Month: April 2020

Teams: Creating meetings via Outlook

Up until recently I have been scheduling my Teams meetings via the Calendar option in Teams however I came across the ability to do this from Outlook or from Outlooks web equivalent which therefore allows you to use any personal email contact groups which I have created.   This makes it much easier to setup meetings with groups of people where a distribution list doesn’t exist and where adding the users individually to the meetings invitee list would be time consuming.

On Outlook assuming you have teams installed the Teams Meeting option should appear automatically in the ribbon when you are viewing you are viewing you calendar:

If it doesn’t you should be able to add it by customising your ribbon, plus if you want it to appear on your home page, when viewing your email, you can also do this.

In Web Outlook (e.g. via http://www.office.com) it is simply a case of going to your calendar and clicking where you want your meeting to occur.   Once the meeting details window appears click More Options in the bottom right of the window.

Now in the resulting window select the Add Online meeting option to the right of the Location section.   Here you can select Teams Meeting.

You have now created a Teams meeting which, once saved, all those invited will get an email invite for.   The only limitation I can see currently is I cant see a way to add the meeting to a channel if you need to do this.

For me this saves time as you can easily create personal email contact groups for those groups of people you frequently have meetings with then use this when you create the meeting so no longer need to type in the user names of each individual user.

 

Remote Learning TweetMeet

Last nights Microsoft TweetMeet focussed on Remote Learning.   It was certainly a busy session with my tweetdeck updating faster than I could think; it was a blur of activity.   Overall it was an excellent session and probably the best TweetMeet I have been involved in so far.   I therefore thought it might be useful to summarise the key messages I took away from the event:

  • We are all human

I think this is very important; to recognise that we, teachers, our students, their parents/guardians and the wider school community are all human.  This is a difficult time; unlike anything we have experienced before and for many the unfamiliar circumstances we find ourselves in can be very scary.  Add to that concerns relating to the health and wellbeing of loved ones, of family and of friends plus for some the actual loss of people close to them and we find ourselves significantly outside our comfort zones.  We need to recognise and accept this, and to ensure we consider it when interacting with others.   We need to ensure we provide space and time for these concerns to be shared and discussed and we need to support each other.   High expectations are great but may need to be considered carefully in the current context we find ourselves in.   As we seek to use remote learning to continue children’s education we must maintain our focus that the most important thing in times like this isn’t the curriculum, assessment, EdTech, etc, but is in fact our teachers, students, their parents, families, and the wider school community;  What matters most is people.

  • We are better together

Related to the above is the fact that as humans we are social animals.   We are designed to be at our best when working with others and in this time of isolation this is no different.  For me the TweeetMeet was a perfect example of this.  There were lots of people involved in the session each individually doing excellent things in relation to remote Learning but by coming together and sharing, discussing and exploring things together we are all the better.    At this time of isolation we need to ensure we build the opportunities to collaborate and to share experiences.   Where individually we identify things that work or don’t work, we should seek to share this.    It may be that ideas shared by others won’t work in your particular context, but by at least considering such ideas you will have gained some insight;  Think Edison and 1000 lightbulbs.    The more we share the better.   My favourite phrase in relation to this being “the smartest person in the room is the room”.   And thankfully we live in a time where we largely have the technology available to achieve this through blogs, vlogs, podcasts, video conferencing, webinars, etc.  The world is a pretty big room!

  • Technology is here to stay

For all the discussion about whether EdTech makes a difference or not, whether we should embrace technology in schools or ban it, we often miss an important fact.   Technology is here, and it is here to stay.   Social media, on-demand TV, sat nav, video conferencing, artificial intelligence, user tracking and many other technologies all exist now and they aren’t going to disappear, in fact they are likely only to continue to evolve and to take an ever greater place in our lives.   Given this world how can education avoid technology;  I don’t believe it can.    Technology provides us many tools which can allow us to do new and exciting things and we need to seek to use it.  Just think where we would be in this current crisis without technology.  How would learning work without it?    So, if technology can act as an enabler of learning in a sudden crisis like the one we find ourselves in now imagine what we might be able to achieve with a bit of time, planning and people working together.  This is what we need to consider in relation to life beyond Covid19.

