Empowering SEND students to learn independently with EdTech

Are you looking for inspiration about how to empower SEND students to take greater control of their own learning through exploiting EdTech? Take away new strategies and hints and tips that you can implement immediately. 

Phil Wheeler, Google Certified Trainer and Presenter, Getech and former teacher

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Session transcript

>>PAUL: Good afternoon, I am Paul Beavis. I’m delighted to welcome back Phil Wheeler following his popular session at Scomis live yesterday. If you’re seeking an inspiration about how to empower students to take greater control of their own learning through exploiting tech in this session Phil will give you strategies and hints and tips you can implement straightaway. As a former classroom teacher for more than a 12 years and now as a Google certified trainer at the center at Getech Phil will draw on his experiences to give us strategies and best practices that can transform accessibility to SEND students so they can expense a greater independence brings. It’s a Google for education partner who works closely with Scomis together we help schools exploit Google technologies. Welcome back this afternoon, Phil.

>>PHIL: It’s absolutely fantastic to be back on the second day for Scomis live. Welcome everybody. And this afternoon we are going to look at empowering SEND students to learn independently using tech we have available. So, for those of you who use chrome and chrome books, the first bit of this afternoon’s webinar is going to be aimed at you. We are going to have a little look at the keyboard of a chrome book. When I spoke to people this week when we were putting the sessions together. We were having Google meet on chrome book and then people looked down at the keyboard when I prompted them and what they did not realize that the keyboard was majorly different to those on Windows and Macs, etc. The first thing you will see and notice is that the keys they are in lowercase. This is really, really useful, is a subtle feature of a chrome book but when we learn to read and write when we are younger we obviously use lowercase keys, lowercase symbols. And that is what we recognize to start with. Therefore, if you have got students with SEND requirements having a chrome book keyboard is actually a little bit more easier for them to understand because they can see the letters. Because when they have learned to read and write they will be using lowercase letters and things will become familiar. It’s a small little thing but actually it allows you to get a quick whip. Of course, you will not have a problem with lowercase or uppercase, it will be the same for everybody. It’s a quick win for the class. You also notice that on a chrome book screen here there is no caps lock. That has been replaced with the search key and you may have seen TV advertisement with this key. For those of you of a certain age you wouldn’t say press any key to continue, of course, you can find the any key but now you can on a chrome book it will be just like tab. If you’re a big fan of caps lock and you want it to come back we can make that any key actually bring caps lock back, as well. If you’re big fan of the caps lock you can use it. Another thing you will notice at the top with the numbers if you don’t have function keys. That F1 through F 12 on a Windows machine they are no longer there. The buttons at the top are basically similar to what you have on your web browser. Next to escape you have backwards and forwards and then you have a refresh for number four. Five and six will allow you to change the size of the screen and have multiple screens coming in which is really, really useful if you have got one screen you need to get different things you can have lots of different tabs open. Then you have your volume buttons. Again, you can make these buttons an extension of your web browser. I really started to get used to those now. But, if you want your function keys back again you can go to the settings and have a look for you as well. So that’s elements of a chrome book which is different to Windows or Mac. A little subtle different, everything else works the same. It can actually be quite intuitive for all students especially those with SEND requirements that they can actually find things a little quicker. It allows them to have more pace into their learning. I will show you this in a little bit more detail but when you go to the bottom left, no, bottom right section of the chrome book where the clock is and you bring up the accessibility tools this is just some of the tools that are available on all chrome books. You can have text to speech. You can change the display. You can basically highlight text on a webpage and it would read the text back to you. That is a nice feature we will have a play with that. All of these tools are available to all users but really it just enables SEND students to access different parts of the curriculum in mainstream education. So they don’t feel as though, they are just gonna use different tools on their device compared to the person who is next to them so they can actually access the curriculum. We will show you some of those tools a little bit more in detail. What I’m going to do start with we are going to flip over to Google Docs. We have got accessibility features in a Google Docs we can talk about. We can all speak much quicker than we can actually type, well, most of us can. This can be very frustrating for all students but if you are an SEND student and you are finding it difficult to process the information and really get that information from your brain down to your arms and through your fingers onto the keyboard that could be quite stressful. Obviously, we know if students are stressed and they are worried about getting some information down and not listening to what is happening and not able to process what is going on they become and they can obviously suffer with a range of feelings which could impact their learning. And that is not good for any student especially with people with SEND requirements. When I have been working with students with SEND I found quite often that they know exactly the answers to the questions, they know, they probably know how to work out quicker than I would. But, they may struggle to get it down on paper or into a document for whatever reason. Google can help with this. What I’m going to do at the moment and am going to put my hands here so you can see them so I am not typing. I am going to say something into this Google doc, it will pick up what my voice says and it will type. I’m going to show you where that is, put a box on here. It’s in the tools section. We will go to tools and then we will go down to where it says voice. In my tools here I’m going to go to voice typing. And you get this little section appear on the screen which is a microphone and if it is black that means your voice is not being recorded. It will not type what you will say. Let’s add some stuff here. As you can see now here are my hands they are together, I am not on the keyboard. But, everything I say is been added into Google doc. If I have a student who now needs to communicate with me or what’s to get down their ideas they can use this tool to process their thoughts. I will just turn that off. You will need to proofread it. It doesn’t pick up everything. It’s a come up with death there and that should be thoughts. That of course does give you the ability to say well done you have produced a piece of work now what would you do? You would proofread that to make sure it will all make sense. It’s what I call the common sense check. Obviously, is to process thoughts and