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The NQT short course is the vehicle through which the NQT Project offers workshop support to newly qualified teachers. The workshops are run at UCT School of Education in a cosy and friendly environment where teachers can be authentic about their challenges and feel safe from reprisal. Cookies, cushions and tea are common.
Curriculum
The course involves 8 workshops of 2 hours each that run throughout the school year. We endeavour to avoid weekends and holidays as far as possible, as we recognise these times as important for teachers to maintain work-life balance.

The workshops run in 2016 covered:

1. Teacher identity: who are we, and what brings us to this work?

2. Time management and wellness: how critical the teacher's wellbeing is to effective lessons and student wellbeing

3. Behaviour management for learning: the use of positive reinforcement and boundaries as well as relationship development to maintaining a classroom climate conducive to learning.

4. Assessment: how to integrate the demands of assessment policy, the need for formative assessment as well as the pragmatic constraints of how much marking one teacher can cope with.

5. Planning: the critical skill of teaching. How to construct solid lesson plans that include differentiation, multiple learning formats, pacing. How to integrate behaviour management into planning. How to plan sequentially across sections, terms and assessments.

6. Relationships with colleagues: how to develop and maintain healthy and productive relationships with peers, management and parents.

7. Resources: When to make your own and when to source from someone else. How to develop resources that are reusable.

8. Key legislation: The critical aspects of the Children's Act, the South African School's Act and the Employment of Educators Act that every teacher should know.
Assessment and certification
NQTs are requested to submit 4 short reflections (one page each) throughout the year on their practice in their schools, themed around the workshop topics. These are compiled into a portfolio of evidence which can then be submitted to obtain the SACE Continued Professional Development Points.

Successful completion of the course (minimum of 6 workshops attended) also receives certification from UCT for Continuing Education.

We ask a nominal fee of R500 for the course to assist us in covering costs. However, in the event that an NQT would like to participate but is unable to pay this fee, we will consider a waiver.

If you would like to participate in the course next year, you can apply here.

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The NQT short course is the vehicle through which the NQT Project offers workshop support to newly qualified teachers. The workshops are run at UCT School of Education in a cosy and friendly environment where teachers can be authentic about their challenges and feel safe from reprisal. Cookies, cushions and tea are common.

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This page offers a list of links to resources that teachers may find helpful for lesson plans or new approaches to teaching and learning. Click on the buttons below to find resources that relate to your interests or needs.

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The growing willingness to talk about stress, mental health and work-life balance is a major and very welcome societal change. With the pressures of beginning a new and demanding career, you need to able to recognize when you need help and where to find it.

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The resources collected here can help you meet all these expectations. They can help you establish the boundaries that are our moral and legal obligation. They can help you work more effectively with your superiors and colleagues. And they can also guide you in establishing rewarding relationships with parents.

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No one ever said this job would be easy. We all know that teaching is a highly complex and demanding activity. Good teachers use an extraordinary range of skills and strategies every day, in every class. So it's a good thing we all love learning because we need to keep developing throughout our careers.

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It's unlikely that any teacher has ever had a truly successful career without a mentor being involved at some point along the way. Mentoring is a highly complex activity that involves two professional teachers in a mutually supportive and symbiotic relationship.

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This is the place to learn about cool, new approaches and initiatives that other teachers are working on and you may not have been exposed to.

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This is the place to learn about cool, new approaches and initiatives that other teachers are working on and you may not have been exposed to. We'll also use this space to add links to new curriculum or policy docs released by the government, or new and interesting research with implications for teaching practice.

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Tes provides a range of primary and secondary school teaching resources including lesson plans, worksheets and student activities for all curriculum subjects.

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Education worksheets for Grade R - 12 - E-Classroom

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Download education worksheets for maths, english, science and technology, life skills, social science, afrikaans, health and hygiene, environment

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25 Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset In Children

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25 Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset In Children

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25 Simple Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset
by Saga Briggs, InformED

What if your true learning potential was unknown, even unknowable, at best?

What if it were impossible to foresee what you could accomplish with a few years of passion, toil, and training? According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, this isn't some hypothetical situation, dependent on any manner of factors from genes to environment. It's a mindset. And it's one you can cultivate at any point in life.

A "growth mindset," as Dweck calls it, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a tendency to believe that you can grow. In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (affiliate), she explains that while a "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can't change in any meaningful way, a growth mindset thrives on challenge and sees failure "not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities."

The consequences of believing that intelligence and personality can be developed rather than being immutably engrained traits, Dweck found in her two decades of research with both children and adults, are remarkable. She writes:

"Believing that your qualities are carved in stone creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character, well then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn't do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics."

The fixed mindset can negatively impact all aspects of your life, Dweck says.

"I've seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves in [a learning setting], in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?"

But when you start viewing things as mutable, the situation gives way to the bigger picture.

"This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments, everyone can change and grow through application and experience."

This is important because it can actually change what you strive for and what you see as success. By changing the definition, significance, and impact of failure, you change the deepest meaning of effort. In this mindset, the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development.

So how does this apply to learning and what can we do to help instill this attitude in our students?
How Can A Growth Mindset Help You Learn?
In a study of hundreds of students, mostly adolescents, Dweck and her colleagues found something startling: students with a fixed mindset will reject learning if it means not failing.

Students were given fairly challenging problems from a nonverbal IQ test, then praised for their performance. Some students were told, "Wow, you got [X many] right. That's a really good score. You must be smart at this," while others were told, "Wow, you got [X many] right. That's a really good score. You must have worked really hard." In other words, some were praised for ability and others for effort.

Dweck writes: "The ability praise pushed students right into the fixed mindset, and they showed all the signs of it, too: When we gave them a choice, they rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from. They didn't want to do anything that could expose their flaws and call into question their talent."

On the other hand, when students were praised for effort, 90 percent of them wanted the challenging new task that they could learn from.

Even more alarming, when Dweck and her colleagues gave the students a subsequent set of harder problems, on which the students didn't do so well, the ability-praised kids thought they weren't so smart or gifted after all.

"If success had meant they were intelligent, then less-than-success meant they were deficient."

For the effort-praised kids, the difficulty was simply an indication that they had to put in more effort, not a sign of failure or a reflection of their poor intellect.

The most unsettling finding came after the IQ questions were completed, when the researchers asked the kids to write private letters to their peers relaying the experience. Students were asked to disclose their scores as well. One byproduct of the fixed mindset turned out to be dishonesty: Forty percent of the ability-praised kids lied about their scores, inflating them to look more successful.

"In the fixed mindset, imperfections are shameful, especially if you're talented, so they lied them away. What's so alarming is that we took ordinary children and made them into liars, simply by telling them they were smart."

Perhaps Dweck's most telling research explores how these mindsets are formed, and how early on in life. In one seminal study, Dweck and her colleagues offered four-year-olds a choice: They could either redo an easy jigsaw puzzle or try a harder one. Children who exhibited a fixed mentality stayed on the safe side, choosing the easier puzzles that would affirm their existing ability. Children with a growth mentality thought it an odd choice to begin with, perplexed why anyone would want to do the same puzzle over and over if they weren't learning anything new. In other words, the fixed-mindset kids wanted to make sure they succeeded in order to seem smart, whereas the growth-mindset ones wanted to stretch themselves, for their definition of success was about becoming smarter.

Things got even more interesting when Dweck brought people into the Columbia University's brain-wave lab to study how their brains behaved as they answered difficult questions and received feedback. What she found was that those with a fixed mindset were only interested in hearing feedback that reflected directly on their present ability, but tuned out information that could help them learn and improve.

They even showed no interest in hearing the right answer when they had gotten a question wrong, because they had already filed it away in the failure category. Those with a growth mindset, on the other hand, were keenly attentive to information that could help them expand their existing knowledge and skill, regardless of whether they'd gotten the question right or wrong. In other words, their priority was learning, not the binary trap of success and failure.

These findings are especially important to formal education and instruction, as they shed light on how we, as a culture, understand learning ability.

"When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you're not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn't need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented."

What's so valuable about the latter world is that it's marked by a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval. People with a growth mindset have a voracious appetite for learning, constantly seeking out the kind of input that they can metabolize into learning and constructive action. And this is extremely significant news for students and teachers.

"Not only are people with this mindset not discouraged by failure, but they don't actually see themselves as failing in those situations-they see themselves as learning."

Could that concept be any more powerful and inspiring?
25 Simple Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset
1. Acknowledge and embrace imperfections.

Hiding from your weaknesses means you'll never overcome them.

2. View challenges as opportunities.

Having a growth mindset means relishing opportunities for self-improvement.
3. Try different learning tactics.
There's no one-size-fits-all model for learning. What works for one person may not work for you.

4. Follow the research on brain plasticity.

The brain isn't fixed; the mind shouldn't be either.

5. Replace the word "failing" with the word "learning."

When you make a mistake or fall short of a goal, you haven't failed; you've learned.
See also Helping Students Fail: A Framework
6. Stop seeking approval.

