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Benefits Of Technology In The Classroom

The use of technology in the classroom is helpful because it develops critical thinking in students and prepares them for future challenges.

Technology can save much time for students because technical devices such as Tablets, Computers, Laptops and Mobile Devices work faster than traditional methods.

Today the internet has become global and by using it students can be more engaged by joining classes virtually.

Teachers can upload classes into different remote learning applications such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams for students and students can access it anytime and anywhere in the world.

Teachers can use it to teach concepts like they usually would, or to allow students to collaborate and share ideas. This is a good way to keep students interested and involved in class work.

Through technology, it is also easy for parents to keep track of their child’s performance by receiving messages and updates from school through the school’s mobile app.

We believe technology used in teaching is great for students and that it will also lead to a more interactive classroom.

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4 BENEFITS OF THE ICLASS SCHOOL APP

Transform Your School’s Parental Communication With The iClass App!

Below are some of the main reasons we believe the iClass App is essential in day to day school life.

1.  Mobile App for Parents

The iClass App will vastly improve your school’s parental communication. Eliminate SMS costs, reduce printing and engage parents with latest school news, events and free messaging. The iClass platform offers a fully integrated mobile app for parents. There is zero duplication of work and parents can be messaged using free push messaging at any time.

2. Create Forms

Easily create and publish forms for a wide range of uses. Parents can easily complete as they can be pushed out seamlessly via the mobile app and tracked on the Dashboard.

3. Manage Events

Keep on top of events, request student registration and offer payment options with our event management module. Teachers can also micro manage their own events tracking registrations etc.

4. Stay Connected

Create Forms for Consent and Surveys, Digital Permission Slips and School News Publishing to keep parents informed in real time.

In these Covid times our iClass App will provide an invaluable communication tool to drive parental engagement. The app alone provides; – Free messaging, Send files to parents, Absentee notes, News, Event, Permission Slips, Forms and more

For more information or to request a demonstration please contact us.

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Top 3 Microsoft Teams Teaching Tips

kid looks at a computer

Microsoft Teams is just one of the many online teaching platforms available to help remote learning a whole lot easier.

Not only can teachers use it to recreate the traditional classroom setup with the use of live video lessons, but they can also use it to store documents, share resources, streamline their teaching workflow and be ore interactive with their students.

MICROSOFT TEAMS TEACHING BENEFITS

1. Record Classes To Be Watched Again Later

One major feature of Teams is the ability to record classes during live video meetings and share them around later. This is hugely important as it allows students who may have been absent to catch up, or for present students to go back to particular aspects of the lesson they may wish to review and revise.

2. Take Advantage Of Microsoft Whiteboard

Microsoft Whiteboard is a freeform digital canvas that easily replicates the blackboard or whiteboard you would use in the classroom. Keep it free-style or transform work into professional looking charts and shapes. Whiteboard works with pen, touch and keyboard.

Teachers can use it to teach concepts like they usually would, or to allow students to collaborate and share ideas. This is a good way to keep students interested and involved in class work.

3. Take Advantage Of App Integrations

Microsoft Teams integrates seamlessly with other apps allowing teachers to make Class diverse and fun. This is where a large portion of Teams’ creativity comes from, as it really opens up doors in terms of delivering content to students, structuring lessons and setting tasks.

Here are two apps we believe are the most popular within the Teams’ environment.

KAHOOT!

Adding a live game of Kahoot! to your Class is a great way to help students feel more connected and build a strong team spirit.

It’s interactive and invites the fun into learning.

QUIZLET

Quizlet is a popular revision tool for students, with millions of study sets already created by teachers and students covering thousands of popular topics. All of the Quizlet activities, such as Flashcards, Learn, Write, Spell and the Match and Gravity games will run from inside Teams.

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G Suite for Education – What You Need to Know

Some schools and institutions can get access to G Suite for Education free of charge. This article contains everything you need to know about G Suite for education. 

What is G Suite for Education?

G Suite for education is a Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals – a free suite of easy-to-use tools that offer a flexible and secure foundation for learning, collaboration, and communication.  

The G Suite for Education Standard Plan is entirely free. You gain access to standard productivity tools like;

Google Docs. This is a collaborative document tool, or rather a simplified Microsoft Word with advanced collaboration features.

