What educators and employers alike have learned from lockdown is that you can underestimate how productive people can be when working or studying from home. With a comfortable workspace, the right tools, and a clear goal in mind, people are capable of accomplishing just as much without a physical place of work. When things were normal, distractions were inevitable, whether it’s the sound of heavy traffic outside the window, or taking a tense daily commute to work. And I say that at home right now while listening to construction work outside my window. Although a little background noise can help to restore that sense of normality we’ve lost, right?
When it comes to teaching STEM, it is important to make learning as creative as possible for students, in order to boost their engagement and deepen subject knowledge.
The Great Exhibition at Home Challenge is a positive contribution to independent learning at home during this period of unprecedented Covid-19 disruption from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Academy of Engineering and Big Ideas.
I have lived an incredible journey becoming an engineer for Rolls-Royce, street-dancer, and a public speaker. My journey wasn’t always smooth though, and at one point I failed every examination at university because of the problems in my life. That’s when I decided to go totally out of the box and learned to dance.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that there is a massive skills shortage in STEM. Unfortunately, another common issue that you often hear about is the lack of females studying and working in computing and technology. In fact, females working in some areas of technology, such as data science, are sometimes referred to as unicorns because of how rare they can be in that area.
A team of students at North Primary School from Colchester will be taking on the best young roboticists from around the world when they compete at the VEX Worlds in Kentucky, USA at the end of April. Their story starts back in the summer of 2016...
“If we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow” - John Dewey.
I was first introduced to this quote by Lee Parkinson, and I think it illustrates perfectly how we should think of edtech. When it comes to technology in the classroom, we tend to follow the most up-to-date trends; this has been how I have used technology such as Minecraft and online memes (ideal for grammar). Plus, there really is an app for absolutely everything. However, to bring real benefit to edtech usage, I’m now changing my thinking.
I had always believed that, in a fast-paced world, we need to find the latest app of the week and involve it in the class to best stay at the cutting edge. However, more recently I have backed off a little. I came to the realise that learners don’t need our help on discovering apps, or figuring out how to access them. They need help with using these resources creatively and effectively. So, at Old Hall Primary our approach has changed from having the latest app on the iPad, or the newest piece of software on the computers - we have slightly gone back to basics.
Apple apps - Back-to-basics
For me, Keynote, Pages and iMovie are a necessity on any school iPad. Admittedly, I was guilty of not using these enough, but since taking the time to really understand them - as well as going through the free Apple Teacher programme - I have done a u-turn. This could be due to the ease of many other apps, or possibly user interface on third-party apps that we use more regularly, but investing the time can really pay off. I think this could also be the case for Google and Microsoft products too, both of which offer self-taught programmes similar to Apple Teacher. I thought I would share one ‘hack’ / feature for a few resources...
Keynote... and Magic Move!
Keynote can used to create presentations. It’s similar to Powerpoint, but with a cleaner, less complicated look, which does help the user interface. A fantastic feature that I wasn’t aware of is Magic Move, a transition tool you can apply between two slides. If the next slide shares any objects such as images, text or text boxes with the previous slide, those objects will be magically moved from one position to the next, and this can then be saved as a video! Therefore, you could turn a presentation into an informative animation, which would be very helpful to explain relationships and cause & effect, such as:
Pages… and Instant Alpha!
Pages is Apple’s word processing software, best described as a mixture of Word and Publisher which has the simple, intuitive look of most Apple products. The main feature that I got excited about was Instant Alpha, which allows you to delete the background or a selected space of an image. This offers a couple of benefits: it makes the image look more part of the text, rather than the old copy and pasted image with a box around it, and it also allows for a basic ‘Photoshopping’ effect of a couple images becoming one.
iMovie… and CCTV footage!
This is probably the Apple software that people are the most familiar with, iMovie is a very effective video editor where you can add pictures, videos, audio or a combination of all three. The effect I like to do was shown to me by Amy Kingsley, an Apple ADE based in Manchester. Amy uses Apple products in an inspirational way in KS1, creating a CCTV effect video!
In truth, the effect is actually using two features. The colour filter is enabled done by tapping a clip, selecting the Filter button, and selecting a filter (I like to go for a black and white one for this end product). If you only want a portion of a clip to have a colour filter, just split the clip and add the filter to the segment you want. The second part of this is to add a title. This is done by selecting a section of the video, tapping the Title button, and choosing the style of font and its position (for this I prefer lower). The end product is very effective, especially for creating exciting videos such as dinosaurs or aliens invading the school, or even staging a break in to help inspire a newspaper report.
Seesaw… and changing your Classwork Mindset!
