home learning

In which I attempt to get to grips with home learning (and fail utterly ****ing miserably); I convince myself that I am a DIY genius and prove all the reasons why you should never attempt to repair your own dishwasher; my children are left in no doubt as to all the reasons why I never made it as a teacher; we compare the parallels between getting Jamie out of bed on time, and herding cats; I 'fess up to my dirty secret and explain why you really don't want a Playdough License; Beth and I discover there's something even more dickish than fronted adverbials; and I share with you why you should never, ever, consider doing 1,000 squats.

Dr. Elizabeth Davis is an education veteran. For nearly 20 years she has helped schools develop strategies for connecting school and home to provide effective learning experiences and today she is an online learning instructional leader for Edmentum. During this episode we dig into the difference between quality e-learning and "emergency" learning and how educators and families can both contribute to effective in-home instruction.

If you like what you hear, you can support our show by subscribing and leaving a review. You can also follow us on Twitter @edmentum and let us know what you’d like to hear our podcast cover next.

'A connected world needs connected learning.' Anna & Shehzad get into the details of Kinteract's journey as a startup. Helping schools transition to remote learning , Kinteract can meet school's remote learning needs, from communication and parental engagement to homework settings.

During this time they are also offering full access for free until the end of July to support schools during the COVID-19 crisis.

In this podcast, we spoke with James Emmet, Network Manager at Engineering UTC North Lincolnshire about how they use features in Office 365 to support students with Special Education Needs (SEN) and English as an Additional Language (EAL).

“We have a high number of students who are EAL, SEN, dyslexic and have low reading ages. I passionately believe that – when used in the right way – ICT is one of the most crucial tools to help these students with their learning,” James tells us.

“Our school’s main intake starts from Year 9, so it’s not long after they start before, we have to start prepping them for their GCSEs. Office 365 and key tools like Immersive Reader are essential for helping these students to learn.”

Immersive Reader is a free tool built into many of the Microsoft Products, including Microsoft Word.

“Using Immersive Reader, students can change the style and appearance of the text to help with reading comprehension,” James explains.

“For example, you can change the font, text size, text spacing and even create a virtual coloured overlay.”

Meanwhile, Picture Dictionary, the Translate tool and Read Aloud are particularly handy for supporting EAL students.

Picture Dictionary allows students to select a word they may not understand and view an explainer image, while Read Aloud turns the text on the page into speech for the student to listen to.

Both of these, combined with the Translate tool, are invaluable when it comes to improving reading comprehension in the classroom.

“We have found that Immersive Reader is being used by all of our students, not only those with EAL and SEN. In fact, one of our GCSE students who is predicted a level 7 in English regularly uses Immersive Reader to break down texts and closely analyse them,” James adds.

Immersive Reader also enables students to highlight word types, such as nouns and verbs, as well as break sentences down into syllables, which both students and their teachers have found useful for English and language-focused subjects.

“Because Immersive Reader is already built into many of the Microsoft products, we have not had to spend any extra time rolling it out into classrooms,” he tells us.

“It’s really taken off in our school. For example, we demonstrated the tool to one student and by the next lesson, the rest of their class were using it.”

The great thing about Office 365 and Immersive Reader is that it works on any connected device. Of course, this capability is more important than ever before as we see many children learning from home.

“We love the fact that Office 365 can be accessed via multiple devices and actively encourage our students to use their own devices or one from our bank of iPads. It gives their learning an extra boost.”

To find out more about Office 365 for Education, get in touch with a member of our team today.

Go to https://www.clouddesignbox.co.uk for more information.