes becomes the lowest common denominator for learning. Some pupils are using ‘tablet’ devices, which might be a low-powered Kindle Fire or maybe an ageing iPad. Others are relying on negotiating a time slot on a laptop shared between several siblings and a working parent, or maybe even trying to complete tasks using an iPhone or an Android smartphone. Because Showbie offers both an iPad and a web app, this becomes possible. But it also becomes the ceiling as well – we can’t push the sorts of learning tasks beyond annotating PDFs, typing comments, recording a voice note or visiting web resources. When we’re used to designing learning using the range of apps and tools possible on iPad, this can be a bit frustrating!

Now one way around this could have been to have sent home all our iPads, like they have done in other 1:1 iPad schools. It was something we considered, but things moved very fast in the UK – from ‘we’re not closing schools!’ one day to total lockdown a week later.

And if we were a Chromebook school, maybe all this would be totally normal and fine, with teachers used to learning and creating just in a web browser. Maybe.

But I guess the main takeaway is that, with EdTech, you need to make sure your lowest common denominator is as high as possible: work to have a common technology platform that gives teachers and students the most leeway for learning.

Why we still need schools

With schools across the world getting their heads around home learning (with varying levels of technology and success), I don’t think anyone is seriously suggesting that we get rid of schools in the long term. But the fact that they are, for the most part, physically closed at the moment does help bring into focus some of the reasons why they exist in the first place.

  • Children need the important socialisation process of mixing their peers. Parents are vital for those first few years, but after that children learn how to relate properly with the rest of the world by learning how to get along with other children their age.
  • School provides an external institutional structure for kids, bringing an order to children’s lives. As children learn how to play by the rules of school, they then can become responsible adult citizens who know how to play and keep on playing the game that is civilised society (see Piaget).
  • Teachers provide the external motivational impetus to direct learning. Of course we want learning to be intrinsically motivating and engaging, but the reality is that reading, writing and maths is hard! Training your hand to write, your eyes to read and your brain to think might not be fun at the time but it pays off over a lifetime, and often requires an adult to direct a child to learn it.
  • It takes a village to raise a child. Schools provide much of that ‘village’ experience in our modern crowded and urban life. Kids get a range of input from a variety of people, both academically but also pastorally. This can be done remotely, to a degree, but is so much easier if everyone is the same room or building!
  • People who become teachers are generally the sort of people who are good at teaching (one hopes)! Not everyone has those skills or aptitude, nor indeed the depth or breadth of subject and pedagogical knowledge to introduce learners to a domain of knowledge. You generally need a piano teacher for a child to learn pianoforte…
  • Parents have to go to work. In Days of Yore, children were very useful to help their parents with agricultural jobs, such as bringing in the harvest (which is partly why we ended up with a 6 week summer holiday in the UK). It certainly is a challenge for parents to carry on doing remote working from home whilst juggling children and their learning as well.

It looks like schools in Demark are reopening, and I look forward to this happening in the UK too (at the appropriate time!).

The Cloud

Ah, the cloud: a wonderful metaphor dreamed up by the marketing departments of Big Tech companies to describe how your data doesn’t have to live on your own physical computer or server but can live inside their data centres instead. We, the user (whether that’s a big organisation or just an individual consumer), no longer has to worry about how that all that computery stuff actually works: instead it can be abstracted away into a nice little diagram of a cloud.

And it’s not a bad idea! Steve Jobs introduced iCloud back in 2011, which was mainly just a marketing concept to bring together an IMAP email service, online backups for your iPhone, some photo storage, file storage and a few other bits and bobs. As internet connections have increased in speed an ubiquity, it has made more and more sense to have certain online services hosted somewhere ‘out there’, rather than inside a school’s network. Many schools might still run a Windows file server, but I doubt there are many that still run their own mail server – this job has been farmed out to ‘the cloud’.

So what are the benefits of moving to the cloud, particularly in the current situation we find ourselves in?

  1. Someone else runs the server for you. Particularly in a small school, this is no joke! Running servers efficiently and effectively isn’t easy and requires a certain level of technical expertise.
  2. It’s cheaper. Because of economies of scale, it usually works out cheaper to buy a slice of someone else’s cloud computing power rather than do things for yourself, particularly if you factor in the true cost of running your own server.
  3. It allows for access outside of your network. It’s possible to set up VPN connections to on-premises servers, but it’s much easier if you’re using a ‘cloud’ service that is designed to be accessed anywhere.
  4. It tends to work better with modern computing devices. If you’re running everything on Windows PCs, then your legacy server setup is fine. But if everyone’s using iPads, then you need services that play nicely with modern apps, file systems and workflows.

