Exeter Cathedral School (ECS) was founded in 1179 as a choir school. Nowadays, the School is a co-educational day and boarding school which prides itself on being a nurturing and purposeful school for some 260 pupils. Earlier this year, after the Prime Minister’s announcement that schools across the country were required to close, the School’s management team met to prepare for remote learning for the first time in the School’s 841-year history. We agreed on a three-phase approach.

• Phase 1: Help pupils, parents and staff navigate the three remaining days of the term.
• Phase 2: Provide immediate and long-term on-site support for key worker families.
• Phase 3: Research, prepare and launch a home learning platform to allow for a longer-term closure.

As a small school, we are mindful of budgets and of the need to be able to develop and manage our remote learning platform in-house. All of our requirements led us to Microsoft and to Microsoft Teams. 16 days later, we launched our first ever virtual learning environment: ECS:Learning@Home.

8 principles to delivering a balanced approach to remote learning

Remote learning was new to us and to our pupils and families. We knew what we asked of them needed to be realistic, doable, worthwhile and stimulating. So, we established eight founding principles that would underpin ECS:Learning@Home.

Meaningful and manageable

We worked hard to set up programmes that allowed uncomplicated access to our curriculum across the age groups. We ensured that our online learning was rich, purposeful and clear.

Enriching

School is about much more than classroom learning. Through our home learning programme we were able to come together as a school for assemblies, form times, quizzes, sports days, guest speakers, Speech Day and more. This allowed us to add the important touches to a child’s day ‘at school’ and to create space for pupils to be recognised for their work and have fun with their peers.

Rigorous, balanced and flexible

We attach great importance to a broad and balanced school experience andwanted to make sure that our ‘real life’ breadth of opportunity and high standards continued to be offered remotely.

Equally, a one-size-fits-all approach was clearly not going to be good enough – each family’s circumstances were different. So we empowered pupils and parents to access our full daily offerings as they saw fit and to build in screen-free time to their routines.

Interaction

Interaction is absolutely fundamental for effective learning and teaching – and of course for first-rate pastoral care. We wanted to use a digital platform that could replicate, as closely as possible, a classroom experience. We were determined to be live, interactive, and reactive to pupils’ needs while online. Teams allowed us to do this and to achieve a coherent model of home learning and pastoral care across the school.

Creativity

And as a school which has its foundations in performance, music and spirituality, we wanted to continue to be a shining light for creativity. As well as daily wellbeing sessions run by our sports department, visual and performing arts featured heavily in our programme. Each afternoon our Creativity Hub opened up and gave our pupils access to lessons and activities in music, art and design and storytelling. We even launched ECS:Choristers@Home to keep our core strands of Choristership alive.

A day in the life of a pupil in remote learning

We streamlined the timetable so that busy families could easily keep track of the daily pattern. Every pupil started their day with live ‘morning welcome’ sessions with their form teacher and friends. This was the backbone of our online pastoral provision and allowed us to continue to be a school where people matter.

Supporting staff, parents and families

Staff training was integral to the success of remote learning. We ran training events to allow teachers to learn about Teams and provided time to practise in designated Training Huddles. All of this was, of course, done remotely! We also provided parents with a weekly evening training session.

We sent out a weekly ECS:Learning@Home update, complete with videos and snippets from the week, and – crucially – a ‘You Said, We Did’ feature: this gave parents and pupils a voice, and helped us to unify our efforts and build a cohesive home-school community committed to improvement.

Pupil and staff outcomes in remote learning

Using Teams allowed us to keep doing what we love – coming together each day as a school community. We genuinely stayed connected and, in amongst all of the learning, had a whole lot of fun!

As a staff body we held games and quizzes, kept the banter flowing through Teams chat, and even had a lipsync battle with senior pupils. Teams also meant that our pupils were able to take their public exams. In fact, the class of 2020 equalled the School’s best-ever public exam results.

The success of our ECS:Learning@Home programme seems to have resonated locally and more widely. We currently have more enquiries than ever before from families who want to explore an ECS place for their child.

How remote learning impacts our future plans

We have now adopted a blended-learning approach to our curriculum with the support of Teams, using it to further pupils’ independent learning skills. Live speakers are now joining us for assemblies and Enrichment Talks via Teams to speak about topical issues and our Pupil Voice initiative continues to thrive digitally.

We see our blended learning approach being integral to our provision over the coming months and years – it’s here to stay.

Find out more

Discover more about ECS’s journey

Get started with hybrid learning

Learn about remote learning

About the author

James Featherstone is the Headmaster of Exeter Cathedral School. His job is to lead and manage the School, look after the team of staff, and to make sure that the 260 pupils and their families have the best possible educational journey. Before joining ECS, James was on the Senior Leadership Team at the Perse School in Cambridge.

