The business world will always be competitive, that’s part of the thrill and reward that comes with success. Whether you own, run, or are an employee of a business, keeping yourself sharp and up to date on various business skills is essential to maintaining a healthy business. As a result, eLearning platforms are gradually becoming more popular. 

USA Today recently reported that about 20% of businesses actually survive their first year, so what sorts out the successful from the not? While there are many factors involved, it would be easy to see that those people and businesses with employees who are well equipped to manage and navigate the constant fluctuations will fare better than those who only have a handful of skills. 

While there will never be a single way to ensure the success of a business, choosing to maintain your education in various ways will certainly help. When considering the astounding rate that technology and societies change nowadays, it is important for people in business to refine their abilities that they can take into professional situations. In fact, the awareness of this concept has become so popular that the online learning market passed $315 billion dollars as an industry, and, according to a survey by Global Market Insights, this market is projected to grow by another 20% by the year 2028. 

So, with all that in mind, here are some suggestions for reasons and skills that can be accessed through digital learning to boost your business skill set. 

Google Suite Master

Nearly everyone uses a Google service at least a few times a week. Whether that comes in the form of a navigational app on a smartphone or creating a spreadsheet, Google has created a slew of software that helps to maintain its place as a powerful, efficient, and helpful service in the world today. Their Google Suite has many applications to use from calendars, to documents, presentations, or video meetings, they very likely have the app for that. 

Additionally, the popularity of their services is such that many employers actually make a point of asking about potential hires’ experience with the software. Being able to add that confidently to your resume not only looks good but is a boost of confidence when it comes to being able to deliver as an employee. 

A less known fact about Google’s services is that business owners and employees can learn applicable skills through online content on the Grow with Google platform. While the self-paced learning courses that offer certificates are not free (some even require monthly subscriptions), these courses are developed in partnership with other learning companies like Coursera, as well as colleges and universities. That adds even more clout to the learning you’re investing in. 

Hubspot Academy

Hubspot is another major player in the business world. Their CRM service is not only affordable, but loaded with various features to enhance your business like their sales pipeline, automated email marketing, advertising methods,  and dashboard features. They also have a very helpful support service that can guide or direct any user to articles that will help anyone learn how to navigate the features. 

On top of all that, they offer what’s called their Hubspot Academy, which goes more in depth into generalized business skills like marketing, time management, and sales tips. Being that this service is used by millions of users, it is also another great set of skills and a notable name to add to your resume. 

edX

This is one of the companies that recognized a while ago that the interest and growing demand for eLearning was important. On edX, business owners, entrepreneurs, students, and professionals alike can enroll in free online courses that are hosted by some of the top universities worldwide. With over 3,600 courses to choose from and 160 different schools, there is something for everyone in any field. 

It should be remembered though that these courses are not-for-profit, but some do offer certificates. Got a new project coming up that you know is just a bit outside your experience, a single class may be enough to set you up for success. 

LinkedIn Learning

The name stands out in the business world as one of the foremost platforms for networking, but did you know that they also offer an online video education library that offers hundreds of courses on foundational topics? The courses are taught by a variety of experts, authors, and educators. While the LinkedIn Learning service is not free, most valuable resources are worth the investment. 

Mindset refers to the assumptions and expectations we have for ourselves and others, which determine our commitment to any given task.  Dr Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence.  Learners with a fixed mindset believe that there is a limit on how much they can learn and, therefore develop intellectually.  Those with a growth mindset on the other hand, believe they can get smarter, and they understand their talents and abilities can be developed through effort and persistence.

Although individuals may not necessarily be aware of their own mindset, it can still be discerned based on their behaviour.  The mindset of an individual becomes particularly evident in the face of setbacks or failures.  A student with a fixed-mindset dreads failure because it is a negative statement on his or her basic abilities, whereas growth-mindset individuals do not mind failure so much, since they realise their performance and learning can be improved from failure.

As educators, we must do all that we can to cultivate our own growth mindset first.  This means we should be lifelong learners, keen to develop our skills, and acquire new ones.  After all, we are role models for the students that we teach, and to have a growth mindset also shows our students that we believe they can be successful too.  Equipped with a growth mindset, educators will adapt the teaching style and instructional material, to ensure all students can learn.