When you prioritize approval over learning, you sacrifice your own potential for growth.

7. Value the process over the end result.

Intelligent people enjoy the learning process, and don't mind when it continues beyond an expected time frame.

8. Cultivate a sense of purpose.

Dweck's research also showed that students with a growth mindset had a greater sense of purpose. Keep the big picture in mind.

9. Celebrate growth with others.

If you truly appreciate growth, you'll want to share your progress with others.

10. Emphasize growth over speed.

Learning fast isn't the same as learning well, and learning well sometimes requires allowing time for mistakes.

11. Reward actions, not traits.

Tell students when they're doing something smart, not just being smart.

12. Redefine "genius."

The myth's been busted: genius requires hard work, not talent alone.
See also 6 Principles Of Genius Hour In The Classroom
13. Portray criticism as positive.

You don't have to used that hackneyed term, "constructive criticism," but you do have to believe in the concept.

14. Disassociate improvement from failure.

Stop assuming that "room for improvement" translates into failure.

15. Provide regular opportunities for reflection.

Let students reflect on their learning at least once a day.

16. Place effort before talent.

Hard work should always be rewarded before inherent skill.

17. Highlight the relationship between learning and "brain training."

The brain is like a muscle that needs to be worked out, just like the body.

18. Cultivate grit.

Students with that extra bit of determination will be more likely to seek approval from themselves rather than others.

19. Abandon the image.

"Naturally smart" sounds just about as believable as "spontaneous generation." You won't achieve the image if you're not ready for the work.

20. Use the word "yet."

Dweck says "not yet" has become one of her favorite phrases. Whenever you see students struggling with a task, just tell them they haven't mastered it yet.

21. Learn from other people's mistakes.

It's not always wise to compare yourself to others, but it is important to realize that humans share the same weaknesses.

22. Make a new goal for every goal accomplished.

You'll never be done learning. Just because your midterm exam is over doesn't mean you should stop being interested in a subject. Growth-minded people know how to constantly create new goals to keep themselves stimulated.

23. Take risks in the company of others.

Stop trying to save face all the time and just let yourself goof up now and then. It will make it easier to take risks in the future.

24. Think realistically about time and effort.

It takes time to learn. Don't expect to master every topic under the sun in one sitting.

25. Take ownership over your attitude.

Once you develop a growth mindset, own it. Acknowledge yourself as someone who possesses a growth mentality and be proud to let it guide you throughout your educational career.
25 Simple Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset
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25 Simple Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset -

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25 Simple Ways To Develop A Growth Mindset by Saga Briggs, InformED What if your true learning potential was unknown, even unknowable, at best? What if it were impossible to foresee what you could accomplish with a few years of passion, toil, and training? According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, this isn't some hypothetical situation, ...

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Early Career Teachers Induction for newly qualified teachers (England) Early Career Framework Supporting early career teachers Statutory Guidance Some key

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The ultimate collection of NQT resources

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The ultimate collection of NQT resources

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Epic tips, articles, and videos to get you ready to crush your first year of teaching.

Survival

Most teachers agree the first year is not an easy ride. The common goal is literally to survive.

Essential tips

These snackable nuggets are the perfect quick fix for time-strapped NQTs.

Advice from the veterans

Check out these articles from NQT mentors and experienced teachers, who've made every mistake so you don't have to.

Practical classroom tips

What you physically need to conquer day one?

NQTs on twitter

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Connect with fellow NQTs on Teacheroo

Join the dedicated group for NQTs on Teacheroo and find support, connect with colleagues and celebrate each other.

Have you spotted any great NQT related content or bloggers not on this list? Let us know in the comments.

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The ultimate collection of NQT resources | Blog | Teacheroo

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Epic tips, articles, and videos to get you ready to crush your first year of teaching. Most teachers agree the first year is not an easy ride. The common goal is literally to survive. These snackable nuggets are the perfect quick fix for time-strapped NQTs.

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How to Succeed as a Newly Qualified Teacher

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How to Succeed as a Newly Qualified Teacher

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Succeed as Newly Qualified Teacher - Online Course - FutureLearn

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Learn strategies to prepare for the transition from teacher training to your first teaching post and beyond with this course from Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Supporting newly-qualified teachers’ professional development and perseverance in secondary education: On the role of informal learning

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Supporting newly-qualified teachers’ professional development and perseverance in secondary education: On the role of informal learning

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2.1. Method

2.1.1. Participants

A questionnaire was distributed via email by programme coordinators of three teacher training programmes on both bachelor and master level. Teachers were invited to participate voluntary and were informed that by participating they agreed that their answers would be processed anonymously for research purposes. Two hundred and fourteen novice teachers working in secondary education in the Federation Wallonia-Brussels, Belgium, with 5 years of teaching experience or less, filled in the online questionnaire. There seems to be a consensus that once teachers have been teaching for more than 5 years, retention rates increase (Struyven and Vanthournout ). The group comprised 37 men and 117 women (the other respondents chose not to give their personal details). All provinces were represented in the sample. Fifty-one participants (24%) had 1 year of experience or less, 43 had between zero and 2 years of experience (20%), 45 had between 2 and 3 years of experience (21%), 47 (22%) had between 3 and 4 years of experience and 28 (13%) had between four and 5 years of experience. Their average age was 26. Most of them were between 23 and 27 years old. Remarkably, more than half of the young teachers had an interim contract; 47% had a contract until the end of the school year, while 12% had a contract for a limited period within the school year. One third of the respondents (34%) had a temporary contract. Only 8% of the young teachers participating in this study had a fixed contract. The majority was working full time. Sixteen per cent were working 4 days per week. Only two respondents were working less than 2.5 days per week. The majority was teaching in lower secondary education (pupils aged between 12 and 15 years, spread over 3 years). Only a quarter of the participants were teaching in higher secondary education (pupils aged between 15 and 18 years, spread over 3 years). The sample included teachers working in two different school communities. Sixty-eight per cent of the teachers were working in private schools, such as Catholic schools, while 32% of the teachers were working in public schools. Thirty-three per cent of the respondents indicated that they were working in a disadvantaged school (low socio-economic status), while 19% considered that they were working in a school with a more advantaged population (high socio-economic status). Forty-eight per cent indicated that the socio-economic status of their students was average.

This study conforms to the internationally accepted ethical guidelines and the ethical code of the Belgian Science Policy Office (www.belspo.be). Given the nature of the study, no approval from the ethics committee was needed.

2.1.2. Measures

The questionnaire comprised five sections with questions on the person, the types of support received, the types of knowledge exchanged and the teacher's perceived competences and perseverance.

2.1.2.1. Types of support

In order to measure the types of support the young teachers were experiencing, they were given a list of various types of support, as discussed in focus groups with experts. They were asked to indicate the types of support they were receiving, how often and whether it was organised in a formal way (formal support) or in an unplanned, unstructured, informal way (informal support). Where relevant, other types of formal or informal support could be added to the list. Examples of types of support were mentoring, conversations with the principal, co-teaching, collegial support groups and internal or external training. In the end, all these formal and informal learning activities were counted (frequencies). Next, also their frequency, ranging between 'every day' to 'once per year', was taken into account.

2.1.2.2. Types of knowledge exchange

The different types of knowledge exchange (information, help and feedback exchange) were measured with a validated questionnaire developed by Froehlich et al. () and adapted to the teaching context. The questionnaire consisted of 12 items, scored on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). The questions were divided into four subscales: exchange of information, exchange of help, exchange of feedback with colleagues and exchange of feedback with the principal. The questionnaire was translated into French, following the guidelines of the International Test Commission (Hambleton ). The Cronbach's alphas were .69, .66, .83 and .86, respectively.

2.1.2.3. Feeling competent in the job

Based on the legal document listing the competences newly qualified teachers in Federation Wallonia-Brussels should possess (Higher Pedagogical Council ), which in turn is based on the six components of professional development according to Mukamurera (, 11-13), we developed a new questionnaire. The questionnaire comprised 14 questions, scored according to a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from completely disagree to completely agree.

In order to validate the newly developed questionnaire, an exploratory factor analysis (maximum likelihood) was conducted. The analysis of eigenvalues indicated that three factors had to be retained. However, the pattern matrix indicated that Factors 1 and 3 only contained two items each. Additionally, the scree plot indicated that Factor 1 actually explained most (40%) of the total variance. Therefore, the factor analysis was forced into one factor. All 14 items loaded on the one factor. Factor loadings ranged from .47 to .69. No distinction was made between attitudes, competences and knowledge. The Cronbach's alpha was .87.

2.1.2.4. Perseverance

Perseverance was measured as described and conceptualised by Portelance, Martineau, and Mukamurera (, 169-197), namely as having four main characteristics, measured with 13 items: resilience (3 items), attachment (5 items), joy derived from teaching (3 items) and adaptability (2 items).

