Hybrid Learning

[caffrey]

Seeing as the guidelines have changed (again) https://www.gov.uk/guidance/remote-education-during-coronavirus-covid-19

 

Where a pupil, class, group or small number of pupils need to self-isolate, or there is a local lockdown requiring pupils to remain at home, DfE expects schools to be able to immediately offer them access to remote education. Schools should ensure remote education, where needed, is high-quality and aligns as closely as possible with in-school provision.

 

How are you provisioning this ?

[hardtailstar]

As we did during lockdown.

 

All lesson material and homework is put on SMHW for those off to see what has been taught.

 

Wee are moving to Google Classroom so I imagine it will be the same.

[caffrey]

No change here either, just trying to work out from the guidance just what exactly comes into effect on the 22nd

[gmonks]

All our work for the week and each year group is posted on the website. Setting up Teams shortly for this too.

[Ditto]

All our work for the week and each year group is posted on the website. Setting up Teams shortly for this too.

My governance primary school currently has 95%+ attendance throughout, so not an issue yet. However, there was a reluctance to provide both in school and online learning. I guess this legislation changes thngs if we have any bubbles sent home and/or other local lockdown. When we were open to Y6 and the lower years before the end of Summer, children who didn't (or maybe couldn't) attend, were told to use Oak Academy. I'm not sure this would be acceptably going forward.

[gmonks]

My governance primary school currently has 95%+ attendance throughout, so not an issue yet. However, there was a reluctance to provide both in school and online learning. I guess this legislation changes thngs if we have any bubbles sent home and/or other local lockdown. When we were open to Y6 and the lower years before the end of Summer, children who didn't (or maybe couldn't) attend, were told to use Oak Academy. I'm not sure this would be acceptably going forward.

I don't think it is.

 

More here - has to be implemented by 22nd October

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/remote-education-during-coronavirus-covid-19

[caffrey]

Well it's saying that it has to be as close as possible to in school provision (Not sure on the exact changes - they are as clear as mud to actually what has changed)

 

I'm going to suggest webcams and microphones, set the webcam up next to the projector aiming at the whiteboard and setting up a meet etc. It will be as if the student is there and with new meet features like q&a it should work well.

[gmonks]

Well it's saying that it has to be as close as possible to in school provision (Not sure on the exact changes - they are as clear as mud to actually what has changed)

 

I'm going to suggest webcams and microphones, set the webcam up next to the projector aiming at the whiteboard and setting up a meet etc. It will be as if the student is there and with new meet features like q&a it should work well.

 

If the whole class is isolating / school closed, it would be better to do screen share?

[caffrey]

If the whole class is yes, but if single students are isolating because of cases at home they will still need a provision.

[sonofsanta]

We installed a webcam in every teaching room over the six weeks, and have had 80 kids self-isolating since Monday, so we're getting to find out all the flaws and problems with trying to do this at no notice and no money.

 

So: the webcams have a 2m cable and we put them on a 5m extension to try and get enough distance to see the board. I knew this was pushing my luck but hoped I could get away with it. I... sometimes have. Some of the cameras cut out and Windows thinks the device is already in use. This USB3 hub boosts the signal well enough to fix the issue.

 

Sound is not necessarily brilliant (still trying to work out if that's specific teachers, cable length, room design or what); partly that's the particular webcam we could get hold of so YMMV, but they're really designed to pick up someone sat in front of them, not 5m away talking to a class and not at the camera. It's... sufficient. Mostly.

 

Image quality is a real problem, because we're trying to translate the experience of "looking at a big board 4m away" through a crappy 1024x768 projector through a cheap Chinese webcam through a 15in laptop screen (at best). Teachers writing on the board isn't necessarily legible unless they write in COMEDY SIZE LETTERS. If you've just got one board that teachers project and write on then you can cover it fairly well and legibly, but if you have a dry wipe board next to a projector/TV panel then you'll never manage to fit both in the view, and if you do you're so far back you can't read anything. If staff were still just in "their" room we could set it up appropriately, but because every man and his dog is moving round site so the kids don't have to, you can't do that. I can't think of an answer here that isn't "install two webcams and staff have to choose which one when they start the meeting". But: £££

 

The best solution in terms of quality is a good mic and streaming the PowerPoint. Mic: if a desktop USB one, needs to have a broad pickup pattern (not cardioid) so the teacher can move about, but then it will pick up lots of classroom noise and not emphasise the teacher. If a wireless lapel one, you have to worry about channels and signals being picked up by other classrooms--and unlike WAPs, you can't map out your channels, because these devices would need to be personal to the teacher not the room given the nature of COVID-19 transmission and the positioning of any mic near the mouth, so they'll be roaming around the building and causing interference. Streaming the PowerPoint (and displaying Teams on the projector to the class in front of you, so that you're going through one set of slides for kids in class and at home) works really well--but not all subjects teach from PowerPoint, so it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. We opted for a lowest-common-denominator setup so that staff could walk into any room and know how it all worked, but I may have to encourage them to do the PowerPoint thing if possible, as it solves the image quality problem completely. I avoided it so as not to complicate matters for staff, but needs must.

