“The phone rang at 10pm the week before Christmas. It was one of my oldest friends, James, a Headteacher at an Independent School in Melbourne. 

“Something’s wrong,” he said simply.

James went on to describe his symptoms: he couldn’t eat; couldn’t sleep and had terrible pain in his chest and stomach. He’d been to the doctors who diagnosed “stress and anxiety”. Horrified, I asked what they suggested he should do. Unsurprisingly, they offered him a cocktail of drugs and suggested that he see a therapist.

He rejected the drugs and saw the therapist, who was stumped. “You seem perfectly fine to me, I don’t know what to suggest,” he said. Fortunately I was visiting Australia that Christmas and was able to have a conversation with James on a long walk on the beach.

A new year, a new lockdown. With the latest government announcement schools have again been largely closed to most learners and are now switching to online learning at least until half term. In contrast to the first wave last year, most schools and teachers are now more experienced with this new approach to teaching and learning and are no longer solely focused on how to deliver online education but instead are considering ways to improve this experience for both their learners and their teachers. 

If your school has been using IRIS Connect to capture and improve classroom practice, take a look below at some ideas of how you could be using our online CPD platform to capture your online teaching, improve your practice and stay connected with colleagues wherever they are.

With the news that UK schools will be closing once more due to Coronavirus, we thought we'd share and refresh our list of 10 resources from back in March 2020, that provides great tips on how to teach remotely.

We know there’s no quick fix and one size certainly doesn’t fit all, but these tools to teach online could be a great place to start. Keep up to date with all the resources we're sharing over on our Twitter account @IRIS_Connect

Share any resources you’ve found to be useful in the comments section below so that fellow readers can benefit. 

Following educators on Twitter can help you to keep up-to-date on the latest advice, trends and educational research, as well as exploring and sharing resources.

Be part of a passionate, innovative, international community of education professionals.

If you’re not sure where to get started, here’s 10 educators we recommend following right now (list in no particular order):

Teachers, and those responsible for teacher training, have recently needed to develop new strategies and approaches to adjust to the changing demands in Initial Teacher Training.

As a result of limitations around school visits and face-to-face training, it’s become increasingly difficult for mentors to meet with trainees in the field, which means ITT providers have had to find other ways to be able to make judgements on trainee progress, provide efficient and quality feedback and enable trainees to get peer support when they need it.  

Rethinking the traditional processes that have underpinned ITT for as long as we can remember has required a lot of time and effort for everyone involved. But as with any innovation, the use of education technology in supporting Initial Teacher Training also provides huge opportunities.

Formative assessment, along with effective feedback, is one of the most impactful parts of teaching and when done well, it can foster significant improvement. 

What is formative assessment?

Formative assessment is any learning activity which reveals information to teachers and learners which can be used to improve learning. This is distinct from summative assessment, the intent of which is to provide terminal grading. Formative assessment allows teachers to understand where a learner is currently 'at', so that the teacher can a) adapt future instruction to better meet learning needs b) consider differentiating their support, and c) enable effective feedback to and between learners.