The Acceleration of Hybrid Learning – Preparing UK Schools for a Digital Future

88% of teachers believe the pandemic has accelerated “hybrid learning” – where youngsters learn at home and in the classroom – and 74% believe online and digital learning platforms are critical to primary and secondary education moving forward.

Nearly three-quarters of primary and secondary school teachers in the UK predict that pupils will still need to use digital tools to learn from home despite schools re-opening last month, according to this new report from Microsoft and YouGov.

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      string(332) "... what they’re doing but also to make them feel part ofthe school. Sometimes we respond to around 700 pieces a day.’Ed Tech for hybrid learning in SeptemberLike many other schools, LEO Academy Trust neverreally closed. They operated at a distance but produced eight hours recordedcontent every day. While ..."
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      string(5233) "conscious that we were rolling out critical thinking from reception to year six but now they are looking at extending their reach into the home as well. Staff take photos of work at school and parents contribute by photographing activities at home and so they have the basis for a learning journal, a collaborative venture that is a better reflection of the children and their progress. Persuasive writing has been transformed by Google tools and offers more opportunities for creativity. In the past a teacher would have analysed and demonstrated the key features and children would have been sent away to write their own version but now it no longer has to be a piece of writing. Children can demo their newly acquired skills by recording a speech, drafting a newspaper article, or composing music and creating an advertising jingle and schools can evidence learning.Children are beginning to be so confident that they take the lead and show initiative. For example, children in year four were tasked with finding out the surface area of their school building. Some used Google maths but one enterprising child opted for Google Earth and came up with a definitive answer.One boy showed how he did long division. By recording each stage with a voice over, he showed the working out in his book, explained mistakes he had made and the answer he had arrived at. ‘It was fine example of blended learning,’ said Graham, ‘and it shows that it doesn’t all have to be generated by adults.’Keeping the values alive when school is outDuring lockdown the school has had a mixedeconomy of resources to provide a variety of approaches from PDFs, to livelessons, recordings and small group discussions. A teacher recorded sketchingtechniques and signposted children to different places. As an EdTechDemonstrator School LEO Academy Trust has produced an impressive range oflessons and is receiving 25k visits per day to their distance learning site.However, children have been able to share too.One girl produced a video for her friends showing her desk in her bedroom andher timetable. This is a new way for children to support each other during lockdown,keeping in touch and working together, despite being apartThe school has provided different mechanisms forreceiving pupils’ work. Some use Google Classroom, some parents like to emailtheir child’s work., Some parents shared their children’s work via socialmedia. The Academy would respond via social media and also pass work onto theteacher. ‘It is important to acknowledge every piece of pupil work,’ saidGraham, ‘not just to see what they’re doing but also to make them feel part ofthe school. Sometimes we respond to around 700 pieces a day.’Ed Tech for hybrid learning in SeptemberLike many other schools, LEO Academy Trust neverreally closed. They operated at a distance but produced eight hours recordedcontent every day. While it is not certain that all children will be returningto the buildings in September, the school will be set up and can provide for childrenwho cannot be physically present. To this end the trust has invested in two highlyskilled trainers, one was recruited from an EdTech company and has a backgroundin teachingdigital learning technology; the other was a middle leader in the trust.Their job is to make sure that staff are confident using the technology and canexploit its potential. They have been busy creating resources and there will bea choice of up to 25 webinars available every week for staff to access. All Webinars will be on Youtube, so will beavailable to the wider community. The Trust is looking to help the sector so therewill be sessions covering the tools teachers could use, with How To topics suchas How to use Google Docs. There will also be focus on areas such as markingand assessment, and how to deliver 4 Cs though technology.Lessons from the LEO Academy TrustRolling out technology to six schools acrossseven sites there were inevitably one or two teething problems. This is whatthey learned:Spare devices are essential. Always have extradevices to hand so if a child drops a device or it doesn’t work, you just handthem another one rather than trying to fix it Wi-Fi can be patchy in some areas and when youhave got 60 children all online in the same area of the school you realise howpatchy it is. You will probably need to increase your Wi-Fi so check outsuppliers who can respond quickly to your requests for more access points andswitches.Some parents may be concerned about the use oftechnology. Staff ran workshops, question and answer sessions, held meetingsand coffee mornings but discovered that some parents were still unhappy aboutthe issue of screen time. The schools invited these parents in to see lessonsand they came to realise that their children would not be using Chromebooksnon-stop between the hours of 8am and 3pmInvest time and money wisely. The devices areonly part of the solution.  You will needto upskill all your staff and but once training and infrastructure are in placethe technology can transform your school.http://www.LEOacademytrust.co.uk/webLEOdistancelearning.co.ukhttp://LEOdistancelearning.co.uk"
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Applications and Software