 

Teams does generally work well enough, contrary to the complaints of certain parents (cf. Annoying thread). We were getting staff to set up a private Team to stage the meetings then inviting kids in, such that it effectively phoned them up. We're now copying the meeting link from within Teams and emailing it, as the link seems to work more reliably for joining, and stops complaints about "my daughter was 2 minutes late logging on, does that mean she has to miss the whole lesson now?" (yes it does, she was late, rules ain't no different at home as they would be in school). One annoyance with Teams: you can't turn off background-noise-cancellation, so if you play a video in class, it mutes all the audio!

 

Biggest problem is that we have no control over 2/3 of the devices used in all this. Which is to say, I can make sure the computers and network here are up to snuff, I can position the webcam to be acceptable, I can get everything working as best I can... then there's 1200 devices out there that might be used to connect in that I can't do a damn thing about. Kids are trying to use their phones to view these streams. I don't know how they can see anything. I also don't see how that's our fault, but that excuse doesn't wash with parents.

 

Fundamentally it can be done but with limited quality. Staff are not teaching from a lectern you can mic up, like in a lecture hall; they're not necessarily putting everything up on a slideshow for everyone to see, so you can't just stream that; and we also all have bugger all money to solve this problem.

 

If I learn any more lessons, I'll post them here.

[caffrey]

Perfect, this is everything I expected and more - excellent writeup thanks.

 

I agree we also run into the end user issues, which will cause a lot more leg work and us breaking bubbles to fix

 

I recently kitted out a room for governors meets using a cheap wide angle webcam and a condenser conference microphone and it went down really well - I'm not sure how well that will translate to a classroom though

 

Re the USB issue did you try usb repeater cables ?

 

EDIT actually thinking out loud, ideally touchscreens in every class and a shared jamboard session would be ideal but very costly

Edited October 7, 2020 by caffrey

[sonofsanta]

Re the USB issue did you try usb repeater cables ?

 

 

The USB repeater cables are basically an integrated hub and long cable, right? I probably should have just gone for them from the word go but at least I can retrofit these boosters where the cable joins. Should all work the same.

 

One other thing I should say: by and large we tried to ceiling mount on suspended ceiling tiles, and that was worth the effort. There were some rooms where we couldn't (position of the teacher's desk, no susp ceiling etc.) and had to mount on a desk at the front instead, but that's not working as well because (a) they get knocked by kids (b) they're often not far enough back, but you can't put them on a desk that's further back because then you'd be looking at some kid's back instead of the board.

 

When we ceiling mounted I did it with a square of thin board from DT to go on top of the tile, something like 6in x 6in is enough, then used these bolts to fit into the tripod mount on the webcam, with a big washer on each side and a wing-nut underneath so I could tighten it by hand. That braces the whole arrangement so you can position the webcam reliably, otherwise if you try and hang it without washers and wingnut the whole thing wobbles about.

 

###

 

I had a 2 hour meeting with the assistant head for T&L yesterday afternoon to discuss everything that's gone on this week and what our short, medium and long term plans are. In the short term we've switched to emailing links to kids instead of inviting them; we're also redirecting all complaints etc. through her so we're not spending our limited time in IT acting as Comms & PR to parents. Reporting problems to us worked fine when it was 1 or 2 kids and we could just fix it, but once it was 80 kids off we were overwhelmed and doing nothing except firefighting, which is a terrible way to work.

 

In the next few days we're going to email out a feedback form so we're getting technical reports in a structured way, without the emotion of a parent shouting at us, and in a way where we can analyse the data quantitatively (e.g. see which rooms or teachers are having the most trouble with sound quality, and thus target fixes appropriately). We're rolling out the USB boosters and experimenting with alternative mic solutions for some subjects (e.g. Maths, where they don't use PowerPoint but tend to talk through problems, so there's the most benefit).

