Classroom Lessons via Zoom

[jjx111]

AIBU to expect the teachers at my daughter’s rs primary school to offer at least some lessons via Zoom? The feedback I have been given is that that they aren’t offering it due to a) safeguarding issues, and b) it would add to the teachers workload. Well, surely if we parents consent for our child to sign in for these lessons then no safeguarding issue. Plus, at present, we parents are doing at least 60% of the teachers work for them via homeschooling. (I appreciate that they are setting work for the children, but this is part of the planning they would do anyway).

Also, do you think passwords and waiting rooms are any obstacle to hackers?

How do you think people 'hack' into lessons? The vast majority of Zoom bombing incidents are from people sharing the meeting link publically and the meeting having no precautions - waiting room, password, no screen sharing etc.

I don't think Zoom will suit all schools but there is a lot of hysteria around it. A little bit of tech literacy and having some precautions makes it quite safe to use.

The rest of us in our jobs haven't had a national roll out of best practice and training. We have worked out what we can do and done it and learned from those who got off the ground quicker and learned from experience in the first few weeks. It feels like my kids school (not all schools, our school) are not looking for what they can do and not willing to learn from others, they're only looking at the difficulties.

Every single word of this.

And the rest of the post, but particularly this.

I hadn't heard of Teams 8 weeks ago and now I'm pretty good at it. Live lessons and recorded ones on every day for most lessons. Mostly gone ok although I might take a while to get over the penis incident. Let's just say parents evening is going to be fun (dad didn't know son had left call going while he went to the loo). Had a couple of inappropriate pictures put in the chat too. I'm pretty unshockable so just started discussing the physical difficulties of the picture. Not happened since. And everything is recorded. But it is exhausting as mostly talk to a silent screen.

I do believe face to face time is really important, both student to teacher and student to student. I can only really speak for secondary students but they just are not (for the most part) like uni students, able to just get on with work without any teacher input. Even university students have the odd tutorial.

I also think that expecting teachers to just behave as if teaching in lockdown is just normal school, but from home, is crazy. There are many additional pressures on them and they have no in-house support.

There will always be disadvantaged kids but failing 95% of children because 5% do not have access to the internet or a device is not the optimal solution.

Equally, the catch all excuse of ‘safeguarding’ is lazy and weak. Schools need to do the best they can and parents need to do their part, too, educating their children about online safety and, ideally, at least popping their head around the door and making sure everything is OK.

I think the solution requires imagination and a bit of bravery, especially at Senior levels.

The timetable needs to be changed and much reduced, to reduce the pressure on not only teachers but pupils. Zoom is far more intense than a classroom and pupils cannot focus all day on it.

There also need to be breaks between lessons for recovery and technology issues. Heads and SLT’s need to allow teacher’s flexibility to allow them to deliver lessons the way they want to and not stick to crap like whole school marking policies or particular lesson formats or resources.

Also all school settings will be different. Some schools could elect for a couple of 30 minute slots per day, others would be more like the normal timetable.

This is not rocket science but blaming teachers for implementing unimaginative and lazy strategies from heads and SLTs Is pointless. Most are working hard to deliver what they have been asked to.

I’m sure that will happen but schools have only been closed to pupils for six weeks so far, so still learning. That is not enough time for anyone to be doing something effectively that is completely different. Have you seen how much criticism teachers have come in for already? Plus yes I do think a zoom lesson would be worse than what is being provided at the moment and certainly with little children would require no less parental input .

But anyway , schools will not be able to provide this and teach the pupils come June anyway

The rest of us in our jobs haven't had a national roll out of best practice and training. We have worked out what we can do and done it and learned from those who got off the ground quicker and learned from experience in the first few weeks. It feels like my kids school (not all schools, our school) are not looking for what they can do and not willing to learn from others, they're only looking at the difficulties.

I do think there is a lot of truth in this. Almost every sector has had to make changes to working more remotely. Some had a head start because they already did a lot remotely. Others have changed ways of working significantly. Others haven't.

Now replace "sector" with "school" and it's still completely true (schools already do remote learning in the form of homework). Some schools are providing incredible online or remote learning. Some are providing little to nothing. Some, like mine, are somewhere in the middle, trying to provide a little of all things to all people.

I wonder if the difference that annoys some people is that companies that haven't adapted to remote working well may well go bust, while schools that haven't will carry on without any consequence.

I'm not totally sure this makes sense or is accurate - I'll admit I've only ever worked for the public sector! But friends who work in the private sector have had very mixed experiences of lockdown - some have been furloughed as they can't WFH or because their company has less work, others are working similar to usual, and some are working much harder than ever.

I don't think Zoom will suit all schools but there is a lot of hysteria around it. A little bit of tech literacy and having some precautions makes it quite safe to use.
That!
no, waiting rooms snd regular password changes won’t stop every hacker. same as a fence around school won’t stop a terrorist. but the likelihood is tiny - plenty of easier targets around.

In six weeks schools have opened for key workers children and vulnerable children, delivered school meals, delivered resources, Changed and carried out new safeguarding procedures, cared for the well-being of pupils and staff, provided online learning that yes could be improved but I know ours is improving every week. They have had to think completely differently and this week has been spend trying to work out a safe plan to re open schools that means new plans daily as the government change their advice. As well as creating a plan to meet the impossible with staffing numbers and building designs, they are also trying to reassure parents and staff. They have had to completely adapt but most of what they have adapted is perhaps invisible to a lot of parents.