it said processed deaths, that’s not common sense that’s not supposed to be there, I needed to change that. They are empowered to check their work, go into their work in a detail and check it and make sure it works. That is a lovely feature which is available in a Google Docs. Of course, what you will find is you probably will have all students using the voice typing tool, not just those with SEND requirements. That of course means you have been a really, really inclusive especially if you have headsets that work with the chrome book they can talk into their doc, the pace of the lesson can be greatly enhanced and everyone is learning at a quicker pace. The differentiation is absolutely fantastic by not differentiating and allowing everyone to access the tool at the same time. So, from my experience I found that SEND students really appreciate the fact that the treated like everyone else, they are not singled out. But, the tools available are still allowed them to learn. That feature is also available in the speaker notes section of Google slides. It does not work in the main body of the text but it’s in the same area so if I go to tools and I go to voice type speak notes or control shift and the S and you click on their again this little button comes up. If I press this I can then add speaker notes to my slide presentation to help me remember what to say about each particular slide. Again, you will have to proofread it because it goes my dialect is not always that compatible with my Google doc but it does a pretty good job. I mean, in that sentence there there is one thing it got confused with. That’s probably because I put pause in there. But, it’s pretty good. But again, I can proofread everything I can do and make sure it all works. As I said, you will find that students will really, really like using these tools because it’s fun so you bring elements of fun back into the classroom. Not that fun ever went away but of course, everyone can use it. It adds a very large expenditure of tools on headsets you can actually have everyone talking into their docs. We know that classrooms are noisy and can you imagine what happens when loads and loads of students all talk at the same time and getting their ideas down it can be pandemonium. But, I found when pandemonium is happening in the classroom things are happening, learning is going on, so headsets with the chrome books will work well. Other things that you can do is that you can highlight text from websites and get this to be read out on the, by the chrome book. So I’m going to type in Winston Churchill and it will bring up some information about Winston Churchill here. And then I could highlight this text here, this website. This website is obviously going to have videos attached to it but down at the bottom of my screen here I have got my accessibility tab. Within my chrome book. Within here I can do lots of different things. I can select to speak, haven’t spoken feedback with the chrome box element, but one thing that’s really quite good for visually impaired students is to have the doc magnifier. So if I press this magnifier on here and at the top of my screen you can see that the webpage is still there but I can now track my mouse around and actually start to scroll down. If I scroll the middle of the page I can actually have the document magnifier making that webpage bigger so it’s easier to read. So that is quite a lovely, a fantastic feature. So you have the whole website on their, Churchill is best remembered for his success leading to Britain through World War II. Come back he was famous for his inspiring speeches and for his refusal to given even when the things were going badly. Of course, one at website, the whole class are using the website, for those students who need to use the doc magnifier they can’t, for those students who don’t they don’t need to have that on there. If you want to, take that one off and go to full screen magnifier. Where this just zooms in a little bit more and that allows you to move around the elements of the website and a full screen mode. So, is making it a little bigger. And then you can move around by going up here so I am moving my mouse around and then scrolling up and down. Again, a nice feature just making a bigger for visually impaired students to be able to read what is happening on this webpage and get some information out. Of course, I will go into my doc magnifier of turn that off and full screen. There is also other things you can have on here, as well. You have got the on-screen keyboard which is quite nice so if you’re using a tablet version you can have your on-screen keyboard so you can attach and type away, so if you use the tablets or even a chrome book in a tablet format, you have the functionality to have an on-screen keyboard. If you have stylus as well that will help you. Also, you have this feature here just above the backspace key which, of course, is a little microphone. Obviously, when you got to the settings here you can use the voice typing option to search and add text. Search for Winston Churchill. And then you can have that come up with that’s again, another feature that building with chrome book. All students will have the ability to use this. Back into our accessibility tools. You can put it on a high contrast mode which will automatically change the way our screen comes so again really quite useful for visually impaired students that may need to change the contrast. Again, all the settings are available for all students. One thing I’m going to have a look at now is I am going to go to my settings because my cursor on here is very small. I cannot really see it. We all lose our cursor from time to time so I am going to where it says advanced. I will go to the accessibility section. I am going to turn on my settings and this is where I can go in and add certain things. I can attorneys on and off. I’ve enabled chrome book’s. It will basically highlight anything here, we can turn it off in a minute. I can use my high contrast mode I can turn my doc magnifier on and off, etc. I want to make sure my mouse is bigger so I will go up to my personalization section and I will find my mouse. I can make sure my repeat rate is faster and slower. And I also, I have gone to keyboard, not mouse. There we are. I can change my mouse speed and I can make my cursor bigger. So let’s go and get that. It’s moved around on this chrome book which is a tad annoying. Automatically click when the person stops. Show a larger cursor so you see my cursor is now bigger and I can change the color. So now it is red. You can see is bigger, is now in red so I can see it. So that can be a nice feature. But also, if you are teaching you can highlight your cursor and put a red circle around it so is easier to see from a distance. This setting could be put onto an individual users chrome book because then they can always find their mouse. So that is a nice feature to have in there. You can have your audio and your captions on. So you can go and put in what you would like or live captions to come across. Again, all the cities are really individual things so all students will have the ability to go play around and set them up. So there are lots of things that are under the hood of the chrome book. Every chrome book, it does not matter which manufacture it is you have a are all there. And then that is how we found that lots and lots of people have benefit from chrome book’s and developed those accessibility tools. So that is some of the tips hopefully you can take some of those await with you today and implement that tomorrow morning. If there are any questions please let us know and we will try our best to answer them. Thank you, very much.

