Bedford High School had been using Frog for over 6 years, with mixed success in terms of getting the whole school community to engage with the Virtual Learning Environment. When the closures were announced, they realised the one infrastructure that would remain stable during the challenging times ahead was technology. With a focus on providing  home learning support for their students, Bedford High worked with Frog on a design update of their Parent and Student portals to make them more appealing and user-friendly. 

Preparation and training

The school took fast action ahead of enforced school closures, creating a clear and coherent contingency plan for how their home learning process would work. They placed Frog at the centre of this, with all assigned work to be put through their platform.

All students received refresher training to ensure they knew how to use Frog and guidance was provided for the new virtual home learning process.

The process included the use of FrogSnap as a feedback tool for teachers, enabling them to provide whole-class feedback rather than every student individually.

To ensure parents were well-informed and engaged in the process, Frog Messaging was used to keep them updated.

The impact

"The analytics were showing we had captured the school community's attention as we were seeing a six-fold increase in users."

"We have found that our users have become more accustomed and accomplished with their use of Frog and we are dealing with significantly less technical issues."

Gabriel Calwell Assistant Headteacher

The school is also using Frog to help subject leaders (SL's) to build their refined curricula. A Bedford High School Curriculum site has been devised to ensure SL's upload key resources to support their subject curriculum. This ensures all subject resources are in one place.

Summary of approach

• Agreed process and roll-out
• Guidance and support provided
• Central place for all subject resources
• Use of communication tool - Frog Messaging - to keep parents informed
• Curriculum site on Frog for subject leaders to upload key resources

River Tees MAT is a group of alternative provision schools. All children that attend are classed as vulnerable and therefore still attending each school each day. As many of the teachers are working from home, the learning situation is slightly more unusual compared with other schools...

Guidance and resources

E-Learning lead, Matt Holley has created online guidance and resources to support everyone. A Covid19 site has been shared to all stakeholders via a Frog dashboard - which Matt keeps updated, it includes:

• School documents
• Amended timetables
• Links to external support websites
• Home learning guidance
• Past papers for older students
• CPD for teachers to achieve during lock-down

Centralised 

The schools struggled to keep printed staff handbooks updated with the ever-changing Government advice. so this content was also moved onto Frog, meaning it could be updated dynamically and sit with all other resources.

Benefits of approach

• Staff can access everything from a single login 
• Information is easily updated to keep up with demand
• Approved links to external content included
• Supports remote teaching and well-being

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.