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Lou Mycroft (Digital Lead and Group Lead Coach)

loumycroft@loumycroft.org

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We looked at the engage materials.  Share
d success stories and ideas for improving RaRPA. All completed the evaluations and professional standards.
During the year member activity included:
•        Toolkits developed for tutor forums e.g. British Values (taken as and example of best practice). Another e.g. IAG toolkit
•        Giving tutors the chance to IV other snippets of tutors ILPs – what are next steps.
•        Strategy for LLDD is now taking baby steps – this has been shared and used by other members of the PEN.  Trialling a simplified electronic ILP – e.g. can put an emoji in. using ‘book creator’.  Special needs means ‘one size does not fit all’.  ‘Difference is those who see it as paperwork rather than being part of their course’. And can infact save ‘masses of work’.  ILPs don’t feedback progress to the tutor it feeds back to the learner.
•        Monitoring training is key – linked to OTLs etc  For example adding an hour at end of day to discuss how to implement what has been covered in training into their own roles.  Next half terms learning walks will investigate the impact of this – to see if it has had impact.  Have themed sessions – moving onto IT next.
•        Some have staff development weeks that get over the issue of getting staff together.  Split up groups who know each other to avoid ‘group think’.
•        Meet on monthly basis with staff who bring their ILPs. Colour coded – so bring their amber ILPs.
•        Used Padlet to share.
•        Developing teaching triangles.  Working on developing more reflective learners.  Tutors report this has been v powerful.  Beyond copying the aims and objectives! ‘thinking about this made me ……’
•        Better target setting is another focus – added this to English and maths areas too
•        Focus on technology in the classroom – flipping – (questionnaire to find out has been used) massive difference to learner confidence and prep for lessons. Has also helped them revise.  Eg pilates – Padlet of exercises and YouTube (part of google classroom).  Trying different things – being more experimental.

Challenges
•        Not all tutors engaging - “RaRPA a long journey’ – never complete.  Having to mandate practitioners to attend training
•        Contracted out provision is a challenge – don’t see everyone in one year. Engagement is an issue.
•        Difficult sometimes with contractors as ACL only a small part of what they do.  Also means attendance is difficult – going out to providers helps.  Done joint lesson obs with other members of the PEN ‘rubber stamping’ internal feedback by external people.  Have worked on an ILP which needed improvement but is now outstanding.
•        Sessional tutors are an issue – some give £25 per training sesh.
•        Some managers don’t have an educational background e.g. don’t understand what ‘needs improvement’ means.
•        Moving from one IT system to another (e.g. Aqua to Tribal) – not easy!  Sometime incompatible with present and prior technology.

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Here is the link for PEN members to book

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Here is the link for PEN members to book

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Disadvantaged families to benefit from free early learning apps

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Disadvantaged families to benefit from free early learning apps

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Parents will benefit from interactive learning tools and text message tips to support children's early language and literacy at home, as part of a society-wide push to make sure children start school ready to learn.

Families from disadvantaged backgrounds will be given free access to some of the best children's educational apps for smart phones and tablets, the Education Secretary Damian Hinds has announced today (20 February), encouraging parents to think about how to use children's screen time constructively, rather than as an easy distraction.

On average, disadvantaged children are 4 months behind in their overall development at age 5. It grows by an additional 6 months by the age of 11 and by the time they take their GCSEs they are, on average, 19 months behind their peers in overall attainment.

There are hundreds of educational apps for phones or tablets on the market that parents can choose from to support their child's early learning, but there is little reliable information about which are the best or most effective. So the Department for Education will buy subscriptions to high-quality early learning apps and provide access to some of these free of charge to disadvantaged families with children aged two to four, in up to 12 pilot areas across the country.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said:

No parent has all of the answers. Being a parent is like learning to drive: wonderful, full of new discovery, but at times challenging, with plenty of obstacles to swerve. Our children are growing up in a constantly changing world and it is hard to keep up.