Recent advances in neuroscience have shown than the brain is much more malleable than previously thought.  Research on brain plasticity shows how the connectivity between neurons change with experience.  With sustained practice, neural networks grow new connections, strengthen existing ones, and builds insulation that speeds the transmission of impulses.  Teaching learners about their brain plasticity then, helps to shift mindsets from fixed to growth, which then leads to increased motivation and achievement.

In addition to teaching about brain plasticity, the type of feedback that teachers give their students can have a huge impact on their mindset.  For example, studies presented by Carol Dweck have shown that telling children they are intelligent encourages a fixed mindset, whereas praising effort cultivates a growth mindset.  When students have a growth mindset, they are more likely to take on new challenges and learn from setbacks, which therefore increases their abilities and achievement.

To put all this theory into practice, we gave our teachers and students these activities below to complete in the makerspace.  Even if your school does not have a makerspace, depending on the resources you have available, these activities can be adapted to take place in a standard classroom.  The most important thing is for the activities to give students the opportunity to learn something new whilst being challenging and fun!  By tackling and overcoming these learning challenges, the idea is for students to develop their growth mindset.

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Over the last several weeks, our digital leaders and I have been working together to plan for and create a makerspace in school.  We have already selected a room that will be the makerspace – the current Reading Room.

We just need to move the books out of this room and into our Staff Development Office, then finally, move the necessary materials and resources in!  Before getting started with this endeavour, I’m sharing my notes here about what a makerspace is, why they exist and how to create them:

What is a Makerspace?

A makerspace is a unique, multipurpose learning environment that encourages tinkering, play and open-ended exploration.  Such activities demand an enquiry-based approach, and they epitomise what progressive education is all about.  The central idea to a makerspace is that children learn by doing.

The only thing that is required of a makerspace is a room with appropriate materials and resources, to encourage learners to make.  From the outset, it is important not to limit students to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Maths) projects alone.  The idea that a Makerspace is just for STEAM classes is a common misconception.  Making can be anything to anyone.  I particularly like, for example, the slogan from littleBits: “Make something that does something.”

Why use a Makerspace?

Pedagogically speaking, the whole maker movement is underpinned by the idea of “constructionism”, which has been coined by Seymour Papert, and it’s a similar-sounding term to constructivism.  Where constructivism is a well-established theory of learning indicating that people actively construct new knowledge by combining their experiences with what they already know, constructionism takes things a step further.  Although the learning happens inside the learner’s head, Papert’s constructionism states that this happens most reliably when the learner is engaged in a personally meaningful activity outside of their head that makes the learning real and shareable.

According to Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager (2013), authors of Invent to Learn:

‘This shareable activity may take the form of a robot, musical composition, poem, conversation, or new hypothesis… This is much more than “hands-on” learning.  The meaningful part of constructionism is not just touchy-feely new age language.  It acknowledges that the power of making something comes from a question or an impulse that the learner has, and is not imposed from the outside… We seek to liberate learners from their dependency on being taught.’    

By creating a makerspace, students are given the opportunity to take ownership of their own learning as they explore their own passions.  Nevertheless, it is still possible to teach basic skills, then flip your makerspace, so that students can innovate and build on what they have learnt.  In this way, makerspaces are a fantastic way to bring creativity into learning and support deeper learning.  Makerspaces are also the perfect environments in which to challenge students, to try to solve problems in new ways.  These challenges can be created by either teachers or students.  What is particularly exciting about makerspaces, is how they can impact lessons, as teachers can become more innovative owing to the new tools available.

How do we Plan for a Makerspace?

Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why, talks about the importance of knowing your why: the purpose, cause or belief that inspires you to do what you do.  This is as important to keep in mind when designing a makerspace as just about any other venture.  According to Laura Fleming, author of The Kickstart Guide to Making Great Makerspaces, great makerspaces begin with a vision for driving their space.  Providing our digital leaders with post-its, I asked them to first begin writing down what core values our makerspace should have:

After much discussion, we settled on:

– Learning, Resilience & Teamwork

To keep things simple and child-friendly, these makerspace core values also form our overarching vision statement.  Watch this space – more to come in Part 2!