>>PAUL: Thanks Phil, wonderful. There are loads of Google tools available. They are all free of charge but I would agree I think once you have, what you showed us was the most impactful tools. As you say, a lot of our customers will use the SEND tools with their students and the great thing about chrome book’s is if you have not got the budget or the money to have the chrome book for every single student then we can actually configure them as managed devices and if a student enables those tools it remembers it and their profile so that if they pull another chrome book out of the trolley those tools are automatically configured and enabled so you don’t have all the dead time in class when you hand out advice and if a TA needs to go in and enabling those kinds of text to speech tools or those dictation tools. The other thing we also found with a lot of our customers is that if they can’t afford one-to-one advice device scheme for all ther students they will issue chrome books just for their SEND students because as you say the great thing is those students can work independently and it means they can actually do reinforcement work at home and use the tools and they don’t need a TA. It frees up TA time in school so they can support more specialists work with their students. So, that’s really great, thanks ever so much Phil for showing us those impactful tools. I can see we have some questions. Sorry, Phil?

>>PHIL: One thing I forgot to mention, a lot of the schools that we have worked with through your selves and elsewhere in the country have got the 11 inch devices which nice because they come with rubberized edges to them. Because the chrome book is really light can be transported around the school grounds. The battery life on them is 8 to 10 hours plus so your not going to have to run back to the trolley to get a charge. This really enables especially with the cameras on them students, SEND and otherwise, to explore education outside of the classroom, so, into the playground, onto the school field, and at their local environment, not in the classroom, elsewhere in school, have their device and have all these tools available with them and their palm of their hands. And it allows them to experience their education outside of their environment that they are used to being in back at school. I forgot to mention that and the chrome book I would say fairly resilient. I have not yet dropped one on purpose but I have been told they are almost bouncy.

