In this video I’m going to give you 10 of the top resources for online learning, because I want to help you manage the challenge of keeping children learning at home during the coronavirus situation if you do need to close your school.
So watch this ‘Quick-Start’ video guide & take notes!
Coronavirus Online Teaching & Learning Resources
I’m going to go through the 10 resources. And I’m even going to give you some quick tips to make it easier for you along the way.
So the first six resources are “done for you” resources. (They’re kind of ‘off the shelf’ resources).
And resources 7 to 10 you’ll do yourself. So that means you can personalise it to your classes really easily.
So just a quick introduction to me. My name’s Annie Boate. I’m the founder of Coachinginschools. I’m also a former teacher and school leader. And over the past six years I’ve developed powerful online training to help school leaders learn how to coach so that they can work more efficiently and effectively.
…So I know what a *MINEFIELD* that ‘online learning technology’ can be!
So if there’s any way I can help you, or if you want to message me, please invite me to connect on LinkedIn.
And by the way, if you’d like me to create a video for you, tell me:
“What’s the number one thing you find challenging or frustrating as a school leader?”
>> Let us know here…And we’ll create something for you if we can!
So let’s go through the first six online learning resources…
So remember, these are the ones that are “done for you”.
1. “Classroom Secrets”
https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ and https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/product-category/beta/
So you’ll see they’ve created some ‘home learning packs’ for you to help you with Corona virus. Now when you go onto the site, you’ll see there is one for EYFS, you’ve got Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6. So as you can see, you would just need to go on there and click the ‘Download’ button.
Something else that Classroom Secrets have done is just recently launched this beta site. So this is kind of another bonus for you if you like. You can either get ‘Class Access’ at the moment (for free)… or you can get ‘Parents Access’ – again free of charge. So that’s more resources to help you.
2. “Learning Ladders”
https://www.learningladders.info/coronavirus-disruption
This is designed to upskill parents so that they can support their children at home with reading, writing and maths. You’ve got to contact them and apply. Do make a note of the Terms and Conditions, because key things I saw here is access finishes the 30th of June, you must have SIMS, iSams, Arbor, Scholar pack or RM so that they can import it. And also, most importantly, they do ask that you pay £200 towards an API link…So be aware of that one before you sign up for that!
3. “Education City”
https://www.educationcity.com/free-resources/
As you can see they’ve got a range of subjects, and they do cater for a range of ages as well.
There’s various resources on there that you can download, print and share with your teacher, friends, your colleagues, and also possibly with parents as well. All you have to do here is start the free trial in order to access that. Be aware though that it is a 21 day free trial. I don’t know what happens after that, but it might just ‘get you by’ for 21 days.
4. “2simple”: Purple Mash and Serial Mash
https://2simple.com/free-access/?campaign=3f314708-5ef0-11ea-9175-062a0562a518
So you can see with Purple Mash you’re able to set the work remotely, and assess children’s work, and provide feedback.
And with Serial Mash, the children get access to over a hundred books in their library.
So that offer is made without any cost, obligation or commitment. So you’re not going to lock yourself in, you’re not going to have to pay a couple of hundred pounds (like you did with the previous one!)
5. “Twinkl”
https://www.twinkl.co.uk/search?term=school+closure
They’ve created 47 new resources for the Coronavirus closures. So you can see these are free. (You can download them from the website).
6. “Century”
Century is offering free support to all schools who are closed due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
Now they will support you particularly in English, Maths and Science, and it also has artificial intelligence (AI) built into it. So what that means is that the system will automatically identify gaps in any student’s knowledge and work accordingly.
Century work with primary schools, secondary schools, independent schools, international schools, and FE colleges (and parents).
Coronavirus Remote Teaching & Learning Resources 7 to 10…
…So these are the ones that you can do yourself. So, obviously, what that means is you can personalise it to your classes – and you’ve got a lot more control over the materials, the resources that the children are actually getting during the coronavirus closures.
7. “G-Suite”
https://edu.google.com/latest-news/covid-19-support-resources/?modal_active=none&topic=view-all
And as you probably know, Gsuite is very, very popular in education. It’s free, and you can see that they’re supporting school closures here with a number of offerings:
So you can see that’s free until the 1st of July, 2020.
So how do you access Gsuite?
Well, your Gsuite administrator will have received instructions for what to do in order to access this stuff. But if you’re not sure, there is a ‘learning centre’ page, and Google are really helpful if you do want some support. Now here are some benefits that you get from Gsuite:
So, first of all, you’re going to get the free upgrades to the ‘Gsuite for education’ various apps.
You also can benefit from hosting calls or online meetings with up to 250 people.
You can live stream up to 100,000 viewers. (Now if you’ve got a school with 100,000 people in it, that would be pretty amazing!).
But you can screen share, you can record meetings, and you can also use the Google Hangouts Meets from now until the end of June as part of their coronavirus offer. So that means you can do things like hold meetings with staff, parents or students.
And you can also, of course, teach classes live as well if you want to.
As part of the Google suite (the Gsuite), you get something called ‘Google Classroom’, and it’s a fantastic way to work more interactively. So teachers can go on, they can organise learning into a logical order, they can take registers, they can upload resources, they can create quizzes, they can set assignments with deadlines, students can submit their work for marking, and teachers can send back any corrections and personalised feedback.
TIP: Train staff first – useful resources here:
https://teachercenter.withgoogle.com/first-day-trainings/welcome-to-classroom
8. “Microsoft Teams”
https://products.office.com/en-gb/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software
Microsoft Teams platform’s already free for educational settings, and it offers video meetings for up to 250 people, and live events for up to 10,000 – so it’s not as many as G suite, but I’m sure that capability would be enough for you.
You can record, you can screen share, and you can chat and collaborate.
Now I would say to you, a really important tip is…THINK TWICE before using this, because the platform went down yesterday (which was Monday), due to the high volume of people now working from home in light of the Coronavirus situation. And this is obviously set to get worse over the coming weeks as more and more people will be required to work from home or self-isolate.
9. “YouTube”
So what you can do here is record a video and then upload it – most importantly as an ‘unlisted’ video.
And then you can either send out the URL link to the students that you want to view the video, or you could get your school IT manager to embed it in a webpage for the students to access on your VLE or a password protected page.
Now, of course, the prerecording of a video avoids the live camera safeguarding risks, and then once students have watched it, you could obviously email them questions and assignments.
So it’s not as integrated as Google classrooms, but it is another option for you.
10. “Vimeo”
Very similar to YouTube – so you can record a video. When you upload it, make sure it’s a ‘hidden’ video.
And again, just email out the questions or assignments. Or – like with YouTube – you can potentially get your IT manager to embed it in a webpage or on your VLE – again, avoiding those safeguarding risks.
Now the other thing that’s brilliant about Vimeo, (which is better than YouTube), is you can restrict the playback. So you can restrict it to only play on your websites so you know that there’s no unauthorised access.