The newly developed questionnaire was validated by means of an exploratory factor analysis (more precisely, a maximum likelihood analysis). Looking at the eigenvalues of the factors, three factors were retained. However, only one item was loading on the first factor and the scree plot clearly indicated one factor. Therefore, the items were forced into one factor, which explained 40% of the total variance. The items had loadings ranging from .30 to .77. Only one item had a loading of below .30 and was deleted. The Cronbach's alpha was .88.

2.1.2.5. Background variables

Finally, we controlled for various background variables, such as gender, age, experience, education, type of contract, part-time/full-time, province, subject, network (public or private), lower/upper secondary school, and the socio-economic status of the school population.

Table 1 summarises the variables under study, the scales, a sample item and their Cronbach's alphas.

Supporting newly-qualified teachers' professional development and perseverance in secondary education: On the role of informal learning

2.1.3. Procedure

Data were collected via an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed in different schools in Wallonia, Belgium as well as in a teacher professionalisation programme in the same region. If they preferred, participants could opt to fill out the questionnaire on paper.

2.1.4. Data analysis

Data analyses were conducted with SPSS, 2013. After checking for normality, preliminary analyses were performed. More precisely, mean values, standard deviations and correlations between the variables being studied were calculated. Finally, in order to test the hypothesis, hierarchical regression analyses were performed.

2.2. Results

2.2.1 Preliminary analysis: descriptives and correlations

Table 2 presents the various variables under study and their descriptives (frequency or means and standard deviations). Next, Table 3 lists the types of support provided (frequencies and percentages). In general, teachers received two types of formal support and experienced two to three types of informal support. Formal support tended to take the form of interviews with the principal, observations made by the principal, documentation offered and training, usually outside the school. Teachers indicated that they received the following informal support: talk with the principal and/or colleagues, spontaneous help from colleagues, and spending free time with colleagues, for example, during breaks. Participants reported receiving more informal support than formal support. Seventy per cent reported that they had experienced informal support while only 60% reported receiving formal support.

In relation to the types of exchange taking place, the descriptives indicate that the participating teachers exchanged help primarily with each other. When seeking feedback, they contacted the principals first, and colleaguessecond. The exchange of more neutral information happened the least frequently of all.

Table 4 shows the correlational analyses. While there was a significant positive correlation between performance and the exchange of feedback, help and information, there was no significant positive correlation between performance and formal and informal support for learning, or with the frequency of formal and informal support. In other words, the more exchange of information, help and feedback there had been, the more positive novice teachers perceived their performance to be. However, it appears that the type of support offered is not what makes the difference.

Similarly, there was a significant positive correlation between perseverance and all types of knowledge exchange. It did not correlate significantly with informal support, but there was a significant positive correlation with formal support and its frequency. In other words, the more formal support a newly qualified teacher experiences, the more perseverance he/she shows.

2.2.2. Hierarchical regression analysis

Table 5 depicts the results of the hierarchical regression analyses, with types of support (Step 1) and types of knowledge exchange (Step 2) as independent variables and perceived performance and perseverance as dependent variables. No background variables were taken into account since preliminary analyses showed that the background variables did not significantly correlate with perseverance or perceived performance.

The results show no significant relationships between the type or frequency of support and perseverance or perceived competences. In other words, no matter the type and the amount of formal support teachers receive, they will not show more perseverance or perform better as a result. However, significant positive relationships were found between the feedback received from colleagues and the principal, on the one hand, and perseverance on the other, meaning that the more feedback the beginning teachers received from colleagues and the principal, the more perseverance they showed. Both relationships explain 21% of the variance in total. Furthermore, there appeared to be a significant positive relation between the exchange of information and the performance of beginning teachers, although the explained variance of the model is not significant.

2.3. Study 2

2.3.1. Method

2.3.1.1. Participants

In order to provide an answer to the 2 qualitative research questions posed, we interviewed 12 novices working in the lower secondary education system: three men and nine women with between one and 5 years of service behind them and belonging to different Francophone Belgian establishments with heterogeneous socio-economic indices. The 12 participants were selected among the respondents of the quantitative study. They were randomly selected, based on years of experience and type of support received. Table 6 gives an overview of the participants and their characteristics.

Supporting newly-qualified teachers' professional development and perseverance in secondary education: On the role of informal learning

We observed a significant gap between how the participants described how they were supported and the support as reported by the school management, which indicates that participants were not necessarily supported as theoretically planned by the institutions. With respect to the formal support, nine had the principal as mentor and three had a colleague as mentor (individual formal support). Three participants enjoyed a formal, collective type of support in the form of organised information sessions. All 12 participants also enjoyed both individual and collective informal support.

2.3.1.2. Measures and coding

Each participant attended a semi-structured interview. Examples of questions were: (1) When entering practice, were you accompanied? How did that go? (2) Did the support offered help you? (3) Did you have discussions with the principal and/or colleagues, and if so, when? Did these moments help you as a teacher? (4) How do you feel in your job? What has changed since you started working? (5) Do you feel that the support offered had an impact on your attachment to the job? (5) What would be the ideal type of support for you?

We then carried out a thematic analysis of verbatim transcripts by means of audio recording (L'Écuyer ; Miles and Huberman ). The transcripts were divided into meaningful units of text, inductively, based on the information provided in the interviews. Afterwards, they were categorised or added to predefined groups of variables (Albarello ). The predefined groups of variables were: formal support offered, types of knowledge exchange, perseverance, difficulties and needs. Lastly, a selection of critical incidents was made in order to illustrate the various groups of variables.

2.3.2. Results

2.3.2.1. Differences between and conditions attached to formal and informal support

A priori formal types of support were reported by 6 of the 12 participants, such as mentoring by the principal. All of them defined 'mentoring by the principal' as 'a class visit and a performance interview, focusing on the exchange of feedback'. For five of the six participants, the guidance was perceived as negative because they felt judged during the interviews. Consequently, they did not perceive the mentoring as a developmental tool. Only one of the six teachers believed that the visits by the principal actually served as an incentive to improve and challenge teaching practices.

He only picked out details ... things to improve; he never mentioned positive things ...

It's not constructive, it's not of much use, it just puts more pressure on us. (E3)

I do not think I want to talk with a member of management about my problems (...) I prefer to talk to a colleague. (E4)

It helped me because at some point we need to be challenged. (E1)

Alongside the six participants who experienced support from their principal, there were three participants who were guided by a colleague. The colleague acting as a mentor was, in fact, a more experienced colleague, assigned by the principal. The participants receiving this type of support said the mentor helped them in dealing with practical issues (e.g. how to fill in administrative documents, time planning, how the photocopier works ...). They indicated that they seldom asked the assigned 'mentor' for help. They preferred to approach a colleague who happens to be nearby.

We have a good relationship. It [the mentoring] does not help me. It is just something that is there in case I need it. I have not contacted him. And he never really approached me either. (E7)

We receive a mentor. We can turn to him with any problems we have. He is a contact person. I asked him questions on practical and organizational issues. Whenever we have a question we know who we can go to. But I didn't go to my mentor, I went to other colleagues. (E8)

The results relating to collective and formal types of support were similar to those relating to the 'colleague as mentor'. The three participants who experienced this type of support agreed that while it helped them in answering practical and organisational questions, it did not help them to develop, probably because of the 'one-shot meetings' (e.g. three per year), without follow-up, which limits the transfer to the workplace.

A few meetings with the educational coordinator ... three times ... on the positive side, being able to answer some questions ... Having the view of a programme inspector about daily issues. (E6)

The same recurring themes. It went round and round. These discussions were not motivating. Not that it did not help me. Very little evaluation took place. (E11)

In summary, the formal types of support were not used to good effect. Additionally, they had little impact on the development of (newly qualified) teachers in our sample and their perseverance in the profession.

Alongside formal types of support, the participants also interacted with each other informally. The 12 selected participants reported benefiting from the informal support provided by a colleague, depending on their trust relationship. In other words, the analysis of the verbatim transcripts revealed that it was actually the trust relationship with the colleague that contributed to the improvement of practices and thus transformed the informal exchange into a tool for professional development.

It has given me more confidence ... A colleague told me he gave the exercise in a different way. I tried it and I found that it worked better. (E11)

"This is the only teacher I could ask for a little help. And that is because she wanted to.(E12)

I gained more structure in my lesson preparation. The contact with this colleague helped me to adjust my practices. (E7)

It is possible to see oneself in class. My close colleague gives me feedback, without any pressure. We could also shoot videos. (E4)

Moreover, when the participants spoke of informal exchanges with team members, for example, in the staff room, they mentioned benefiting from insights gained via this type of knowledge exchange in relation to classroom management and course planning and set-up ... It was again found that it is the climate of trust and mutual support that makes the difference.

"Colleagues", they are my real source of encouragement. Without them I would have been depressed. (E3)

I was helped by the exchanges with colleagues ... on managing the class and on how to handle issues that arise. (E12)

When they saw me coming out of a lesson that seemed to have been difficult, they explained to me how they managed these lessons a little better. (E11)

When we see that some things do not work, we realise that this may also be the case for other colleagues who are even more experienced. (E11)

In conclusion, the informal support offered seems to be a powerful tool for supporting the professional development of the newly qualified teachers in our study. All the participants are unanimous in stating that it helps them in recognising their difficulties and improving their classroom practice, together with other colleagues.

