Secondary Schools providing Lesson Videos

[jacobibatoli]

Is there any reason why are the secondary schools cannot provide lesson videos?
The schools in the US are doing this
universities are doing this

In my case I am not doing them because I am the sole deliverer of my subject to 1700 students.
Oh yeah and have a toddler to look after and a teenager to shout at to do his work and a husband who earns 5 times as much as me and genuinely cannot be disturbed when he is trying to work.
My students need nurturing, to know that they are ok not the stress of trying to use the only IT kit in the house thus depriving other family members. Or showing up that they live in very poor surroundings (poverty or badly maintained).
I am setting work that they can do when they can and am spending far more time responding to their emails when they are struggling mentally and emotionally and need immediate reassurance; I can do these emails on my phone whilst dealing with my kids and cannot if forced to do live lessons.

And better to teach 2/3 of the class than nobody.

This means simply allowing 1/3 of the class to fall behind and that is an completely at odds with how most teachers work. Every child matters. Better to spend the time ensuring all students are learning than writing off 1/3 in order to focus on the 2/3. And no, teachers can’t feasibly provide decent remote learning for the 1/3 at the same time as doing video lessons with the 2/3.

This is about the 100th thread in this topic. The reason many schools will not and cannot provide them has been discussed to death at this point.

You have obvious issues such as safeguarding (recording/editing footage, inappropriate behaviour during the live feed, teachers children interrupting, parents/siblings in the back ground wearing, is the child also visible and what are they wearing/what room are they in, are they being supervised by a parent, parents/siblings fighting in the background), access to strong internet connect for both teacher and all pupils (as it's unfair on pupils who may not be able to access, and many are finding their internet speeds are tanking due to so many people at home using internet), you also have the issue of access to materials, if you have multiple children and one laptop/computer/tablet then who gets priority, or even if parents require it for work in the day. If they do video lessons theres a expectation of children to attend and it may be upsetting for those who dont, and no additional work would be provided due to the expectation of them being present. It therefore increases the affluent/poverty divide, and could potentially increase bullying if kids start to notice who is never in lesson because there parents cant afford internet or a personal device for child.
Secondly you have a huge issue of attention span. University students (adults who chose to attend their courses) are struggling to sit through a hour long lecture of being talked to through a screen, therefore it would be incredibly difficult for a child unless you have a very rare teacher who is either A)techsavvy B)incredibly engaging. Most teachers have no experience of online teaching and present a lesson online through either video presentation or video feed of themselves is very very different method of teaching to classroom and requires a completely different method and presentation to be interesting and engaging.

I'm a senior school teacher in a private school. We are doing video lessons but it doesn't have to be for every lesson; we are expected to use our professional judgement. Yes there are certainly safeguarding issues.
It is possible to do video lessons to most kids in my school because pretty much all.of our pupils have access to devices; often multiple devices in each household so siblings can also engage in their lessons at the same time. However, this is not the case in many UK state schools and it would therefore be impossible to conduct video lessons where only perhaps a small proportion of the class could attend. Teachers also need access to technology and training in order to conduct video lessons, remember! My school is lending staff iPads and laptops if they do not have their own- but again, not every school can afford to do this...

My school is lending staff iPads and laptops if they do not have their own- but again, not every school can afford to do this...

If the piece of equipment is needed, it should be provided by the school. Ridiculous to expect staff to buy their own ipads!

My school is lending staff iPads and laptops if they do not have their own

I had to donate our school's 6 iPads and 10 spare (ancient!) laptops to the hub school so the pupils there could use them.

It's important to remember that geological location and catch areas will have a huge impact on whether schools can do live lessons as it will impact A)how likely students/teachers are to have technology at home - more affluent areas I imagine are more likely to use online lessons as most children will have a device in comparison to areas with very high numbers of FSM and poverty where pupils are a lot less likely to have personal devices and likely share - if they have access to internet or a device at home at all.

Likewise it will be less likely in rural areas simply because of internet connect, not only for the pupils but for the teachers. Moorland, rural areas, more often then not have poor and weak connections which simply dosent work for any form of active streaming, or even uploading as it will take f o r e v e r . I grew up in rural (and not so rural) wales, so I know from experience, and have lived in moorlands/more rural areas of england which have also experienced slow internet. Absolute nightmare when both I and DH need a strong fast internet connection to get any work done in a reasonable time frame!

If the piece of equipment is needed, it should be provided by the school. Ridiculous to expect staff to buy their own ipads!

School budgets are stretched so thin that not all schools can afford to provide staff with laptops capable of streaming video, or any devices at all. It's really shit, but I personally dont feel individual schools are to blame. In a ideal world they would have provided all teachers and students with internet/device, but budgets dont extend that far to even have technology to use within the school itself.

I do wonder if there will be a big divide between the state schools that offered this and schools that didn't that another poster mentioned. How do these schools check /mark that any work had been done without pupils taking photos and uploading?

The videos in Microsoft teams I mentioned are for viewing but not download so I can see in a more rural areas that could maybe be a problem if internet asked was an issue. They also do speak in language lessons.

There are no longer any textbooks (they have access to sites with e books now but didn't before this really) so the videos are quite important.

I would be interested how schools not teaching online are managing more practical subjects. Dd has started gcse course in drama so they have been watching scenes of plays on national theatre website (given a login in) then writing about what they have seen and discussing (live text chat).