In the meantime, Laura Fleming notes the following free apps, which are great to use for BYOD as a portable digital toolbox for students:

– iHandy Level

– Ruler App + Photo Ruler

– Protractor

– PadCAD Lite

Swivl is a robotic platform accessory for smartphones and tablets, providing an easy way to capture and share video.  After purchasing the Swivl a few months ago, we’ve been putting it to the test in order to record presentations and to serve as a self-observation tool for teachers.

You simply insert the smartphone or tablet into the swivelling platform and wear or hold a digital marker, which the Swivl robot follows using an infrared signal.

The marker itself also captures audio, so even if the presenter is standing several metres away from the device, the video recorded will still provide crystal clear audio.  When the video is completed, you can upload it to the Swivl cloud for viewing online anywhere.

In this video below, I am wearing the marker around my neck and you can see the Swivl can rotate 360 degrees in order to follow the marker that I am wearing.

There are many educational applications for this sort of technology.  As well as being a great tool for recording presentations for flipped learning, its most powerful application is to enhance teaching.

One of the most useful lesson observations I received early on in my teaching career was when a colleague videoed my lesson.  Watching the video afterwards was like no other feedback I had ever received; I could actually see myself as others saw me teach.  This “self-observation” was incredibly effective, as I was quickly able to see with my own eyes what I was doing well and what I could improve.  The additional benefit of having the Swivl robot of course, is that no human observer is needed to record the video for you – the robot does it all for you, enabling you to get a true sense of what you’re like as a teacher.

According to Bill Gates, teachers around the world need more effective feedback in order for them to improve their teaching practice.  From Bill’s own observations inside the classroom, this is the key area that needs to be addressed in education today.  I would just add that to better facilitate this coaching process, it is self-observations that teachers need.  As we introduce this technology into teacher training, we will see teachers make dramatic progress in the classroom.

Flipped learning is a pedagogical model in which the teacher delivery during in-class time is flipped with the homework elements of a course.  As a type of blended learning technique, students can watch relevant videos at home, which have been prepared by the teacher, while using their in-class time to focus on exercises, projects or discussions.

My own transition to a flipped learning classroom has been a gradual, organic process.  Although I still believe there is a place for the traditional (“sage-on-the- stage”) teaching approach, I’ve come to recognise the many advantages of a flipped learning model.   Sharing relevant tutorial videos with students and colleagues, both from my own YouTube channel and links elsewhere on the Web, enables me to spend more time as a facilitator of learning.  This simply means that learners spend less time passively listening at the beginning of the lesson and more time engaged in activities to develop their skills.  By doing away with the traditional classroom, which is very teacher centred, it also means that I have extra time to provide valuable one-on-one assistance to students who need it the most.

According to Eric Sheninger (2016), author of Uncommon Learning, there are two main components associated with the flipped learning approach:

1.  Students watch lectures and consume other forms of content outside of school at their own pace whilst communicating with peers and teachers using online learning tools.  In my opinion, this point about students working at their own pace cannot be understated.  The ability for students to pause, rewind and fast-forward a tutorial video means that they are in a much better situation to assimilate new learning.

2.  Students apply what they have learnt during in class time with assistance from the teacher.  As there is more time freed up during the lesson itself, there are more opportunities for small-group work and one-to-one contact with lower-performing students.

In order to make the lesson time itself more engaging while integrating formative assessment, there are many web-based tools that can complement the students’ main in class activities:

– Poll Everywhere

– Plickers

– Kahoot

– TodaysMeet

In addition, there are also some fantastic tools out there for students themselves to become authors, teachers and collaborators, working together to teach content to each other.  Some of the best of these tools include:

– Adobe Voice 

– VideoScribe

– Explain Everything

– Quizlet 

– Google Slides 

As well as giving my students opportunities to use these tools, I have used each one of these applications myself as a medium in which to share information with students for them to learn at their own pace.  As Sheninher himself states though, ‘pedagogy always trumps technology’.  For digital learning to be implemented effectively, we should focus on pedagogy first and technology second.  When integrating technology, we need to remember that it is less about the tool and more about what students can do with the tools handed to them.