And when it comes to children and technology - that's where a manual can be helpful. Not all screen time is created equal: on one side there are the pressures that come with social media and the time spent looking at a screen, which is a key worry for parents - but on the other, the power of technology and the internet can open up a whole new world when embraced properly.

But it's also difficult to navigate, and often expensive, so I want to support parents of all backgrounds to feel able to embrace its benefits and use it in a measured, sensible way that helps improve children's early development at home.

Screens can be an easy distraction for children, but harnessing the power of technology to support early communication and development means that we have another tool in our arsenal to help young kids develop those skills.

Mr Hinds also confirmed today that nearly 6,000 families in the north of England will also take part in four new programmes that provide practical tools and advice, such as parenting group sessions, educational toys and books or text message tips sent directly to their mobile phones.

Up to 375 schools and nurseries will be recruited for the projects, run by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Leeds-based education charity SHINE - building on the Education Secretary's 10-year ambition to halve the proportion of children leaving Reception without the communication skills needed to thrive.

The trials will include:

Making-it-REAL: 960 families in 120 schools in Greater Manchester and Yorkshire will trial a successful National Children's Bureau programme that trains early years professionals to visit families at home, getting parents more involved in drawing, singing songs and counting with their children, as well as encouraging them to use everyday activities to boost learning;

Group Triple P (Positive Parenting Program): Trained experts will show parents how to improve their children's language, and social and emotional development through role play, homework exercises and video clips of positive parenting techniques. 1,800 families in the north west will benefit across 150 schools and nurseries;

Parent Child Home Programme: Trained experts will visit families in Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield and Barnsley at home twice a week for 15 months, demonstrating different reading, conversation and play activities, and providing books and educational toys to enrich the home learning environment. The programme will be run by Family Lives and 320 families with two-year-olds will benefit;

Tips by Text: Parents of four and five-year-olds will be sent three texts each week to encourage activities that help develop literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional skills, such as counting the number of plates on the table. More than 2,700 families from 105 schools in the north east will trial an eight-month study run by the Behavioural Insights Team, who have run other successful text message 'nudge' trials like this.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds continued:

There is more support for childcare and early learning than ever before, with more than 700,000 two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds having benefited from 15 hours of free childcare a week since 2013. But the vast majority of a child's time is spent at home and what happens here is critical to their development.

The Home Learning Environment can have a huge impact on a child's ability to succeed in life, so I want to support families with hints and tips to propel their child's learning so they are not behind on their first day of school and they can go on to reach their full potential, whatever their background.

The plans set out today build on the Government's work, announced last month, to appoint a new advisory panel to assess existing apps and produce tips and guidance for all parents to help them make informed decisions about which apps to choose for their children.

The expert panel, chaired by Professor Jackie Marsh of the University of Sheffield, will draw up a set of criteria for assessing an app's quality, which will also help decide which apps the Department will provide to families free of charge.

Local areas will be chosen based on factors including the proportion of children achieving below the expected level of development in communication, language and literacy at age five, as well as a focus on some of the most deprived communities.

Sir Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the EEF, said:

Parents want the best for their children, whatever their background or wherever they come from. But it can sometimes be difficult to get parents involved in their child's learning in practical ways which make a difference and we know little about how to do this well.

By testing different ways of improving the home learning environment - from texts to parents to home visits - these new trials will give us much needed information about how we can give mums and dads the tools they need to give their child the very best start in life.

I'm delighted that we're able to partner with SHINE on this project. They have excellent networks in the north of England and will help us to make sure we reach those schools, nurseries and families most in need of support.

Fiona Spellman, Chief Executive of SHINE, said:

We're delighted to be partnering with the EEF to deliver the Home Learning Environment Fund. Research consistently shows that communication and language difficulties in the early years can hold back children for the rest of their time in education.

These programmes are a great way of seeing how we can make a real difference at an early stage and support all children to achieve their potential.

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Disadvantaged families to benefit from free early learning apps

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Parents will benefit from interactive learning tools and text message tips to support children's early language and literacy at home, as part of a society-wide push to make sure children start school ready to learn.