So, what might networked services in a school might need to end up in the cloud?

  • Email. This is a quick win, as more than likely you’re already getting someone else to do this for you! We make use of London Grid for Learning‘s Staff Mail, which has a web interface as well as offering Exchange access on a Windows PC, a Mac and iPad/iPhone. But Office 365 or G-Suite for Education are good options too!
  • Calendar. Our Exchange email can do calendars for each individual, but we use Google’s calendar for the whole school calendar. Only certain individuals can add new events, but it means that everyone can see what’s going on across the school.
  • User Authentication. This needs some careful thought – how are your staff (and students) going to log into the cloud services? As the number of online services increases, so can the number of different usernames and passwords. This is both annoying for staff as it’s one more password to remember and can also become a real security risk as staff may reuse passwords etc. We use LGfL’s Unified Sign On (USO) as the core identify and then are able to sync this up with G-Suite, our on-premises Active Directory as well as Office 365.
  • File Storage. We use Google Drive, as schools get unlimited storage. It also has quite a few ‘hooks’ that allow us to weave it into existing workflows: there is an app for iPad, there is the Drive interface on the web (that Google would much rather you used), and you can also use Google Drive File Stream on the Mac (which adds Shared Drives in a comparable way to a normal network drive). Because the files are all stored in the ‘cloud’, they can easily be accessed when working from home.
  • Photo Storage. iPads make for handy cameras, generating gigabytes of photos and videos over time. Thankfully, Apple offers 200GB of free storage for schools with Managed Apple IDs. This means that photos can be backed up to the cloud from iPad, along with device backups and iCloud document storage.
  • Management Information Systems. In the UK, Capita SIMS is the market leader for managing student data, whether that is home contact details or attendance registers. Capita do offer a ‘hosted’ version, which allows you to run the software on their cloud servers instead of on an on-premises server, but it still is very much a Windows PC-only piece of software. Nearly 5 years ago, we moved to a web-based MIS called Pupil Asset that provides much of the same functionally but inside of a web browser that can be viewed on any device. It’s not all been plain sailing, but we’re now in a much more agile position when it comes to accessing student data remotely.

Moving to the cloud does mean a change in workflows and you have to make sure staff are on board. It does need to be carefully planned and communicated, with potential issues identified and addressed quickly. If you are able to articulate the ‘why’ for a switch to ‘cloud’ computing, plus do all you can to make it as easy as possible for people, it can be a real success and make a big difference.

Shared iPad for the kids still in school

When it was announced that schools in England would close as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, it was also announced that schools would remain open for vulnerable children and children of ‘critical workers’ (i.e. doctors/nurses/delivery drivers etc). So as well as thinking about how we would keep learning going for children at home, we also needed to consider those who would be staying in school too.

In terms of the educational provision to be provided for the children remaining in schools, the guidance from the government was as follows:

Schools have flexibility to provide support, activities and education in the way they see fit at this time. No school will be penalised if they are unable to offer a broad and balanced curriculum during this period.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-school-closures/guidance-for-schools-about-temporarily-closing#practicalities

As we are delivering all our home learning via Showbie, we decided that we would provide time during the school day for children to log on and access this learning whilst at school. But on what devices?

We are a 1:1 iPad school, so it would surely be easiest to just let students use their existing iPad? In theory, yes. But this was compounded with a few difficulties:

  1. The list of possible ‘critical worker’ children vs. the children who would actually turn up each day was quite different. We would end up with a large pile of potential iPads that staff would have to hunt through each day.
  2. Our school is across two sites with the second site now entirely closed during the pandemic, so getting hold of the iPads for those children is a little more tricky.
  3. Whatever solution we decided upon would need to keep on working without any on-site tech support.

In light of all this, I decided that we should give Shared iPad a try!

Shared iPad mode allows for devices to be logged into by multiple users, with all of their data stored in the cloud and synced to the device upon login. It makes use of Managed Apple IDs, both to store all the data in iCloud and to organise the classes that students belong to.

We already had Managed Apple IDs in place for Y1-6 students, so it was a case of making some new ‘classes’ in Apple School Manager containing the various children who potentially might still be attending school. I then had to set up a set of spare iPads in Shared iPad mode, which involved sorting some settings in our MDM. We then installed all of the required apps and restriction profiles and then assigned those devices to the new classes that were synced from Apple School Manager.