That being said, with all these web-based tools and other digital applications available, it makes sense that a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or 1:1 technology initiative can radically enhance the flipped learning model.  By providing students with access to their own device, it can bring out the best of what flipped learning has to offer.  According to Sheninger (2016, pp. 117),

The flipped classroom is an excellent first step in making students’ in-class experiences more active, more student centred, and more meaningful. Combining the best aspects of the flipped classroom with the power of 1:1 technology would allow for an even more radical reshaping of the classroom. School should become a place where students can learn at their own individual paces, become active creators instead of solely passive content recipients, and learn in an environment that they “own”, which adjusts rapidly to meet their learning needs and interests.      

Explain Everything is an iPad app for making teaching videos quickly and easily.  The interface consists of a blank canvas,  annotation tools and a record/pause/play button.  As soon as you hit the record button, the application screencasts the notes and drawings that you make on the canvas whilst recording your audio narration.  If a mistake is made or you want to change something about your screencast, it’s easy to go back and rewrite what you’ve recorded.

For teachers, the application can be used to record beforehand the explanation of a difficult concept – the combination of readymade sound, images and animated notes put together in a concise video serves to capture students’ attention and can be used for flipped learning.

Below are some examples of how I’ve used this application to create short tutorial videos on the topic of binary, decimal and hexadecimal conversions:

Even more useful still, is to have students make their own videos.  This enables you, the teacher, to quickly identify any misconceptions that a student has about a particular topic.  As an assessment tool, asking students to make their own tutorial videos can be invaluable for giving you a clear insight into their knowledge, skills and understanding.  At the same time, students become much more involved in their own learning process by making a tutorial video.

I recently attended a series of workshops on Talk for Writing, a strategy for teaching children to write.  Developed by the English educational writer and poet, Pie Corbett, Talk for Writing is based on the principle that before children can write it, they need to be able to say it.  The approach uses a three-stage pedagogy:

1. Imitation – Engaging activities help children internalise the pattern of language required.  Children recite aloud an exemplar text, supported visually by a story map and physical movements to help them recall the text.

2. Innovation – Shared writing is the key activity at this stage, helping children become independent writers by “doing one together first”.  By developing their ability to choose appropriate words and phrases, this stage enables children to then write their own versions.  After working in response partners, the whole class can discuss some of the more successful writing with the aid of a visualiser.

3. Invention –  This stage provides children with an opportunity to alter, develop and polish their writing in light of what they have learnt.  The teacher continues to focus on the next steps necessary to support children’s progress, so that they can become independent speakers and writers of the text being studied.

Technology for learners…

In order to facilitate this pedagogy, the following five iPad apps are perfect tools.  I have put together some quick video demonstrations and tutorials below to explain how they can be used for the teaching & learning of Talk for Writing:

Action Movie FX – A great special effects app for providing “hooks” to engage reluctant writers!

Aurasma -Using augmented reality, Aurasma can bring stories to life (think Harry Potter-type newspapers) and help to develop children’s use of ambitious vocabulary.

VideoScribe – This app is perfect for creating story maps.  By providing an animation in which a hand visually draws out the text, children are more engaged and more likely to remember the text they have just read.

Adobe Voice – Particularly good for non-fiction writing, this app provides an efficient way for children to quickly make engaging presentations.

Puppet Pals – Using this app, children can easily create their own animated stories.

My experience with using iPads in the classroom has been positive.  They can be introduced relatively seamlessly into most lessons across the curriculum, and there are so many apps to choose from, that you’re sure to find one to suit the needs of you or your students.  That being said, I have put together a list of my all time favourite apps for use both at home and at school:

Big Cat Collins books – young readers enjoy learning to read with this app, as they can interact with the pictures, and the words are highlighted as the voiceover reads the text.  The voiceover can also be switched off to allow the child to read at their own pace.  This app is only available in the UK App Store, so if you’re based in another country you may need to change the country of your App Store.

Book Creator – this is a brilliant app for supporting children in creating their own multimedia books, as it enables them to easily combine text, images and sounds.

Comic Life – provides a fun way for children to create comic strips using traditional templates.  Photographs can be inserted with various call outs, text boxes and speech bubbles.

iCardSort – more for use at home than at school, this app provides digital Post-it notes, which can help older learners to organise their ideas and revise learning.  As a student on a masters programme, this app helped me a lot to distil and plan key ideas for my essays.