I am a private tutor so self employed and with an interest in maintaining my income.
I have started to do some teaching ( 1-1) via zoom, ms teams and i one case WhatsApp video call.
I have found it extremely difficult even 1 to 1. With an average size class of 30 or more
I think it would become so tricky that the learning experience would be less successful than asking to watch video/explanation/ or read notes etc, then try questions and email teacher with queries. That is for secondary.
For primary it is even harder as younger children will not be able to focus as well. I'd imaging Tryng to teach 30 children phonics via zoom or hangout or whatever would be worse than hearing cats. That's before you add in screen freezes, sound glitches and the like. I can't see a way round providing worksheets/ activities and asking parents to actually teach/ supervise here.
Private schools can manage better because their classes are so much smaller and homes are wealthier so that pretty much every student can have a dedicated laptop and sufficient broadband width etc.

Whilst most parents with children in state schools will care enough to make sure the children are supervised as much as possible and are behaving well, there will be the small proportion that won't and also a higher proportion of students with behaviour problems than in an independent school.

@LaurieMarlow I agree with every word of your post. No solutions just endless excuses, no creative thinking being employed to test out different things. No one solution will be perfect, obviously but sometimes you need to come up with an idea, discuss it (with explicit limits on how long the discussions go on for), try it, evaluate it, tweak it and try again. There people like this in healthcare too, put up endless obstacles so nothing ever gets moved forward.

DS did a kickboxing grading today via zoom and is now having a piano lesson via zoom! He's working towards grade 1 and the teacher has been excellent. DD dance school is keeping things going too. It is doable and just requires some hard work and creativity.

Safeguarding isn't just about not letting strangers into the zoom meeting ( which I agree can be managed via waiting rooms) but because teachers can be videoed or recorded and images and voices used in everything from daft memes to pornography. Some students will do things like this.

I teach in a private school and we’re doing live Teams lessons for all classes. School has said no to Zoom as there’s been a few incidents of hacking.

We upskilked our tech skills in the weeks before lockdown. We knew it was coming. Having said that I’ve been given an iPad and Apple Pencil and all pupils have iPads or laptops so we’re in a very fortunate position.

Dance schools and music lessons are not dealing with 30+ students all at once and are self selecting for they types of families where parents are likely to have high expectations of behaviour.
I also think it is probably easier to teach subjects based on physical movement via things like zoom, compared with a concept in maths/ science.
I don't have a tablet or stylus so at times I'm resorting to holding a whiteboard up to a camera and writing on it at the same time. For this reason I'm making much more use of prerecorded videos ( Corbett maths and YouTube etc) to explain a concept as it is actually much clearer for a first explanation when teaching online. I would never do this teaching face to face.

I seem to have been ignored. Maybe because I've told you this is being done in mine, and many other schools. However, I am not sure how many members of staff you have in a corporate setting who think mooning the screen is funny, but I have a few students. And do your colleagues make memes or porno clips using your face and voice ? Do you understand why some teachers are reluctant ? I do it as I don't care and record everything.
I'm sure you'll ignore me again as this doesn't fit the 'teachers are lazy bastards who are all drinking gin and don't like kids'.
Currently working out how to break up a fight from 2m away. They won't let me have a cattle prod.

@Feelingdeprived I am so jealous. I have a manky old laptop.

If your school is providing a "watch this bitesize/ Corbett maths/ mathswatch video and try these questions. Then on Thursday from 9:00am to 10:00am teacher is available on some kind of messaging platform to answer queries and/or can be emailed by students, they are probably giving a BETTER learning experience than doing a zoom lesson for 30+ students at a time.

I would love to do online video lessons however our schools explicitly state we cannot. It is to protect students and the teacher.
We are able to do screen cast to help support teaching which help to a degree. My school refuse to give us access to the proper technology to allow us to so without the laborious editing and shifting to upload it. So many teacher have paid for it themselves.

RIGHT !

ds is taught solely (since last September) by an online school. (my online schooling.....google it). They use zoom. BUT its not the "free" zoom app. The school have paid for and set up the meetings in as secure as poss way! But thats taken a IT team plus the teachers on board being trained etc etc etc. It costs££££ ( we pay as parents for this). Yes its brilliant, teaching is great, etc etc. But this scholl has been set up to teach soley this way, the teachers KNOW and plan for this. So yes it really does work.

"why not maimstream" folk bleat......

1. schools cannot afford ££££ for the secure zoom , IT people etc to put in place. Plus training each teacher (some are more IT savvy than others).
2. safeguarding (see 1 about free zoom being not secure as zoom pro I think its called where you pay for it).
3. some teachers are scared of tech. remember many were trained a long time ago/ teacher training is all about face to face. They just don`t know how to do it. DS teachers are trained/expected to be tech savvy and so it works. Its part of the job. 4)kids lack of accsess to tech. MANY surprisingly ONLY have their phone . thats it. no laptop, no printer, nothing. or tech too old too use zoom/ teams etc. so what happens to them???

5)parents dont know how to use tech. eg if they do need to scan work and share files. some would look at you blankly! so then youve got up to 1000 (average school) parents to train up, IF they bother!

the private schools are using zoom (like online school), but they have parents with the tech in place. ££££ to do it.

Teachers also need better tech to do it properly. Some kind of tablet/ iPad plus stylus at the very least. And some good tech support too.

And ds school have a limit on class size . its capped at 20. mainstream 30 is average. most of his class till corona hit were between 4- 15.

Corona`s meant intakes gone up since Easter (which is fine, quality is still excellent).

@EducatingArti 😂😂😂

yes a good point. the teacher needs decent tech as well to even deliver a class. Most schools don`t provide laptops. dh is a secondary teacher. the providing of a laptop was last year 2010 aprox.

all of ds teachers use laptops not ipad/tablet tbh.

online school all classes are recorded as standard and teachers know this, part of the job so to speak. this is so if a student misses a class they can watch it later or use it to revise /look up for homework (even at an online school they get that lol). But the teachers sign up for all this as part of the job. And if like a pp says abouts mooning a student did that here, they`d be chucked out the room lol!