From EdTech to PedTech: The Pedagogical Power of an Immersive Experience

hello everyone and Welcome to our webinar today we are delighted to see so many of you that have signed up uh for this webinar we've got people who are coming from London from Finland from Canada New Zealand so welcome to you all please do say hello in the chat where you are we love to see where you are joining us from apologies for my voice I am a little bit croaky today but fortunately it's not a lot of me speaking today because I'm going to be joined by two people who are going to show us all about the pedagogical impact of immersive experiences but before I do I'd like to introduce Ivan who is our head of our Support Services hi Ivan how are you hi Lois like we talked about a minute ago it's snowing in h so everyone in the chat I hope your spring is going but than mind but it's long day other than that oh so you're keeping wrapped up warm there um we've got people from yeah saying it's actually sunny in St Andrews it's actually sunny in Scotland where I am as well so for those of you who don't know Ivan you probably have come across him before in emails or the support services but Ivan heads up our support team and I's going to be in the chat today answering any questions you have about thing link whether it's thing link accounts or any functionality so if you see someone replying thing Link in the chat it's actually Ivan yes and as Amanda has said Ivan is indeed a superhero I can actually pouch for that so Ivan I'll say goodbye for now and thank you for all your assistance thank you um so this webinar today as hotly anticipated um we are delighted that a report that was produced um by Fiona and the team about the Leo Academy trust and their approaches to digital learning and teaching it was released uh earlier this year it actually highlighted thinglink in their report as one of their much loved tools and when we saw this and knowing Fiona and Cheryl already we just wanted to put this web AR together so that you all had the opportunity to hear firsthand some of the thinking that went into this groundbreaking book and also from Cheryl who's been walking the talk there in Leo Academy trust so please do join me in welcoming Fiona and Cheryl hello how are you both hello the warm welcome so it's not snowing I don't think in near London and it's not snowing where you are Cheryl either no snow here oh but I'm delighted to see you both we've got people joining us from Boston Brazil Memphis the Alps it's snowing there but Fiona before we dive into uh all of your work that's gone into the book and Cheryl with the report I'd love to hear a bit more about yourself because you were actually nominated one of the top 50 influence Educators recently which is a bit of a hoot because I can't influence my own children to put their shoes on when it's time to go out really no it's a wonderful thing and you know I was lucky enough to know you before the book came out and I've admired your approach and there are very few people that truly truly get it when it comes to a tech and and you both certainly do but Fiona tell us a bit more about yourself and your background and how you came to be involved and start the PED Tech movement sure so originally I'm a school teacher in school leaded by trades um primary school and my happy place is still on the floor of a keystage one classroom uh working alongside children um but then having been a school leader and worked in various National advisory roles I now what might call a portfolio worker so an independent education research consultant so I do a lot of work directly in and with schools also with um edtech organizations professional learning Partners Publishers and also with my academic haton I'm a post-graduate lecturer and research supervisor so really really interesting mix of things and constantly learning and that's the most important thing for us all isn't it and that's why these kinds of conversations you know working with colleagues like you Louise and with Cheryl I learn so much and it's an absolute privilege to be part of this group today oh thank you Fiona um and Cheryl I have to say that we had John neon from quizzes a few weeks ago he did a webinar and when I said that we were doing this webinar he said that you were the unsung hero of digital learning and teaching I think yeah absolutely but we want to sing your Praises here and shine a light on all of the work that you've been doing at Leo Academy so a huge welcome to you tell us a bit more about yourself thank you yeah thanks for the introduction there that's amazing um yeah so hello everybody um I'm Cheryl um I'm the director of digital learning at the Leo Academy trust um I've been a primary school teacher for the last 13 years um and I've been at Leo for the last six or seven years now I forget how long it's been it's been a long time um and we um we started running a a onetoone Chromebook program back in 2019 whilst I was still in the classroom and you know I was very much part of that early stage of utilizing technology in the classroom and obviously with covid that kind of really escalated our our use of Technology across the trust um and then and then yeah I've come to kind of grow into this this role that is fairly new in the UK um where I sort of um look at the Strategic um aims of of the trust and utilize that across teaching and learning so it's a bit of a strange role and every day is different and I think I've learned so much from the work that we've done with Fiona on how we think differently about digital um and yeah and it's it's it's still you know we're still at very early stages but really excited about the future um of our children that's phenomenal and we're going to be over the course of this webinar um I'm going to take a back seat and hand their owns over to you and we can hear all about the book and it's going to be really interactive as well because you're going to ask people to reflect on their own pedagogical stances as well so you know if everyone starting to watch this keep watching because you're going to be asked to uh to have a look at your own practice and I think that that's something that we could all do and learn and reflect and certainly in the book you you do ask people to do this and that must be uh really interesting from the comments you get afterwards I'm sure that it shines a light on for people who who really maybe haven't thought about all of the influences on the way that technology is used in their schools their districts um across their classrooms so before we get stuck in because I'm dying to get get stuck in we always like to just uh remind people because I'm conscious that there