I read too much Twitter: -online learning

The headline says it all really - I read too much Twitter! I have alerts and reminders and way too much to read. However occasionally it causes a rant, and today is one of those days, so let me explain.

It started off simple enough a teacher talking about a friend who is also at a teacher, but this time at an independent school who has been tasked with teaching 3 lessons a day online using Microsoft Teams (now I am old so I don't get all the emoji's but it looked she was trying to say 'oh my God why?'). Apparently all the girls were having iPads couriered to their 'country homes' - off on a tangent, I went to an independent school (on a scholarship) but we didn't have a country home, we lived in a semi owned by the Prison Service!

So I was intrigued by this and stated to read the thread and boy did it ever get interesting. There were comments about how long it takes to create videos, how unprepared the State schools were/are how this will widen the gap for the disadvantaged.

Now I could have sat there and tried to reply to each comment and question in the thread, but then I would have ended up either spending the whole day there, getting kicked off Twitter or both. You see Twitter is great for complaining but not very good for resolving things, the character limit works against you. So I thought maybe I should reply in a LinkedIn article and then share a link to it.

Firstly I would like to say by way of disclosure I am a Microsoft Innovative Education Expert and have been using their educational products for the past 25 years so I guess they are my favoured solution, I understand there are Google and Apple solutions as well as a whole raft of things you can throw together if you are techie enough.

Here are some replies you may want to give some thought to and while I am thinking in terms of Teams here I am sure Google Classrooms has similar features.

• You are not David Attenborough, aside from the fact that he has a huge team making his videos, you probably don't have his focus, so your video will never be perfect.
• Your students don't care, they are used to seeing you in class, they have seen you forget things, drop things, walk into things, etc. They may not have seen your curious cat before, but that just shows you are human.
• Your videos don't need to be 45 minutes long, 10-15 minutes max, backed up with some files to work from (you would have those files on hand anyway)
• You can do a video, you probably use TikTok or WhatsApp on your phone, the only difference is no wine glasses or G&Ts
• That technology gap we keep talking about - Teams runs on just about everything from a 5 year old android phone to an full on desktop system, anything with internet web browser access. Yes there will be a difference in performance, but the ability to connect is still there
• There was a comment made about there only being 4 people displayed onscreen during a video chat, I believe this is being addressed by the end of the month when it will change from a 2x2 to a 3x3 image screen. It's worth noting though that the active speaker is always displayed dynamically on screen
• Thinking on a tangent here, even if there was a project set for say creative writing or art it is still possible for someone to write or draw on paper and take pic and upload it using Teams
• Using forms with Teams make it really easy to gauge comprehension or knowledge of a topic, multiple choice tests can even be made self marking to give students instant feedback
• A wonderful feature that helps support nationally diverse communities is inline translation in chat, allowing students and parents to interact in their native languages
• Help is out there - the MEC, Microsoft's Education Centre has a ton of resources from videos and tutorials to full on CPD courses - https://education.microsoft.com/en-us/resource/4c0c02c0https://education.microsoft.com/en-us/resource/4c0c02c0
• If you are more of a people person then I can wholeheartedly recommend Steve Molyneux's gang at the Tablet Academy in particular Phil Burney and Sam O'Leary have a ton of Teams experience and they also have Google specialists on hand as well. They have also just released some free resources to support online learning
• If you still want a person and get a hold of Steve's crew or maybe you are reading this from outside the UK, DM me on Twitter @steamcentreuk or email me [email protected] and I will try and either answer questions or find someone who can.
• One final thing, I did see several comments about student engagement, there is great tool called FlipGrid that allows an educator to pose questions for students and have them respond to it via short video clips. They can then comment on the clips, therby fostering discussion.

So that my rant over, hope it helps some of you, hope you all stay safe and well.