The upshot of all this was that we had a set of iPads that any of the students could pick up, tap their name from the list and then log in with their passcode. Handy!

It also nicely coincided with the release of iPadOS 13.4, which added in a ‘guest’ button on Shared iPad. This means that a user who is not on the list on the Shared iPad can still log in and use the device – once they log out, all the temporary data is removed. This means that Nursery and Reception children can still use the devices to play games etc. without the need for a Managed Apple ID.

What about Early Years Foundation Stage?

So, in my previous post, I outlined the approach we’ve been taking with Years 1-6 and utilising Showbie (and the school website) to encourage home learning during the school closure. But what have we re we doing for children in Nursery and Reception classes?

For many years now, we have been using Tapestry as an online tool for creating children’s profiles. Teachers and Early Years Practitioners take their observations of children’s learning using photos, videos and notes and then upload this to the site, either on the webpage or using the companion iPad app. When compared to the old regime of writing post-it notes, taking and printing off digital photos, followed by sticking them into individual paper profiles and highlighting off different ‘Development Matters‘ statements, the digital route has been a HUGE time-saver! Go digital!

Tapestry also offers parent access, which allows parents/carers to see all of the observations of their offspring, as well as giving them the ability to leave ‘likes’, comments and even upload photos/videos of learning that’s happening at home. Parents love it, as do teachers.

So, when it came to considering how to communicate about home learning tasks during school closure, Tapestry was already part of the thinking. The original plan was to post learning activities on the school website, and then invite parents to upload outcomes from the different tasks. For example:

Our topic is ‘Crazy about creatures’ so we would like you to design your own crazy creature! You could draw, make, build your creature. 

Can you add write some labels or tell an adult:

– What colour is your creature?

– How many arms, legs, eyes does it have?

– Where does it live?

– What does it eat?

Please take a picture or make a video describing your creature and upload to your Tapestry account for us to see.

We look forward to seeing your designs!

http://www.heronsgate.greenwich.sch.uk/school-closure/eyfs/eyfs-week-1-23-3-20/

Tapestry closes that feedback loop, giving teachers/EYPs an insight into what’s actually happening at home that can then inform future planning, as well as giving the opportunity for feedback to parents. So far, so good – particularly as many parents were already signed up to Tapestry and using it regularly.

One question remained: was there a way we could share the learning activities within Tapestry itself, rather than directing parents to the school website? Well, it turns out there was, in the form of ‘Memos‘.

Memos is a new feature in Tapestry, which allows staff to post text (including web links), documents and media directly to parents within the website. Initially I used this to post the daily learning activities, mirroring what was on the school website. However, it also seemed like a great way for teachers to share a bespoke greeting every day to their individual classes, helping keep that connection with children and sense of the school community going.

Home Learning

At 3:30pm on Friday 20th March 2020, schools across the UK closed their doors until further notice as the government stepped up its strategy in combating COVID-19. We’d been tracking pupil attendance for the week previously, watching increasing numbers of pupils and parents self-isolate with symptoms of possible coronavirus infection, with the school basically shutting itself: by the time Friday came, we only had a mere 10% of pupils coming into school anyway.

With children now at home for the coming months, what was our plan for learning to continue? Taking an article entitled ‘Preparing to Take School Online?‘ as a framework, we thought through our options. At the time, school closure only seemed like a remote possibility, but as the days a weeks progressed we realised how inevitable extended home learning was going to be. So what was our plan? And what did we actually do?

Days 1-3

The plan was to have the first few days of home learning already prepared before the school actually closed, to give us a few days to get ready for ongoing learning. Initially, the plan was to post work for each year group on our school website as this would give a low-barrier method to share learning with parents and students. However, as school closure looked more and more likely, we realised that we needed to leverage our existing learning platform to make this work longer-term: Showbie.

Showbie

We have been using Showbie since 2015 as way of managing learning on our iPads, initially with shared devices and then as the learning pipework for our 1:1 iPad programme.

Showbie is a bit of a strange beast, but one that is very focused on what it does and does not do and one that has evolved to meet the needs of educators over the years. There is a free and a paid ‘Pro’ version (with all limitations removed) and the basic idea is that a teacher sets up a classroom and then students join that class with a class code. Teachers can post comments, voice notes, files, images and web links to the class or to individuals and then students can post back with the same, as well as annotate PDFs/images/documents with a range of digital markup tools. It essentially provides a digital version of the tried-and-tested paper workflow of exercise books: giving our resources (aka photocopying resources), taking back work (aka handing in exercise books) and giving feedback (aka marking).