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'easy on the i' is the information design service within the Learning Disability Service at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

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'easy on the i' is the information design service within the Learning Disability Service at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

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free symbols for people with leanring disabilities

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Easy on the i - Free Easy Read Images, Free Easy Read Resources

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'easy on the i' is the information design service within the Learning Disability Service at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

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Improving Outcomes for post-16 learners with physical disability

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Improving Outcomes for post-16 learners with physical disability

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Discussions were wide ranging:
- What does quality look like? Learning experiences V wet Wednesday activities (the impact of caring staff and also the challenges).
- Impact of learners life circumstances
- Leeds SEND Janette attending - working on setting learner outcomes
- use of support in classes (see EEF research and support materials), the use of volunteers who need training (e.g. Kirklees mentor training).
- Tutor contracts - how to give them time to talk to LSAs, subcontracting can be an issue.
- High expectations, differentiation and staff expertise. Messages - 'make it your own' and 'the power of sharing'

Next meeting
Can we develop a healthcheck for RaRPA?  Delegation can be difficult because need to see he wider picture.  What is RaRPA - messages around 'making it your own' and 'the power of sharing' - closer links to the new inspection framework? It shouldn't be more work - not 'tweeking'
Share how support tutors to understand what RaRPA is and how to support tutors to carry out RarPA moderation.
Setting learner outcomes - a template for tutors to work to (feedback from SEND event?)
Supporting those who carry out learning walks & obs to understand RaRPA (understanding workshop environments e.g Ofsted inspectors) - in order to give feedback, need examples.

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Further Education in England: transforming lives and communities

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As a long time user of Twitter in both my personal and professional life, when I became a trainee teacher I automatically looked for ways that Twitter could support my practice and well-being. Initially, I thought about Twitter as a tool I could use directly with my students and, indeed, my very first micro-teach was focused around this. However, I soon realised that Twitter could be useful in many different ways more focused on teacher well-being and community.

When I started taking part in a regular weekly Twitter chat - #UKFEChat - I found such support and encouragement that it got me through many a challenging week. I found hundreds of people to connect with and amassed many links to resources, articles and posts I might never have seen otherwise. Shortly after my micro-teach, I (nervously) re-ran the session for a group of second year trainees, coinciding with University Campus Barnsley's own first Twitter chat. Since then, I have helped to coordinate a monthly Twitter chat with student teachers and education staff from both University Campus Barnsley and Northern College, encouraging people to share their thoughts and ideas. For some, this is a chance to try a smaller chat before taking part in bigger chats such as #UKFEChat or #UKEdChat. For others, it is another way to connect with like-minded peers and further build their personal learning network. For all of us, it has become a community with familiar and supportive faces - or rather avatars!

Since the first #EdNCUCB chats, there have been regular monthly chats in term time covering topics such as functional skills, motivation, digital literacy and even the reading that has inspired us. My micro-teach has been adapted more than once as I realised the different opportunities Twitter offered. I've delivered it to several different Cert Ed/PGCE groups now at University Campus Barnsley and most recently was invited to present it as a workshop at Ashton Sixth Form College. Next week, I will visit Northern College to present it once again. Every time it is different because every time my learners are different but people are always open-minded and enthusiastic.

Nowadays, I talk about the amazing power of community and how that can support us as both students and educators. I talk about things like the #Teacher5ADay hashtag (originally introduced by Martyn Reah), which encourages wellbeing and self-care and supporting one another in keeping those things in mind. This has proved so inspiring that there is now a #Teacher5ADay journal and a retreat! I discuss how hashtags can create openings to meaningful discussion topics in the classroom, like the class I held with one group about #OscarsSoWhite - are they and why did my group think that mattered? Or how Twitter gives us an opportunity to have a powerful voice, reaching well beyond our own social groups. Or how we can now read words straight from the mouths of authors, filmmakers, artists and even leaders, often with no filter whatsoever.