2.3.2.2. The ideal type of support

All 12 participants agreed upon what constitutes an ideal type of support at the start of their professional career. The same categorisation of support systems discussed above was used to organise the results (Bamberger ; Anseel, Lievens, and Levy ; Froehlich, Beausaert, and Segers ).

First, the exchange of information should, according to the participants, be supported by the principal, since the principal is the person best able to facilitate the integration of new teachers in the school. Having the principal as a mentor also allows the mentor to explain the school's internal functioning. However, this has nothing to do with the help-seeking initiated by the starting teacher as advocated by Bamberger (), who makes a distinction between two types of help-seeking, depending on the type of help needed. On the one hand, there is a need for instrumental help, i.e. help that is needed in relation to a work-related requirement. On the other hand, there is a need for emotional help, i.e. help with solving personal problems, e.g. related to (psychological) well-being. Bamberger () argues that it is exactly this kind of help that has a positive impact on performance and reduces employees' feelings of uncertainty, because it provides them with more information on the context in which they are working. They perceive it as a service offered by the management from the start.

Secondly, feedback can best be provided by a colleague of the newly acquainted teacher's choice, teaching in the same discipline. It appears that beginning teachers do not necessarily rely on more experienced colleagues. It can be concluded that it feels more comfortable for novices to observe other novice teachers in order to exchange and benefit from reflexive feedback.

Thirdly, assistance with solving a specific problem could be provided by a more experienced colleague, who is teaching in the same discipline (Froehlich, Beausaert, and Segers ). The fact that colleagues have chosen one another seems to play an important role; it goes together with feeling psychologically safe. The colleague as a mentor helps the novice spontaneously, without judging or evaluating the beginning teacher.

3.1. Limitations and suggestions for future research

There are a number of limitations that could be taken into account in the future research. A first limitation relates to the sample group and the types of formal support they received. For the purposes of the analysis, participants were grouped based on the type of support they had received in practice. Unfortunately, it became apparent that the support participants had actually received was different from the support they officially stated that they had received before starting the study. Consequently, participants were not distributed equally between the types of support received. Secondly, it was not easy to determine the characteristics of the different support systems. While core characteristics, such as the person involved in the mentoring (principal versus colleague) help us to determine what type of support is being offered, other characteristics, such as the type of questions posed and type of knowledge exchanged, tend to overlap. Thirdly, it is not easy to make a clear distinction between the many types of informal learning activities taking place. Moreover, some of these informal learning activities happen unconsciously. It is possible that some of the informal learning was not taken into account because we were not able to measure it. Future research could overcome this deficit in measuring informal learning by, say, making use of socio-metric badges. Socio-metric badges could measure the knowledge sharing taking place between colleagues and the principal and could give us a more detailed insight into what is discussed, how and how often. Then, the learning activities that have taken place within the framework of formalised guidance could be used as the unit of analysis instead of the formal support organised.

Furthermore, future research could study in more detail the role of the principal in workplace learning and the perseverance and attrition of novice teachers. What role does the principal's leadership style and position play in the learning and development and - in turn - the perseverance and attrition of newly qualified teachers? Similar studies could be set up to examine the style, role and position of the mentor.

3.2. Practical implications

This research feeds the discussion on how to organise support for newly qualified teachers. Both studies provide arguments for supporting informal learning among teachers instead of imposing formalised support systems. Supporting informal learning among starting teachers can be achieved, for example, by allowing them to choose their mentor - a person with whom they feel confident and psychologically safe. Meeting the mentor need not be formally organised, but can depend on the needs and questions of the novice teacher. Providing the novice teacher with sufficient autonomy whilst continuing to offer opportunities for learning and development will have the most positive impact on his job satisfaction and competence development.

Our results also have implications for initial teacher training. Since social informal learning (e.g. through the exchange of feedback with colleagues) benefits newly qualified teachers the most, it is clearly important to sufficiently develop teachers' communication and teamwork skills during their initial training, for example, through the set-up of student communities in relation to their internships (De Vos et al. ). During regular meetings, these communities can discuss difficulties faced during internships, as well as prepare classes together. This might lead to interesting debates on learning methods and student learning, for example. Also, students might do their internships in duos. Being in front of a classroom together with a peer, student might foster discussions on student learning, classroom management, difficulties experienced, etc. They might also observe each other and give feedback. Similarly, Dupriez and Cattonar () refer to collegial professionalism, i.e. being able to systematically collaborate and have exchanges with other members of the teaching team.

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Supporting newly-qualified teachers' professional development and perseverance in secondary education: On the role of informal learning

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2.1.1. Participants A questionnaire was distributed via email by programme coordinators of three teacher training programmes on both bachelor and master level. Teachers were invited to participate voluntary and were informed that by participating they agreed that their answers would be processed anonymously for research purposes.

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With digital savvy, teachers can enliven America’s classrooms

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With digital savvy, teachers can enliven America’s classrooms

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While many teachers still endure remote instruction and the Zoom fatigue that comes with it, more and more are returning to schools. Over half the nation's districts have reopened and children are returning to classrooms, including urban centers like Chicago and New York City-even if they're peering out from behind plexiglass screens.

But as educators breathe a weary sigh of relief, will they simply snap back to the old normal?

Hopefully not, for this is a poignant moment that should not be wasted. Many teachers are not only weathering the pandemic, they are crafting novel ways of motivating kids and tailoring instruction, even partnering with parents in potent ways. As educators reopen schools, they just might reinvent classrooms.

My research team has followed 32 California teachers since last fall, coding hours of recorded Zoom sessions. It's clear that many of them feel exhausted after long staring into that flickering grid of bedraggled faces. But we also discovered an uninvited yet living laboratory for creative teachers. Their pedagogical inventions-deploying digital tools that spur lively conversation or offer personalized feedback in real time-have bubbled up from below, rather than mandated by district bureaucrats from above.

Our study also reveals pedagogical breakthroughs that help battle ever widening racial disparities in learning. Inspired teachers now deploy video clips, music, and real-time exercises to invite participation and speak to kids' colorfully diverse communities. A few innovations stand out: materials and new media that spark robust conversations among students and teachers; digital tools that ease student assessment, then tailor exercises to each student's proficiency; and rethinking the school day to reduce class size and better organize learning at home.

Lemonade from Lemons

"I hate it," Antoinette Estrada told me, a fifth-grade teacher outside of Oakland, after months of Zoom-based instruction. But Estrada's eyes brighten when turning to her novel teaching tools. She moved her entire science curriculum online, hosting "tons of videos relating to what they are reading, with investigations they can do at home."

Another tool, emulating action-packed video games, invites students to solve math problems, eager to win their digital adventure. This exemplifies a trend in which designers pull the seductive elements of gaming into formal curricula that match state learning standards in clever fashion. Estrada also deploys software that gauges each student's reading level, then automatically pegs exercises and homework to their proficiency. In short, teachers are discovering the same engaging dynamics inside digital lessons that motivate children to purloin their parent's cell phone.

Critics often claim that technology breeds impersonal or alienating norms online. But we discovered how digital tools can host safer environs for shy students or those with learning disabilities. "I have kids who participate through chat, but they never talk to me on video," said Amanda Parker, a Waldorf teacher. Kids with disabilities join mainstream classes in the morning, then break into smaller "intervention groups" during the afternoon.

Creative teachers like Estrada and Parker are not alone, as many educators harvest the fruits of their digital labor. One in every five district chiefs say they will retain digital innovations as their students return, according to a RAND study entitled, "Remote Learning Is Here to Stay." Nearly three-fourths of the nation's teachers say one-to-one access to laptops, post-coronavirus, will improve their classroom practices.

Rethinking the School Day

Beyond the move away from didactics, more radical reforms are surfacing as well. Many schools have split classes in half; teachers then repeat new content for tandem groups of just 14 to 16 students. To free morning time for these small classes, asynchronous lectures and written exercises are programmed beforehand, tackled by students in the afternoon.

Parker talks of "reversing" her reopened classroom in which stronger pupils listen independently to taped reading passages, "while I teach the material here with my low kids, and then we flip it." Some charter networks, like Rocketship Public Schools in Silicon Valley, expect students to watch lectures at home, freeing in-class time for hands-on projects.

Fewer students are marching back to school with sagging backpacks stuffed with textbooks. Teachers have digitized conventional curricula, along with applied exercises, such as art projects and music pieces enlivened electronically. Nor can the dog still eat the homework, since assignments now live online.

Many teachers report housing curricular materials and homework tasks in a single digital location, inviting parents to track their child's progress and easily lend a hand at home. "I've never seen parents so aware of what we are doing day to day," one teacher told us. Whether these new partnerships with (exhausted) parents can be sustained once kids return to school remains an open question.