Seesaw is an online portfolio system that can be used to collect and comment on work. More importantly, children’s parents, guardians and carers can comment on the work too! To get started, teachers will need to upload pupils’ names separately (or, for speed, they can enter a full class list). Seesaw then does the rest. Honestly, this is enough to give each child a login and account for Seesaw. Not only that, but Seesaw does all the hard work to give the child’s parents a log in, too. Plus, it’s free!
Seesaw provides the perfect way to keep a constant record of a child’s progress. It links brilliantly with other apps, so it is a fantastic way to collect and share work with pupils on their iPads. As Seesaw links well with other apps, information can be uploaded in a variety of ways:
It is worth noting that all of the above features can also be improved further with a brilliant feature with is adding a sound file, or annotation. This can be the child explaining what they have done or the teacher giving feedback to a piece of work. In addition, there is the facility for parents to add feedback too, which is very powerful!
Skype... and Book Creator
I enjoy using Skype, as there is so much power in having an expert stranger - I was lucky enough to get Jillian Morris-Brake. Jillian runs Bimini Shark Lab in the Bahamas, and has years of experience where she has traveled, filmed and photographed extensively across the globe. I was excited for my class to get the opportunity to speak to Jillian, as she could provide not only the content for our persuasive text, but also the purpose, which was going to be to shared on her website sharks4kids.com.
Launching Skype in your classroom is a fairly simple process. All it requires is a new account, some video and audio equipment, and a device to broadcast from. Skype used to only be available through the computer, but you can now use it on many different devices.
Following a Skype interview with Jillian, I asked the children to discuss the notes that they had made; they even swapped notes that they had made from Jillian’s lesson. We followed this with some research in class using iPads, laptops and, of course, books.
The next day I set the class up on Book Creator Chrome, which I had used with small groups, but I had wanted to try in a class situation. Dear me, what a game-changer! Book Creator itself is an app that has been used in schools for a number of years. Recently however, a Chrome site was launched. This has many of the same features, with one major addition: collaboration. Now, I have had some good moments with edtech, but 24 laptops accessing and working on the same book at the same time - wow! In short, we wrote an informative eBook about sharks and the threats to them, and managed to complete it in four hours: two hours were spent writing it, and then two the next day to edit.
In summary, I am not necessarily suggesting that you go out and use these specific edtech resources. This year, choose any piece of edtech that you are unfamiliar with, or haven’t used in a while, then spend some time learning its features. Brainstorm how to use it, share it with a colleague, give it a month or so of using it now and again in class, and see where it goes.
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Andrew Duffey, Head of Design Technology & Engineering and Computing at The Henrietta Barnett School for girls, talks about how VEX Robotics is preparing students for their future careers and the extraordinary demand for students to join the school robotics club.
Andrew has incorporated VEX IQ into the classroom using the free online curriculum, developed to meet national academic standards, to teach Year 8 pupils the key elements of STEM through robotics. He credits the practical and theoretical aspects of VEX as pivotal factors to ensuring students are engaged, as well as thinking creatively and critically throughout lessons.
“Whether it’s building or designing a robot or using the free programming software exploring coding languages where the transition to C++ is seamless, the girls’ knowledge of STEM is increasing every day," said Andrew. "I had a colleague at the school approach me about the benefits it has had on the pupils in his science class. As VEX teaches pupils about gears, linkages and ratios, they’re already familiar with lots of the theories introduced in Physics which their classmates are learning for the first time.”
Andrew’s implementation of VEX goes beyond the classroom. His school's teams engineer robots to take part in VEX competitions, which take place on a regional, national and international scale.
During the most recent VEX UK National Championships, which take place annually at Telford’s International Centre, The Henrietta Barnett School teams in attendance featured prominently during the awards ceremony, where accolades for the teams ranged from the Judges Award, to the Excellence Award, the top overall honour in the VEX competition. Andrew supports VEX events throughout the year and offers his support to local schools beginning their own journey with VEX was unanimously voted ‘Volunteer of the Year’ during the ceremony.
The measure of VEX Robotics’ success at HBS is evidenced by the sheer number of students attending the robotics club lead by Andrew and his colleague Sean Kelly, as well the rising number of students eager to get involved.
“We could easily treble the number of girls attending robotics club. If anything, that’s underestimating how many girls are keen to join, but unfortunately, we just don’t have the space for it. They have students queuing up at the door, sitting on the floor and even watching through the windows in awe of the robots being created by the teams. It’s just so wonderful to see them so excited by robotics!”
Not only is Andrew helping to capture the interest and imagination of girls through robotics, but he is helping to create an environment with phenomenal potential for moving into STEM careers. Since using VEX Robotics as a teaching tool four years ago, several girls from the school have gone on to study engineering courses that combine elements of robotics at university, including one at Oxford.