In sharing my love of Twitter, I appreciate more than ever the power of community, not just on Twitter but amongst people who love learning and knowledge in general. I never get tired of delivering this particular class because it builds on something I love. Whatever I do - in education or otherwise going forward - that passion and enthusiasm that I feel at the front of the classroom discussing 140 characters, encapsulates everything that drew me to teaching in the first place. Twitter, for me, pushes boundaries, crosses boundaries, and offers up possibilities. Just like FE.

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Twitter for Educators - All About Community

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As a long time user of Twitter in both my personal and professional life, when I became a trainee teacher I automatically looked for ways that Twitter could support my practice and well-being.

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In addtion to trying to understand tutor needs around the RARPA process we are also looking at how we can be more consistent in implementing RARPA across provision specialising in delivery to LLDD learners. A working group has been established and the first full meeting is scheduled for 18th December.

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We hold tutor forums on a termly basis and currently obtain immediate feedback on the sessions in a short survey. An analysis of the comments suggests that we are meeting tutor needs for development, however we have no direct way on knowing which tutors (if any) are accessing the on-line resources such as toolkits as they can be downloaded and printed by anyone with access to the site. We have therefore set up a tutor survey (copy attached), the results for which will be reviewed termly.

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You can see here how there is a space built in for the tutor or student to staple / stick in / write in electronic link to evidence

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The basic paper-based KC ESOL ILP (evidence collated separately)

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The basic paper-based KC ESOL ILP (evidence collated separately)

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A tailored for ESOL for Employment ILP/RARPAP doc (evidence collated separately)

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A tailored for ESOL for Employment ILP/RARPAP doc (evidence collated separately)

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Or, how to never need to follow links in emails?

Please let Lou know if you'd like her to share this Padlet with you on another email.

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Setting up and efficiently using a Padlet account

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This is a process for developing digital resilience which we will use each time we support you with something digital.

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Some years ago, I was part of a team running digital CPD for educators. We were consistently struck by the same thing - for every person enthusiastically getting their phone out at the front of the class, there was another sitting at the back with their arms folded (sometimes glaring at us). Later, one of us asked if we'd managed to get through to the 'Folded Arms Brigade'. The name stuck and FAB was born.

We wanted to understand what was underlying some educators' resistance to bringing digital into their practice. With support from the ETF's practitioner research programme we ran a series of action research projects between 2014-17. We used Thinking Environment interviews to dig deep into what limited people's engagement with digital and tested a series of interventions to try and get educators over the hump.

Our findings led us to the FAB (Folded Arms Brigade) Model of Digital Resilience:

We have used the FAB Model consistently since, in one-to-one 'digital nursing' (see below) and in group training sessions. It is not an artificial construct. It fell out of what people told us about how digital made them feel and react. The point of FAB is digital agency: getting people to the point where not only do they feel fluent in a single platform, app or device, but they have faith that that they can carry some of that fluency over to the next programme, app or device.

For any given digital challenge, each of the four FAB elements needs to be addressed in turn; of course an individual may be working on a number of digital challenges at once.
1.First Principles
Interviewing digitally resistant educators was a humbling experience. We had not realised how powerfully jargon blocked individuals from pushing on. One educator told us they couldn't make sense of the word 'icon': "that's something you worship in church." Another said they had painstakingly rewritten an important document because a colleague had "saved it to the cloud. I mean, where is this cloud?"

As human beings, once we feel excluded from something, the defences go up. We learned to invest time in exploring language, before going onto devices.
2. Purpose
Many of the educators we interviewed got stuck at this stage. They did not have, could not figure out, or were not willing to admit a purpose for what they were being asked to do. Resistant feelings often channelled into panic at this stage. We spoke to people who lacked confidence around the simplest digital processes at work, but who said breezily, "I'm on Facebook all the time." Facebook is one sophisticated platform, even for the unwary, so the issue was never about capability. It was about each individual finding in each platform, app or device a purpose which was meaningful to them.

No purpose = no point.
3. Support
Standard digital support did not get a good press in our research. Whether well-meaning colleagues, IT technicians or the grandkids, the majority of educators we interviewed had bad experiences of asking for help. Reflections ranged from, "they went too fast for me" to "they made me feel stupid". Whatever good intentions, it was evident that the 'knowledgeable expert' could be counter-productive.