  • The Digital divides will be our biggest challenge

I have written about this already and you can read my post here.   Our biggest challenge is likely to be the lack of parity which exists in relation to technology.   It isn’t just about access to devices such as laptops or tablets for use by students at home, or access to the internet at home.  We also need to consider the many other divides.   Parents at home may have differing abilities to support their children in using technology at home plus students themselves will have differing abilities.  Schools will have different amounts of IT support available to help out staff, students and parents with issues and problems.   Additionally, schools will have different amounts of professional learning and training resources again for use by staff, students and parents.    There will be different levels of IT equipment in schools with some schools having 1:1 devices while others might be limited to a single IT lab or less.   Experience with the pedagogical aspects of using technology to support learning will also differ across schools or even within schools across departments.  Confidence levels and motivation to experiment, plus the school culture with regards technology is another factor which is inconsistent.    If we are to achieve equal opportunities for all students in relation to the opportunities to use technology in learning, these and many other divides will need to be considered.

  • Safeguarding

The final point that stuck out for me from the TweetMeet related to safeguarding and the need to keep students and staff safe during this period of remote learning.    This is an issue which in my view is very complex and is for individual schools to reach a decision in relation to their own context.   That said I have a particular view on this and in particular on the use of video to allow students and teachers to interact.  I am aware some schools have disabled the ability for video calls to be used citing safeguarding concerns, with the view that by turning off video within the schools technology solution they are protecting their students.   If we accept that we are human and we are social animals, then students will seek personal contact independent of our actions, so by disabling video we force students to use other non-school platforms to achieve the personal contact they seek.   I believe this represents a risk.    I also think we need to consider the fact that learning is a social experience so the more social we make remote learning the more successful the learning will be.   Removing the use of video complete with the various visual cues it presents reduces the impact of learning.  I will acknowledge that there is a clear safeguarding risk where video is enabled, however life is never without risk.   For me, it is about engaging parents, students and staff about managing the risk as much as is reasonably possible while still enabling the best learning opportunities possible.

When I started writing this piece my plan was a short summary of the TweetMeet session;  Failed on that one as this isn’t exactly short.   I also must admit this post also only covers the highlights of the session as I saw it and most likely missed loads of other excellent points or discussion threads.   That said, and in acknowledging point 2, I thought I would share.  I hope the above is helpful and look forward to reading any thoughts or comments people may have.

 

Digital Citizenship and Covid19

Before the Covd-19 crisis begun I presented on Digital Citizenship at the JISC DigiFest event and previous to that at the ISC Digital event in Brighton.   In both cases one of my reasons for presenting was my concern regarding students increasing use of technology not being match by an appropriate considerations or awareness of the risks.   I was worried that students were giving away large amounts of data without considering who they were providing to, how it might be used, how long it would be kept or how it might impact or be used to influence them as individuals, and as groups, in their future.   I was worried and believed education and its educators needed to start to do something about this.

Since then the Covid-19 crisis has deepened with the lockdown rules introduced.   I have seen large numbers of schools and other organisations rushing to find solutions to the challenges this crisis has created.   New applications have been put into use, devices issued and configurations quickly changed to enable remote working and remote learning.    Applications such as Zoom and Houseparty have quickly achieved viral status as people adopt solutions to keep in touch and maintain some form of social interaction and community spirit in a time of isolation.   Decisions as to what to use have been based on which apps are easy to use and which are being used commonly by others.     In all of this fast paced change, home working and learning and technology enabled socialisation the phrase that jumps to mind is “act in haste, repent at leisure”.

Teachers, parents, children, the elderly, in fact almost everyone is now using more technology that they previously did, either in new devices, new apps, the duration spent using technology, etc.   With this use we have greater exposure to online risks such as cyber crime and to risks associated with the data trail we leave behind us.

There is also the discussion of tracking apps to help identify where people have come into close contact with someone with the Corona virus of Corona virus systems, or the use of thermal cameras and facial recognition for a similar purpose.   Although in the short term this appears to be in the interests of public good, this data might be used in the future for other purposes related to the tracking and profiling of individuals, or even to help with targeted campaigns aimed at influencing the behaviour of individuals or groups.

To be clear, the current situation is far from normal and far from ideal.   No-one chose for this to happen.   As a result, the decisions which are being made, and which need to be made, are borne out of necessity rather than being purposeful, fully planned and implemented with the implications carefully considered.    There is also the issue that, at the best of times, we cant predict the future yet now are presented with an even more unpredictable future but the need to make decisions now that will influence this future.

