With global impacts, most notably the pandemic affecting student learning in numerous ways, from hardware supply delays, to at-home learning, it can be hard for education providers to keep schools up-to-date on digital maturity, whilst also keeping within your budget. Furthermore, with a fast growing number of IT and edtech products becoming available every day, finding the time to narrow down which products are the best for your school, or Trust can be a challenge, especially when considering your budget for the year. Odyssey Education are IT consultants and providers for schools, academies, colleges and Trusts, with over forty years of experience in IT, alongside being Department for Education approved. We work with a variety of vendors to ensure that you will get top quality Audio-Visual, User Devices, data protection, value-add ons, and more, along with education friendly discounts. We have provided some top tech tips below that we recommend you consider implementing or adding to your educational institute!
However, it’s also important before considering IT purchasing, to remember to focus on the needs of your school’s teaching staff and students; what IT would best support them in their lessons and lesson planning, and how exactly can the technology that you choose complement teaching in the classroom?
1. For implementing an engaging lesson, we recommend that you consider a panel for the ultimate student experience; panels are easy to use method to increase collaboration in the classroom. For example, our partner, BenQ‘s interactive display panels are anti-glare, touchscreen and can have key features installed such as the EZWrite Digital Whiteboard App, which provide MS Office Compatibility and hand-writing recognition, which is perfect for increasing student interaction and motivation with their learning!
2. Focus on how the Edtech tools will impact teaching and learning. There are thousands of education technology tools available, and many have similar features and functions. For example, when using Google Meet or Microsoft Teams for peer learning, thinking about the functions that you need from technology to carry out these lessons. Also consider checking out reviews on independent sites, such as LendEd, on the tools you wish to use; other schools may provide information or case studies on tools that they found most helpful for them.
3. Ensure you use technology that will increase contact time between teachers and students. For example, we recommend that you use tools such as NetSupport’s classroom.cloud! This multi-faceted software not only is essential for helping with safeguarding students, but it additionally ensures that teachers can monitor students access to webpages, and that students can simply click a button if they need help or urgent help, so that teachers can respond to queries quickly and individually. Teachers can also send surveys to their classes before and after lessons asking how well they understood their objectives to provide further, individualised support. Technology can and should be used as a way for teachers to get to know their students better!
4. Consider using a single learning platform for all your resources and apps. Keeping them accessible from one location, both in the classroom and at home, is important for keeping tech in your classrooms simple. Software that we recommend for this is ClassLink, a secure single sign on solution that provides access to all your resources with one log in. This software ensures easy, cyber-secure, and efficient access for teachers and students to their work, without the worry of remembering multiple passwords and log-ins, whilst their analytics will provide up to date information on what students are engaging with the most, gaining insight into where best to invest in future learning.
5. Learn from your students! Primary and secondary school students have been exposed to using and learning from technology from a young age. They know how to make the most of using and adapting to technology quickly, especially through home learning, whether it’s through embedding videos and photos into resources, or using a new app. Additionally, research conducted this year found that schools who involve students in their technology usage planning report higher outcomes than those who haven’t, demonstrating the importance of student voices in their learning and education!
6. Make use of tutorials. Online tutorials are available across the internet in visual and audio formats, for example, YouTube, and most will be very detailed and helpful.
7. Take advantage of tools that will help you save time! Our favourite tool is Learning by Questions, which helps teachers save time on marking with automatic, targeted feedback, and on lesson prep with curriculum-based Question Sets. Other tools we think are useful for educators include Flipgrid, as a tool for social learning, Google Classroom, which can be very useful for setting assessments, and Diigo, which helps students easily access and organise research, and share their findings with their peers.
8. Make the absolute most out of Edtech tools! For example, did you know that you can make mini e-books using Google Slides? This tool can also be used as a log to track student performance, make comic strips, drawing art, flipped learning, and additionally integrate with other Google products such as Google Sheets to further enhance your students learning!
Overall, there is a vast range of education technology available! Finding an IT solution suitable and flexible enough for your school’s budget and teaching needs can be a journey. It is beneficial to contact an education technology consultancy (like us!), that will be flexible, providing the option of managed, or general services, to provide you with free advice and up-to-date information on what IT may be available and most well suited for you and your school’s vision.
Source:odysseyeducationoe.wordpress.com