Outside of school James enjoys singing, travelling through France (he’s a linguist by training), and doing his best to keep up with his two children on their adventures together.

The post How to deliver a balanced approach to remote learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

More than ever, students are now accessing and engaging with learning through their own mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets. One of the main benefits of using podcasts, are that they don’t require the consumer of the content to be viewing a screen. This can often prove both flexible and convenient, particularly as the files can be listened to in a variety of settings – e.g. while out exercising, or even when relaxing in the evening.

So, the concept sounds great – but how do you actually create a podcast? This blog will take you through some key steps to creating your very first podcast, using many tools available within the Microsoft Office 365 suite.

1) Planning the content for the podcast

Before starting to record a podcast, there are some key factors to consider:

• • Who are the intended listeners?
  • How might they be accessing the content?
  • Are you recording ‘solo’, or wanting to capture a conversation with multiple participants?
  • What recording setup do you currently have?
  • Are you likely to require any further equipment?

Addressing these points will help ensure that you are prepared to record your first podcast.

2) Recording the podcast

The main hardware requirement for getting started with podcasting, would be either a smart phone, tablet, laptop or PC with a built-in microphone. A dedicated external microphone will likely enhance the quality of audio, but is not essential to the recording process. A set of earphones or headphones can also be useful for blocking out unwanted background noise during the recording process.

If you are simply looking to record ‘solo’, then you can use the Voice Recorder app built into Windows 10. This provides basic recording and editing features, and is one of the simplest ways of capturing audio content. Most modern mobile devices also come with their own built-in app, which will have a similar level of functionality.

However, if your aim is to capture a conversation between multiple participants e.g. between a host and several guests, then Microsoft Teams can offer a suitable solution.

Firstly, you will need to arrange a Microsoft Teams meeting to host the conversation, and then invite in any other participants. Once in the Teams meeting, you can select Start Recording by clicking ‘…’, which will begin recording any audio and video being shared by the participants. Once finished, you can follow a similar process to Stop Recording.

Although you are not likely to need any visuals for an audio podcast, it can be useful to have cameras switched on as a visual aid throughout the recording process. This really helps with making a virtual conversation feel much more natural – as participants can often benefit from seeing body language and visual cues.

3) Editing the content

It’s not always essential to edit a podcast. However, you may wish to tidy up your recording before publishing. If using Voice Recorder, this is possible within the application itself.

If you have recorded within a Microsoft Teams meeting, you can use the Trim video function within Microsoft Stream. If you want to retain the video captured within the podcast, then sharing as part of a Microsoft Stream channel (within your organisation), may prove a suitable option.

If you are wanting to extract just the audio from your recording (to be hosted elsewhere), or wish to do some additional editing, such as adding background music or adding an intro/outro – this will likely require the use of audio editing software. You could check with your organisation to see what software you might already have available to you. Audacity is a free open-source alternative, which provides plenty of functionality for anyone looking to get started with audio editing.

4) Hosting the final podcast

Once you have recorded and edited your podcast, your next consideration is where to host it. There are many ways that you can host a podcast online. One way of doing this via your Office 365 account, would be to use Microsoft Sway. Sway is described as Microsoft’s digital storytelling tool, and allows great flexibility to embed different types of multimedia content – including audio. Here are a few simple steps to get started with your podcast in Microsoft Sway:

1. 1. Select Create New
   2. Source a suitable image to use as cover art, and Insert as an Image Card
   3. Set the image Emphasis, as appropriate
   4. Create an Audio Card, and upload the relevant audio file
   5. Add any additional info (episode no., topic, guests etc) into the Caption box
   6. Use the Group function to link both the Image and Audio

These steps can easily be repeated to add further podcast episodes within the same Sway.

Using the Styles option within Design, will also allow you to customise the way that your Sway looks and feels. Selecting the Slides navigation mode often provides a clear and simple way of navigating between individual podcast episodes.

The Play button will provide a preview of how your Sway looks, and once you are happy, you can click the Share button to obtain a shareable weblink. This can very easily be embedded within a Team, using the Website option when adding a new tab to a channel.

Putting the steps into practice

Our DigiLearn podcast might give you a bit of inspiration to support you on your own journey to creating and sharing podcasts with your students.

Below is a quote from Nicky Varley – an MIE Expert and Lecturer in Children’s Nursing at the University of Central Lancashire, who has started exploring the use of podcasts within her teaching.