are people who are joining us today who maybe haven't used thing link before you maybe don't know about thing link so just very quickly um and feel free to to join in any comments Fiona and Cheryl so we came up with our kind of strap line if you like which is a massive learning Made Easy and what's quite f fascinating is that then link is 13 years old now and AA Maria COA who is the CEO and founder of thing link had this Vision 13 years ago that you could make anything an interface for Learning and she believed that through that interaction that we could have these kind of physical environments and digital environments that actually kind of give us this opportunity to interact and it's that kind of multi modal experience where you can build layers of interactivity that makes thing link so unique but when we talk about immersive learning quite of and it's quite a buzzword at the moment and I think that's because people are able to use AI to create these kinds of 360 environments they're able to use headsets with 360 environments so immersive learning and the power of immersive learning is is being discussed a lot at moment but we just wanted to kind of call this out and say it's not just about headsets so there are lots of reasons why headsets aren't appropriate for some schools they might be cost prohibitive they might not be right for some Learners they might not just be you know able to be accessed for whatever reason but for us immersive learning it's not just about headsets it's about creating those immersive experiences and it's about sharing of them as well and that might be generated with AI it might be using immersive experiences with images that you take yourself but we wanted to make it easy for both teachers and Learners to consume those kinds of experiences but create those kinds of multimodal experiences so that's a little bit about thing link and in order to do that we have a whole Suite of tools now which um are AA ailable for schools and for colleges and we're also used across employee development as well um but today I thought just for a little bit of fun today is world's hiu day did you know that today is world hio day and do you know what hio is everybody there's already a few comments that are coming in as well people are loving multimodal and and loving yes yes audio listening is immersive as well but hiu are just a really nice way we thought it'd be a bit fun if uh we could have a go at creating a haiku and Fiona and I were talking about this earlier on and I believe that you did come up with our hiu yourselves as well yes although I'm going to confess um I I uh borrowed the help and the expertise of my 12-year-old and a bit of expertise coming from Gemini as well shall I read shall I read you our ped Tech themed I'll put it on the screen for everybody and I that some coming through already on the chat which is just lovely go for it impactful learning digital tools ignite Minds pedagogy shines I love that that's just brilliant and Amanda has just put one here as well thing link cross world immersive learning made real touch explore and engage that's just brilliant and there's another one that's here too Tech and teaching blend Illuminating young minds future Pathways glow Amanda's on a roll here he is I was trying to think of one that I could do and at that moment my dog had jumped on me and she's particularly hairy so I put one uh together which I'll put in the chat which I thought was quite funny so I have a particularly hairy dog um and uh this is my one so fur Cascades like Falls in your eyes the world's Delight heart's warmth but boundless fluff anyway that's all I've got to anyway I think that's enough of me and enough fun with Haiku so if you've got a haiku do put it in the chat as it is just a little bit of fun to help us but I couldn't think of a a better introduction to your session than that Hau so gemini or not George is a genius okay I'm G to take my slides off now and I'm gonna hand over to you Fiona and you're going to take us through from edtech to ped and uh Cheryl you're going to be joining in with all of your walking the walk examples so I just remove myself over to you guys that's amazing thank you so much Louise you just make all of these things so much fun a huge thank you to you and what we're going to do is have a little look at this concept of from edtech to ped Tech and share with you some of the ideas and the thinking behind it and then what does it actually look like in action and what's the impact around it all so Cheryl and I going to do a bit of a a double act here and lots of the things will'll be referring to in the first part of this are from the book that um Louise mentioned um and so I'm going to signpost you to the relevant parts and later on we're going to refer to an impact report um so we'll signpost you to relevant parts of that as well so lots of ways of finding out more detail about this but first why is it we need to change the way we think around digital technology and I just want to touch very briefly on a little bit of the research in this space and there is billions and billions of words been spoken and written about Ed teex so this really is a quick visit and I just want to th draw out three key bits really first of all this thing that you see in the UNESCO quote that this sense of having a right to an education is also kind of now synonymously seen with the right to forms of meaningful connectivity and often that's spoken about Beyond school or in our wider worlds and social lives and accessing ideas questions answers on demand all of those sorts of things but this kind of ond demand learning mindset is kind of prevalent now um Society wise we're also seeing more and more and more teachers using different kinds of edtech as part of daily practice now whether that's part of the role of the teacher teaching planning preparation assessment marking resourcing or whether that's in the classroom in the moment of teaching or by the Learners themselves it's all in this mix that we're experiencing and that's reflected in the kind of global edtech spend you can see some figures on screen about what that looked like just over the last year and I know colleagues that worked with from all around the world have joined us today and and I know this resonates with a lot of the sorts of things you're seeing in various different countries and locations but more time more thinking more expectations more investing what is the impact of all this and a little later on we're going to um hand over to Cheryl who'll take us through some of these things in more detail but we're seeing really impactful uses of technology in all all kinds of places and