Initially, Showbie was just an iPad app. However, to keep up with the G-Suite juggernaut in the US, where whole districts were ditching iPads and buying glorified testing machines Chromebooks instead, Showbie has now ported all of their tools to a web version with full feature-parity.

Because all teachers and pupils were used to using Showbie every day and because it could also be accessed on any device with a web browser, we decided we would also post all learning on existing Showbie classes as well as the website. This would allow the following advantages:

  • Teachers would know which children are actually engaging with the learning, something you just wouldn’t be able to tell from a website.
  • Children would be able to complete digital worksheets and activities within Showbie itself without needing to print anything off.
  • Because all the completed work is immediately viewable by the teachers, teacher can then use that to give general feedback to their classes (or individuals where necessary), which can then also inform future planning.
  • Children who needed differentiated work, due to their ability levels, could have specific work posted to them on Showbie. Trying to do this on the website would have involved something like emailing work home to specific children.

Getting ready

So what did we need to do to get this all ready before the school shut?

  1. I needed to email home all of the children’s existing Showbie logins. Thanks to our often-wonderful MIS Pupil Asset, I was able to import a custom data field with the child’s username and password onto each child’s profile, and then use mail-merge tags on an email sent home to parents. Result!
  2. I needed to build the ‘Days 1-3’ assignments ready for once school had closed. As I am a ‘teacher’ on all of the Showbie classes in school, I was able to build it once for each year group and then copy this across to the rest of the classes.
  3. To avoid potential digital vandalism and possible confusion, I went through and made sure all previous Showbie assignments were ‘view only‘ and had a ‘due date’ to the last day that schools were open.
  4. As a means to find out which children had actually been able to log in at home, I made a ‘Hello!’ assignment for each class, inviting children to respond back with a comment to show us that they had logged in ok. I set this assignment as locked, scheduled to open at 4pm on the closure day.

How has it gone so far?

We’re two weeks in and we’ve hit over 80% of children logging in at home, which I think is pretty good! Here are some common problems that children and parents faced:

  • I need my child’s username and password! Despite having emailed all of these home, some parents did not receive these. Further emails and even text messages with credentials helped sort this.
  • I’ve logged in but my child can’t post anything! We had previously set up ‘Parent Access‘ on Showbie, which is a cool feature that allows parents to set up their own Showbie accounts and then see a read-only version of all their children’s learning. However, many parents were still logged in with this account and so had to be walked through how to log out of this account and into the child’s account.
  • It’s asking for a class code! This usually meant that the parent or child had signed up for a new account rather than using the preexisting one. Sometimes the child had also managed to block themselves from their class, which was a simple fix from our end. When a parent got stuck at this point, a phone call home usually got things sorted.
  • I don’t have a computer/a spare computer! Even though home internet access is nearly ubiquitous these days, lots of households just have their smartphones and that’s it. We started collating together households in this situation and have started to send home some more elderly loaner iPad Airs, which have been gratefully received!
  • Showbie is taking ages to load! With the whole of the Western world waking up to the efficacy of digital learning, Showbie have seen a HUGE spike in usage. What this means is that Norway wakes up and starts pounding Showbie’s servers at 8am, followed by the UK at 9am. Showbie support have been fantastic and they are adding more and more server capacity over time.

From a learning point of view, it’s been quite a journey as well. We’re used to using Showbie in a classroom setting where the teacher is physically there and can help out kids and tell them which apps to use. In a home learning setting, we’re having to assume that students can only really use the Showbie web app and possibly the wider internet. This means that task instructions have to be crystal clear and any PDF activities have to be do-able in Showbie, ie with plenty of whitespace to annotate!

On a day-to-day basis, a colleague and I are creating six Showbie assignments each day, with the work teachers from Years 1-6 have created. This has involved a bit of a sanity-check on the tasks, lots of PDF creation and the occasional YouTube upload. Once we’re happy with these, we then copy the assignment to the rest of the classes in each year group. Thanks to scheduling and the ability to lock access to assignments, we are able to build all this without pupils seeing the work in progress! After everything is set, we then upload the learning to the website too. Phew…

It’s been a very busy and tiring two weeks, but it’s been very gratifying to see the sheer number of kids eagerly logging in and gobbling up the learning!