“The podcast was recorded via Microsoft Teams and then uploaded to our Virtual Learning Environment for the students to listen to. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and they appreciated that we could share our stories within the podcast – something the students said they had really missed from the classroom. The trouble with no longer being face to face, is you miss that interaction with students, and sometimes online teaching can feel a little cold. Within nursing, sharing our past experiences really helps to paint a picture for our students. This is something I know I have really struggled to recreate with other forms of technology, but now podcasting seems to have changed that. By using this approach, not only are we being inclusive, we are also being creative.”

There are many different approaches to creating and hosting podcasts utilising many of the tools within Office 365, and we would encourage you to share any of your own innovative approaches with the wider #MicrosoftEDU community.

Find out more

How to use Voice Recorder

Recording a meeting in Teams

Create channels in Microsoft Stream

Digital storytelling with Microsoft Sway

Recording a podcast for accessible learning

About the author

Chris is a Senior Learning Technologist at the University of Central Lancashire, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Since 2018, he has led development of UCLan’s innovative and sector-endorsed DigiLearn model and programme – to support, recognise and reward colleagues in relation to their inclusive and innovative digital practice. Widening collaboration across the sector, Chris also co-ordinates UCLan’s DigiLearn Sector – an active community, connecting over 1000 digital practitioners across HE, FE, schools, and beyond. As a Microsoft Learning Consultant, he now works with other institutions – supporting their adoption of Microsoft technologies to improve both staff and student outcomes. Chris also makes regular appearances presenting at both national and international education conferences. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisLearnTech.

The post New ways of learning: 4 steps to record and share a podcast with your students appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Teams is built with intelligent security by design. As it’s our one main online portal, once signed in, we can access everything we need. This means no longer do we have to remember multiple logins for different websites.

Getting time back to support teachers

As teachers, we often don’t give professional development the time it needs. I’m just as guilty as most when it comes to this! But we can use this technology to help us gain back valuable time to focus on our development and help our students achieve better learning outcomes as a result.

Ensuring all staff are sufficiently trained to utilise new technology is often a thought that raises questions for school leaders. We introduced Teams in training sessions for our teachers and support staff, using the following five steps.

1.      Share your vision

Firstly, you need to share your rationale on using Teams, and why it is important. Earning trust in this step will set you up for success down the line. We prepared Teams by putting current and relevant versions of the files and documents relating to teaching on Teams. For classroom support staff, have resources, information on pupils etc. on Teams.

Within our school Teams, we have set up different teams. For example, we have a whole staff Team and subject teams. You can control who can have access to different Teams within your school.

2.      Learn the basics

Once all our staff members had an understanding of Teams, we then talked to them about the basics, such as creating Channels. These can be created within the Team for topics, units, and more. They are where you share information and communicate with your team. We focussed on Posts, Chats and Files to show how staff how to get the best out of Teams, quickly.

Chat: You can send messages quickly and easily to individuals or groups. You can also make audio and video calls. During the school closure period this function has been crucial to keep communications. Not just meetings, but we have even had staff quiz nights over Teams for a bit of fun and to boost morale.

Posts: To me, posts are the virtual version of a staffroom noticeboard. They’re visible to everyone in the Team. This has been very helpful for myself and other members of staff to give key messages to everyone, and easily allows quick conversations and file sharing. In both Chat and Posts you can also attached documents, websites, pictures, video clips.

Files: You can upload and organise documents within the Files. These can be accessed, edited (both individually and collaboratively) by any member of staff, from any device, and any location. Because it automatically saves the latest version, there is no confusion about different versions of the same document. For us, we can regularly update documents such as our Childcare Provision register and staffing rota, and because these can be accessed on any device – everyone who needs to can still read and check these documents.

Within Teams you can also use a range of other Microsoft tools such as Forms, Sway, Flipgrid, and link to third party apps such as Wakelet and KaHoot.

3.      Add OneNote to your channel

All staff have their own OneNote Notebook, but we also have different sections and pages within these notebooks as a collaboration space, which everyone can access and add to. As a Headteacher, I now keep all of my notes on OneNote, so that I can access them at any point in the day. In our Senior Leadership Team, we are using OneNote to create agendas and take minutes from our conversations and meetings. This helps us prioritise our actions to stay on track and to collect ideas for training and future Strategic Development Priorities.

4.      Provide training and education

We introduced staff to the Microsoft Educator Center, which provides a wide range of on-demand courses and learning pathways, including for Teams. We asked staff to undertake the first two Microsoft Educator online course, which would help develop their understanding and use of Teams, and also give them MIE (Microsoft Innovator Educator) accreditation. These courses were: Transform Learning with Microsoft Teams and Getting started with OneNote. All of our staff did this and are really engaging with becoming a MIE.