it's really interesting to look at where that is the graph you see on the screen here is one extracted from the PED Tech impact report we'll talk more about later on and I just want you to have a look at this thing that in this scenario in the Leo Academy trust after the introduction of onetoone devices you can see by the orange bars that upward trend of attainment across Reading Writing Mass cor subjects in comparison to a broader landscape with a fairly stable or slightly downward decline in other words bucking the trend and that's really significant to think about in terms of future planning and in terms of effective use of digital technology these are the kinds of headlines we're seeing at Leo Academy trust and are being seen in um schools more broadly as well things like that attainment Gap growing by those who are using edtech effectively and additional progress additional rates of progression happening redu uction in the in the level of um extra interventions needed in the classroom because technology gives us the mechanisms by which to provide high quality in teaching and learning that's fully inclusive at the moment of teaching and learning itself we're seeing workload reductions we're seeing more engagement more attendance Behavior goes down because schools seen as a really or working learning environment seen as really purposeful learning spaces and of course if workloads down engagement is up hack success criteria of one over another are up satisfaction both for professionals and children increases and what does that do creates a sticky environment that we all want to be part of so in terms of net Mobility staff retention and professional reward professional satisfaction these are all huge huge markers of impact but we do know don't we that around the world whether a classroom is a 3-year-old a 93y old whatever the country location we know there's huge amounts of ience in how Tech is actually used that gives us a bit of a social Equity issue doesn't it because if we think back to the United Nations sustainable development goals goal for Quality education we are challenged all of us to ensure inclusive and Equitable quality education for every single learner that we work with and that's really interesting when you think about all all of these successes all of these um turbocharging of learning experiences are happening in classrooms all around the world the onus is on us to make sure our Learners are not the ones that are missing out that they too are included are being made accessible and are seeing the kind of learning gains others are seeing alongside that we've got this strange kind of framing around digital Technologies around edtech that often it's seen as pivoting around tools tool specific thinking and historically we've seen this kind of repetitive cycle as kazen Aran says here in this lovely quote that we go through something new has come out it's really exciting there's all this hype and noise around it and then lots of investment not just Financial but time and energy and exploration and conversation and then a kind of poor level of integration as people grapple with all of that white noise and then a kind of slight disappointment when we see bit of a lack in terms of impact on educational outcomes and the cycle is just repeated because it's a new tool or a wizzy shiny new thing each time and as Louise said earlier we're kind of seeing that a little bit with generative AI at the moment although there are those that see it as as a slightly different conversation but the point here is all of us are being consistently poked provoked to do something with digital technology by different people in our classrooms in our workplaces society media law culture Global events all these little pokes and prods are affecting the way we think about digital technology and these influences are pouring into US pouring onto us from all kinds of different places so I'm going to ask you now to think about what influences how you think about digital technology so I'm going to introduce you to this model it's called the funnels of influence it's in the book it's a whole chapter that unpacks the extent literature review that's behind this going to give you a simplified version of this the diagram you see on the right is the funnel of influences I want you to see The Funnel of influence in yellow that's influence is coming from the context that you work in and the fun of influences the blue one from the self that's you personally you as a unique individual brilliant human being and those influences are coming together and creating a situation that's specific to a moment in time now let's look at those influences the things coming from the context that you're in these will be things like Global events National policies economic changes a foot budgets and localized policies um organizational process and routines um school specific or workplace specific cultures and norms and habits all the things that for anyone in that context would be the same but I hear you say we all experience those things slightly differently and that's where the follow of inferences from the self really comes into play so these are the things that affect each of us as unique human beings so when you're born you enter into an environment where there are um all kinds of different assumptions and expectations and Norms you know what it means to be an adult and a child in the home you're born into what it means to grow up and to go to school or to go to work was that valued or not valued did that mean going out or staying at home all kinds of different thinking that starts to be surfaced and then your own experiences of Life thereafter are seen through that lens that you started to develop as a very very small child now your own education feeds into that so for example if you think back to your own uh schooling experiences and if I said to you think of one teacher who you really remember you'd either think of someone who had a profoundly brilliant influence on you maybe inspired you open uped doors for you made things possible or somebody maybe who had the opposite effect and who restricted you limited you maybe humiliated you but there'll be somebody that you think back on and think ah I remember them and as a professional now as an educator in the workplace or with children adults whomever it is how you see the role of an educator will have started to be formed by the influences from that person that teacher in your own childhood back then because you'll either replicate the things that you felt were great and impactful or beneficial or you'll react against the things that you felt were really not so great but either which way as