If I was worried about Digital Citizenship before the Covid-19 crisis, I am even more worried now.

5 tips for remote learning

As we head towards the end of the Easter break and into the new term and for a lot of schools, a period of remote learning, I thought I would share my thoughts and tips on remote learning.

The first point I would make is that there is no one solution to remote learning.  It depends on your context including the age of your students, previous experience using technology and online learning platforms, individual subject requirements, teachers confidence with platforms and their own personal experience of those that are available and the equipment available to teachers and students, to name just a few factors.

  1. Seek feedback from students: Be clear and open with students, for most the use of technology in this way is new, and for all the current pandemic is new.   As a result, things may not be perfect and issues/challenges will be experienced however if we accept this we can then all work together to review, revise and improve, and to get to the best possible use of technology.  It is therefore important to seek feedback from students often in order to then revise how remote learning is delivered.
  2. Use video conferencing to regularly check in with students learning: A key part of teaching and learning is the interactions between teachers and students. Video conferencing is a key method to achieve this however we should not simply seek to substitute classroom teaching with video conferencing sessions of the same length as traditional classroom-based lessons.  We should however ensure that at the minimum there are regular check in opportunities for teacher and students to interact, discuss and share by video conferencing however this could be at the start of each lesson, once daily, at the start of a short unit of work, etc.   We need to experiment to identify which works best for the teacher and each class taught.
  3. Set clear expectations for video conferencing: Video conferencing presents challenges in relation to background noise, interruptions, talking over each other, etc.   This can clearly be seen simply by watching the use of video conferencing technology within BBC news broadcasts.   For teachers this is no different from working in a classroom, albeit the challenges when interacting virtually via video conferencing are different to those which occur in the traditional classroom where working with students face to face.   Like in the classroom it is therefore important to establish clear expectations as to how students should behaviour while on a conference call as part of the class.   It is also important to review these expectations via feedback from students, especially in the early use of video conferencing to support remote learning, to ensure all, students and teachers, share ownership of these expectations and that they meet the needs of the teacher and learners alike.
  4. Set personal boundaries for responding to students: Remote learning, the use of video conferencing, email and other online platforms can lead to teachers feeling they are always working, and even more so in international schools where students may live and therefore interact with the teacher from different time zones. This is not good for teacher wellbeing.   Boundaries need to be set as to during what times a teacher will interact, how quickly responses can be expected, etc.   I find a useful technique to address this is to have a dedicated workspace meaning the rest of the house means I am not working.   It is also important to consider what devices emails and other platforms are installed on plus how notifications are presented on devices.   On my phone, for example, I have do not disturb enabled for the evenings to stop me from instinctively responding to emails simply by suppressing the notifications outside normal working hours.
  5. Find your balance in lesson delivery: Learning can be delivered in a variety of ways both in real life and via remote learning. In remote Learning you may choose to create video content in advance similar to flipped learning, or you may do live video sessions.  You may provide students presentations to work through, or links to videos online or even worksheets or workbooks for more self-study style learning.  You may ask students to work collaboratively in groups using video conferences or you may ask them to complete questions where you can provide remote live feedback, such as via OneNote.  I do not believe any single of the above approaches to be correct as each has strengths and drawbacks with some requiring significant prep time.  You need to experiment and seek a blend of these and also other approaches I have not listed.    A point that I have seen multiple teachers state is that this is a “marathon not a sprint” so we need to be careful to not burn ourselves out by creating lots of content and exciting learning experiences in the short term, only to find this quickly used up in lessons.

The five points above are the key suggestions I would make in relation to remote learning.   You will notice they are inter-related in a number of ways.  They are purposely not over specific, as given the different contexts of teachers across a single school never mind across the globe, I don’t believe it is possible to be specific and precise without either ruling out some learning opportunities that would work or proposing approaches which in some contexts may detract or damage learning.

To all engaging in remote learning, good luck, and please do share your thoughts, successes and what hasnt worked as together we can get through this, and together we can learn a lot from this experience which may help us start to reshape the educational experiences of the students yet to grace our classrooms.

Automation in Office 365

I spent the other day playing around with PowerAutomate, formerly called Flow, to create a simple Automation to manage staff leave requests.   It was a simple project to automate the approvals and sending of confirmation emails for info and for record.    Following completion of the project I thought I would share a guide for the steps I took.