5.      Assign them a task

To get teachers used to Teams, we asked them to upload all their planning from the school year and their mid-year reports by a certain time. We had already uploaded the latest data (both Core and Foundation curriculum) and the associated documents onto Teams, so we asked them to update these versions from now on, as this would enable easier access for them and other colleagues.

These first small steps have given our teachers confidence in using Teams. Not only does Teams make the classroom easier, but it helps our staff to communicate quickly. It also helps us store files safely, developed documents collaboratively, and is accessible anywhere, on any device.

Find out more

How to unlock anywhere learning by setting up a Teams Class

Join a Teams webinar

About the author

Tim is Headteacher at Cornerstone CE Primary in Hampshire. Part of his role is to support his team to continue to review, develop, and refine their approach to teaching inspiring engaging and meaningful learning experiences for students and teachers. He is passionate about professional development and networking, fascinated by teaching and learning, and driven by the needs of his pupils. You can follow him on Twitter here.

The post Five steps to introduce Teams to your educators appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

At Cornerstone Public School, we decided to implement Teams across the whole school to make it easier for students and teachers to access the information they need, when and wherever they are.

Having access to planning is a key aspect of teaching. In Teams, these documents can be accessed securely, while meeting GDPR guidelines.

Giving your students’ access to anywhere learning helps them gain confidence and digital skills, preparing them for their future.

It’s easy to set your class up on Teams. Normally, your IT team will have added your students to a class group and you can then add this to your Class Team. If not, add your student’s Office 365 Education names.

1.      Organise your class Team

Every team comes with a general channel, which has the following tabs: Posts, Files, Class Notebook, Assignments, and Grades. You can add more channels if you need to and set their privacy to be accessible to all students or just some.

2.      Communicate with your students

Use Posts to message your entire class or Channel – I tend to do this for news and to share information. The Announcements feature is great for when I need to draw student’s attention, for example to share an assignment. If you need to talk to a student or colleague one-to-one, you can use the chat function to send text messages, audio messages, and video or audio calls.

3.      Share and organise documents

You can upload, create, and share key documents for either pupils or the whole class to edit collaboratively. You can set files to read only when you need to use them as reference to complete assignments. The documents can be all stored securely in one place making it easy to find.

4.      Class Notebook

Class Notebook gives your students a place to take notes and collaborate with the class. A variety of media can be embedded within a page on a Notebook supporting students’ learning experiences. For group work, the collaboration space provides a space where groups can work together.

Assign students their own OneNote notebook. Splitting the notebook into different categories helps the work stay organised. Each section acts like its own book collating all the work that a student completes.

5.      Assignments and grades

This brings us to Assignments and Grades. You can set students assignments through Teams, either for the whole class or particular pupils depending on differentiation. You can even add the assignment instantly into a student’s particular section of their Class Notebook.

The Grades tab lets you track student progress and view the status of their work. You can grade individually via the Grades tab, or collectively through the Assignment tab, adding feedback and points.

Using Microsoft Teams, creates independence, particularly for students in the older years of primary school. With the majority of secondary schools using an online platform for learning, this prepares them for this experience, as well as their future in further education and the workplace.

Find out more

Five steps to introduce Teams to your educators

Join a Teams webinar

About the author

Henry is a digital leader and Year 6 teacher at Cornerstone Primary School and an MIEExpert. He is passionate about developing technology in the classroom and equipping students with the best skills to prepare them for the future.

The post How to unlock anywhere learning by setting up a Teams Class appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

For those not based in Wales, Minecraft: Education Edition is available for free until June 2020 for all educators and learners who have a valid Office 365 Education account. You can request access here.

Setting the context for learning is a really important consideration when planning any lesson or activity with Minecraft. There are many ways practitioners can create really engaging activities, ideal for remote access learning. Here are two projects that I have found to be really effective.

Developing literacy skills

Minecraft can be a fun and interesting way of developing reading and writing skills. Focus on environment descriptions in a text and challenge your learners to create their own settings within Minecraft. Novels and short stories with rich setting descriptions are perfect for this activity. One project that particularly highlighted this was The Wonderful World of Roald Dahl. Learners engaged with a range of texts and created their very own settings from Roald Dahl books with Minecraft. Following this, learners created their own stories with imagined settings within Minecraft. An important aspect of this project was the planning, reading, and writing which was done before learners started building in Minecraft. This ensured that the time spent building within Minecraft was purposeful and encouraged learners to be reflective throughout the process.

Minecraft: Education Edition has produced a range of Roald Dahl themed resources to support educators with developing literacy skills through Minecraft.