an educator you be you the influence is affecting you today started way way way way back before you even thought about the landscape we're in now so all of these influences affect us and coming here today we've accumulated our own education our training our um career Journey so far the people we've met the experiences we've had it all accumulates and today we are a result of everything that we've lived through so far that creates a very unique lens and that lens interprets all of those influences from those yellow Bubbles from the context and that's why each of us see any given moment slightly differently to the next person and that results in this kind of situational knowledge the stuff we're drawing on from our own minds in this given moment situational expectations what we expect of ourselves what we expect of others what we think others expect of us and a situational identity who we feel we are how agentive we feel how um empowered we feel in a particular moment and all of that stuff that is what shapes what we think what we say out loud to others what we intend to do what we actually do and of course then what others experience and each of those might be aligned in the same but usually is a little bit different from each other there is some variance in there and all of that stuff that's what starts shaping our pedagogy and so that's where I want to take us next I'm going to ask you to do some really deep thinking in a moment about your pedagogy because what do we actually mean by this word pedagogy and I'm reasonably sure if I asked each of you just to jop some thoughts down in the comments panel you'd each pick out slightly different ideas and things around pedagogy give it a go while I'm talking start jotting into that comments box sorts of things that come to mind when we use this word pedagogy there's no right or wrong to this these are all things that have come from the influences affecting us because when we think about pedagogy it's an umbrella term right and people often use it to refer to pedagogical beliefs the things we believe about pedagogy pedagogical approaches the the methods the recipes the teaching and learning strategies we use our pedagogical intentions the things that we want to enable our pedagogical practices the actions that we carry out when we use pedagogy we may be also referring to theories botski P Skinner Le fer communities of practice behaviorism all of social culturalism all these things politicized pedagogies that maybe come from government or mass media or from fashionable Twitter Arty implicit pedagogies that we might be doing without even realizing it or explicit pedagogy we need to do thing X and this is how we're going to do it we might be referring to organizational pedagogy that are work organization have chosen to adopt or individualized embedded pedagogies things that are really important to us so there's loads and loads and loads that we mean when we use this word pedagogy and what that ends up uh translating into in practice is this kind of overgeneralized notion of what pedagogy actually means and arguably perhaps it's become the most misused word in education because when we say the word pedagogy which lots of us use day in day out in different environments we often referring to slightly different things so here's some definitions I want you to think of pedagogy as four distinct domains because pedagogy technically means what it is to support learning now that's not the same as how we learn or um the science of learning it's what it means to support learning and people are often say to me ah yeah but F you mean teaching well teaching is one particular theory about how learning is supported so it's not right or wrong but it's one Theory and there are other theories that would say learning can be supported without the role of a teacher and without processes of teaching and we only need to think about our learning our informal learning Beyond School away from the workplace for example to help us kind of see where that starts to come into play so let's think about pedagogic as four distinct domains number one what do you think it should mean to be a learner and what do you think it should mean to learn what does that look like what does that mean who's involved where do we do it how do we do it so domain one Learners and learning domain two teachers and teaching what should it really mean in 2024 to be a teacher what is a teacher as a as a as a function as a person what is this thing teaching what happens how does it happen why does it happen domain three around knowledge curriculum and assessment like where does knowledge even come from how is it formed how's it verified who decides on it I a funny example of um years ago people often thought that the world was flat and that was seen as knowledge and as a fact and in 2024 slightly fewer people think that the world is flat and now it's thought of in a more spherical sense and now that's seen as knowledge so you know when did it change who decided on that change how did that evolve what therefore is knowledge where does it come from how's it shaped and the fourth domain around schooling and systems how does going to school or going to workplace or going to Professional Training how does that relate to our wider lives what are the connections the relationships Who's involved who's not involved and why now these are some really really big questions so we're going to unpack those very very briefly but when you use the word pedagogy I want you to think of all four of these things because too often often when we use the word pedagogy we just end up referring to a subset usually it's actually just referring to teaching strategies which is like one teny part of pedagogy supporting learning is so much more broad than that isn't it so quick activity we'll see how the time goes whether we'll do all of this or just part of this we're going to have a look at which theory of pedagogy your own beliefs align with with traditional behaviorist beliefs with individual constructivism with social constructivism or sociocultural Theory sounds more complex than it is right I'd like you to scan the QR code that you see on the screen now you'll be taken to a Google form on that form you will have one question four possible answers there is not a right or wrong answer these are four parallel belief systems each of them equally valid each of them equally right one of them will feel right to you and what I want you to to do is choose the one that represents the best fit it's not perfect the best fit for how you think things should be going to give you two minutes tops the links in the chat box or you can scan on the QR code