Learning Lessons In Lockdown

12 Aug 2020

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      string(5788) "Over the last ten years, education technology evangelists have made remarkable claims about how new technologies will transform educational systems. In 2009, Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School predicted that half of all secondary school courses in the US would be online by 2019, and that they’d cost 1/3 of a traditional course and provide better outcomes. Sal Khan of Khan Academy proposed in a TED talk that he could use short videos to reinvent education. Sebastian Thrun of Udacity said that in 50 years we’d have only 10 institutions of higher education in the world after massive open online courses colonized the field. As the winner of the TED Prize, Sugata Mitra claimed that students didn’t even need schools or teachers, and that groups of children with access to the internet could teach themselves anything.A disasterAnd then in 2020, the world was blighted by a terrible pandemic. Schools serving over 1.6 billion learners shut down. It was a moment that technologists had promised for years could be transformative, but for most learners and families, remote online learning has been a disaster.As educators face the challenge of spooling up new online and hybrid schools to serve vast numbers of students, they can choose from three kinds of technologies that support learning at scale. In classifying education technology, the first question to ask is “who controls the learning experience for students?”There are three answers to this question: instructor-guided online courses, algorithm-guided adaptive tools, and peer-guided networked learning communities. 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For auto-didacts, the options are limitless, but for the vast majority of us who need contact with human teachers to help us learn, these kinds of offerings are not very helpfulThere are a variety of algorithm-guided adaptive tools that are engaging and beneficial to student learning. Part of the appeal of these tools is that they use a variety of different kinds of automated assessments to determine student understanding, and then they provide personalized learning pathways to students based on their performance.Theoretically compellingTheoretically, it’s a compelling model, where each student gets the instruction, the assessment, the feedback, and the experience that they need. But, the model depends on having good automated assessments, which only exist in three domains: mathematics, computer science, and early language acquisition (such as learning to read a native language in primary school, or learning the introductory parts of a foreign language).Even within these domains, the assessments are only partially useful—in computer science we can automatically assess whether a student has met a well-defined engineering challenge, but not if they’ve made an aesthetically pleasing home page for a new website. Automated math tutoring software can be a useful part of a school systems’ remote learning plans, but there simply isn’t good automated tutoring software for studying literature, science, social studies, or most of the rest of the school curriculum.While instructor-guided and algorithm-guided technologies attempt to use computers to directly teach students, some technologists have built learning environments where peers teach each other. The Scratch community, where young people learn computational creativity and share their programs, tutorials, and resources with one another, is probably the best example of a peer learning network that has been adopted in schools.Outside of formal schooling, virtually everyone in the networked world participates in some way in these learning networks, when they peruse and comment on makeup tutorials, or read up on video game wikis, or participate in networks for hobbies and crafts. The kind of learning that people do in these networks is rich and deep, but it depends tremendously on internal motivation. 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Digital Learning

A Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education

28 Aug 2020

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      string(3990) "This paper by D2L, highlights the ways in which work and learning need to shift to be more skills-focused, in line with technological development and changing societal norms. The paper explores why we must embrace new or hybrid learning models to transform our thinking about lifelong learning and skills development to allow individuals and economies to thrive going forward. The Whitepaper suggests that as higher education leaders and policymakers think about how to prepare for the future of the workforce, the education system must be at the crux of any solution. Main Points: The Fourth Industrial Revolution is putting cognitive jobs at risk, in part or in full, due to automation and the rise of AI and other technological advancements. As job functions evolve in this new paradigm, skill sets are relevant for shorter and shorter periods of time. The increase in AI and automation requires ongoing upskilling and reskilling in order to move humans up the value chain. As the gig economy grows, ongoing, lifelong upskilling and reskilling will be essential for the gig worker to continue to have marketable skills and see a pathway for professional growth. Millennials are job transient. Building institutional knowledge and job loyalty is becoming increasingly difficult for employers. Employees are working longer. Coupled with skills becoming obsolete more quickly, neither employers nor employees can expect skills to stay relevant throughout careers. Building a modern learning company provides a strategic advantage in the ability to attract, retain and develop top talent, and outperform the competition in this new skills race. Information is becoming more accessible, but a degree is becoming less affordable. #While costs increase, the promise of a degree leading to a good job decreases, as the skills developed are not connected to labour market needs. Average earnings for degree holders have fallen nearly 15 percent between 2000 and 2012. Employers increasingly feel graduates do not have the skills required for the labour market. A constantly fluctuating skills market means employee skills are becoming out-dated more rapidly and require ongoing training and development. Development of human capital is essential for countries to be competitive in the global, knowledge-based economy. Jurisdictions that emphasize and invest in education and training outpace those that do not. Recommendations: Make education and training a priority for investment. Investing in the development of an education system that is affordable, accessible, flexible and responsive is paramount to ensure value and create a competitive economy. Think responsive, flexible and adaptive. Recognising that learner demographics are dramatically shifting, education systems must adapt to the reality of a post-traditional learner. Align programmes and credentials to labour market needs. The education system must become more responsive to changes in the labour market, including regular examination of the relevance of programme offerings and where to invest limited education resources. The use of labour market information, such as essential skills in demand, employment statistics, unemployment rates, and wages and salaries should be a foundational component of such regular examination. Recognise the shift to a skills market. Designing “hybrid” programmes with skill sets from different fields will enhance the value of a postsecondary credential for students as demonstrable skill attainment is increasingly more desirable by employers. Leverage industry as a partner. Include industry partners in the design and execution of educational programmes to ensure alignment of skills taught to skills sought. WEB LINK The Future of Work and Learning Keywords Work, learning, society, individuals, skill development, individuals, communities, economies, technological development, hybrid learning"
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Leadership

