Naace Newsletter - September 2020

Naace Board of Management

This is a quick note to mention that there will be one vacancy on the Board of Management from January 2021 (for a four-year term). Nominations will be requested in the October/November issue of this newsletter and on the web site. If you are thinking about helping Naace continue to support schools, their staff and pupils, this might be an avenue for you. If you would like to have more information or chat to one of the current board members please contact us.

Joining Naace

For anyone reading this email who is not a current Naace member. We have a range of membership options available, so whether you’re new to the edtech community, or a stalwart champion for the use of technology in education, please do get involved. We’re looking to build a community willing to share thoughts and opinions on how we can support educators and learners.

You can join by completing the information page on our website here

or if you have any questions, or would like to discuss membership, please get in touch

New materials for schools

Our friends at South West Grid for Learning have just announced significant additions to the materials available through Project Evolve.

Project EVOLVE was soft launched in its current beta on the 28th August to meet demand from schools for curriculum materials for the new term.

Members of the team have developed a comms plan to support the main site launch at the end of this month. This is a unique way of working for us as we are developing the site as we go along; taking feedback from users and releasing new functionality in line with the project development plan. It’s a little like building a plane while it’s flying. The next phase will see a registration mechanism on the site to begin to track and support users.

For those of you who have not been as close to this initiative as others, here are a few snippets to support any dialogue you might have with schools.

It has been designed not only for schools but for any professional working with children and young people from ages 4 to 18

Written by recognised experts within their field and quality reviewed by organisations that include the Diana Award and Intellectual Property Office UK Government.

Every one of the 300+ statements across all 8 strands of “Education for a Connected World” has been supported with:

Outcome criteria

Questions for educators to set the scene

Activity plans

Google Slide deck

Supporting resources for children and young people

Educators can use ProjectEVOLVE to navigate the UKCIS framework by:

Open search

Filtering

Phase

Year Group

Theme

Strand

SWGfL are currently building additional functionality that includes:

Assessment through a uniques concept mechanism

Planning assistant for professionals

Impact assessment functionality

Knowledge dashboard with class and pupil tracking

There will be incremental releases of this new functionality between now and December 2021

NaaceMark Assessments

During the current difficult and challenging situation with regard to Covid19 many schools have asked about assessments for the NaaceMark Award. Earlier in the year we extended all NaaceMark/ICTMark Awards that were due to expire in the summer term until December 2020. We are now working on a scheme whereby, whatever situation a school finds itself in, so long as it is ‘open’ and has staff and pupils who can take part in an assessment visit (in place or online), then an assessment can take place.

For schools who are able to welcome a visit, the assessment can go ahead in the usual way so long as the relevant regulations with regard to Covid19 are in place and adhered to (social distancing, face coverings etc.)

For schools who aren’t able to accommodate a visit, we are working on a scheme where a series of ‘online’ meetings can take place to allow the assessor to discuss with the school community all the questions normally asked face to face via a virtual meeting. There will need to be a number of agreements discussed between the school and the assessor in advance and we hope to have full details of the scheme ready for the next edition of this newsletter in October, so that the scheme can start from 1 November 2020.

If you or your school have any thoughts or comments, we’d love to hear from you.

We’d like to feature TMPR in this issue as one of our partners. TMPR have worked with Naace over the last year or so to help us get the right information out to our members and the wider school community – Thank you – your help is much appreciated!

CREATIVE & COMPETITIVE WITH A SHARP TECHNICAL EDGE

In today’s competitive markets, our clients are benefiting from the support of a specialist PR and marketing agency that has a proven track record in your sector and a reputation for getting right to the heart of your sales strategy.

Here at Technical Marketing & PR, we have a decade’s worth of experience in going above and beyond the brief to deliver results for some of the UK’s leading engineering, construction and technical brands, ranging from FTSE 250 multi-nationals to niche privately owned businesses.

TMPR has pioneered the Virtual Marketing Manager (VMM) service to offer regional expertise for global organisations and outsourced marketing and PR services for businesses with no internal marketing function. And we have designed and implemented award-winning, creative and effective communications and marketing campaigns that have had a tangible impact on our clients’ bottom line.

But don’t just take our word for it. Read some of our client testimonials and get in touch to find out how TMPR can give your business a competitive edge.

Create Education is another of our partners and we’re very happy to be working with them and feature their support in this issue of the newsletter.

The CREATE Education Project has a simple aim - we want to help to bring the cutting-edge technologies used in many industries across the world, into education. The starting point for this, is with 3D print.

Globally day to day interactions are all now required to be customisable and tailorable. From shoes to sandwiches every person is empowered by being able to have things just as they want them. CREATE wishes for education to be the same.

To do this, the company provides the technology, training and consumables in combination with free resources and platforms to empower teachers; allowing them to create their own style of teaching and enabling students by giving them a skill set that will form part of many 21st century careers.

This vision is achieved through the CREATE Education community; a wide network of forward-thinking industry partners and CREATE Education hubs and ambassadors that through their day to day interactions showcase the amazing value that 3D printing has to offer.

We’d also like to feature our most recent partner – Turnitin. Welcome to the Naace Community!

Turnitin ensures a comprehensive approach to education and research integrity through data-based originality validation, computer code similarity checking, and authorship verification. As the academic and research integrity landscape evolves, Turnitin stays ahead of trends through advancements in technology and deep partnerships with education leaders, institutions, and practitioners.

Our premier solution, Feedback Studio, is an integrated originality checking and feedback service that helps teachers improve student writing and outcomes. Unlimited draft submissions maximise the opportunity for formative learning and industry-leading plagiarism detection ensures that students know how to properly cite and reference the ideas of others. With standards-aligned feedback tools that streamline the process of helping students improve as critical thinkers, Feedback Studio's interactive feedback platform motivates students to become better, more focused writers.

Turnitin’s assessment platform, Gradescope, uses leading-edge technology to dramatically reduce the pain and time associated with traditional grading. Gradescope provides a suite of integrated solutions to help educators and students digitally collect, organise, and store work; it effectively streamlines grading workflows for paper-based exams and assignments, online homework, and even computer programming projects. With over 60 million answers graded in over 600 institutions to date, Gradescope identifies student and class trends with robust statistics and dashboards.

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