First create a form.  I am not going to provide a guide for this as it is reasonably straight forward and there are other guides online for this.

Now www.office.com and select All Apps

Now select the Power Automate option

In Power Automate in the search box you can search for a template.   Automate comes with a wide variety of different templates for you to use plus, where there isn’t a template appropriate to your needs,  you can take any existing template and simply modify it.

For this example I want to start with a MS Form which a user will submit which then requires an approval before resulting in an email to the approver and user submitting the form.    For this I searched for Form Approval.    The “Start an approval process and send an email on Microsoft Form submission” template appeared to be closest to what I was looking for.

On the resulting screen which looks like below, scroll to the bottom and click the Continue button

You will now be presented with the Power Automate editor where you can customise your Automation including any emails involved.

Now lets start with some of the customisation:

  1. Give your Automation a name so that it will be easy for you to identify it.
  2. Select the Form which you wish to use with this automation. This sets the From which will trigger this automation.
  3. Again, select the Form which you wish to use this time to get the info from the Form to use in your automation.
  4. Select how the automation will work where multiple approvers are selected. The automation can require all to approve, one person to respond or allows for other custom settings.   In this case I will use First to respond as anyone in the approval list should be able to approve a request.
  5. Give your approval a title. This will be the text which appears in the approval email received by those you set as the approvers for this automation.
  6. Add here the list of users who will approve a submitted request. Simply enter their email addresses here separated by a semicolon where multiple approvers are to be listed.

The next stage is to customise the approval email which will be received.   We do this in the Details section.

In the Dynamic content window a list of variables and other functions will be available.  This will automatically include the fields you setup in the form you created for use with this automation.   Click in the details section then click on a variable such as Date (From) above to add it.

I note that there is very little formatting available in the approval emails.  I also recommend leaving an extra line space between elements as I found the formatting to a little on the picky side.   As such a details section like the below:

Would results in an email which would look like below:

The last part of the setup process is to configure the emails which will be received for an Approved or a Declined request.    Below I will cover setting up the email for an Approved or Yes condition however the process is identical for configuring the email corresponding to a Declined or No condition.

The first thing I would do is turn on HTML support within you email.  This provides you with significantly more control over the formatting and look of your emails.

To do this first access the advanced options via the Show Advanced options link.

Now change the Is HTML option to Yes.  Having done this you now have the ability to use HTML in your emails.

We can now go about configuring this email.

To configure the emails follow the below steps:

1. Enter the email addresses of those who receive the approval/decline email. This can be multiple email addresses using a semi colon to separate them.   You can also use the Add Dynamic content to gain access to variables such as the Approvers email variable and the Responders email variable.   This means the automation could be made to send the confirmation email automatically to the person who submitted the form, the Responder, and to the person who approved the automation email, the Approve

2. Next give the email a subject line.

3. Finally create the body of the email. Again you can use dynamic content to add variables such as the various pieces of data which a user has filled in on the form along with some other variables such as the approvers email, etc.   As we have selected HTML formatting you can also use HTML tags such as <br> to force a line break, <p> for a new paragraph, etc.  This gives us a lot more control over the email design including fonts, colour, sizes and even including images.     Looking at a very simple email it might look like the below:

And this would result in an email like below:

Having configured the Approved email make sure to go and repeat this for the rejected/declined email.

With everything now setup the final step is to make sure and save your automation using the Save button in the top right.  You can then Test your automation to make sure it works.  Simply click Test.

In a separate browser window visit the form which you linked to this automation and either preview it and complete or visit the sharing link and complete it.   Having clicked Submit on the form the automation should run and your approvers should now receive their approval emails ready to approve.   Having approved the relevant confirmation emails should be received.

Congratulations you have completed you first Automation.    This first automation highlights a limited amount of the power of PowerAutomate.  Go ahead and start exploring!

Digital Divides

The digital divide has long concerned educators in considering those students who have access to the internet and devices at home, plus support from parents in relation to device use, and those who do not.   Covid-19 has had me thinking about this, what this now means for schools and students and how we might leap the divide which exists.

Divides

The digital divide as a concept seems quite simple and tangible; either they have access, or they don’t.   This disguises the complexity of the issue and in my mind the existence of divides, plural, rather than a singular divide.

Firstly internet access; Some households will have super-fast broadband while others may have nothing whatsoever with a multitude of options in between.   The issue being this isn’t necessarily an issue of parents choosing not to have access but could relate to the location of their home and the available options in relation to internet connectivity.

