A year ago today marks the first day that schools closed under the first lockdown in the UK. What a year it has been since then. Under the most difficult of circumstances, teachers, headteachers, schools, families and communities have come together in ways that we haven’t seen in generations.
What have we seen?
The last year has brought in so many new words and phrases for many into our everyday teacher vernacular; words such as ‘Zoombombing’, ‘Asynchronous’, ‘Synchronous’, ‘Blended learning’, ‘Hybrid learning’ and ‘Remote Learning’ and I don’t think anyone will ever think of bubbles in quite the same way again.
In the situation we find ourselves in, finding the positives is not the easiest. With children in secondary schools now administering LFTs (there’s another one!) for themselves and we still find ourselves in a lockdown (albeit schools are open again), one thing that has been a real positive from a teaching and learning with technology front has been the huge inroads that teachers have made with their confidence and competence with education technology.
Where have we grown?
An infographic I still regularly share, based around the initial work of Mandinach and Cline is the one I expanded upon in my first book and still regularly features as a discussion point in my training and consultancy work outside of NetSupport.
A long-standing barrier to technology adoption has been the confidence of staff and their competence in using technology and doing so confidently, when it’s right to, or not to. We have seen technology use in education soar over the last twelve months. Confident and competent or not, educators have had to jump into the water without their water wings and they have come up triumphant in so many ways.
Innovations?
Plato said, “necessity is the mother of innovation” and we’ve seen plenty of that over the course of the last twelve months. It would be interesting to see the data on this but taking EduTwitter as one example, there has been an explosion of educators joining the platform to learn, connect and share with other educators from around the world.
We’ve seen plenty of innovation from edtech companies as well. Like many companies, at the start of the lockdown, NetSupport teamed up with CENTURY to offer both of our company’s products to schools for free during the first lockdown.
What have NetSupport been doing?
As a company, NetSupport was well ahead of the curve with our award-winning classroom.cloud product. A perfect companion to the likes of Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, classroom.cloud enables you to help learners with their learning regardless of their location, with the ability to provide local or remote support, see all of your student screens, give them access to the resources, sites and tools you want them to be able to use and more features besides. It truly has been instrumental in helping schools around the world with the continuity of learning.
As noted by CEO at NetSupport, Al Kingsley:
“The last year has highlighted now more than ever that the real strength in all of our organisations are the people and the relationships and support we give each other.
It’s a timely reminder that while technology has the potential to play a pivotal role as we move forwards in reshaping the educational landscape, without that human factor or spirit, frankly all bets are off. I for one am hugely proud of our teams across our schools and business.”
There have been lots of learning points to reflect upon during the last twelve months. Whilst technology adoption may have been lacklustre before the pandemic, it has soared for many during this time. One such area has been in the arrangement of online parent evenings – something which I do not think will ever or if so, rarely, come back to face-to-face meetings. The benefits of holding these online are many and for a relatively low price point too.
It would be remiss of me writing this reflection however to skip past the severity of the situation we have all experienced during the last twelve months. We have lost so many people to COVID-19 who would otherwise still be with us.
Reflecting back…
It is therefore I think important to recognise and pay tribute to all of those who work in public service. Thank you. Equally, it is also important to remember those who have lost their lives in the last twelve months. It has been a horrible time for everyone and whilst we might be tired of hearing the phrase, ‘new normal’ – let’s remember that for some, this ‘new normal’ is a future without many loved ones, colleagues and friends.
The best we can do as we move forwards is to carry on doing all that we can for the communities, children and families we serve; whether you’re a teacher, a school leader, a nurse, police officer or a vendor working hard to create products that support the activities of schools. Thank you for all that you do and continue to do. Thank you.