Local history projects

Minecraft can be a really effective tool to support the development of historical enquiry and interpretation. In the project That’s Entertainment, learners investigated the role the local area played in people’s leisure time in the past. To start the activity, learners used a range of sources to investigate this, including: online journals, interviews with the local residents, and photographs. Some students created an online questionnaire to collect information using Office Forms through Hwb. Following this, learners focused on an area/building within the community and used their research to create a website to share their learning with others.

After the planning stage, learners worked collaboratively to build a virtual museum of the locality in Minecraft. Each child focused on a specific building and used their research to inform their build. They also created a plan which included the scale of their building and the blocks they would use. To share their learning with a wider audience, learners added Non-player Characters (NPCs) to link their websites to their Minecraft communities.

You can access the That’s Entertainment resource through Hwb.

Remote collaboration and sharing

There are lots of ways learners can share their Minecraft work if they are working remotely. A great way for learners to document their progress within Minecraft is by using the camera tool. Photographs are stored in a portfolio where learners can add captions to describe each of their photographs. Portfolios can be exported and shared as a PDF.

Learners can also use the book and quill tool to combine text and photos to share their learning within Minecraft. The book and quill encourage learners to write more detailed descriptions. They are able to add multiple pages and images within the book. This can then be exported and shared.

There are lots of Hwb tools for students to share their learning within Minecraft remotely. Why not challenge your students to create a digital story using Sway through Office 365? Learners can combine images, text, and video and share their learning using a link. You can find more information about getting started with Sway here. 

Gamifying distance learning to improve outcomes

The Minecraft: Education Edition team has compiled a special Minecraft remote learning toolkit, which includes more than 50 lessons, STEM curriculum and project-based learning activities so educators can use Minecraft: Education Edition with their students whether they are in school, at home, or in another remote learning environment.

Find out more

Discover how to start with Minecraft: Education Edition

About the author

James Protheroe is assistant headteacher at Darran Park Primary School, South Wales. As a Microsoft Showcase School, the school has placed digital learning at the very heart of teaching and learning. This has included developing effective pupil digital leaders who have supported teachers and learners across Wales to develop effective approaches to teaching and learning with Microsoft tools.

As a lead practitioner for Central South Consortium, James has supported schools from across the region to develop effective leadership in digital learning. James is an MIE Expert and Minecraft Global Mentor.

The post Utilising Minecraft: Education Edition for remote access learning appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

How would you establish the values, the vision, the ethos and aims, the mission statement? What would you place high on the curriculum? How would you define your identity? What skill-sets would you want the teachers to have? And what about the support staff: how many would you have and what would you want them to be able to do? And of course, what would you do about the technology?

These questions, and countless more, were exactly what our team faced when establishing Bertha Park High School in April 2018, the first non-replacement secondary school in Scotland for almost twenty years.

Creating a 21^st century school

What a unique opportunity, and one we grabbed on to with both hands. Firstly, we challenged everything. Any decision we had to make we questioned. This was a real opportunity to think differently and think better. We could challenge the norms of secondary schools and force decisions based not on what suits the administration of a school, but on preparing the young people for life in the 21^st century.

Let’s take the set-up of the school. School bells. We don’t have them. Historically, bells were used to programme young people to start and stop tasks on the sounding of a bell to prepare them for work in the factories of industrialised Britain. That world, arguably, is no more. So why would we prepare our pupils for an environment that no longer exists?

We have four 80-minute periods per day instead of six or seven, which are common in other schools. Why? 80 minutes allows fewer subject to be taught in the one day. Therefore, there is less mental juggling for the students. Also, less time is wasted on period change-overs and travelling between classes. Longer periods also allow for much more in-depth learning in the same lesson and even the opportunity for outdoor activities.

Improving health and wellbeing

Young people’s mental health and wellbeing is a concern for every school. We took this opportunity to introduce daily mindfulness sessions. This allows students the chance to get themselves into a better mental and emotional state for learning.

We thought hard about students using their mobile phones during school time and decided that this was not something we wanted to support. We are providing the learning tools for the pupils in the shape of 1:1 devices, therefore they don’t need their phones and the distraction of social media. Student’s phones are confined to their lockers during school hours – including breaks.

Our use of the physical space is something we considered in depth too. We have a number of open-plan teaching and learning areas alongside classrooms. These are used for individual, paired, and group-work as an alternative to classroom working. These spaces reflect contemporary working spaces in universities, colleges and the workplace – again preparing our learners for the 21^st Century.

Re-imagining parent-teacher relationships

We took this opportunity to re-examine the relationships schools have, not only with the pupils, but with the parents too. We spent a great deal of time consulting with the community. We got their input on what kind of place they wanted the school to become, what the values and ethos would be.

We then set about explaining that, for this to come about, everyone in the triangle: students, parents, and staff would have to agree to abide by the values of the school with everyone treating each other with respect and patience to get the best out of their time at school.