We tested the concept of the "digital nurse", a different blend of know-how and empathy: a digitally confident individual who doesn't know everything (but knows how to google) and knows they can figure things out if they push on through. Later research really brought home the power of digitally nursing in groups - rather than one-to-one - to avoid creating dependency.
4. Fluency
We defined fluency not as knowing everything, but as knowing how to get by, a bit like getting around on holiday with conversational French. To be digitally fluent means pushing on through, following FAB processes and knowing how to get help.

Once 'FAB' fluency is established in one area, digital confidence can be applied to other programmes, apps and devices. Transferability is not 100%; there are new First Principles to explore and Purposes to establish, but the individual is on their way up in terms of their digital agency overall.

The later projects identified five additional FAB principles:

Simple stuff, but if you say, "it won't let me in," you're maybe giving up, whereas, "I can't get in" gives you the chance to try again.

Fitting with the Thinking Environment approach to interviews, which is all about identifying and overturning untrue limiting assumptions, we encouraged participants - and ourselves! - to identify resistance and take a few moments figure out what might be happening.

As we have seen, digital nursing is about knowing just enough, and about knowing how to bring ease to digital learning. One of the joys of this work is in seeing educators digitally nurse one another - not as experts, but as critical friends.

We learned that one thing nervous educators quickly learned to do was bookmark, which of course means that once a bookmark was lost - because of an upgrade, or switching to a new device - the source was also lost. Going the long way round means using a search engine or typing in the URL until a neural pathway is formed. Combined with good password 'hygiene' (using a phone app such as Keeper), this proved to be a powerful principle for developing digital confidence.

Learning to harness the power of the 'computer in your pocket' - away from organisational firewalls - affords educators with a glimpse into what might be possible - and the chance to explore ways of making the possible safe.

When we stumbled over FAB we had no idea of where it would take us. Education is awash with 'models', many of which turn out to be the Emperor's New Clothes when you try to apply them to real-life. FAB really works. Please do get in touch if you want to explore how it might work for you.
Footnotes

1. These are published in various places, please contact loumycroft@loumycroft.org or @loumycroft if you want to read some more.

2. A set of processes which enable people to do their best thinking. See Nancy Kline, More Time to Think (2009).

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Some years ago, I was part of a team running digital CPD for educators. We were consistently struck by the same thing - for every person enthusiastically getting their phone out at the front of the class, there was another sitting at the back with their arms folded (sometimes glaring at us).

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Project ideas from RaRPA network meeting 1

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Project ideas from RaRPA network meeting 1

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- focusing on how I as a tutor can get learners to really own their learner journals so they are a working document for their learning and reflection; and not just a written assessment tool, as they see it. This is much harder with EAL learners, so will try different methods.
- I would like to do more research on is recording progress through different means other than through written work.  I think we successfully capture written progress but would like to explore how LLDD learners might record progress other than through written methods.
- My project will be around improving the quality of RARPAPs in terms of setting targets. Too often these are reading- and writing-based as this is ‘easy’ for teachers to evidence, but doesn’t always meet the needs of the learners, and can be quite grammar-driven. I am looking to broaden the scope and encourage S&L targets and how we can capture/evidence these to maintain robust RARPAPs.
- Bev, whey do people find Rarpa complicated?

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Lou introduces the First Principles and Purpose of Padlet, and offers some Support to help you achieve Fluency.

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Leeds City Council - Adult Learning.
Following a review of tutor observations and the last forum, we  are introducing tutor feedback into our quality cycle.  The aim is to understand what tutors think about the raft of support we currently provide; identify what support they get from their organisations (as our provision is commissioned out); and identify what CPD support they feel they need moving forward. more details are on the attached document.

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We have a number of providers who work exclusively with learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities and have found that they struggle to use RARPA effectively and consistently.  So we have set up an LLDD project group to look at agreeing and producing best practise guidance, common standards, and if necessary additional ILP templates specifically for this cohort of learners.