once you've press submit on the form you'll see a um a response confirmation and that will tell you which um descriptor aligns with which Theory and what I'd love for you to do is pop your response to that in the comments box and I know some colleagues have um engaged with this already through the book and through some other sessions so I can see some of these starting to come in already which is awesome amazing I can see flurry of responses coming in just give you another 30 seconds okay going to give you 5c warning then I'd love to play this back to you going to carry on in five four three two one awesome thank you so much for doing that and if you'd like to keep that QR code or link and um do the activity with colleagues or do it again when you've got more time to reflect later you're really really welcome to do that and I'm just going to play back to you some of the results that have come through it's anonymized um just to say that around about half of the group on this call are aligning with social constructivism and then the other half of the group are nearly evenly split across the other three theories which is not at all unusual fantastic right we're going to dip into another one we're going to have a look this time at what you believe about the role of the teacher and a function of teaching so again if you could scan this QR code or click on the link that's in the um in the chat box same thing one question four responses pick the best fit for how you think things should be and then press submit and then you'll be able to see which um theory of pedagogy your views about teachers and teaching align with again I'm going to give you just three minutes for this one I feel like you should have put some music on for this Fiona no I was just thinking that Cheryl can I have to ask you to sing Cheryl oh I don't think anyone wants to hear that today that's my learning point for next time we do this such good amazing two more minutes this is so interesting say one more minute and 30 seconds [Music] and 10 seconds 5 4 3 2 one you're an amazing group thank you so much for doing that and do you know what's really fascinating about the responses to this um activities do you remember when we looked at Learners and learning said about half the group aligned with social constructivism and then the um other half was split across the other three responses and this particular activity with this particular group not one person is the line with social constructivism and we've got a nearly even split across the other three um theories really really fascinating isn't it now I want to leave time for um lots of questions and conversation and most importantly for Sher to share with you in just a moment so what I'm going to do is I'm going to skip over the next two stages of this activity but I'm going to ask if can pop those links in the chat box and you'll have a copy of these slides as well and then you can do the other two parts of this looking at knowledge beliefs and looking at beliefs around the role of schooling in your own time when you've got a bit more um time and space to reflect so why does all this matter why does it matter which theory of pedagogy our beliefs align with well it's because of this let's have a look at the different types of tools that we think about and use and I'm going to use a little example about um autom marking quiz tools and I want you to think about which parts of these tools we tend to focus on so when we think about learn quiz tools the focus that we often give is on the convenience of Auto marking the Adaptive questions the time savings the individualized pathways all of those sorts of things sometimes we then think about the teaching strategies the pedagogical approaches underpinning those like retrieval practice space learning adaptive teaching so on the bit we don't often think about is that all of that is underpinned by forms of individual constructivism in other words beliefs that learning is predefined that it's sequential that it's cumulative and it takes place by the formation of individual mental models now it's not a perfect example but you'll start to get this sense of how we look at the surface and we don't we look at the the what and we start to think about the how but we don't often think about the why now there's another example of this that I really want us to think about and that's this notion around collaboration because lots of people would talk about collaborative boards you know putting ideas together or collaborative tasks and we talk about that very much in the activity the task level again we don't think quite so much often about some of the approaches that that underpin the impactful uses or the successful uses of that in other words the role of of of talking the think pair share type um uh aacy approaches or having access to a bank of ideas all of the ideas around collaboration meaningful collaboration are kind of built off the premise of a form of constructivism often social constructivism in other words it's that interchange between people that adds value to The Learning Experience whether that's through scaffolding questioning challenging whatever it might be but the role of talk and the type of talk really really matters so the belief system the why underpins the how and the what we don't talk about it quite often enough now as professor John hassy says if as Educators we can pick and choose tools that help them to be the educator we want to be then the tool and the human being become more effective and of course that leads us to Greater Collective efficacy which we know has an impact on attainment and that's what this notion of pedagogical alignment is all about if we can be really clear about our beliefs and our values our pedagogical beliefs then we can set out very clear very precise very informed pedagogical intentions if we have clarity about our intentions we can then pick and choose the most appropriate evidence informed strategies to bring those to life and if we have the right strategies with that alignment our actions will be aligned with our beliefs we won't be contradicting ourselves to the words we use or the um prioritization we make in the moment of learning and then we create compl complete alignment and consistency Clarity for the Learners that we work with and why are we all here is to support those Learners children or adults wherever they may be so this shift from edtech to ped Tech the rationale behind the book Louise so kindly shared at the start is there used to be this kind of very edte what and how centered mindset we looked at what tools we might use and we thought okay how can we use those tools in teaching and learning