Visit the VEX website to learn more.
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Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a way to accelerate student progress in Maths, while also ensuring that they have fun along the way? Well, with Maths-Whizz, the multi-award winning online Maths tutor from Whizz Education, both of these seemingly contradictory objectives are entirely possible.
Not only has the Maths-Whizz Tutor been proven to accelerate student attainment in Maths*, but the verdict from students is that it also makes the subject fun. But how does Maths-Whizz achieve this? The process can be broken down into four easy steps.
1. Assessment
As soon as your students log into Maths-Whizz, they will take a pressure-free assessment which pinpoints their individual strengths and weaknesses across the curriculum. The tutor will then automatically set each student engaging tailor-made lessons and fun games, which aim to close the specific gaps in their core knowledge that have been identified in the assessment.
2. Adaption
As your students learn, the Tutor adapts its lessons and games, ensuring that they receive appropriate content at the exact moment it's needed. Factors used to determine the appropriateness of the content provided include: the student's answers to previous questions, the time taken to answer questions, and the level of encouragement provided by the Tutor before an answer is submitted.
3. Support
Just like a human tutor, the Maths-Whizz Tutor supports your students’ learning by providing confidence-boosting prompts and scaffolded support. Additionally, if the Tutor feels a student is struggling, it will take them back to foundational material.
4. Reinforcement
To ensure a student has mastered a topic, they must pass a short interactive test. Once they have passed this test, Maths-Whizz will move them on to more challenging content. If a student does not pass the test, the Tutor will continue to build on their foundations until they are ready to progress.
What’s more, we’re so confident that the Maths-Whizz Tutor will accelerate your students’ learning that we back it up with a Money Back Guarantee. T&Cs apply.
To find out more about how the Maths-Whizz Tutor can help accelerate student attainment at your school, visit www.whizz.com and book a free consultation, or call us on +44 (0)203 328 6564.
*Research by Whizz Education - conducted with over 12,000 students and verified by independent experts - found that students who used Maths-Whizz for 45-60 minutes a week increase their Maths Age, on average, by 18 months in the first year of use.
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For schools, the question of which programming languages and tactics to focus is always difficult. To tackle this issue, VEX Robotics - the global leader in classroom and competition robotics - is kicking off the academic year with the introduction of two major edu-innovations. 2018/19 will be the year of VEX Coding Studio and STEM Labs. As well as getting students up to scratch in coding and computer science, both releases develop 21st-century skills like problem-solving, creativity and computational thinking. You’ll want to know about these resources - especially as they’re… free-of-charge - so let’s get acquainted.
VEX Coding Studio (VCS) is a one-stop software solution for the VEX IQ (Key Stage 2 and 3) and VEX EDR V5 (Key Stages 3, 4 and 5) robots. It seamlessly takes students from block-based to textual programming, walking learners through this notoriously difficult transition in a logical process. The software even opens up routes to advanced object-oriented concepts to stretch keen students.
Teachers can struggle with choosing which type of code to teach, but VCS covers three of the four most popular programming languages currently in use: Python, JavaScript and C++. These account for almost 40% of the programming languages used worldwide, giving students industry-relevant knowledge and giving teachers the flexibility to decide which code to teach which class.
VEX robots bring code to life and allow students to see the direct impact of programming on the real world. Getting hands-on with the EDR V5 and IQ robots actively involves students in the learning process and allows them to take ownership of their STEM learning; they’ll learn how individual maths and engineering elements come together to form solutions to practical problems.
The free VCS software is available on Windows and Mac, with Android, iOS and Chromebook support coming soon.
STEM Labs are a series of scaffolded, hands-on activities aligned with education standards that show real-world applications of concepts using the VEX EDR. Activities include diverse builds, games and competitions, all designed by a team of classroom teachers and cognitive scientists working closely with the world-renowned Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy.
STEM Labs offer hundreds of hours of free curriculum content across the STEM subjects and beyond. They implement concepts into Maths, Design & Technology, Engineering and Computer Science subjects, with minimal preparation time for teachers. Each STEM Lab can be used on multiple platforms and includes easy to follow build instructions. The activities give students multiple approaches to solving a problem, allowing them to communicate and collaborate with their classmates, experiment, and design creative solutions.
With these amazing free resources, VEX Robotics continues to lead the way in classroom robotics. Through the VEX IQ and VEX EDR robotic platforms, as well as the fastest growing robotics competitions in the UK, the VEX IQ Challenge and VEX Robotics Competition, the company aims to inspire the world’s next generation of innovators, thinkers and problem solvers.
Check out https://www.vexrobotics.com/programming for information on VEX Coding Studio, and https://education.vex.com/ for access to STEM Labs.
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