Lessons Learned, Policy Leadership

Key lessons have emerged from talking with teachers, along with observing their lessons online. First, novel digital tools best stoke learning in socially cohesive classrooms. Leaders in the ed tech industry talk constantly of personalizing instruction or breeding great autonomy for the lone child. But this narrative ignores how inventive teachers embed digital tools in ways that get all students into the act, stoking kids' shared interest in math games or story comprehension by blending videos, animation, and digitally energized applications.

Tech-savvy teachers don't rely on clever digital tools alone, they work from a larger pedagogical toolkit to build socially coherent lessons. They set norms for how children contribute vocally or work on tasks live in unison with one another. Estrada sorts students into breakout rooms where the software reads aloud. Then, kids "explain to each other why they are choosing a certain answer. It's more interesting doing it together with peers, rather than me talking the whole time," Estrada said. For more routine tasks, other software magically grades math and vocabulary exercises, freeing her time to devise more challenging activities.

The second lesson from our study: These pedagogical innovations may soon evaporate into thin air, lost amidst repressed memories of the Covid-19 era. Educators display a cathartic joy when returning to their classrooms-now with only a fraction of their kids in attendance, the other half huddled in safe pods down the hall or still sitting at home. But a mindless return to stuffy classrooms will not likely recover kids' lost year of schooling. This is especially important to remember given that campuses serving higher shares of Black and Latino students have remained closed far longer than those situated in better-off suburbs.

So, can the renaissance in pedagogy, spurred by teachers themselves, somehow be sustained and trumpeted more loudly? Or, will the centuries-old routines of schooling quietly quell these unprecedented digital and social inventions?

Money alone will not be enough. Congress directed $54 billion in fresh stimulus to school districts last December. President Biden aims to more than double this amount, spurring the nation's momentum in unlocking classrooms. But it remains up to local educators to curate inventive pedagogies that work. We have seen plenty of teaching that fails to engage kids: dreary PowerPoint lectures while students remain dead silent; didactic explication of long division with no opportunity for pupils to practice.

Instead, district leaders might propagate a variety of innovations, from better ways to organize the school day to novel means of engaging parents. Teachers have drawn digital tools and fresh ideas from websites and social media, born instantly out of necessity. But careful research could discern which new pedagogies effectively boost the confidence and competence of all children. Our data stem from teachers in charter schools. Can their peers in large urban districts display this level of creative agility?

Familiar habits and deep-seated rituals must not swamp all that educators have learned over the past year. Instead, teacher associations, district leaders, and policymakers might cultivate these seeds of innovation, nurturing the creative pedagogies that have sprouted across the land.

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With digital savvy, teachers can enliven America's classrooms

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While many teachers still endure remote instruction and the Zoom fatigue that comes with it, more and more are returning to schools. Over half the nation's districts have reopened and children are returning to classrooms, including urban centers like Chicago and New York City-even if they're peering out from behind plexiglass screens.

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Online teaching software: the basic tools you should know about

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Online teaching software: the basic tools you should know about

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With no COVID-19 vaccine in sight, hundreds of colleges, universities, schools, training centers and tutors are moving their instruction to virtual settings - many, for the first time. Adapting teaching and ensuring a fluid learning experience will entirely depend on the technology chosen for the job, but a quick Google reveals EdTech to be an incredibly crowded space. So what online teaching software should you use to make a success of virtual learning?

What to look for in virtual teaching software

Your virtual teaching toolkit will largely depend on the size of your student base and organization, your particular role and subject, and any additional learning needs. Budget will also factor in, with larger institutions being able to pay for more heavy-duty learning management systems (although there are some good free versions out there).

You should also consider software performance, user-friendliness and equity to try and reduce the anxiety surrounding learning a new technology. The last point - equity - is particularly important to remember: not all your students will have access to the same bandwidth, devices or privacy while at home. As such, you should look for ways to collaborate and learn outside of real-time video calls.

Finally, it's important to remember that your virtual teaching toolkit shouldn't just help you craft a great online lesson; it should support you in everything that happens outside of it. You're entering unknown territory from an unstructured home environment, potentially with childcare responsibilities thrown in - with all the stress and additional workload that entails. Remember to choose tools that bring structure to your day and make it easy to stay connected, visible and in control.

Essential online teaching software

There are virtual teaching tools out there for every different teaching approach imaginable, catered to a range of different ages, needs and abilities. We've grouped together some of the basics - with options for individuals as well as institutions. They cover everything from colleague communication and video classrooms, to managing your schedule and sticking to your work hours.

🍎 Synchronous virtual classrooms

The global COVID-19 lockdown has made Zoom a household name. But in addition to using Zoom to video call your family, it's a useful tool for no-frills virtual classrooms and department meetings. Its free version far outstrips Google Hangouts and Skype in terms of participant size - allowing you to host up to 100 participants at once. It also lets you create several breakout rooms, share screens and use group chat for smaller discussions during a lesson. You can easily record calls too - useful for self-critique as you iterate your online teaching methods, and for sharing meetings with colleagues who couldn't attend.

Price: free for 40-minute calls. Upgrade for $15/month for longer call durations.

Learning management system (LMS) software provides a single space for all your organization's admin, documentation, reporting and training needs, in addition to the tools to plan teaching, host virtual lessons and create assignments. As a tech giant dominating the virtual collaboration space, it's unsurprising that Google can offer a nice free platform for all the above. Google Classroom brings together all its standard G Suite tools - like Docs, Sheets and Hangouts - to help you seamlessly manage and deliver virtual teaching.

Price: free with a G Suite for Education account. Upgrade to a paid G Suite Enterprise for Education account for premium tools.

3. Microsoft Teams - for a comprehensive digital learning hub

While stopping short of calling itself an LMS, Microsoft Teams offers a similar suit of virtual teaching tools as Google Classroom and is also happily free. It allows conversations, content and collaboration to happen in one unified digital space. Great for creating secure virtual classrooms, sharing assignments and feedback, and streamlining staff communication.

Price: free for students and teachers with a valid school email address.

4. Blackboard - for top-of-the-range higher education LMS

Time to get serious - if you're looking for a purpose-built higher education LMS with a modern and intuitive feel, check out Blackboard. It facilitates fluid, user-friendly digital learning environments with a ton of specialist solutions thrown in. These range from Blackboard Analytics for Learn, which helps you identify barriers to student success, to Blackboard Predict and Blackboard Intelligence which help keep students on track and let you optimize institutional performance. A great platform for delivering sophisticated, engaging online teaching experiences - and ensuring everyone gets the right support.

Price: aimed at institutions rather than individuals, Blackboard comes with a hefty license fee.

🙌 Asynchronous support and communication

5. Slack - for peer and organization communication

Transparent asynchronous is the bedrock of all remote collaboration - it democratizes communication, allowing everyone to access department-wide conversations and talk when it actually suits their schedule. Many remote teams have already realized that email just isn't the optimal space for that, and are instead using instant messaging platforms like Slack for the bulk of their day-to-day communication. Slack effectively breaks all team communication into thematic groups - called threads - allowing staff to dip in and out of conversations that concern them. It's a great tool for building an online peer community - creating spaces for colleagues to share best practices, exchange ideas, share global updates and just check-in on each other.

Price: $7/month per person for their smallest plan.

6. Floop - for work questions and support

For students, Floop is the virtual equivalent of raising your hand in class. It was built by teachers to solve the challenge of providing tailored support and feedback to individual students learning remotely. Students can quickly send pictures of their work with anchored comments, so they can highlight exactly where they are stuck and raise questions. Teachers just need to reply to the comment to provide targeted feedback. A handy tool if you're working with analogue or read-only digital materials - although you might want to prioritize using collaborative document platforms like Dropbox Paper longer-term.

Price: free for now, but pricing will be announced for the 2020-21 school year.

7. SmartSurvey- for feedback on remote teaching

Feedback is crucial for making distanced learning work - especially in the early days as you adapt your approach to an online setting. If you go in for one of the heavy-duty learning management systems detailed above, you'll likely have a few options for posing questions and reviewing engagement data. But if you don't, simple online survey platforms like SmartSurvey are a good alternative. Use it with students to see how well you explained certain concepts, as well as with teaching staff to surface admin blind spots and gauge wellbeing.

Price: free for sending a maximum of 15 questions to 100 people.

8. Edmondo - for centralized teacher-student communication

Primarily targeted at school teachers, Edmondo helps you centralize all tutor-student and tutor-parent communications. It's effectively a social platform - with familiar post and direct messaging functionality - for classroom discussion and organization. You can use it to share assignments and materials, help students learn new virtual tools, post classroom updates or chat directly with individuals. A useful asynchronous teaching tool for students who may not always have access to a home computer or a strong Wi-Fi connection.

Price: completely free, with a paid "Schools" plan for larger organizations.