Building student and staff digital skills

We chose Microsoft Office 365 and our virtual learning environment. The majority of the classes, homework, and lesson content is delivered through Teams and OneNote.

These platforms have provided a seamless integration of school work, homework, student collaboration, peer support, shared documents, efficiency, and anytime, anywhere learning.

Students have their own devices, provided by the school, and these provide an equity in opportunity across the board. They encourage creativity and the freedom to tackle tasks in a new and contemporary way. Stop-motion animation, green-screen filming, blogs, and videos are common methods for our students to demonstrate their learning.

Teachers too are grabbing this opportunity with both hands and devising teaching tools and resources that take advantage of what technology can provide. In the months leading up to the opening of the school in August 2019, we ran careful recruitment drives alongside intense training. This ensured that every teacher was comfortable with the technology and the Microsoft suite of tools was deployed consistently across the entire school.

Our communication with parents benefits from immersion in the digital realm. No more banana-sodden newsletters printed on paper and languishing at the bottom of school bags. We send links to Microsoft Sways sharing the stories of what’s been going on in the school, featuring video documentaries, interviews, and photo-shows as well as more traditional text accounts.

Our entire approach to technology has been based on and supported by the Microsoft Education Transformation Framework and the Flagship tenets. These have given us a rationale to base our direction upon and a justification for the way we are approaching the establishment of our school, the curriculum content, and our technology immersion. The Microsoft Office 365 suite provides tools to allow us to deliver what we’ve promised.

A successful start

We opened our doors to learners on 21 August 2019. We learnt a lot in the months and years leading up that day. And we have continued to learn every day since. We realised that the world has changed dramatically, and therefore, so too has education.

We also realised that too many schools wanted to teach the way they always have done – blissfully preparing the young people for a world that no longer exists.

We wanted to challenge that – as any self-respecting and forward-thinking school would.

If you are considering making some changes (and why wouldn’t you?) here are our top tips:

• Be brave (have the courage to do what no one else is doing, yet).
• Seek forgiveness, not permission (you’ll never get off the ground otherwise).
• Proceed until apprehended (you’ll be amazed by the positive changes you can make)

By equipping our students with vital digital and soft skills in an environment that mimics the workplace of the future, we are preparing our students to succeed in the future of work.

Find out more

Microsoft Education Transformation Framework

Bertha Park High

About the author

Stuart Clyde is Head Teacher at Berth Park High School. He is passionate about giving students the digital and soft skills they need to succeed in the future. He aims to give students the very best experiences and opportunities throughout their time at Bertha Park High School.

The post The Bertha Park High School Story appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

What is a Showcase School?

A Showcase School is one which has used Microsoft’s Education Transformation Framework to help increase student outcomes and focus on preparing students with future-ready skills. The school-wide transformation starts with a clear vision and is sustained through a culture of learning, innovation, and continuous improvement.

At Newark Hill Academy, we work hard to create immersive and inclusive experiences for our students that inspire lifelong learning. We are proud to equip our student’s with essential life skills. Skills that empower them to achieve more and prepare them for the future of work.

A day of collaborating and learning

Joysy John, Education Director from Nesta, started the event by sharing her manifesto on how we can support our pupils by preparing them for jobs that are yet to exist. Resilience is a key skill for our learners. We discussed what interventions we could use to develop pupils’ social and emotional skills ready for the world of employment.

During MIEE Teams calls, we were put in the shoes of our students as we all took part in #FlipGridFever. Being camera-shy was not an option as we all took part in the conversation. We shared our favourite Microsoft classroom tools and how we use them to improve outcomes. OneNote and Teams were firm favourites.

At Newark Hill Academy, OneNote has completely changed the teaching and learning experience. It has also fuelled teamwork and the sharing of resources as well. Each year group puts their planning, resources, team meeting notes, data tracking, and everything related to the cohort into a OneNote document. As a leader, this gives me a complete overview of everything I need and I’m able to dip in and out when needed.

We were blown away with the magical power of PowerPoint Preview and we cannot wait to start using it. Microsoft Education Solution Specialist Ian Woolner, showcased the wonderful accessibility skills of Dictate. He shared some new mystic powers within Microsoft Edge that will be released in the next update.

“More schools and colleges are unlocking the benefits that come with using technology in the classroom. Programs such as Teams can make learning more accessible and collaborative, as well as give students key skills they will need in the workplace. We are looking forward to supporting more schools and seeing students benefit from the Microsoft Showcase Schools Program.”

Chris Rothwell, Director of Education at Microsoft UK.