Devices; Some families may have a computer/tablet at home while others may not.  Where a computer does exist, it may be a shared device or even a device used by parents to enable working from home.   Where a shared device this represents a challenge for a child to gain access especially where other children or even adults need the device while a child is seeking to undertake time bounded work.  This device also may or may not have some of the software used within school.   It may not have an up to date operating system and may therefore represent a cyber risk to users using it.

Mobile Phones: I mention mobile phones separately to devices above given how common mobile phone ownership is among students these days but even this assumption hides a layer of complexity.   Some students may not have phones, albeit a small number these days, however those that do have phones may have limited data packages meaning use for schoolwork could quickly become costly to families where Wi-Fi at home is not available.    The size of screens may make phones less ideal for work set or, like devices, phones may not have the needed software.  I note that many schools are deploying homework or school management apps currently and therefore I believe most schools are already taking a stance that parents will have a mobile phone;  In the most cases this is true but I do wonder about what is in place for those where it isn’t true.

Support: In schools the availability of IT support is critical.  If staff, as users, have difficulties, they may quickly disengage and re-engaging them with technology is often much more difficult once this has happened.    In schools this is easy enough, although as I will explain later even this is an oversimplification, but at home this is dependent on parents.   Parents need to support the specific usage of a tech tool as set by the teacher as well as providing the required technical support.   Some parents are likely to be very tech savvy and quickly able and willing to support their children in engaging with technology and learning through digital tools.   Equally though there will be many parents who themselves will feel out of their depth and unable to support their children in using what technology they have access to at home.

Schools: And even in our schools there are divides.   There are divides in terms of the equipment available with schools, with some school issuing devices to all teaching staff whereas in others there is little available beyond a classroom computer fixed in each classroom.   The available internet bandwidth may differ between schools as may the availability of IT support and training.   Also, the overall school attitude to IT and to IT strategy may differ with some schools engaged in experimenting and innovating and other schools scared to explore, scared of risks around GDPR, etc, or where EdTech may even have been given only passing consideration.

Moving Forward

The above divides can easily be seen as providing an impossible and wicked problem; How do we address all these different issues?    In my view when presented with a problem like this our best option is to seek to make progress and avoid overthinking or spending too much time in planning.   It is simply a case of act, review, adjust, act again, and a continuing process of iteration.   But where to focus?

I would propose three key areas first:

Infrastructure: One of the biggest limiting factors continues to be access to fast reliable internet across the country.  Here I am referring to the UK however this issue can be applied to any country.  Generally, this is a governmental issue and needs addressing at a national level however it is one which schools can have some impact either through access to the schools infrastructure outside normal hours or possibly through mobile service provider solutions as two possible approaches.

Devices: Next is access to devices for students to use at home.  How these devices are provided isn’t important, whether this be devices the students/parents own, or devices provided by schools or other organisations, the key thing is that students have access to a device.   Ideally this should follow internet access however at a push it doesn’t have to; If students have devices they can at least use software locally installed, or free Wi-Fi hotspots should they not have access to reliable Wi-Fi at home. Yes, this will require funding and I am under no illusions as to the extent of funding required, however in the meantime we can at least attempt to achieve what is reasonably possible through partnerships between schools and also with charitable and commercial organisations.

Training: My next focus area is training for parents not in the technical issues of IT but in how they, as a parent, can support their child in using technology in their learning at home.   I remember my old man helping me with Maths homework but at that time it was all pencil and paper, so he didn’t need anything more than a bit of maths knowledge and an interest in supporting me.   Now we still require the above but in addition parents need a little IT know how to access online platforms and understand how information might be stored/organised and what might be expected of students using these platforms.   Schools need to seek to support parents in this area.   Now there already are lots of examples of this in resources being created in schools and shared online.   Each school needs to consider what it offers and look to build on this.