how can we use them to support our educational Vision but it was all pivoting around the use of a tool this evolution is moving towards that ped Tech mindset so ped Tech is a mindset it's not a thing it's not tangible it's not a technology it's a mindset and all it's doing is switching that around the other way and saying let's think about the why first and then the how and the what what is our educational vision and then which Tools digital or otherwise can support that it's a very subtle distinction it's very specific distinction but it does make a massive difference on impact and that's where we'd like to go next so Cheryl and I have been working together um for I don't know it work sounds like the wrong word Cheryl working alongside you is just so much fun and we've been conducting this uh research which was published in December I think wasn't it seems yesterday in a long time ago all at once but what this did is it um was a study that took place over a period of about 12 months there was 17 of us on the research team we used all kinds of methods to really dig into what's happening in the classroom at the point of teaching and learning and where is the impact when we move from this edtech to ped Tech mindset so I'm going to hand over to the brilliant brilliant Cheryl Shirley now just to take us through some of the things that that found Cheryl thank you Fiona um yeah so I think one of the sort of biggest things for us was we were really starting to think about how um how children you know how we can make sure that our classing remain really inclusive um and how do we utilize technology to be able to um support children that have a huge range of needs and I think sort of maybe prior to this it might be that you know the teachers sort of in the classroom providing children with a load of resources that you know they would hand out to the to the class and you know I think for some children there's some real issues with that they they don't really like having things given to them and being told that they've got to use them or this will help you like this is this is the tool for you and I think what we really wanted to do was really focus on how we can make sure we utilize technology to be able to provide children with that on demand help and support um that we know that we'll we'll support them with their learning and take away the stigma of um you know this these are the things that you need um and and having the teachers make that choice for the children we wanted children to be able to make those choices for themselves um so that's that's almost where thing link kind of comes in really where you know we wanted to create this culture of that autonomous access for for children and getting them to be selective over what what exactly it is that they that they want to do so for example making sure they've got instant access to things like word Banks and vocabulary and um having success criteria there if they need it um and I think that's really really important having those giving children choice on how they how they access things so for example you know in in example you can see on the screen here having that toolbox of of information but it not just be in sheets it could be a video to support them because some children looking at a sheet isn't going to help them at that moment in time but having a quick two-minute video to support them would be the right choice for them and I think that's really really important um and and also that Children's Learning shouldn't be limited by the Capac the capacity of the teach I think really important in the room where you know in a classroom in a typical classroom there's only one teacher and there are you know often in our class rooms we have sort of 32 children and how do we make sure that children are not rying on that adult support all the time I think that's so important um yeah so I'm just going to move on to the next slide thank you f and I think one of the things that we really wanted to focus on um throughout the report whilst we were doing the research was around you know we know that children are spending a lot of time at school each year but what are they actually doing and how does digital make that difference to them and we found that you know through the research we did lots of classroom observations and we looked at lots of different ways that we were utilizing technology but we found that digitizing task is increasing efficiency within our classroom and I think that could be something really simple from you know how long does it take children to um find a word or locate a word in the dictionary versus how does it take them how long does it take them to do that in the classroom you know with the with the device and you know it it allows children to be really focused on learning and what they actually need to do and it being really on demand so that they're able to do that successfully and I think one of the things that we really found I found really interesting whilst doing um whilst sort of taking part in the research with Fiona was around how things completely change in terms of the nature of what's happening in the classroom so things like the nature of talk for example that's been a really big one for me and I think one of the lessons that I observed during the research was around kind of um children ordering a story in writing for example and in the classroom that was utilizing technology the nature of talk was about the actual writing and the aacy and practicing the skills that they would need to be successful with the writing whereas in the class that wasn't quite wasn't utilizing the technology the nature of talk was around the task I can't find my glue I you know where's my pencil and all those sorts of things and actually there wasn't enough time in that lesson to really focus on what what the objective actually was and it gave children more of an opportunity in the digital lesson to really focus on vocabulary and have those higher order thinking which ultimately is leading to um our greater depth outcomes giving children that opportunity to really focus on what's important uh this is just a quote from one of our children so it says there uh I can think more about what I'm supposed to be doing and then my learning is better so it takes away some of those challenges that some children face in the classroom um and and so they're actually able to to focus on that and you can see that this is our impact and I think Fiona showed the similar one earlier but this one is our writing attainment and I think often when we talk about digital we talk about you know we might be losing our writing access and actually we found the complete opposite