The Future of Work and Learning

22 Jan 2018

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      string(5694) "The last ninemonths have underlined the stark inequalities that underpin our educationsystem but also the remarkable resolve of teachers. Lockdowns and burst bubbleshave required schools to ‘go online’ repeatedly in an effort to ensure studentsmaintain access to a meaningful education. Unfortunately, inspite of these efforts, the data paints a damning picture, with disadvantagedyoung people often struggling to access remote learning during the pandemic. As term comes toa close, we must think hard about how to address the ‘digital divide’ that hashampered the provision of education in adversity. In doing so schools,government and tech companies must ensure they support teachers to foster amore productive, workload-reducing relationship with technology.Inequality atmultiple levelsLast week, The Centrefor Education and Youth (CfEY) and Microsoft released ‘Closing the Achievement Gap in the ConnectedClassroom’, which exposes the scale of the ‘digitaldivide’ whereby pupils in some schools have far greater access to digitaltechnologies compare to others. This reinforcesthe inequalities set out by The Sutton Trust which found that poorer parents,who sometimes work multiple jobs and have limited work flexibility, were unableto spend as much time supervising their children’s studies. These inequalitiesmust be understood and urgently addressed. However,alongside considerations about numbers of hours and numbers of devices, we mustattend to the quality of youngpeople’s remote learning access. According to a Teacher Tapp survey of 5,000 teachers commissioned by Microsoft forits new study, just one-third of students had access to a device that wouldsupport high quality, hybrid learning (learning that combines online andoffline learning). As Jonathan Dandoof Oak National Academy noted at the studies’ launch, “not all devices are madeequal” and the wrong device could prevent young people from accessinghigh-quality online resources. According toOak’s data, about a quarter of those accessing its platform do so via a mobilephone. Analysis shows that where this is the case, pupils complete tasks at alower rate than where they use other devices. As Jonathan puts it, phones –with their plethora of apps- are literally designed to foster distraction. Thus, with theirsmaller screens, fewer digital capabilities and Instagram just a click away,mobile phones are no match for a tablet or computer. Given these findings,headteachers are right to be alarmed by the DfE’s recent cuts to laptopallocations. More has to be done to ensure that all young people have access toa suitable device that supports their learning. Otherwise, we risk entrenchingeducational inequalities, the effects of which will be felt for years to come.Isolation As well asdisparities along socio-economic lines, the digital divide plays outdifferently across schools. Well-networked senior leaders have been able topool resources and share innovative approaches to remote learning whereas“schools working on their own are really struggling”, according to SebastienChapleau of Citizens UK. Kelly Loftus,Director of External Relations at Teach First agrees, sharing a fear thatisolated schools may lack vital support during this difficult period. Here, theprivate sector may have an important role to play. For example Chapleau noted thatManchester’s MediaCityUK had helped local schools provide appropriate devicesand data. To ensure thatresources go to those who need them most in the future, public and privatesectors will need to work together – identifying areas of need and using schools’knowledge of their student intake to make evidence-informed decisions. Meeting teachers’needsWhilst it isimperative that students have access to the resources they need to accessremote learning, it is also important that we do not lose sight of the broadereducational picture. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that thereis no substitute for high-quality, face-to-face teaching and little appetitefor a wholesale dismissal of school-based education. That said,necessity is the mother of invention, and some remote learning practices mayendure beyond the pandemic. Some schools have increased their use of onlinequizzes, which can be easily administered and marked, reducing teacherworkload, whilst giving students vital retrieval practice. Others have drawnon resources from Oak National Academy to share additional lessons, sethomework and support catch-up work. These workload-reducing approaches areaccompanied by an optimism regarding technologies’ potential to supportstudents’ independent learning and to prepare them for future studies andworking life.It is thereforeno surprise that many teachers are enthusiastic about the possibilities forheightened use of technology. However, this is rightly tempered by concernsabout design and implementation. At the launch of ‘Closing the Achievement Gap in the ConnectedClassroom’, Loic Menzies, Chief Executive of CfEY,stressed that ed-tech has to be more than a classroom gimmick, with a designprocess that involves teachers at every stage. This sentimentwas echoed in the Teacher Tapp survey. Faced with a choice between a new set oftextbooks, one-to-one devices, and a new interactive whiteboard with avisualiser, over 40% of English teachers chose the latter, compared to only athird of science teachers. These figures demonstratethat technology must be tailored to teachers’ needs and informed by differentsubject disciplines’ unique demands. Unfortunately, in the past, the ed-techsector has"
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Leadership

Bridging The Digital Divide: Getting Tech Right

23 Dec 2020