Conclusion

Providing printed copies of worksheets to all because some may not have reliable Wi-if is no longer the answer.  Sending worksheets to student via email or via an app may be progress, but is it enough and should we be doing more?   We first must seek to find out what our students and their families have in terms of technology.  Armed with this information we can then look to how schools can support students learning using technology at home.   This will take some creativity to get correct and for some schools with limited resources I suspect this may still be printing out booklets, but for many there are at least steps which can be taken now or in the near future.  The digital divide (or divides) is an impossible problem for which a solution may not exist but at least we can seek to continually improve and give students the best technology enabled learning experiences possible, preparing them for the technological world we now live in.  And if you needed evidence of this technological world we need to prepare students for just take one look at the world today with the massive growth of work from home during this period of isolation and the use of video conferencing tools to stay in touch and even to socialise.  I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Two weeks of remote working

Its now been 2 weeks of working from home so I thought I would share how I am getting on.

For some time I have discussed with my IT team about making us of opportunity to work from home more often however few have taken me up on this, and personally I haven’t taken up my own offer very often either.    I found myself wondering why would team members come in to work, travel to and from work, when they could actually sit in the comfort of their own homes and work from there?

The last two weeks have given me some answers to the above question with two factors in particularly sticking out.

  1. Work has an ebb and flow about it, be that the specific meetings, the movement of students between lessons or the school bells. There are also the longer term ebbs and flows and sports events on Wednesdays, weekly assembly and head of department meetings on Mondays.   There is an inherent structure in these ebbs and flows.   Now I am working at home I am finding it difficult to keep track of where I am within each day and also to keep track of where I am in the week.   The last two weeks have disappeared plus I have often found myself wondering, “what day is it?”.    I suppose the answer to this challenge is to build a new structure at home, however I don’t think this is as easy as it sounds given the previous structure for me personally was built up over 20 years working in schools and colleges.
  2. Humans are social animals. We want to be around other people and to interact whether this is formally in meetings or informally discussing the football results in the morning or as you pass someone’s desk.   Now video conferencing helps in allowing us to communicate but it simply isn’t the same as real life face to face contact.  It also needs to be scheduled whereas our normal day to day interactions include many incidental conversations as you walk to the staff room or to a meeting.    These meetings and discussions were never planned but their existence added to the rich colour and uniqueness of each working day.   Working from home doesn’t quite have this same social dynamism.   I am not sure how we might address this issue, and I think randomly video calling staff across school might be a little strange or even creepy.

Now it may be that as more time passes and I become more used to working from home that I miss the issues above less and less.   Or maybe I will find solutions to allow me to address these challenges while still working remotely.

Would be interested in how everyone else is finding this work from home experience?

 

EdTech beyond Covid-19

I believe things will never quite be the same again following Covid-19.    These unprecedented events have the potential to act as the catalyst for a number of EdTech changes in particular.   For example, I have read a few comments over the last week where EdTech initiatives which have been slow to progress, often being discussed in schools over a number of years with little movement, have suddenly been quickly progressed due to Covid-19 and the immediate need for online remote learning.   Due to this I thought I would share some thoughts as to what might change beyond the current crisis:

Flipped / Blended Learning

Over the last week or so since schools closed teachers who previously hadn’t had much experience of creating video learning content have suddenly found themselves creating content.   Some of this video has been live through Zoom, Hangouts or Teams, or has been posted for on demand access through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, FlipGrid and even TikTok or through school Virtual Learning Environments.    Although discussions of flipped or blended learning have been ongoing for some time, Covid-19 has led to a peak in interest plus to a rapid upskilling of teachers driven by a specific and immediate need.    With this greater interest and skill level I would predict that we will see greater use of video, and in particular pre-prepared video which can be used or accessed on demand within schools and learning, similar to the lecture capture concept which has become more common in Higher Education.

Digital Skills

The current situation has required the rapid upskilling of teachers to facilitate online remote learning.   Lots of resources have been quickly pulled together and curated by various groups of individuals and organisations.    The importance of a teachers digital skillset has become never more apparent and with this it is likely to see increasing levels of importance beyond the current crisis.  Schools will need to asses what their strengths and areas for development are in relation to the use of EdTech by staff, and how they might address the identified needs.    I should also mention that infrastructure and IT support are also likely to need to be considered as these are cornerstones of successful EdTech usage.

Remote / Distance Learning

The benefits in the use of video to engage remote learners, allow for remote teachers and also provide on-demand learning materials has become clear to a significantly greater number of educators during this period of lockdown.    It may even be that parents and our students are now more aware of what is possible, and therefore are likely to have greater expectations as to what schools should provide once we progress beyond the current crisis..    As such I believe the student absent from school may no longer be excluded from the days learning in the way they have been in the past, and we may see students accessing learning remotely becoming more common.