 

From October half-term, we're going to make sure every class has a Team set up, and try to integrate Teams more directly anyway with resources available etc. so that if we go into lockdown, everything is ready on there to pivot to full remote learning. Once that infrastructure is set up, for any self-isolating student staff will simply start a meeting in that class, and the offsite students will be told to just go into the group for their timetabled lesson to join the meeting. That's easy for everyone to understand. The downsides, as I can spot them right now, are:

(a) any absent kid can join, not just the self-isolating one, which may encourage absenteeism (not a big concern with our student body specifically) or kids who should be resting to recuperate from flu etc. trying to work and thus extending their illness (not ideal, but not the end of the world)

(b) we need to know cover arrangements in the morning so we can add the cover teacher/supervisor to the Team for the day. Bit of an admin faff for us. Can't think of a better solution; don't want to add every cover supervisor to every team, for that way lies madness; don't want to make class teams public so anyone can just join.

[caffrey]

Thanks, sounds like you are getting things in hand at least, I think I've got a meeting tomorrow to go over this.

 

These are what I mean https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics-Active-Extension-Cable-Female/dp/B01L81WQ2O/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=usb+repeater+amazon&qid=1602150536&sr=8-7

[sonofsanta]

Thanks, sounds like you are getting things in hand at least, I think I've got a meeting tomorrow to go over this.

 

These are what I mean https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics-Active-Extension-Cable-Female/dp/B01L81WQ2O/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=usb+repeater+amazon&qid=1602150536&sr=8-7

 

 

Yeah, that's basically an integrated 1-port hub at the female end of the cable, so should work. I dunno if 10m is too far for that initial stretch though--might be more reliable to get a 5m active cable and a normal 3m extension, which'd give you 10m altogether with the 2m cable on the webcam. Practically speaking that will cover you for all classrooms, I'd say--certainly in rooms where we have the PC by the wall at the front of the classroom (so we can run the cable straight up the wall without having to cross floorspace), 7m has been enough to get the right view on the board. If we'd gone further away you wouldn't be able to read the board on the stream. 10m would just give you that extra flexibility where the desk is away from the wall etc.

[caffrey]

Yep , it's a bit suck it and see at the moment. It's a shame I didn't finalise all my room connectivity \ sound standardisation - would've made adding a web cam trivial. We use these where I have the budget https://saharaav.com/connectivity/cable-kits And they have a spare USB port and a 3.5mm jack

[Brimstone]

These are free tools that plenty of schools are using very successfully using for remote learning, documents can be added with video and audio creation tools and more both can used with or without Google Classroom. Many of those schools have upgraded to the paid for version.

 

https://web.seesaw.me/remote-learning

 

https://www.showbie.com/features/

 

PS. Both can be accessed and used fully via a web browser as well.

Edited October 8, 2020 by Brimstone

[supportman]

Going to just stream the audio and powerpoint over teams as we did during lockdown but in class.

 

Bought teachers wired microphones if they need them.

[TechMonkey]

Our approach is to ignore cameras and get the Teacher to share their screen to show the remote pupil what they are doing on the board. To get over sound issues we have purchased some bluetooth lapel mics. Dongle goes into the mic socket on the PC, the other end goes on the teachers belt and the mic on the lapel. They are not perfect but they mean the teacher can be anywhere in the room and still be picked up. We are not kitting out ever room with these, just have some in reserve to be booked out.

 

Not used in anger yet so the plan may be the first casualty of action!

[sonofsanta]

One other thing to say about cameras: teaching staff are (rightly) cautious about parents watching them, and were upset when one parent sent in a photo as part of a complaint about the quality of the image. There's not a lot we can do about that apart from reminding them it's inappropriate (we have set the lobby setting for anyone outside our org, so parents can't follow the link themselves to watch). If your staff are wary about cameras, it's worth bearing in mind. Certainly from my perspective just sharing the PowerPoint is better quality anyway, but unless staff have a smartboard they can write on that's no use to those subjects that still use whiteboards rather than slideshows.

[caffrey]

Not sure if this is of any use to anyone but just had this sent via email from Google

 

https://events.withgoogle.com/distance-learning-webinar-series/hybrid-learning-webinars/#content

[SamanthaD]

but unless staff have a smartboard they can write on that's no use to those subjects that still use whiteboards rather than slideshows.

Can they use a document camera connected to the PC instead? Write the content on that - in class see it on the screen same as a presentation, remote participants see the same image. Loads of options for getting a document camera type setup if you don't want to spend money, most novel I've seen is a CD angled across a laptop webcam to reflect downwards onto the keyboard!

[sonofsanta]

Can they use a document camera connected to the PC instead? Write the content on that - in class see it on the screen same as a presentation, remote participants see the same image. Loads of options for getting a document camera type setup if you don't want to spend money, most novel I've seen is a CD angled across a laptop webcam to reflect downwards onto the keyboard!

 

 

Oh sure--but having two webcams connected to a PC that staff have to choose between is inviting disaster!

 

(Plus the Hue HD webcams seem to have vanished from Amazon? Bad timing, that)