💡 Organization, structure and time management

9. Timely - for managing time and staying visible

Shifting all teaching and infrastructure to cyberspace comes with a significantly increased workload. When you factor in childcare, remote teaching from home becomes a blur of competing demands - a sure recipe for burnout. Timely helps you stay in control by creating a flawless digital timeline of everything you work on each day, which is especially useful if you also bill for your teaching. Its intuitive calendar interface helps you time block your day and the Reports feature lets you check every project is getting its just attention. The "People" feature also breaks down exactly how many hours you and your team work each day, so everyone can stay visible, stick to their hours and get proactive support. Ideal for managing faculty staff remotely, as well as structuring your own schedule.

Price: trial all features free for 14 days. Upgrade if it's love - $5/month for individuals, $39/month for organizations.

10. Dewo - for outsourcing meeting scheduling

As workloads increase, you'll want to cut down on all the pointless small admin and organizational tasks that clog up your day - and meeting scheduling is a prime candidate. Thankfully, Dewo can take the whole slog off your hands, managing all coordination back-and-forth for you. With a combination of calendar data, timing preferences and AI, it suggests optional meeting times which maximize the availability of focused time for all meeting participants.

11. Todoist - For organizing your tasks

If you're looking for a digital to-do list that's a cut above Notes, check out Todoist. Aside from mapping out all your work in one organized space, it helps you prioritize tasks and keep your most important upcoming tasks in focus. With integrations for a ton of staple digital collaboration tools - including Dropbox and Google Calendar - it acts as an organizational hub for getting things done.

Price: free for 5 people working on up to 80 projects. Upgrade for $3/month for their Premium plan.

12. Pocket - for curating useful web resources

Ditch your bloated bookmarks bar for this handy app, which lets you save web content to one clean repository. It's provides an easy way to save all the interesting articles you encounter for later, and also lets you create shared resource lists for colleagues and students.

Price: free, with the option to upgrade for $5/month for Premium.

📱 Virtual collaboration and teaching aids

12. Loom - for making quick video explainers and demos

Billed as "video messaging for work", Loom is a great tool for creating quick screencast videos - either with or without audio. It's ideal for providing tutorials and demos, like showing a group of people how to set up or use a new piece of software. Just start recording your screen and get a shareable link to your video once you've stopped.

Price: the basic version is completely free. Upgrade for $5/month for advanced recording and editing features.

13. Prezi - for professional digital presentations

Prezi lends instant design credibility to department and classroom presentations. It offers motion, zoom and spatial relationships for those with the budget looking for something more engaging than PowerPoint, Keynote or Slides. A range of professionally-designed templates do the artistic legwork for you, so you only have to focus on adding your content.

Price: subscriptions start at $9/month. Upgrade for $24/month for offline access, PDF export and premium images.

14. Dropbox Paper - for document collaboration

If you need a remote-friendly word processor tool, look no further. Dropbox Paper provides one clean space for creating, sharing and editing work with others in real-time. It's a particularly good choice for student assessment, allowing you to add comments throughout a document. You don't need a Dropbox subscription to use it either - for now, at least, it's completely free. Its Slack integration is a nice bonus if you're looking to keep your communications neatly tied together.

15. WeTransfer - for sharing large files

Need to send someone a file that's too big for an email attachment? Provided it's smaller than 2 GB, you can send it via this free browser tool. If you'd rather build a common file repository for staff or students, check out Dropbox (or Google Drive File Stream for a less user-friendly, but free solution). Shared folders let everyone quickly share and access important documents, templates, frameworks and assets.

Price: free for sending files up to 2 GB. Upgrade for $12/month to send up to 20 GB and enjoy 1 TB of storage.

16. Idroo - for virtual whiteboards and live annotation

Virtual whiteboards are a no-brainer if you teach using equations or diagrams, but they also help to make all types of virtual collaboration easier and more dynamic. In addition to plain boards, Idroo lets you paste powerpoint presentations, PDFs and Word documents for live annotation. You just need to set up a web account to get started.

Price: get 5 plain boards and 50MB of storage for free. Upgrade for $10/month if you need document annotation.

While mainly aimed at creative industries, Markup Hero is a useful for taking screenshots and annotating images. You can easily to share links to your images and save annotations for future editing. Being completely free, it's an ideal choice for providing feedback on assignments, presentations or offline documents.

Price: completely free

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Online teaching software: the basic tools you should know about - Timely Blog

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Adapting teaching to the virtual space entirely depends on the technology chosen for the job, but a quick Google reveals EdTech to be an incredibly crowded space. To help you get started, we've grouped together the basic online teaching software you should know about for virtual teaching success.

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Apparently, the term originates in biology when a response comes back to an organism (Rinvalucri, 1994) but coming from an engineering background, I had my own idea of the word 'feedback' when I first started to teach.

Having now taught English for more than 15 years, it has a different meaning to me. People study English to get feedback on their language skills, their progress and the tasks they complete. It is hard to find someone who doesn't like or want to be corrected. After all, speaking correctly and properly is one of the reasons people attend language/skills courses.

The only problem is that most students want their teacher to correct them while teachers often have the aim of helping students to learn from their peers and be independent. Feedback is given to students at different stages of a lesson for different purposes.

speaks about the following six methods you can use for oral feedback and correction in her book, 'A Course in Language Teaching (Ur, 2012)' :

recast, elicitation, clarification request, metalinguistic feedback, explicit correction

Can you think of an example for each? If you are now thinking about focusing on 'form' in giving feedback and correcting students, read Scott Thornbury's post here:
https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/tag/correction/
It is crucial for a teacher to know when to focus on content and when on language. Watch to see what can happen if you focus on the wrong thing.

We should keep in mind that feedback on 'content' is as important as feedback on 'language'. It shows the teacher is interested in the conversation and is 'actively' listening. It actually makes the student more enthusiastic to communicate with the teacher rather than just focusing on making some grammatically correct sentences.

There are different reasons why we teach writing and there should be different methods how we mark them to address those different reasons; but in the general sense of dealing with writing tasks in and outside the classroom, there is a lot of controversy regarding our attitude towards feedback and correction. Let's start by having a quick look at what normally happens in a writing session.

This is what usually happens:

1. The teacher selects the topic and gives it to the learners.

2. The learners spend some time either in the classroom or at home to write about the topic.

3. The learners give their 'final product' to the teacher for 'final marking'.

But this doesn't look right, does it? The main purpose of teaching is to facilitate learning but I don't see any 'learning to write' points, as mentions in his writing book. gives the following stages to make the writing process more productive:

1. Teacher or students select the topic.

2. Pre-writing activities e.g. note taking, brainstorming, creating spider-grams, etc.

3. Teacher comments on the notes and makes suggestions.

4. Student writes draft 1.

5. Teacher and students read drafts and comment on the content.

6. Student writes draft 2.

7. Student reads draft 2 with guidelines and makes changes.

8. Teacher reads draft 2 and indicates good points and areas for improvement.

9. Student writes draft 3.

10. Student edits and proofreads.

11. Teacher evaluates progress.

12. Teacher assigns follow-up tasks to help in weak areas.

In what usually happens in the classroom, the focus is more on the end product, so the learners focus on creating something and giving it to the teacher and the moment they hand their end product in, they feel they have no responsibility towards their writing any longer and it's the teacher's job now to work on it.

On the contrary, the second 12-step process focuses on the 'path' rather than the 'destination' and the students will learn during the writing process.

There are different ways to edit, comment and provide feedback and just like any other form of correction, these can be done in forms of 'self-', 'peer-' or 'teacher-' correction and editing codes can be taught at the beginning of the course to create ground rules to stick to till the end. , in her book '' (Hedge, 2005: 140) mentions the following most common codes language teachers can use to mark writing tasks.

Web Tools

Much has been said about editing codes and the way we can teach them in writing lessons so I am going to write about some novel methods to help you wiht editing stages in writing lessons.

The following platforms are the ones I have been using for some time. They make editing and commenting easy, fun, tech-based, green and more productive:

Audio feedback can actually help learners improve their listening skills as well and a lot of research has been conducted to prove their higher rate of productivity in comparison with ordinary written feedback. Audacity is a free open-source programme which gives you the ability to create audio files and edit them easily. There is a straightforward tutorial on how to create audio podcasts using Audacity . Teachers can ask their learners to send their first and second drafts to them to receive quick audio feedback before they start writing the final version. While audio feedback can be a productive way to help our learners, there are a couple of tips we should keep in mind:

Remain positive and keep a motivating tone.

Sequence your feedback and signpost the feedback stages.

Be clear and speak with a clear voice.

Limit your comments and prioritise errors (just as you would do in written feedback).

Begin with positive feedback, be specific and descriptive while giving constructive (negative) feedback and end with positive overall feedback. (sandwich the negative points).

Audio feedback can be given in many different ways. You can even record your voice with Windows voice recorder and send it to your students, too.

If you really hate all these applications and want something hassle-free and entirely web-based, then try Online Voice Recorder or .

Jing is a free TechSmith product which can help you create screencasts and share them easily on the internet. Your casts will also be available on your profile. TechSmith gives you 2GB free storage on Screencast and you can go Pro if this is not enough for your purposes. After you install Jing, the software's toolbar appears on top of your desktop and can be accessed right from there while you are doing anything in any other programmes. So you can open a word document, start editing it and video the whole process for the learner to watch at a later time.