Personalisation rather than differentiation

Remote learning has shown us how students can actually access learning in their own time, space and also personal way.    In addition, some of the tools such as Microsoft’s Accessibility tools, for example, also allow for the language to be changed or the font size or background colour, all customizable to meet the end users, the students, needs.   This customization at the point of consumption, as opposed to differentiation at the point of delivery, is likely to significantly increase.   As such teachers are likely to need to think about how the learning they design, deliver and facilitate will offer sufficient flexibility to allow for students to personalise.

Work from home

When we talk about schools we immediate think of the physical buildings, same as when we talk about work, there is a physicality about it.   I saw a great tweet referring to school being the students as opposed to the physical building.   What covid-19 has taught us is that this physicality is in our heads, an illusion, and that in reality our school or place of work isn’t as reliant on the physical space as we thought.    Our school or work can, to a greater or lesser extent, exist virtually and online.    This is likely to be a significant challenge as we are, as humans, creatures of habit and therefore not travelling to a physical place of work, or to a physical school, may be a difficult change for us to adjust to however I think we will see increasing consideration around flexibility.    Workers may be allowed work from home days and some schools may adopt timetables or schedules including virtual school time or virtual school days.  We may also see a growth around online only schools.

Online socialising

For me our students online social media habits have to date been seen in a very negative light, being thought of as being anti-social or changing in their behaviour or attention spans.   The last week has however shown how the online world can provide opportunities for socialising as much as the real world can, albeit in different ways.    We have seen virtual pubs, lots of online Karaoke, community groups and much more form quickly online to overcome the challenges of social distancing and the potential harm of individual isolation.   Thinking about children, and how parents may be overprotective and concerned of the dangers in the real world, therefore leading our students to be more isolated than they would have been in the past;  For me I remember parental comments about returning home “before the street lights come on”.   This kind of freedom to socialise in real life isn’t afforded in anyway to the same extent for the current generation of children.  Is it therefore any wonder they would look to use the online world?    I think going forward there will be a greater acceptance of the benefits of the hyper connectedness which our students already experience through the many apps they use.

The Bigger Players

We have seen over the last week a number of school services overwhelmed by increasing demand and traffic as schools and workplaces across the globe shifted to remote learning and remote working.   Even the big players like Microsoft and Google have had some issues in this period of unprecedented demand.     In looking at these issues, although the bigger services were negatively impacted by demand they also tend to have greater capacity to upscale and recover quickly, greater resiliency, where need arises hence I think we will see a number of small EdTech companies disappear as they loose out on business to the big players.   This shift will have both positive and negative implications.  We may lose some interested and useful solutions to a difficult financial climate while homogenising on common functionality which will be seen across all schools.

Data Protection/Cyber

Although most of the above is positive I do have some concerns.  I am worried that as people rushed to find solutions to overcome isolation, maintain social connection, etc, that they didn’t show due care for the protection of their personal data and for the resultant cyber risk.   Great communities may have formed overnight using free services but what data did we give away regarding these groups and the individuals within them.    It worries me that when things do settle down, we may realise that some decisions made have negative consequences.   I suspect the pendulum which swings between individual privacy and public good, and which previously tended towards individual privacy may have shifted somewhat and may now tend more towards the public good.   In some ways this may be a good thing, but what may be a good thing in a crisis may not be a good thing when everything returns to normality or near normality.

Conclusion

It may be possible that I am wrong about the above and that the world simply acts like an elastic band and springs back towards the normal which existed prior to Covid-19.  It may equally be that Covid-19 acts as a catalyst for wide ranging change and a new normal, distinctly different from what existed before, is established.   The likelihood is that the world will find a position somewhere between these two possibilities, with some schools embracing change and others not.    It is also worth noting that the world education sector is likely to see some significant change especially around fee paying schools operating internationally.  I know from my own experience working in the Middle East that some of these schools rely fully on fee income and that this period where parents may be unable to afford fees due to job losses will result in significant uncertainty and some difficult decisions.   For ex-Pat teachers this will be a period of great concern.   My thoughts go out to these schools and their staff, and in particular to the schools and staff I personally worked with.  My thoughts are also with those who have lost loved ones, and to those who will likely lose loved ones on the weeks and months to come.

The above represent my thoughts on what might change following this crisis.   Only time will now tell how close or far I am from the truth.