>>PAUL: The ones we often recommend to schools are the rugged ones and they are kind of military drop tests very few of them get damaged and we know how easily things get knocked off tables in schools. The other thing maybe also to mention about the chrome book’s, as you mentioned, they come in a variety of different styles and sizes. But the students, you know, can use them both inside the classroom and at the great thing is you say is when they are using them inside the class you have other students using them as well they don’t feel like they are singled out. Sometimes students whenever to schools and we’ve issued those students with IT they refused to get the laptop out if there being treated differently from the other students in the class, obviously, these tools anyone can use the tools. Personally, I hate writing so I let the dictation tools. The great thing is because Google is great for its data analytics and all the processing is done on the cloud the voice dictation is incredibly accurate. It’s 99 percent accurate, it’s really not quicker than typing, it can be used by all students, mainstream students and the teachers themselves for doing prep. They really are great tools. The other thing also seen with our customers is they can also use these tools when they have got students who have joined the school and English is their second language. Because, teachers can dictate, the student can dictate in their natural language and get that technology converted into English which the teacher can mark. It saved a lot of teachers prep and planning because they can actually reach for the resources to meet those students needs. That was brilliant, thanks, Phil. We have quite a few questions coming in. So if you don’t mind we will have a go at them. This one I have got is, will adaptive technology braille readers, I guess what they are giving in this example is a lot of schools spend a lot of money traditionally with legacy accessibility technology which is run on Windows devices. Obviously, for school they spent the money on all these peripherals they might be concerned about moving to a chrome book environment if they have that technology. Does adaptive technology work with Google?

>>PHIL: First of all, I will give you a three word answer and that is, yes. Because obviously, that is the easiest way to say it. The beauty about Google workspace and many of the other tools that are available as they are cloud-based. They are device agnostic so they will work on your legacy tech. That’s really, really important. Schools have invested that money and they want to get the maximum life out of that kit and that’s understandable. You don’t have to buy one kit one year in this latest trend and then you to buy a new kit. Google will work on legacy devices and all of the tools I have shown you today do voice typing is better than Google docs it doesn’t matter what device you’re using it on. Obviously doc magnifier was a chrome book Pacific element that was built into chrome book but any of the Google tools will absolutely work.

>>PAUL: And that is a really good point especially for today’s students who at home learning. And they’ve not got a chrome book they can sign into their Google workspace web browser so it could be on a PlayStation, Xbox, any smartphone, any device that is Internet compatible and obviously they sign in as them, all the settings are enabled and because chrome book is cloud-based they can still use those tools. Although, chrome book is fantastic because it tools building the whole Google ecosystem has got these accessibility tools built throughout. So, it’s really inclusive product. So, we have got more questions. Can any of the SEND tools be accessed and used by other schools stakeholders such as parents? That is a good question.

>>PHIL: That’s an absolutely fantastic question. Again, you will be not suprised the answer is yes. Let’s take voice typing, that can be used by schoolteachers and meetings as a fantastic way of getting information down so taking minutes becomes quicker and becomes fun. Who would’ve thought minute taking would become fun? It can be used, of course, by parents read as Paul previously mentioned earlier on you have a family with English as an additional language they can then communicate what they need to say to the school and their native language, click translate and it can be translated into English. A reply can then be written in English and translated to the native language. All of a sudden you have an effective communication tool. Because I can only imagine the frustration I would feel if people started to communicate with me about my children’s education and a language I couldn’t understand?