The Sutton Trust has said that there is a difference between private (57%) and state (21%) secondaries offering online (includes pre-recorded) lessons to their pupils.

In the state system, that leaves 79% doing a range of activities - from almost nothing to being set work that needs to be "turned in" (a google classroom phrase). In my experience at least, nothing is being corrected though by the teacher.

Just to recommend (again) that if you can afford it you get your children some online lessons over this period. My dd (age 15) has had no work from the school at all. But she's doing Skype lessons in her modern languages, with native speakers. It's a bit of a lifeline. Gives her adults outside the family to talk to, homework to do before the next lesson, inspires her to do more work on her own, etc. And she'll be well ahead in those subjects when/if she finally goes back to school, allowing her to spend more time on the other subjects. Just one lesson a week per language works well.

I am teaching video lessons. Mostly live on Teams. I’ve also recorded some narrated PowerPoints. I work in a state school. A lot of our students are disadvantaged and the school has spent a huge amount of money on laptops and WiFi dongles that we are distributing to those who need them. Our budget will no doubt be shot to pieces and our deficit will be huge by the end of this, but there was just no way we were going to sit back and let them fall behind, knowing that their peers in private schools would be surging ahead. Our year 10 and year 12 students will be in direct competition for GCSE and A Level grades with those privately educated kids next year. Not all teachers are doing videos for all classes, but they are all live online and interacting with their classes during lessons. At A Level video lessons are quickly becoming the norm though.

I honestly don't see the point in pre-recorded lessons. It's going to be very time consuming for the teachers to produce and I don't see how it's more useful than just watching a generic video on the internet or reading the textbook. What children actually need is the interaction with their teacher when they get stuck. My DC's school have produced a few videos but what is actually useful is that a teacher is available during the one hour lesson on google meet so the kids can go online and ask questions (even basic questions like I can't find the sheet I'm meant to be using).

I disagree thst there's no point in pre-record lessons. Yes it's obviously great if the teacher can be online to interact (I had a brilliant video sixth form lesson today for instance) but that can't always be the case (I and a number of other teachers I know have one year olds or toddlers at home and it's just impossible to be online through every single lesson!). I sometimes make up for it with a pre recorded lesson... for instance, I might model some annotation for them, talking the pupils through it and using the visualiser. It's true that they won't be able to ask me questions for instant answers. But it's still better than nothing as they can see the actual process, and I can narrate my thought process and explain why I'm doing what I'm doing, in a way that is much more difficult by writing up in a wordy document! My husband teaches science in a private school and is in the same boat. He has to explain complex theories to his pupils upto A Level and it he can't be online he will design a PowerPoint and do an audio/video recording. His pupils are finding this much easier to understand than just reading the textbook, although obviously they have that as well.

Of course, as I said, we are only able to do this because a) we have the technology st home (some we own, some borrowed from our schools) and b) because as it's a private school so most of our pupils have access to personal devices and the school is lending iPads and laptops etc out to staff (and I presume pupils?) who don't have their own. It must be very very difficult in many other schools.

I'd love to do it. I teach in 2 state schools. Sadly our internet at home is so crap that I can't. A year team meeting today was so broken up that I could only hear one word in 3. How the hell am I meant to teach live like that?

Perhaps if this "amazing" and "wonderful" government sorted out the woeful internet that some of us are subject to, I might consider it. Until then, tough.

Our unions have given advice not to give live online lessons.

@surreygirl1987

Unless you're teaching anything that's not on syllabus though you'll just be giving information that's available elsewhere anyway though. Most students can't concentrate on a video and would rather a reference sheet they can refer back to without trauling through a video.

I very much disagree with that, but never mind. We are all going to have our different opinions and we can each only do what we know what works well for our students. It is working great for me and my students so we'll happily stick with it! I think it depends, like anything, on how you do it too. Any teaching approach needs pedagogical underpinning and you can do pretty much any teaching method well or badly!

Remember that for each of you teachers in a state school doing online classes or pre
-recorded sessions, there are another 4 who are not. If you're in private school, another one isn't. That's a huge difference.

We all must work around the constraints we face while working from home, whether that's dodgy internet, lively toddlers or union bans.

I'm a tutor and so at the moment I'm helping (mainly my Y10 and Y12s) with the work set by schools. Definitely the most important factor for my students is whether they can get some communication with their teacher (even if just by email). I think the next best is notes produced by the teacher. A video can be somewhat useful for practical things (I teach science and maths - so it's totally useless for maths where it's much more helpful to have notes, but can be occasionally helpful for practical elements in science. It doesn't have to be produced by the teacher necessarily but there seem to be fewer generic videos on A-level topics online so the teacher tends to be making videos themselves).

The kids who are having the most difficulty are the ones who have been set work on new topics (one A-level class for some unknown reason has been set a bunch of questions, some of which aren't even on syllabus on a whole host of new topics all in one go) without any specific reference material to help them understand the underlying principles. It's definitely much more helpful for them to have a set up where they read/watch this then attempt questions.

‘Work around union bans’? No, the union is there to protect its members, if you don’t feel you want or need that protection and you work to undermine your colleagues then you should leave the union and sort out your own safeguarding measures.