Penistone Grammar were looking into developing a remote learning strategy before Covid-19 closures were announced, so Strategic IT Lead, Michael O'Brien had already been investigating their options...

Guidance

They prepared guidance on 'what good looks like' for their remote learning. The Headteacher outlined that for years 10-13, every hour of lesson time, teachers should use Frog to set assignments and include:

• Instructions
• The activity or task
• Assessment

Method

With activities and assessments already being used within their Frog Platform, Michael had been looking at ways in which teachers could talk through prepared material. Having rejected live video conferencing because of technical and organisational challenges, he settled on a little known feature of PowerPoint.

Recording

MS PowerPoint includes a feature which allows voice recording with a presentation. Once saved, it creates a small video file which can then be uploaded as a resource attached to a Frog Assignment.

Microsoft PowerPoint Recording a Slide Show

After creating your PowerPoint assignment - use the 'Record Slide Show' functionality.

Record your voice-over in PowerPoint.

Export your PowerPoint as a video.

There has been a glut of free content available online recently, and although this can support home learning for our students, as a teacher I was overwhelmed by it coming at me in many different forms (GDPR seemingly out of the window) and could only imagine how parents and pupils must be feeling. Just because content is free, billed as 'educational' and promoted for home learning use, did not mean it was safe.

Increasingly concerned for pupils and their families, I took on a mammoth task to create a 'Home Learning Links' site. This is an ever-evolving compilation of links that I have visited and vetted (to some degree). As well as links, the site includes Online Safety advice provided by approved organisations such as CEOP, Childline and UK Safer Internet Centre.

With this resource created, I was keen to share it with our Penrith Hub (network of schools), so we could collaborate and share resources to keep the site maintained. 

I am happy to open this up as a resource for other schools to use, so many more pupils can benefit from it. I only ask that North Lakes School and Frog could be credited wherever it is shared.

Thanks!

Martyn Soulsby

Leadership Team & DPO

With everyone working remotely, schools have asked us how they can find out who is logging into Frog. Here's how...

Watch our Analytics Application guide for FrogLearn to find out how to track user activity. There's lot of graphical data you can access to monitor trends.

• To find who is logging in by individual, year groups and username take a look at the VISITOR LOG FrogCode widget. You can add this to any site and find out who is logging in!
  
  
• The Analytics Application provides you with overall trends and you can combine this with student data to see more. An Excel template has been provided with instructions for how this can be achieved.
  
  
  

With coursework assessment still ongoing and the usual methods of feedback and collection in person no longer possible, some schools have been looking for an alternative way to collate this...

Whilst waiting for official advice from the exam boards, Mulberry School for Girls found their solution using the Assignment and File Drop facility to collect work from students.

Students

Receive the coursework and submission dates in their assignment menu so they can organise their work effectively.

Teachers

All work is collected through the Assignments feature and teachers can use the 'Download Files' option to download all coursework as a single Zip File. Individual student folders keep everything in one place, ready to send to the examining body.

Many of our schools have been asking for a guide to Frog Messaging that can be shared with parents. For those new to Messaging, this is a feature we launched earlier this year that enables schools to communicate a message which parents can access in two different ways, via a push notification on their mobile device (using the MyFrog App) or by logging into Frog on a web browser. 

MyFrog App (requires a parent to download to their device)

Messages will appear on parent mobile device as a push notification.

Frog Browser

Parent logs into Frog using a web browser and messages will be indicated by an icon at the top right of their screen. 

As clear and regular communication is critical at the moment, we have provided a guide which you can share with parents to help them pick up school messages.

Frog Messaging - A simple guide for parents

You've told us that visibility is key when both students and teachers are working remotely, so here are some guides to help you!

Assignment Monitor

This application, which you can find in FrogDrive > Applications allows you to see which departments are setting work, week by week.  Assignment Monitor also lets you search for individual students, see all their work set and the marks they received.  

Learn more about Assignment Monitor

Reporting

The Reporting app is a useful tool when preparing for meetings. Heads of department can see which members of staff are setting work and be able to report on class hand-in rates.  You can run reports on students too, seeing counts for work set across multiple subjects and how much they are handing-in.

Watch this guide for more about Reporting

The British School of Paris is a 1:1 iPad school, although lots of work was already delivered through Frog, they needed to think differently.

Keith Pearey, Deputy Head, created a new section on their Frog platform, with a site for each year group.  The sites have a page for each day of the week, and sub-pages for each period. Keith went through each class' timetable and added a noticeboard for every teacher. 

In short, he created a digital planner for teaching.

• For a child, every morning they log into Frog on the iPad, they open this planner, select the current period and there is work provided by their teacher waiting for them. 
• Teachers are free to use any resources they currently use within the school but from home.
• SLT have a true picture of what each teacher is covering in every lesson!
  
  
  

School routine is important for both students and their parents, so how do you make a virtual school day work in reality?

One of our Frog Schools has gone beyond delivering transactional lessons remotely, they've transformed the whole school day! Assuming responsibility for their students from waking up to going to bed, in a bid to help them find structure in this new situation.

Using simple Frog tools, both students and parents have a routine to follow via simple timetabling of the school day, including breaks, just as they do within the school environment.

Here is an example of what they have created:

Using Markbook to create and set homework for every class in a year group.

The Head of Computing at Mulberry School for Girls wanted to be able to set homework for the whole year group, but was concerned that in doing so, his teaching team would not have a feasible way to mark the assignments.

This problem is easily solved by using the Frog Markbook.

The Markbook saves time when setting and marking work because one teacher can assign work across the whole cohort and each individual teacher can asses their own classes. It also gives a picture of everything a student has been set, which is useful when trying to control their workload at home.

Here's a useful guide to Frog Markbook:

Record all Homework Activity

• Assignment hand-ins and non-submissions for online and offline homework.
• Late but completed submissions.
• Non-completion due to absenteeism.

Share Resources

• Search homework content within mark books to reuse/duplicate and share assignments.
• Set assignments across whole departments enabling the same piece of homework to be set for all classes.

Gain Insight

• Full online overview of how each child is progressing in your class with export to .csv option.
• View reports by class, student or subject - ideal for parents evenings!

Simplified Marking

• Mark work online and keep a record of student grades in the Markbook (supports multiple marking schemes).
• Highlights status of current grades against target grades.

How to set time limits on student work in FrogLearn.

For schools, not being able to get the usual visual cues as to how pupils are faring means it can be difficult to find the right work-balance for everyone. Teachers at Ellesmere College were busy setting quizzes for their students through Frog but had a concern about maintaining healthy levels of interaction and asked us if they could limit screen time as a way to manage it.

In FrogLearn Assignments there is a handy setting for this, which can be enabled with every new assignment that contains a self-marking quiz. You can set an overall limit on the exercise and/or a time limit on individual questions in a quiz.

How to set a time limit on assignment work in FrogLearn

 
At secondary level, where a consistent structure can help students to plan their day, especially with children home learning, many schools are setting timetable expectations at a higher level.

As per this example shared by Whalley Range High School...

Whalley Range High – Setting expectations