Aberdeenshire school shares successes of remote learning 

Lockdown has taken schools, teachers and students through an array of challenges. However, despite these hurdles, teachers have been able to realise some lasting benefits of remote learning. As principal teacher for technology at Mintlaw Academy, Aberdeenshire, I and my team are delighted to be able to share the positive outcomes that we have identified which have helped to optimise students’ learning throughout the pandemic.

All our staff have found video resources to be particularly effective during lockdown. We have used the video learning resource platform ClickView over the past four years across all areas of the curriculum; it has also proven to be a perfect teaching resource during lockdown.

All schools across Scotland can now benefit from the power of video learning with the recorded educator lesson videos through WestOS, part of the National eLearning Offer (NeLO). ClickView was selected to host and stream the prerecorded content and then agreed with the National eLearning Partnership to support all schools in Scotland by providing full access to ClickView until the Easter break.

The combination of ClickView and WestOS videos has saved us so much time; and will continue to do so after we return to the classroom.

We have seen vast benefits particularly in the sciences; video-based learning content is ideally suited to the way today’s students prefer to absorb information.

In most science lessons, students are engaged in the classroom because of the hands-on learning activities; without them, we are limited to theory-based learning. As you can imagine, we started losing a lot of students’ interest.

FLIPPED LEARNING

Recognising that our return to school after the first lockdown wasn’t going to be the end of remote learning, our teachers made best use of the time in school with the practical equipment to hand, to record videos of lessons for a “flipped learning”approach.

All the students now come to the remote learning classes having already seen the video-based lesson and can ask questions and contribute to the follow-up remote learning activity, informed and engaged. This positive mental attitude is certainly benefiting many students and is something we’ll continue to offer.

LIBRARY OF LEARNING

All the ClickView videos and its broadcast TV provision, as well the teacher generated videos, are stored as a library of learning content with assessment questions built-in, all mapped to the curriculum. When pupils log into ClickView they can go straight to their curriculum area to find age-appropriate learning content. This is also going to be a highly valuable resource to narrow the attainment gap, and for those students who may have missed lessons or during revision time. As each learning video is assigned interactive questions it has been easy for our teachers to look more analytically at students’ progress.

MENTAL HEALTH

The impact of the pandemic on students’ mental health is something that we should be mindful of at all times. Clinical psychologist and founder of Innovating Minds, Dr Asha Patel, worked in conjunction with ClickView on a range of wellbeing titles to help students to navigate what has been a difficult time.

Remote learning has been a tough journey but at Mintlaw we all feel that it has helped us to create an even more robust and inclusive learning environment for now and the future.