>>PAUL: And the other thing on that, Phil, we often when I worked in schools and we had new students join us if the parents don’t have English as a language that actually you are relying on it the students to translate and inform their parents on your behalf. Obviously, that can be really tricky especially if it’s not good news is that you’re trying to impart to the parents. They can put the child a very difficult situation. We have seen schools use Google forms to send out trips and visits and paperwork out to parents do not speak English as their main language. They say the next thing is the parents can feel it in, the students can fill it in, and their native language and translate it back. But, for legal requirements not only, as a school member staff if you have permission to view the document not only can you see the Google translation you can also see what they originally typed in the version history so you can be confident that you actually have a copy of the document exactly as they typed it before it was translated. And also, you mentioned minutes. We find that a lot of schools use things like Google classroom for their staff meetings so actually they flipped it on its head and the teachers and the senior leadership will use Google classroom for sharing information just with the teachers and other staff stakeholders. You can obviously record those meetings and you can all collaborate. The great thing is if you recorded something on Google be you can speed through it so I have seen that where teachers wanting to see a recording of a staff meeting it’s, but they’re only interested in a particular bit, through the search key they can actually have a transcription and then search for certain words the person said in the video and it goes straight to that bit of video. So, as a productivity tool, it’s fantastic. The other thing you can obviously do is you can subtitle it and if you have recorded the video in English you can choose I think is something like 40 or 50 different languages. So if you have a student who is accessing the video that the teacher has created they can view it in their natural language and the teacher does not have to duplicate work or create other resources for that student. Really good stuff. Let’s see, what else have we got? I will take this one to begin with but then I will ask you about it. How can I find out more about chrome book’s? Obviously, people can contact Scomis. We will give you a demo. We work will sleep with Getech who fill works for, Google premier partner. We can give you access to chrome book and give you demos on this. So please contact Scomis if you want more information. Bill, are there more Google resources or websites you would recommend if you want to find out more about the chrome book’s and the managed devices themselves?

>>PHIL: Yes, as well as looking at contacting yourself. People can go on to the Getech website there is lots of different information about the chrome book’s. But I will say if you’re in the area go through Paul and we can liaison together about the requirements. And then and the Google teach center there is lots and lots of information about the Google tool themselves. And then all of the products that Google provides so you have your doc sheets, product information about the actual elements of Google workspace and what it can do. You have information about teacher certification and of course there is the information about the chrome book’s and it will talk to about manufacturers and what they are. For example, I am using a chrome book from Taiwan in front of me. I could use another chrome book from a different manufacturer and it will do the same. It is the badge on the front that is different. The keyboard is the same, what is under the hood is the same. All those tools we talked about today are all in there, as well.

>>PAUL: That is great. Perhaps I should also mention you might not be aware, Phil, we actually had Anna who is the European head of Google education given a keynote yesterday and we have the recording through the Scomis website. She was telling us because Google doesn’t so much on sustainability her recording of her sessions covers a lot of the information about the green issues and how chrome book’s are great devices not only because they use low power because everything done on the cloud but because Google has a very green agenda and the parts now are not only are they recyclable and they have information but they also information about schools can it repair chrome book’s themselves. One thing on that perhaps I should add is obviously at Scomis we do schools with device management and the great thing about chrome book because everything is done on the cloud and I don’t mean this and evaluate but the chrome book is literally a dummy device. It means that the chrome book, as you say, a less a battery all day, it’s very rugged. The really great thing about it especially with SEND students and has a very low technical maintenance overhead. The problem I often find before when issuing traditional non-chrome book devices to students with that if they were using that at home you would have to bring in and if they were issues it really frustrated the students and obviously with SEND students the frustration of things not working a lot of the SEND students need things to be reliable and work to give them confidence. The device management side of chrome book is a good and it means if you have a school device we can actually lock it down and restrict at so if they take it home on an unfiltered broadband connection is still safe for them to use. Actually, I think that’s probably all we have time for on the questions for now, Phil. Unfortunately, we have not been able to answer everyone’s questions during this session but we will publish answers to all your submitted questions in the coming days. Once again, I would like to thank you, Phil, thanks ever so much for joining us again today and it just let people know that Phil’s session from yesterday on Google digital tools is also available from our website. I would like to end the session by saying the last couple of years have seen an adoption of a cloud-based learning platforms by schools and here at Scomis as a Google for education partner we are in partnership with Getech to help Google and other cloud-based technologies by providing flexible access to technical expertise we are also able to help you build on the platforms you have in place to fully exploit then as we all start reimagine teaching and learning. Please, please do get in touch to find out more about how we can help. We will see you back here after 1:30 PM when we’ll be joined by our final keynote keynote speaker Doctor Emma who conducted 10 years of research only 20 years as a teacher and leader in secondary schools. Well-being and education as for all sectors can be at risk for been all talk and no action. Emma leaves us no doubt about our responsibility and most importantly our ability to practice well-being for ourselves as professionals in the workplace. And modeling it for students in the learning environment. See you there after lunch.