“The training has been very well received and is another example of how Bradford is leading the way when it comes to helping teachers best the best they can be, even in these strange times.”
Developing the digital classroom in Bradford
Teachers in Bradford have been keeping themselves at the forefront of remote learning thanks to a series of training programmes designed to help them get the best out of modern video communications platforms during the COVID-19 crisis.
Bradford Teaching Schools Hub recently commissioned computer experts at Bradford Council’s Curriculum Innovation Centre to offer specialist training to every school and every trainee teacher in the district.
The sessions were designed to help teachers understand how to use the software to best effect, learn about the latest emerging online teaching assets and hear about the teaching techniques that work best in a virtual classroom situation.
Curriculum Innovation Consultant Tim Bleazard explained: “The training was designed around the three main digital platforms used by schools – Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom and Seesaw – showing teachers how different functionalities can be used in different ways.
“We also looked at ‘asynchronous’ learning, where teachers set tasks and children complete them later rather than in real time, together with technologies that enable the creation of things such as video tutorials, stand-alone presentations and self-marking quizzes.
“As an additional offer we also held consultation sessions for head teachers who hadn’t yet chosen a platform and some specific strategic training to advise them on the best ways to roll out remote learning training in their school.”
At the end of the training programme teachers and trainees who wanted to take virtual learning to the next level were signposted towards one of the formal accredited qualifications offered by the different software platforms.
Tim added: “All of the sessions were recorded so that participants could go back and research links to additional resources and we also used a series of gap tasks so that people could experiment in their own time and find out how best to fit the technology to their teaching methods.
“The training has been very well received and is another example of how Bradford is leading the way when it comes to helping teachers best the best they can be, even in these strange times.”
Lucy Morris, a Microsoft Teams-using Spanish and ICT teacher at Fearnville Primary school in the city, said: “I’ve done quite a lot of training with Curriculum Innovation in the past but this was something completely different, designed specifically to help us rise to the challenge of teaching during the pandemic.
“It was very hands-on and user-friendly, focusing on helping us understand and explain how we’ve fitted the new technologies into our lessons.
“A real bonus for me has been finding out about all the different websites and apps that can be used with Teams to generate real engagement from the children. I recently used an online quiz site called Kahoot and I’ve never seen Year One children so excited – they can’t wait for the next one to come around.”
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“The training has been very well received and is another example of how Bradford is leading the way when it comes to helping teachers best the best they can be, even in these strange times.”