QuickTime Player - the video feedback platform

Apple's QuickTime Player which is also available for PC users has some new and unique features which have made life easy for Mac users. Just launch QuickTime, double-finger tap the icon in the dock and click on 'new screen recording' (you can also create ordinary voice or video recordings using your Mac camera.) and the application starts recording your screen. You can also talk on the recording at the same time to create a high-resolution video feedback. When you are done, click on 'stop screen recording' and choose the quality you need and the file is ready!

If you have some time and want to create something really impressive, this is where you should look for it. Create a presentation of the feedback, play the presentation and use a camera to add your own video to the feedback. So your learners have the chance to see the online edition of their work being corrected while they can watch their teacher talking about it at the same time. Knovio has an which gives you the same functions there as well. It is primarily an application to help you add your video to your presentations which is a very useful tool for flipped classes but can also be used to provide extraordinary feedback video files!

Kaizen means 'good change' in Japanese and is some sort of philosophy towards continuous improvement. This innovative online tool works seamlessly with Google Drive and Google Docs. If your learners send you first drafts through Google Drive, then this is the tool you shouldn't miss. You can work on the documents on their website or you can add their add-on to your Google Drive and work on documents right within Google Docs. In Kaizena you can highlight parts of the document and record your voice in small segments. Kaizena has even taken a step forward and creates unique teacher URLs and this means the learners can request feedback on a specific part of their document and an e-mail is sent to the teacher to come back to the file and give the feedback the student needs. This is a two-way platform which means the students can listen to the audio feedback and record their own voice and reply to the teacher's comment.
Gmail
Google Drive has already given us a lot of features to help with teacher's feedback. You can now edit Word documents directly from your mailbox without having to convert anything.
Microsoft Office
The Word's 'track changes' and 'compare documents' features are fantastic tools for language teachers when it comes to error correction and feedback. 'Track changes' has several customisable features including colour-coding. Click on the 'review' tab in a Word document and you will see this in the middle. 'Compare documents' gives the learners the opportunity to compare the text they have written with a model text in a writing lesson or to compare their answers to an activity with the answer key. This feature can also be found in the 'review' tab in a Word document. The usual 'comment' feature can also help add notes to the text just like what we do on a piece of paper. Don't forget that the whole process in a Word document can be recorded using any of the methods we have talked about here.

All teachers agree that effective feedback is time-consuming but no one can deny their value to our learners. We are very lucky to have all these 'tech' tools which make effective feedback easier than it used to be in the past (but most probably still more difficult than in the future!). So why not take the risk and leave our comfort paper zone and help save the planet while improving our feedback effectiveness in our writing lessons?
Bibliography:

Hedge, T. (2005) 'Writing' Second Edition, Oxford University Press

Rinvolucri, M. (1994). ' Key Concepts in ELT ' ELT Journal Volume 48/3 July 1994, Oxford University Press

Raimes, A. (1983) 'Techniques in Teaching Writing', Oxford University Press

Thaine, C. (2010) 'Teacher Training Essentials- Cambridge Copy Collections', Cambridge University Press

Thornbury, S. (2006) 'An A-Z of ELT', Macmillan Books for Teachers, Macmillan

Ur, P. (2012) 'A Course in English Language Teaching', Cambridge University Press

Tribble, C. (1997) 'Writing', Oxford University Press

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/conducting-feedback-exercises-tasks

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Apparently, the term originates in biology when a response comes back to an organism (Rinvalucri, 1994) but coming from an engineering background, I had my own idea of the word 'feedback' when I first started to teach. Having now taught English for more than 15 years, it has a different meaning to me.

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14 Online Teaching Tools to Enrich Your Virtual Classroom

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14 Online Teaching Tools to Enrich Your Virtual Classroom

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2020 has been a transformative year. Everything has changed, including the way kids and university students go to school.

During the pandemic, most of the world instated social distancing rules, 20-second hand-washing practices and preventive mask-wearing in public. To say this affected the way educators and students interact is an understatement.

In March, millions of children transitioned from face-to-face classrooms to some kind of virtual education set up at home.

During the first months of the pandemic, teachers had to scramble and find the best ways to set up a virtual classroom that would keep their students engaged.

During these months, educators at every level tested tools and programs until they found their favorites. We scanned the web to find out what those are.

For this article, we've collected 15 versatile online teaching tools to enrich your classroom.

Visme is an online design tool that anyone can use to create presentations, infographics, concept maps, schedules, reports and more.

It's packed with tons of features, like free photos and graphics, customization options and an easy drag-and-drop editor that both non-designers and designers love to use.

Many tools are directed either at the educator or the student. In the case of Visme, our integrated design tools benefit both.

How Visme Can Help Teachers

Teachers are always creating content for their students to learn with-from slide presentations to fillable worksheets and more. With a Visme education license, teachers and students can use the tool together for a creative and interactive educative experience.

Below are some of the solutions Visme offers for educators at any level.

Interactive content as presentations and infographics

Visual posters and infographics

Webinar materials

Interactive schedules

Syllabus and lesson plans

Printable lists and worksheets

Embed third-party content like quizzes and forms

Share news about a class on social media or email

Personalized report cards

Personalized certificates

Sign up. It's free.

To help you get started, here are some handpicked Visme templates for teachers. Click on the button below each template to customize it for your own use.

Class Schedule Template

Create a class schedule in the form of a presentation and share it with your students to help them stay on track with their weekly lessons.

This class schedule template is designed with engaging colors and visuals to make it easier for students to remember the information.

Lesson Plan Template

Use a template to create a fully visual lesson plan to share with your students.

Simply input all your information and download it as a PDF or image. It's easy to then import into your LMS or send it to students via email.

Report Card Template

At the end of each semester, show students their grades by adding a little fun.

Use this report card template to input each student's final results and inspire them to continue performing well for the rest of the year.

Certificate of Completion Template

If your course isn't part of a school curriculum, you can still instill a sense of accomplishment in your students with a certificate of completion or achievement certificate.

Use this template to add your course information and personalize it with the student's name.

How Visme Can Help Students

Visme also helps students get their work done for their online classes. Teachers can assign all sorts of assignments to be created with the tool.

Below are some ways students can use Visme:

Here are some useful Visme templates for students at the school or university level. Click on the button below each template to customize it for your own use.

Idea Web / Mind Map Template

Students thrive with graphic organizers and visual mind mapping tools. Visme makes it easy and fun to create idea webs, flowcharts and mind maps. This idea web template is perfect for finding similarities between two different topics.

Presentation Template

Research projects and book reports have been assigned as presentations since we can all remember. Help your students create better presentations with our Visme templates for students.

Timeline Infographic Template

Many assignments involve understanding how things happened over time. This type of visual can be apple to projects for history, literature, and social studies.

By creating a timeline infographic, students understand the process of the topic and enjoy creating it along the way.

WIth Visme you can also create any type of graphic organizer from scratch using the free design tools that come built-in with the editor.

Watch the video below to learn more about graphic organizers and how to create one.

2 Google Classroom

Google Classroom is the low-key most versatile online teaching tool available.

This Learning Management System (LMS) is part of G Suite, which means teachers can use Google apps to create lessons, quizzes and documents all inside Google Classroom.

To use the Google Classroom app, you'll need a G Suite for Education account. Many schools and teachers transitioned to this LMS when schools were closed due to the pandemic.

For anyone using Google products regularly, Google Classroom is easy to tackle. Inside the app, educators offer the content for the lessons, quizzes, assessments, and tests. They can also communicate with the students and parents via message boards or email.

The best thing about Google Classroom is that you can create all the content for your classes with the software of your choice. For example, you can simply use Google apps to prepare lesson materials or import any visual created with Visme.

In 2020, Google Classroom is easier to integrate with Google Meet, the new version of Google Hangouts. This has made it even easier to conduct an online class.

You might know Zoom from business meetings but did you know that it also works great for online teaching?

There are two ways of using Zoom; Meetings and Webinars. The most suited for interactive online teaching is Zoom Meetings, while Zoom Webinars is better for lectures. Teachers can choose with which to work at any given time.

Zoom Meetings have practical features that make online teaching easier, such as breakout rooms. These help teachers separate the students into groups, much like you would do in a normal classroom setting.

Each group can communicate with each other and the teacher can be notified to come in and help if needed. Since Zoom became so popular for distance learning, many other online teaching tools have incorporated seamless integrations.

4 A Web Whiteboard App

AWW App is the perfect solution for teachers that are used to having a board to write on during class. This is a digital whiteboard where teachers can annotate much like on a regular board.

The integration between AWW and Zoom makes it easier than ever to teach a class online. You can also import PDF and PowerPoint files into AWW.

This app is great for teachers that enjoy explaining things by showing how it's done.

The boards can be pre-created before a lesson or written on during the lecture. The settings permit students to collaborate or "come up to the board."

