Article Details

Article Details

Strategies to engage learners online – City of Edinburgh TeachMeet

Author: Leila Okasha (Currie High) and Sonja Fedrizzi (Broughton High)

In 2020, we need to remotely re-create the classroom experience and navigate the challenging digital shift in the delivery of lessons. Opportunities for teachers to connect and collaborate from isolation are more important than ever. On 19 May 2020, an enthusiastic group of 34 Edinburgh Modern Languages teachers (French, Spanish and German) met online to exchange ideas and explore digital learning tools. The webinar was hosted by Pam Tosh (Secondary Lead Teacher for the City of Edinburgh) and included presentations by ten very experienced teaching professionals.

The volunteers were allocated a five minute slot to present an idea which they had found useful before participants were able to ask questions or check points for clarification.

The first presentation was on Microsoft Sway and how much more engaging than PowerPoint this can be. It can be used for presentations, newsletters and much more. Pupils are able to collaborate with each other on a Sway presentation. The presenter encouraged us to look at Education Scotland’s French greetings presentation using Sway.

Our second colleague demonstrated how Gimkit can be used online to motivate students and how it can be an excellent tool for learning vocabulary. A free version of Gimkit is available, and a licence can be purchased for a more advanced version.

Our third colleague demonstrated how to use Screencast-o-Matic, which allows teachers to talk pupils through a PowerPoint presentation. She also mentioned an app (app.wizer.me) which pupils can use to record themselves speaking – an invaluable asset for the teaching of languages.

Next two colleagues from the same school showed a typical week’s work being issued for an S1 year group – explaining how it was broken down into ‘lessons’ and how differentiation was incorporated. They talked about a podcast they had made as a listening comprehension for junior pupils.

Similar to screencasting, we were then shown how to record over PowerPoints (audio or video) and create a video clip for pupils.

Our next colleague spoke about encouraging senior pupils to set up times with junior pupils, through staff adding them to the relevant Team (audio only).

An excellent presentation followed on how to use both Google Forms and Loom. The former – similar to Survey Monkey – can create charts from an anonymous questionnaire on any given topic. Loom (Loom.com), used through Chrome, can be added as an extension to the address bar and then used for giving verbal feedback – saving time – or for making presentations more engaging with audio/video.

Kahoot is a tool many will be familiar with in the classroom. With Create.Kahoot.IT, you can assign a Kahoot competition to a class or year group with a deadline and then publish the results. Data available from the quiz can be very valuable to a teacher.

Lastly, a colleague showed us the ‘suddenly-popular-with-young-people’ Bitmoji – an avatar of yourself. She explained how she has used these to create praise postcards to attach to Teams and in a virtual classroom.

At the end of the session, I felt overwhelmed by so many new technologies, but also fired up and excited to try some of these ideas out. I set up a Kahoot competition that very evening for our S1 year group. They have loved it and some of the pupils who have been reluctant to engage so far took part!

Over the course of the next week, I became fully converted, recording myself over PowerPoints to make instructions and new information accessible to pupils. My Curriculum Leader has used Loom to welcome new classes at the change of timetable, and we hope to try Bitmojis in the next week or two!

Overall, it was such a useful professional learning session. There were ideas for everyone; ideas with potential to have a significant impact for our pupils. Forums like this enable the sharing of information and building of expertise, but they also facilitate support between colleagues: ‘The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other’ (Robert John Meehan).

University of Strathclyde Education Scotland British Council Scotland The Scottish Government
SCILT - Scotlands National centre for Languages