we found that by providing children with the use of Technology we're able to really focus on um getting those greater outcomes through those those things I just discussed um on the screen here you can see that we're just talking here about a little bit about how children can be more autonomous over what they do they they they don't like being stood out as being different in the classroom and by digitizing things and giving creating that culture where children can be selective over what they're doing means that they are they are able to be selective over what they what they choose to use and it doesn't look any different you look at one child and they're utilizing their device in one way and you look at another child and they're they're utilizing it in a totally different way and I think that's that's really really important and I think in terms of cognitive overload I think that's another thing that's really important to our children is that often you know the teachers boards are overloaded with information and you know things that we give children can often be full of um lots and lots of information for them to be able to take in um it might also be simple things like you know them being able to quickly already practice something and being able to listen back to it is so important so that they remember you know or they you know they I think that choice is really really important and you want to empower them to be independent definitely um and they're not and and they're not reliant on putting their hand up and focused on asking the adult all the time they can be the independent with with what they're doing and you know I wanted to show you today the simplistic side of thing link I think is probably simplistic but powerful at the same time um but these are just a few examples that you'll see from from our what goes on in our schools where providing children with very simple tool kits that support them this is particularly for writing um there's a you know our teachers they're very creative some some do it really simply some people put a bit more effort in and make it really Jazzy for children to to focus on but you can see there that the point is is that all of those resources are there in one place so that children can be selective over what they do that like I said in a in a way that works for them it could be that there's a video to support them it could be that there's just a quick reminder so that when they're doing their writing they can really focus on okay I know that we've been learning about conjunctions I'm just going to I need a quick reminder about what that is and then I can carry on and I can just get on with it I haven't got put put my hand up and ask the teacher what is a conjunction I can't remember and so everything is there all in one place for children to be able to access independently um and I think somebody mentioned in the chat it's definitely that you Universal Design for Learning approach um you know we we see those those really clear um examples of udl in practice our teachers are finding that by digitizing and I we talk about Waggles what a good one looks like so a teacher example that given it might be previously that they would have had to have sort of differentiated that lots of different ways for every child to be able to access but again by putting it online we're able to chunk it we're able to make really good use of immersive um readers and things that children can can make that them more independent with it and be able to access it and this is a really nice example um where you've got this the one on the left might be the example we may have done a previous ly where we hand this to the children and we get them to read it and and try and pull it apart look at the features Etc um and again for some children that would be okay but for lots of children that would already be cognitive overload and by maneuvering that into something like thing link where there is really clear instructions on what to look at where to look at and then to have all of those accessibility features as well um just makes that so much more powerful and so much more accessible for every single child in the classroom and then the other one that I always find um a challenge with classes is the use of research and I think that's something that children often find really difficult um and I think again I think giving children different ways to research is also a really powerful thing so you can see here we've used blockade labs to sort of create an immersive kind of experience so they can look around and they can come up with questions that they may have but you can see that they've also then thought about different ways so again like if they're learning about clothing there might be a video about clothing there might be a website about clothing there might be an immersive kind of thing where you can a 3D model where they can look around at the clothing and make those decisions and come up with those um decisions on you know in that real in that real way that's going to support everybody I'll come back to you Fiona well it's to kind of state the obvious really isn't it I mean the examples that Cheryl so brilliantly shared which are like the tip of the iceberg of the the scale and the embeddedness of the work across the Leo Academy trust schools the the the essence of that is that the focus really is not just on the process of learning but how can that learning process be most effectively supported coming back to that message around pedagogy you know how do we believe believe learning should be supported and this immersion through Visual through sound through video through experiences through provocations that connect to talk and all these wonderful connections that's where we see the impact you know impact on learning happens when we focus very explicitly and very precisely on learning and in environments where we don't see an impact on learning research shows us time and time again it's because the digital technology or the tools are used for the schools overarching organizational purposes or for the the teacher sort of administrative and preparation and functional purposes now we will see an impact of those types of use of course we will but the impact will be seen on workload efficiencies and financial savings and data transfer and all of those kind of operational organizational employee type benefits they're really really important but if we want to see a focus on learning we must make sure our actions are focused explicitly on learning and then just to conclude with this kind of thought provocation that we still often talk about the digital divide and yes it's a very very real thing isn't it