The future of learning

AI is bigger than ever. Microsoft’s Director of Education Chris Rothwell encouraged us to think outside the box regarding how it can enhance teaching and learning to create a positive impact with our pupils.

Through a Teams Meeting, Dominic Williamson joined us from Seattle to share his in-depth knowledge of how we can use Teams with our pupils to improve learning and collaboration.

The day concluded with the Showcase School plaque presentations. We did some interesting photoshoots, enjoyed refreshments with networking before we headed off home for the weekend to celebrate our achievements. All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable and insightful day hosted by Microsoft. We look forward to sharing our knowledge and experience with other schools to help them inspire their students.

We’re extremely proud to become a Showcase School. We’e excited to continue our commitment to using technology across our school with a strong drive for digital literacy. Our students are preparing for jobs that don’t exist yet. It is important that we equip them with the skills they need to succeed in the digital workplace of tomorrow.

Find out more

Discover how the UK leads the way on using technology in schools

Become a Showcase School

Equip your students with digital skills

About the author

Sonia Kendal is Principal at Newark Hill Academy, Peterborough. She is passionate about working to prepare children for the future by creating a 21st Century approach to learning through the use of technology.

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1. Developing learner autonomy
2. Facilitating effective group collaboration
3. Developing students’ digital skills in preparation for the workplace

Microsoft Teams provides a digital space that brings conversations, content, assignments, and apps together, enabling students to take full control of their own learning. Accessible from any device, Teams is easy to use and encourages collaboration between teachers and students.

Facilitating different learning styles

At UCLan we split students into two separate groups to explore the different ways they could use Teams to engage in effective collaboration. We wanted them to evolve from simply being consumers of learning content, to actively engaging with and creating content themselves.

The timeline below shows how these students utilised Teams over the course of 8 weeks to effectively prepare and engage in live assessed debates. Group A used Teams to prepare for the debates, whereas Group B used Teams during the assessment itself.

Week 1 – Building confidence with Microsoft Teams

The focus of the first week was primarily to introduce students to Microsoft Teams for the first time. In initial workshop activities, we build the student’s confidence with using Teams. These activities involved students posting and commenting on relevant articles and news stories to generate discussions with their Module Leader and other students.

Weeks 1-5 – Introducing the assignment

Students were briefed on the Assessed Group Debate, which was being held at the end of the learning syllabus. We gave the students full autonomy to organise and manage themselves. They chose their co-workers, topic, and debate format with a deadline of confirming these by the end of Week 5.

Week 6 – Group A create a Team autonomously

Having self-organised and submitted their topics and debate format, Group A create their own Team to enable them to discuss, edit, and share an up-to-date copy of their presentation. The Module Leader was also added as a member by the students so they could help or advise students if they needed it.

Week 6-8 – Group A use their Team as a central hub to communicate and prepare

In preparation for the assessed debate, Group A used their Team extensively over the next two weeks for collaboration, file sharing, and formative feedback from the Module Leader. In this particular example there were 32 student-to-student interactions, and 13 student-to-Module Leader interactions.

Week 8 – Assessed debates

As students arrived to watch the assessed debate, Group B added them all as members to a Teams site that they had specifically created for the debate. During the debate, they encouraged the audience to post questions which Group B responded to live in the moment. This innovative practice was praised by staff and co-students. It was highlighted in the Module Leader Report and provides an example of good practice for future students to follow.

Enhancing learning experiences

The impact of these examples can be explained in two ways. Firstly, we found the students’ learning experiences were significantly enhanced as a result of these autonomous approaches. Secondly, they have had a positive impact on the associated staff.

In a module evaluation, students were asked to comment specifically on whether Microsoft Teams was useful in their learning on the module.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Teams was described as “easy to use”. It also “helped with planning the structure of the assignment, with staying in touch, and allowed us to send and save work to proceed with the assignment.”

One student said it “helped in terms of the debate as it allowed groups to communicate together and with other groups and the lecturer.” Incidentally, both Group A and Group B achieved first-class grades for this assessment.

Most importantly, Teams provided a platform on which students could shift from consumer to creator of learning and assessment content. They did so in an authentic and organic manner that suited their individual learning style.

Find out more

From consumers to creators: developing learner autonomy using Microsoft Teams

9 ways to transform the student learning experience with Microsoft Teams

About the authors

Andrew Sprake is a Lecturer in Sport and Physical Education in the School of Sport & Health Sciences at UCLan. He teaches physical education philosophy and practice and the sociology of sport and physical education. He is particularly interested in the pupil-voice. He is an MIE Expert and recently presented at the 2019 BETT show in London, using Microsoft Teams to address the question: How can we enable and empower student voice?

