Strategies for setting up online classes and assessments for schools

Strategies for setting up online classes and assessments for schools

On Monday morning, the 13^th of April, PlayAblo and Sri Sankara Global Academy (Chennai) joined hands to conduct a free webinar. The 75-minute long session was scheduled for schools who were looking for guidance and advice on the approach to running virtual classes as well as various tools to consider to for eLearning and online assessments.

The session was attended by over 120 school management across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. A highly interactive session covered a wide variety of questions from the participants covering multiple aspects of virtual learning, long term view and impact as well as requests for follow-up customized sessions for individual schools.

This blog summarizes the key messages from the session and some of the questions that were raised during it. The attached video is a curated recording that you may go through to do a deep dive.

If you are looking for personalized advice for your school please feel free to reach us at schools@playablo.com or call at: +91 74062 58882. We will be glad help you out.

Webinar summary

Speakers

1. Mrs. Jyotsana Magesh. Jyotsana Ma’m has an experience of over a decade and half in the K-12 space. She is currently the serving Chief Education Officer at one of Chennai’s most renowned Cambridge board school, Sri Sankara Global Academy.
2. Ms. Pondivya Jayaram. Divya is a senior Learning & Development executive with an experience of nearly a decade and a half. She has worked in both K-12 as well as the Corporate Learning space. She is currently the Director of Content Strategy at PlayAblo (Go Sharp). She has earlier worked at KPMG, Accenture, TCS and SIFY.

Session details

The session started with the speakers sharing their thoughts on the key challenges specific to the school environment from the point of view of an educator.

The speakers acknowledged the exceptional times we are all in due to the COVID19 pandemic gripping the globe and what this means for the schools if they want to stay relevant and at the forefront of the educational fraternity in their respective communities.

Lesson planning

Jyotsana Ma’m went into the strategies needed to alter the typical lesson planning that can help the schools successfully adopt and adapt to virtual learning.

Virtual platforms

Ms. Divya then shared with the audience multiple available platforms that the schools can consider to setup virtual learning infrastructure for their students.

We did a deep dive into the implementation and usage of Google Classroom, OpenMeetings, Microsoft Team & Yammer.

We also briefly covered ClassroomScreen a popular product from Netherlands originally built as a tool for digi-boards but can also be used for online classes and student engagement.

Online assessments

As online classes become the norm in the weeks, months and years to come the extent of the physical gap between the teachers and the students will grow too. This will need extensive usage of on-going assessments to ensure the teacher can measure learning outcomes and take remedial actions right when they are needed to be taken. The traditional approach to paper-based worksheets will immediately go out of order. Only the schools who have successfully adopted the online assessments will be able to measure their students’ abilities and areas that need attention.

Towards this end PlayAblo demonstrated how our award-winning assessment platform for schools uses elements of gamification to engage students as well as successfully runs continuous ongoing assessments as part of classwork, homework and supplementary practice.

PlayAblo is custom setup for individual school in 100% alignment with their lesson plans to ensure the teachers can use it meaningfully along with their classes on a daily basis.

PlayAblo provides each student with their individual access to the platform to ensure the data about their performance and areas needing attention is sent to the teacher

PlayAblo comes bundled with over 100,000 questions for Math, English Grammar and Communicative English for the Primary Grades. School can also extend the platform usage for additional subjects and grades as per their existing assessment question bank.

The gamified nature of the product keeps the students engaged and we have seen students attempt 4-5 times more problems with PlayAblo when compared to the traditional paper-based worksheets.

Instant feedback along with Points, badges and leaderboard positions provide lots of motivation for students to keep up with practice and improve their learning outcomes.

Participant questions

The webinar incited a lot of pointed questions from the participating schools. Some of the questions addressed in the webinar were: Future of online classes after the COVID19 crisis is over, how should the lesson plan be tailored for different classes, how can online assessments be done in areas where the reach of internet is only minimal, can PlayAblo be customized for individual schools boards and books adopted and a lot of more.

Webinar Video

The full recording of the webinar can be viewed here

Need advice for your schools?

If you would like advice on how you can setup online classes and assessments for your school, please feel free to reach out to us. It is completely FREE of cost and you also get a 30-day obligation FREE access to the PlayAblo platform for all of your school students.

email: schools@playablo.com       Phone: +91 74062 58882