What’s the risk?

EduTwitter seems to be awash at the moment with talk of school leaders writing risk assessments for remote learning. With so many schools opting for live teaching using free online services, t’s easy to see why risk assessing is so important:

https://news.sky.com/story/more-than-120-zoombombing-child-abuse-cases-investigated-by-uk-authorities-11990648

And this report was in May 2020; we’ve seen tweets galore just this week not just for zoom but for other platforms too. And also teachers commenting on how exhausting it is live teaching plus questions about children being 4hours plus on screen for lessons and a lot more screen time on social media and other platforms too.

Is there another way?

Paul Rose, our founder, left headship 7 years ago to build a completely safe yet incredibly powerful online teaching service that could teach anything, to anyone, anywhere and at any time.

Deaf, mainstream and special schools have used YouTeachMe before, during and since Lockdown 1. Once headteacher described it as ‘a Godsend’.

Here’s why:

  • Pre-recorded teaching videos, shared with learners at home and yet available to every member of staff in school at all times.
  • Personalised but not personal – videos can be targeted to just one learner, delivering an excellent learning experience without putting staff and learner in potentially dangerous position
  • No live sessions – so no hacking, zoombombing, sharing of invites, accidental mishaps with microphones, inappropriate chat, webcams, family members wandering into the background and so on
  • No data protection issues – everything is encrypted and all personal data is controlled by the school.
  • No intensive training courses required and no struggling to learn how things work, primarily because it’s straight forward but also because we’re available to help
  • Resources available from other schools that you can utilise for your lessons to help reduce your workload
  • No specialist equipment needed to video your lessons just use your camera phone or tablet cameras, but go ahead if you have pro equipment!
  • Ensure the best progress possible for each child without adding to your workload
  • Learners can revisit the video as many times as they need to so that the lesson is embedded and learning reinforced
  • Parents can access the videos quickly and easily, they will be able to pick up the platform quickly and without too many user questions coming into school staff
  • Track which children have watched the les video lessons you set each day
  • When it comes to a risk assessment for deploying there’s really not much that needs documenting

Beginning the process (again)

Today (5th January 2021) every UK school has sent home letters to parents moving the majority of children to remote learning.

For many school leaders there’s nothing that new in this pandemic driven crisis.

Leaders of failing schools are all too familiar with extreme anxiety, dramatic changes dropped suddenly and from a great height, staff absence, parental disquiet and so forth.

Having been the leader of a failing school I’m pleased to tell you, dear reader, that good news is around the corner.

No, it’s nothing to do with a vaccine, or that there is a strategy being developed from above. It’s that school improvement in a crisis is a process.

And of course, processes can be worked through.

Lockdown 1 followed a process: panic stations, formulate a plan, deliver and review, improve until stable.

This lockdown is slightly different because pressures and expectations are higher, but the process is identical.

This then is where the visionary leaders start to stand out. They are the ones who face a crisis, work through the process and go beyond to improve until ‘stable’.

They are the ones who push until improvement until ‘excellent’.

So today as you’ve begun this process again most will resettle on the stability of packs of worksheets, Zoom or Microsoft Teams sessions and phone calls home.

Those visionaries that are seeking more than stable take a look at YouTeachMe.

You’ll immediately see where it can help you deliver excellence once again.

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