division in terms of devices in terms of connectivities subscriptions all these sorts of things infrastructur things but actually in the world that we live in today in 20124 with schools all around the world doing all kinds of different things actually the digital divided is perhaps being nudged exacerbated by the choices that each of us do and don't make about what we open up at the point of learning because we're all fundamentally pedagogical Gatekeepers the default can be to leave those Gates closed maybe that's through fear or lack of training or knowledge or you know whatever the reason might be but what we want to do is just nudge nudge nudge nudge those pedagogical gates open and just to remember that not every decision in a school or around a workplace not every decision is about teaching and learning but every decision is fundamentally a pedagogical decision whoever it's made by teacher leader policy local National because it will ultimately affect the choices available to Educators and Learners at the point of learning who they work with how they work with them and why they're working with them we've got some actions for you to take away do go back and probe your pedagogy you've got those other two activities probe probe probe and keep thinking keep reflecting on it and do that with colleagues that you work with get those pedagogical conversations going on think about what you're focusing on the beliefs the approaches the practice what are we focusing on and why and really think about bringing that pedagogical alignment into place Louise it's been so much fun over to you can everybody join me and giving you a huge round of applause for all of the work you've been doing F all the work that you've been doing sh it's absolutely phenomenal and you know in working in an edtech company um I can truly truly say that this is just what we want to hear because we know that we design these tools to be part of that process to be part of that mindset and to see this in action is just fantastic so thank you so much for doing all of this lots of really amazing comments coming through amazing way webinar lots and lots of congratulations so thank you and we've got a few minutes left and I just thought it'd be really fun um I just put my screen back on is to say that um we saw some of the wonderful examples that have been used in Leo but we're also seeing because of the ability to create those kinds of Bas media assets if you like these kinds of examples now and I showed this one to you before I think as well where we're seeing teachers creating these examples and this is Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene and the educator here has put in little Snippets of examples of what that means they've even gone as far as you know putting in a chat bot which is going to answer you in the style of a thespian and we just kind of take that pedagogical mindset that ped Tech mindset from the outset and this is right for him and his learning is that he's doing in that school at this moment in time so some phenomenal examples uh that we're seeing that are being developed right at the moment um and I can also say from behind the scenes as well we are planning to make things even easier for people in the way that they use things L um so for example in the future might be able to upload a PDF of how to do something like start your fire and it might actually create a scenario based learning experience so that you could try out different things in order to help you start that fire rather than just having the image with the tags on so we're looking at much more depth in the way that you can create those uh experiences as well but before we go just to say that there is a new module to our thinglink certified Creator course we've added an extension module which is all about using guided TOS so if you are already a thing link certified Creator you can go back in and you'll see this expension module and we'll keep adding to these um there'll be one about AR one about using admin tools and an advanced scenario Builder as you've just heard me give you some sneaky peek news there as well um our next webinar which you'll be interested in um on the 8th of May actually this is next one after that um is going to be announcing our new thing link certified trainer program and on this webinar myself and Michelle El Michelle will be talking all about how you can become a thing link certified trainer um we're also going to have a webinar with Book Creator and Book Creator and thing link just play beautifully together so we thought it'd be really fun to invite David hutler who is the community manager from Book Creator and also some lovely examples from Denmark with Christopher who's been sharing these on LinkedIn recently and he's actually been using Book Creator and our AR app to create some immersive experiences and another webinar and this is slightly tweaked towards the healthc care industry but I think there's something there for everybody which is all about creating scenarios and scenario based simulations so that's coming up on the 1st of May so I think that's all we've got time for so I'm just going to remove my screen back there and just say there is some amazing comments that are just coming through all of the wonderful uh feedback for yourself and on behalf of the whole team here at sing link um yeah we can't thank you enough for all of the work that you've been doing in support of creating a ped Tech mindset and you know seeing thing at the heart of that has been really exciting for us as well we're all sharing the journey together aren't we thank you so much for for for joining the ride we're all in it together certainly and Cheryl thank you so much for giving us a lens on what you're doing in Leo Academy and and I've uh been pleased to be part of that Journey for some years with yourself as well and what's coming next have you got any ideas about what you're going to be doing next I mean you've just shown us some amazing things I think every time I speak to you Louise I always find out something new so uh I'm really excited for to be able to share the practice across the trust as well so yeah thank you as well amazing I think that's our time come to the end now so thank you so much for joining us everybody we will send you an email that'll have the links to all the slides all the links to the resources I'm just glad my voice is held out thank you so much everyone take care and we look forward to seeing you on the next webinar thank you

Channel: ThingLink

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Id: Rz4_YQQ6skM

Length: 60min 56sec (3656 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024