Jess Macbeth is a Senior Lecturer and Research Degree Tutor in the School of Sport & Health Sciences at UCLan. She teaches the sociology of sport and physical education, with a particular interest in disability sport. She is an MIE Expert and recently presented on Preparing Modules for Teams Delivery at the Keele Digital Festival 2019.

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All up, we travelled over 50,000 virtual miles from Ferndale in South Wales. We used Skype in the Classroom and Teams to communicate and collaborate with learners from across the world.

This was reflected in a call with Anna Dyagileva and her students in Russia. They shared a Sway presentation about life in Russia. During the call, learners discussed cultural similarities and differences between children living in Russia and Wales. As well as singing popular songs from each country, students taught each other phrases in Russian and Welsh.

“Using Skype in the classroom breaks down barriers and opens up our classrooms to a world of truly global collaboration and communication.”

Skype Master Teacher Darren Hurley

Supporting skill development

Learners from Year 5 and 6 took part in digital collaboration that supported younger learners from other schools to develop digital literacy skills. Using Microsoft Teams, learners read books to classes from other schools. As well as developing reading skills, we found these calls really engaged all learners and helped them understand the power of digital connections. This activity also promoted the use of Teams for meaningful collaboration to other schools in Wales.

Gamifying learning worldwide

One of the highlights of the Microsoft Global Learning Connection was taking part in the Kahoot Cup. This unique pop culture competition involved teams from 25 countries across the world. Each school represented their country to answer questions using Kahoot and points were added to the national total. Team Wales, led by Paul ‘Lanny’ Watkins eventually finished in 4^th position behind eventual winner Team Canada.

“This is a truly unique opportunity for collaboration with students from other schools across Wales. Students love competition and learned so much about other countries during the Kahoot cup.”

James Protheroe, Assistant Headteacher and MIE Expert

Learning through virtual field trips

Skype in the classroom, provided learners with opportunities to learn from experts through virtual field trips.  Leaners enjoyed learning practical first aid skills from the Red Cross in a hands on session. They also developed an understanding of how charities work to support people all over the world.

“It’s important for students to understand the work of charities like the Red Cross and what better way to do this than learning new skills which they can relate to their everyday life,” said Sophie Mills, ICT Leader.

In addition, learners visited Ranjitsinh Disale, a teacher in India to learn about climate change and the impact it is having on our environment.

“It was interesting to hear how the teenagers are planting trees to help stop climate change in India,” said a Year 5 pupil.

“An important part of becoming an ethically informed global citizen is having the opportunity to ask questions to experts and think of solutions to solve problems that we all could face in the future. Through utilising Skype in the classroom, all our learners can do this,” added Protheroe.

Connecting students across the globe

Over the two-day event, we made sure every learner from Darran Park Primary took part in Microsoft Global Learning Connection. Many classes communicated with classrooms from across the world playing Mystery Skype. The idea is to develop effective questioning, problem solving, and map reading skills by getting students to ask questions to locate where the other class is located.

Mystery Skype is also an effective starting point for discussion and can often lead to future collaboration between schools.

“I didn’t know how similar we are to children in other countries. I love using Skype because you can learn new things and talk to children you wouldn’t meet in real life,” said a year 4 pupil.

Younger learners took part in mystery animal Skype, asking questions to find out which animal the other class had chosen.

Building vital digital skills

In 48 hours, learners engaged in purposeful collaboration with students and experts from over 40 countries using Skype in the Classroom and Microsoft Teams. Microsoft’s Global Learning Connection helped our students understand the power of global connections and improve their digital literacy.

“It is so powerful to watch learners developing student voice through sharing ideas, collaborating and questioning children and experts from across the globe. Skype in the classroom and Teams have made this possible!”

Darren Hurley, Skype Master Teacher

The students of Darran Park Primary School are excited to learn more from people across the world through continuing their digital global connections using Skype and Teams.

Find out more

Discover Skype in the Classroom

About the authors

James Protheroe is assistant headteacher at Darran Park Primary School, South Wales. As a Microsoft Showcase School, the school has placed digital learning at the very heart of teaching and learning. This has included developing effective pupil digital leaders who have supported teachers and learners across Wales to develop effective approaches to teaching and learning with Microsoft tools.

As a lead practitioner for Central South Consortium, James has supported schools from across the region to develop effective leadership in digital learning. James is an MIE Expert and Minecraft Global Mentor.

Darren Hurley is a key member of the digital strategy team at Darran Park Primary School. As a Skype Master Teacher, Darren has brought the curriculum to life through opening up classrooms on global scale. He has collaborated with educators from across the world to create truly memorable experiences for students and develop authentic pupil voice. Darren is an MIE Expert and Minecraft Global Mentor.

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