Ted Talks are a great resource for online teaching. We wouldn't exactly call it a tool, but more of a repository.

Ted's website offers videos of 18-minute speeches by influential speakers on a variety of topics. There are even some Ted talks by kids, which can be greatly inspiring for students.

Best of all, every talk is free to include in lessons. The videos can be embedded or shared with a link. They're easy to incorporate with any LMS.

Dialpad has a VoIP for education solution that provides an easy to use application for schools where teachers & students can meet, text, chat, and interact online.

Students can engage with teachers within virtual classrooms using screen sharing, whiteboarding, and chat features. Teachers can also set office hours, share class recordings, and connect with the faculty all within the same platform.

Dialpad is accessible on a variety of devices, including tablets, smartphones, computers, and laptops. Using Dialpad helps to reduce IT overhead for schools, and removes the requirement for hardware.

Teachers can meet students remotely, and create online classes instantly from anywhere in the world. They can also send out bulk SMS messages to check in with students on assignments, send updates, and announcements. Schools can set up advanced call routing rules for students to reach the correct department or desk, so teachers never have to worry about missing important phone calls.

There are so many features available on Dialpad, that we couldn't even fit all of them here. For teachers interested in an all-in-one application, Dialpad offers a free 14 day trial.

7 LightSail

One of the most challenging things to keep up with is your students' literacy progress. This is true both online and in face-to-face classrooms.

LightSail is a program that has already been showing positive results in classrooms. Now, with the spread of online learning, their team has adapted to educative solutions provided.

The LightSail app provides students with a variety of reading material to improve their literacy. The app tracks how much each student reads and how they are improving.

Teachers can create lesson plans around what their students enjoy reading, be it a book, or a website. Everything the student reads can be turned into a learning opportunity.

A big part of school education is communicating with both students and parents. This is no different when the learning is being done online.

The Remind App is an advanced messaging system that works in three different ways:

Reminders for upcoming lessons or due dates of projects and tests

Email messaging with students and parents

Direct messaging with parents of students

The main feature of Remind is that all notifications are sent to mobile devices, making it easier for teachers to interact with students and parents.

The app can be integrated with Google Classroom and Google Drive for easy access to class materials. Also, it's easy to send links to Zoom meetings and webinars.

Teachers can set up office hours for timely messaging and control over their private lives.

Pear Deck is the perfect add-on for teachers who regularly use Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. It improves interactivity and the quality of visuals on the teacher's slides.

The add-on is available in the editor and also includes a teacher platform to help keep track of student participation during class.

When you open the PearDeck add-on in your Google Slides or Microsoft Powerpoint software, it's available in a sidebar. All the features are accessible from right inside the editor and can improve your presentations to a great degree.

10 Actively Learn

The Actively Learn website is a specialized platform to teach ELA, Science and Social Studies. It's easily integrated with most LMS like Google Classroom and Canvas.

What stands out about Actively Learn is the way the readings are set up for both students and teachers. It's the perfect platform for blended learning, and just as easy to use as an online learning teaching tool.

Each article, video or book excerpt has a set of questions, vocabulary features and further reading for the student. The features for teachers include suggested lesson plans and further assignments.

Padlet is a multifunctional platform to collect information, visuals, videos, documents and much more. Users can create "padlets" or digital corkboards to create collections of data and information pretty much any way they want.

Teachers can use padlets to build group lessons, work on group projects, collate research for a lecture, and much more.

Padlet is one of the favorites in the online teaching world and it's no surprise why. Here is an article with a long list of ideas for teachers using Padlet.

12 Thinglink

Thinglink is a platform dedicated to the creation of interactive visuals. You can add interactive elements like audio, text popups and map location labels to any of the following:

This is one of the most immersive online teaching software. You can even create VR-ready environments for students to explore at their leisure.

13 Edpuzzle

Edpuzzle is an app that takes any video and turns into an educational lesson. Teachers simply add their chosen video, set it up for students with questions about the content and assign it to them via their regular LMS.

Edpuzzle integrates with Google Classroom and many other LMS platforms as well.

A notable feature of Edpuzzle is that teachers can easily track student progress. The settings can be toggled for the video and to make added questions unskippable.

Edpuzzle is the perfect accompaniment for the flipped classroom method, both in face-to-face and virtual classrooms.

14 Quizizz

Quizizz is a free quiz maker for students of any age. If you don't want to create your own quiz, there are lots of available quizzes in the gallery that are free to use.

Integrate your quiz seamlessly with Google Classroom or share it with a link. You can also share it as a game and send the link to the Remind app and other online teaching tools.

Considering that Quizizz has been used in regular classrooms for a while, the transition of the tool to online teaching was seamless.

15 Talking Points

Talking Points is a communication platform for teachers and families. It's similar to the Remind app but the most important feature is that the messages are translated to the family's language.

The app supports more than 100+ languages. Each family picks their home language (if they don't speak English) and all messages will arrive in the chosen language.

The app works on all mobile devices and is free for teachers.

16 Brighterly

Brighterly.com is a fantastic online resource for children's math education. This platform goes beyond traditional math learning by incorporating fun and engaging math riddles for kids. With interactive classes and a team of professional math tutors, Brighterly caters to students in grades 1 through 8.

Whether your child is in the early grades or tackling more advanced math concepts, Brighterly is dedicated to helping them excel academically. Their commitment to teaching math concepts, combined with the inclusion of enjoyable math riddles, ensures a well-rounded and effective learning experience.

What Are Your Favorite Online Teaching Tools?

Teaching online in a virtual classroom is easier than it seems-the difficult part is getting used to it. Once you have the tools you need to be efficient and engaging, every lesson is easier than the one before it.

Most of the online teaching tools in this list can be used with Visme. Simply upload your Visme creations to your preferred tool and you've got the perfect combination.

Sign up for a free Visme account and take your virtual classroom to the next level.

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15 Online Teaching Tools to Enrich Your Virtual Classroom

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Keeping students engaged online can be challenging. Check out this list of the best online teaching tools to take your virtual classroom to the next level.

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COVID-19: The best resources for online teaching during coronavirus

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COVID-19: The best resources for online teaching during coronavirus

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Schools across the globe have already closed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic - including those in the UK from Friday March 20th - and many more are expected to shutter over the next few weeks.

As a result, teachers are suddenly faced with the challenge of how to continue their students' education. While this might seem a daunting task, there are several ways teachers can utilise the technology and resources already available to support online learning and ensure students still receive a quality education.

It's important to note that there is no one size fits all when it comes to learning. Different groups have different priorities and the resources that should be used are context-dependent. There are also special considerations to think about for students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), and for students who might not have access to high-speed broadband.

However, teachers should take some comfort in the fact that there are hundreds of online resources to guide them as to how to teach online. We have rounded up some of the best here to help ease the transition from the classroom to the web.

Taking a step back

The main piece of advice to educators is to take a step back and focus on what matters most. This means that prioritising the creation of an open and clear channel of communication with both students and parents is an essential first step.

As an initial resource, Mark Anderson, ICT Evangelist, has created this useful infographic to help teachers think about the first steps that need to be put in place during a potential school closure, to guide key decision making during the process:

Delivery and technology

If your school needs to close down, there are several ways to move content and lessons online.

Independent Thinking suggests that schools should consider remote learning via technology for students in Key Stage 2 and above. For those learners in Early Years and Key Stage 1, it is more appropriate to have a system in place to share learning activities and resources with parents.

Engagement

One of the biggest concerns for teachers is how they will continue to engage students and keep an eye on their progress from afar.

Safeguarding

With this increased focus on digital learning, more young people will be accessing content online. Therefore, the biggest priority for both teachers and parents is keeping students safe. One forward-thinking deputy headteacher from Dubai created an infographic with some great safeguarding questions schools should ask as they move to distance learning.

National Online Safety also offers a free comprehensive guide on online safety tips for children which is well worth the read for both parents and teachers. The guide encourages teachers to be clear with learners and parents about how to interact online and recommends that teachers create consent forms that are shared with parents, particularly in the case of younger children.

Offline options

Something else for teachers to consider is that not all students have access to devices or even an internet connection. With this in mind, we would encourage schools to offer support, where feasible, with loans and access to technology.

Useful resources for parents

Parents will be equally as concerned as teachers about school closures, and those with younger children will have a greater responsibility to help with keeping their studies up.

There are several benefits to online learning and with the right knowledge, teachers and parents can embrace these possibilities.
If you want to join a community of teachers who are all finding their way forward and providing continuity for their students you can join FutureLearn's newly-launched How To Teach Online: Providing Continuity for Students course, designed to connect teachers to one another to share, reuse and remix student-centred lesson plans through these challenging times. You can browse all of our courses related to online teaching here.

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COVID-19: The Best Resources For Online Teaching During Coronavirus - Blog - FutureLearn

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Schools across the globe have already closed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic - including those in the UK from Friday March 20th - and many more are expected to shutter over the next few weeks. As a result, teachers are suddenly faced with the challenge of how to continue their students' education.