Going the distance
5 key SEQTA tools that can help your school facilitate amazing remote learning
It’s no secret that distance education is a hot topic right now, and it’s easy to understand why. Schools are closing their doors in record numbers due to the global Coronavirus situation and with teachers, students and parents crying out for continuity, effective distance education tools are becoming increasingly important.
Thankfully, SEQTA’s teaching and learning ecosystem is brimming with best-practice functionality that can support schools to facilitate amazing distance education experiences. We’ve spoken to SEQTA Senior Education Consultant, Kim Edwards, who has outlined her “top 5 SEQTA tools” that schools should consider using as part of their remote education strategies.
- Learn and Engage mobile apps
“It sounds simple, but being connected to your school starts with being connected to your school information. And there’s no better way to stay connected than via SEQTA’s mobile apps. Available on both iOS and Android, SEQTA’s Learn (student) and Engage (parent) apps build on the capabilities of SEQTA’s browser-based software, providing users with additional device-only features including push notification, hassle-free authentication and fingerprint security.”
- Expectation, feedback and reflection
“SEQTA’s powerful assessment tools are based on the Visible Learning work of Professor John Hattie, and together, they create a mechanism that truly improves student learning outcomes. In brief, the expectations tools allow students to predict how they’ll fare on a given assessment, providing a window into how much effort a student is prepared to put in. Once the work is submitted, teachers can easily provide immediate feedback, and if they want they can separate this feedback from the grade to ensure the student doesn’t gloss over the meaningful comments. Finally, students are invited to reflect on their performance and next steps, helping teachers to understand if the student has truly taken on board the feedback that’s been provided.”
- myEdOnline – personalised, distance education
“myEdOnline is an incredible personalised learning tool that supports teachers to deliver engaging individualised learning for students. Teachers can easily track individual student progress and provide just-in-time 1-on-1 feedback. They can quickly embed video, quizzes and a huge range of other resources into their lessons and then easily share them with students – from an individual to class-wide level. myEdOnline is a tool that’s truly suited to the distance education landscape and lets students independently negotiate their own learning paths – anytime, anywhere.”
- Forums
“Forums are a great tool in SEQTA that enable teachers to reduce their teacher talk and increase student talk. Think of them as an online discussion space where teachers can pose questions, easily provide resources, and monitor and moderate the discussion online. SEQTA’s forums are effective because they support students to build and check their knowledge and allow teachers to see what the students know and understand. They enable the whole class or group to easily communicate and interact at a level that closely replicates the classroom setting.”
- Goals
“The goals area in SEQTA Learn provides a space for students to individually or collaboratively co-create class learning goals for the week, month, term or year. It’s a great tool for students to use in distance learning as it makes their learning goals explicit and enables teachers to identify each students next steps in their learning pathway. Teachers can easily track students’ progress against specific educational goals and parents can also view their child’s goals.”
