OUT OF THE CLASSROOM Of course, plenty of schools were already using digital platforms for teaching before the pandemic hit. Jenny Hinton is digital lead at Parkdale Primary School in Nottingham, part of the Transform Trust, where iPad apps and online platform Showbie have been trialled for year 5 students since 2019. When lockdowns threatened school closures, logins were quickly set up for students in other grades, and Zoom calls and YouTube videos
were used to train parents and teachers alike, speeding up existing plans to shift into digital learning. “It was important for everyone to feel supported on the journey,’’ Hinton says. “We didn’t want technology to be a barrier to high engagement and continuation of learning.” As with Brookham, Parkdale realised that its plans needed to evolve with students, with trial and error showing that live classes were helpful for checking in with children and structuring the day, but
asynchronous, pre-recorded lessons were often more useful – and more engaging than listening to a teacher drone on via a video call. Instead, live, virtual interactions were used for wellbeing check-ins and to work collaboratively, with apps and quizzes further checking progress. “We wanted to make sure the children could be independent in accessing learning and not reliant on parents providing support,” she says. The great eLearning experiment revealed that online and video can
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