Google Sheets. These are spreadsheets that several users can use simultaneously. Though Google Sheets are not more powerful than Excel, they are more user-friendly.

Google Slides. Basically, these are collaborative presentation tools. 

Google Forms. You can use them to design forms, share, and automatically record the results in Google sheets. 

These four tools are already popular in the business and non-profit world. Furthermore, they are browser-based and support several devices. 

Does my school qualify?

To qualify for Google Workspace for Education, K-12 and higher institutions must be government-recognized, formally-accredited institutions offering nationally and internationally-approved learning at primary, secondary, or third level. For a complete list of requirements, visit Qualifications for Google Workspace for Education. 

The sign-up process

After you submit your request and verify your domain, Google will review your eligibility; approval requests are generally resolved within two weeks. 

What next after approval?

After getting your approval for Google Workspace for Education, you can add users to your domain, set up applications, and access advanced features like mail migration. 

Take advantage of G Suite for Education today to enhance education with free and easy-to-use learning tools. 

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Video Classroom Options for Schools

Video Classroom Options for Schools 

The conventional teaching method alone cannot satisfy all the needs of learners of different age groups. Modern schools need a more flexible and effective technique to complement the traditional teaching method. 

Among the numerous options available, video classrooms have gained significant popularity as they allow students to learn without time and area restrictions. Below are five video classroom options you can use.  

Schoology 

Schoology Learning has offered instructional models for more than a decade, including 100% online courses and blended learning environments. This video classroom option has continued to ensure that all learners have access to the same quality of teaching and learning, irrespective of their social status, special learning needs, or any other factor.

Zoom

Zoom brings students and teachers together to get things done in a frictionless and secure video environment. It offers a suitable communication medium that supports video meetings, voice, webinars, and chat across multiple devices and spaces.  

Blackboard Collaborate 

Blackboard Collaborate is one video classroom option designed specifically for schools that want to deliver a more engaging, personalized, and flexible learning environment for learners. This platform extends beyond traditional web conferencing to achieve the wide-ranging and varied learning needs of modern tutors and students. 

Cisco WebEx Meetings

Learners can meet, connect, and collaborate easily, securely, and reliably on Cisco WebEx Meetings. This video classroom option offers integrated audio, video, and content sharing services on any device. Besides, smart features, like WebEx Assistant and People Insights, bring AI to automate video classrooms and enhance student-teacher relationships. 

Adobe Connect

Adobe Connect brings the real power of virtual to video classrooms. Schools can take advantage of its versatile age to create and conduct stellar video conferences for different grades. Using Adobe Connect can make teaching extraordinary and securely extend your reach far and beyond the ordinary.  

From any corner of the world, you are a click away from your students learning and interacting with their teachers. The above video classroom options offer the opportunity to keep your students focused and engaged with the best quality and real-time virtual classes. 

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5 Tips for Google Classroom

Google Classroom facilitates easy management of student work – announcing, assigning, gathering, and providing feedback. It has saved many tutors’ hours of work. 

Without a steady workflow and a practical strategy, managing digital learning can be burdensome. Google Classroom makes learning more effective only when teachers understand how a digital classroom works and how to use it to the advantage of both learners and teachers. 

Here are 5 tips for Google Classroom to boost your efficiency. 

Use topics to group assignments 

One of the first things you should do to boost your Google Classroom’s efficiency is determining how you want your students to see assignments in the classroom tab. Click “Classwork” to get topics of your class on the left-hand side. Then click “+create” and select “Topic” to set your topics. 

Enable real-time feedback for presentations

Copy and paste evaluation templates into all private comments in preparations for presentations. Remember to use general evaluation spaces, success criteria, star and wish emojis, and others with slots for every learner’s feedback. This will give learners accurate and informative feedback in real-time – as they do their presentations.   

Link multi-step activities in one assignment 

For younger grade learners, having several assignments posted daily is overwhelming to them and their “busy” parents. To avoid this, create a landing page containing all the activities for a particular subject that day. 
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4 Edtech Trends Part 2

kid looks at a computer

Educational technologies (Edtech) are transforming the classroom and the learning experience for students all over the world.

