4 pupils never posted to their blogs There was not a complete overlap.<\/p>\n I am quite please with the engagement. Given the short notice I was aiming for engagement as opposed to achievement.<\/p>\n The schools SMT were in touch with parents and we had no worries around pupils who did not show up online.<\/p>\n The above posts are a series of notes taken at the time. Musings and mumblings as opposed to anything well though out. Writing them helped me think through things and will help look back and learn over the coming years. What follows is more of the same.<\/p>\n Over the weeks I posted one big blog post a week with ideas for the week. These were all linked from a featured post on the blog: Home Learning \u2013 Banton Biggies<\/a><\/p>\n I was quite surprised that the take up of what I though of more creative and fun tasks were not taken up as much as some of the more basic stuff<\/span><\/span>. Sumdog, which enjoyed in class was much less used than expected. <\/span>I think<\/span><\/span> I’ve underestimated the community aspect of a class in sparking ideas and encouraging children<\/span><\/span>. <\/span>Perhaps<\/span><\/span> more show and tell about learning in Teams would help. One problem with that was the understandable uneven attendance in meetings. This made it hard to move on through the week.<\/span><\/p>\n Blogs are, imo, very good at sending information out. <\/span>The combination of media, the ability to make the information <\/span><\/span>publicly<\/span><\/span> available and the way it can <\/span><\/span>be organised<\/span><\/span> are useful<\/span><\/span>. I recorded the text as audio and pupils told me they found this useful.<\/span><\/p>\n The incorporation of posts allowed by the display posts plugin<\/a> allows you to repeatedly add regular information simply. I’ve used Display Post plugin to list my lockdown posts above, but it is a lot more powerful that this simple example.<\/p>\n Blogs are not, imo, the best way to collect and review pupil ‘work’ on a day to day basis. But the pupils were familiar with them and they worked well for me in the short term. Using OneNote would have been better if I could have avoided <\/span>previous problems<\/span><\/a>. I didn’t feel the effort to get pupils using OneNote when they had not before would have worked. If I had had a straight p6 or 7 or even a composite 6\/7 I would have done so, but felt it best to stick to what we knew.<\/span><\/p>\n Still some of the blog posts are valuable beyond the “handing in” aspect. first as evidence of learning and second a record of these unusual times. Making 380 comments wore out my emojis and kept me in touch with my pupils.<\/p>\n The Glow Blog reader<\/a> plugin made checking the pupils posts really simple. I can’t recommend it enough.<\/p>\n I didn’t follow ‘best practise’ for my meetings. I worked it out as I went along. Each meeting had several shorter elements including:<\/p>\n My first method of organising the meetings involved a new presentation every day. Toward the end I stopped doing that. Pupils often saw nothing or didn’t see slides at the right time. I <\/span>probably<\/span><\/span> stuck in that rut, spending most of the morning making slides for far too long. <\/span>Eventually<\/span><\/span> I ‘presented’ by using the chat. Adding text, pictures and video as I went. Keeping the videos very small <2mbs meant this didn’t interrupt the flow.<\/span>( Simpler Meet<\/a>)<\/p>\n I used a fair bit of audio in the meets. Splicing together snippets from Farrago via loopback with my mic as input in Teams. This allowed me to ‘play’ poets reading their work and music. I used this to play bits of music as a timer when I gave the pupils time to work on something. (Lockdown Learning 18 May 2020 \u2013 virtual devices<\/a>).<\/p>\n Having periods, 2-5 minutes of silence or music might seem a bit daft but I found the pupils enjoyed it and produced some good work. We used it for drawing, number talks, writing and brainstorming. I imagine it is even harder to respond immediately in Teams than it is in a classroom, so thinking time.<\/p>\n I ended up making quite a few short < 1.5 minute videos to explain things. At first I uploaded them to Teams well before the meets and asked for them to <\/span>be watched<\/span><\/span>, flipped style. <\/span>As it became obvious that the class didn’t all watch them I continued but then uploaded them into the chat during the meet and gave time to watch them<\/span><\/span>. This got round the problem of live explanations involving visuals synchronising. None of these videos were things of beauty. Earlier ones took time but I cut down and down in both size and speed of production. Either using the built in screen recording on iPad or recorded voice over for Keynote slides on Mac. In the later I used Screenflow to add audio for its better editing. In both cases reduced dimensions and quality of videos in HandBrake.<\/span><\/p>\n I found a few things irritating in Teams. The differing UI on different devices made it hard for some of my pupils, especially the younger ones. I would have loved a sticky post effect for announcements. <\/span>I believe<\/span><\/span> this is in the works but my pupils <\/span><\/span>regularly<\/span><\/span> missed announcements as they <\/span><\/span>were pushed<\/span><\/span> up the stream<\/span><\/span>. I did have a channel <\/span>just<\/span><\/span> for announcements, but <\/span>I don’t think<\/span><\/span> the pupils visited that much.<\/span><\/p>\n The file dialogues in teams drove me mad. Years of selecting files and then double clicking or hitting return\/enter to open got me every time. Files from the desktop were fine as it then used the system dialogue. Ones from OneDrive or the teams files area, bleh.<\/p>\n Closing a document you had opened from a folder in the files area didn’t as I’d expect leave you in the folder but put you back to the top level of files<\/span><\/span>. Again not a big deal but it slows down a workflow. I guess this is to do with Teams being a cross platform app built on electron.<\/span><\/p>\n The ability to edit a document in Teams <\/span>was turned<\/span><\/span> off due to high demand but <\/span>I think<\/span><\/span> it would be a killer feature. I did work with older pupils a little in shared word docs. <\/span>The whole bouncing back and forth between different apps seemed too complex to start using with my younger pupils<\/span><\/span>. Being able to do this in Teams would have been great.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve grown used to video only because I have to. I prefer audio \/ podcast \/ as a medium. I have at least 5 kids who are deeply uncomfortable on video. Which is understandable<\/p>\n — Athole (@athole) May 18, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/johnjohnston.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/engagment.png\")
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\n2 pupils never participated in a conference a couple more never stayed for more than a few minutes.<\/p>\nPrevious Posts made During Lockdown<\/h3>\n
Learning Tasks<\/h3>\n
Blogs<\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nTeams<\/h3>\n
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