As more and more schools are implementing Edtech into their learning plans, we though it would be a good idea to take another look at the biggest Edtech trends educators should know about in 2019.

Don’t forget to read part one of this blog for a rundown on Offline Learning and Immersive Learning, two forward-thinking solutions set to take education by storm.

3. 5G

5G mobile networks will offer the fastest and most secure internet connection available and will innovate many areas of life, including how we learn.

5G connectivity supports instant streaming and will positively impact virtual reality and augmented reality technologies by enabling tech companies to manufacture self-contained headsets that simply need an internet connect to work.

This in turn will lower prices and lead to commodification of VR and AR headsets to the benefit of schools everywhere.

4. Gamification

We’ve talked about gamification before and how it can help improve student engagement and interaction by making learning fun for everyone.

Gamification technologies, such as the popular learning language app DuoLingo, use game techniques and rules to improve engagement and knowledge retention to great success and can greatly help teachers in the classroom.

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4 Edtech Trends Part 1

Educational technologies (Edtech) are transforming the classroom and the learning experience for students all over the world.

As more and more schools are implementing Edtech into their learning plans, we though it would be a good idea to take another look at the biggest Edtech trends educators should know about in 2019.

1. Offline learning

Not all schools have access to the internet, which is why so many Edtech companies are now exploring offline learning options for schools.

Offline learning options leverage the power of information technology to provide comprehensive classroom solutions that help in the areas of individual and collaborative learning and knowledge retention among others.

Offline learning solutions ensure every student has access to the very best learning materials, regardless of where they’re located.

2. Immersive learning

Immersive learning relies on virtual reality and augment reality technologies to provide students with incredible learning experiences they’ll never forget.

Immersive learning is suitable for just about every area of education, from recreating historical events to teaching students using interactive lessons that emphasize knowledge retention through visualization.

 

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Edtech Trends to Watch Out for in 2019

High school website in Dublin

While educational technology enjoyed a stellar year of development and implementation in 2018, it’s really going to take off in 2019.

We’ve examined the most popular forms of edtech from 2018 to determine what edtech trends are going to take centre stage in the coming months.

The biggest and brightest edtech trend set for widescale adoption in 2019 is without a doubt experiential learning.

Put simply, experiential learning is a form of teaching that engages with the learner through a variety of experiences such as hands-on learning, collaboration, experimenting and analysing.

Edtech that supports experiential learning includes virtual reality and augmented reality, virtual labs, gamification and online platforms, so teachers have a wealth of edtech products to choose from when introducing this form of learning to students.

Another edtech trend set to take the educational world by storm is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to provide more personalised learning.

AI is used in a multitude of fields and is especially suited to education, thanks to the use AI in conjunction with data analytics to develop personalised learning experiences that cater to the specific needs of students.

For instance, AI can streamline grading and assessments, and will pick up on particular areas students are finding difficult and suggest revised learning topics.

The above are just two of the numerous edtech trends that are likely to see widespread adoption in 2019, but we believe both experiential learning and personalised learning by way of AI will have the biggest impact on students and teachers alike.

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What to Ask When Buying Edtech Products

Learning

When it comes to buying edtech products for the classroom, most educators are understandably hesitant to spend big money on software and devices without knowing exactly how they’ll improve the learning experience.

Thankfully, a recent article aimed at edtech companies reveals the questions teachers and administrators should ask before investing in any edtech product.

“5 Questions Teachers Will Ask About Your Edtech Product” from The Tech Advocate offers plenty of good advice to not only edtech companies but also their prospective clients, namely educators.

It may seem obvious, but the first question you should ask is if the product will be useful to you or your students.

As the article points out, there’s a wealth of edtech products out there and teachers need to know if the product they buy is going to solve a specific classroom issue.

It’s always a good idea to ask for evidence that the product works, such as research studies or validation, and make sure to enquire about the products success rate in other classrooms.

Edtech products can vary greatly in terms of ease-of-use, so remember to find out what’s required to implement the product into your classroom, and if training is required to use the product.

Finally, ask about support for the product and what kind of customer service is available should you run into issues.

Book a live demo

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