Even Monsters Get Sick – this is a really engaging interactive story for young children.  They learn the basics of how to treat people who are unwell while improving their reading skills.

iWriteWords – one for younger children, this app helps with letter pronunciation, basic spellings and handwriting.  Easy and fun to use, this app quickly engages children.

iMovie – I use this app a lot with children to make educational videos.  It’s easy to learn and allows you to create your own video projects on the fly from scratch or create a movie trailer using a template.

Video project on the fly:

Video template:

Math Vs Zombies – in this app children have to quickly answer maths questions to defeat zombies before they can attack.  The game progresses through a number of levels and includes addition, subtraction and multiplication questions.

PDF Expert – having experimented with a few other PDF reader apps before this one, I can say that this one is hands down the best.  Great for storing planning documents and other lesson resources, I use this app more than any other app on the iPad.  This app makes it easy to annotate, organise and view documents as PDFs.

Percy Parker – this app sets each of the times-tables to catchy music and is a great way to engage children with learning their times-tables.

Planet Geo – my first graders would always want to play with this app.  It’s brilliant for developing children’s geographical knowledge, as it teaches them to identify different countries, cities, flags and World Heritage Sites.

Puppet Pals HD – children I have taught have loved this app.  It encourages children to develop their speaking and storytelling skills through the use of digital puppets.  It’s also an app that can be used by teachers to create child friendly video content.  I used this app to create a short video for school children (below) about the Copyright of images online.

SpellBoard – helps children to learn their weekly spellings.  All you need to do is enter the spellings and the app will generate customisable tests for you, which then stores a record of children’s progress.  You can also add pictures to the words as well as record words and sentences using your own voice.

Stop Motion – children can create stop motion animated movies quickly using this app. It’s simple to use, as you can copy, paste, delete and insert frames at any position.  One of my students from a Film Making Club, which I ran last year, used this app along with Windows Movie Maker to create the video below.

WordFoto – this app allows you to take a photograph and then add ten words, which are wrapped and morphed against the picture.  It’s a simple idea, which can be used for descriptive writing and poetry.

Concluding thoughs…

There are many other fantastic apps to choose from in the App Store, which can be put to good use both at school and at home.  As always with educational technology, the important thing is to ensure that the app is appropriate and engaging.  In my experience, children will quickly get to grips with most apps that you provide them with, and as a teacher, you can make use of a lot of these apps as part of your daily teaching practice.

Information Communication Technology (ICT) is an area that touches every subject.  As educators (whatever our specialism), we need to look at how we embed ICT into our daily pedagogy.  I’ve put together here some top tips with primary, secondary and tertiary students in mind:

1.  Get students blogging as a way to consolidate their learning. The fact that students have a potentially global audience for their blog entries means that most will spend more time refining their written work, which not only improves literacy but serves as a valuable tool for reflection.  It’s also a good opportunity to explore digital literacy with your students, helping them to understand the important concepts of e-safety, netiquette and effective search techniques online.

2.  Use word clouds to showcase key words.

A word cloud is just a collection of words that have been tiled together, as illustrated above. The most frequently used words are automatically made to appear larger by word cloud generators, which makes them a great tool for showcasing the learning outcomes of a lesson or analysing the key themes of a text.  Many great word cloud generators such as Wordle can be found online.

3.  Encourage collaboration through the use of Google Drive.

Google Documents for example, provides an ideal space for students to work together on group essays and research projects.  I provide here a review of Google Docs Documents:

4.  Promote Assessment for Learning by creating tests and quizzes for your students to complete online. My personal favourite is Google Forms – these can be embedded into students’ email.  It provides a quick and easy way to flag up any deficits in students’ knowledge and understanding, which can then be addressed in the follow up lesson.

5.  Use a good quality webcam on a stand as a cheap alternative to digital microscopes and visualisers.

As a former Year 6 (5th grade) teacher, I would often project students’ writing onto the whiteboard, and as a class we would up-level the work together.  This helps students to see what teachers or examiners are looking for when they mark a piece of work and is a great Assessment for Learning tool.  More recently, in my role as a 1st grade teacher, we’ve put our class webcam to good use by looking at mini-beasts the children have found in the playground!

6.  Use iMovie on iPads to get students creating video presentations of their learning. These can then be uploaded (private or unlisted) to a class YouTube channel. Not so long ago, if you wanted students to film, record, edit and annotate a video, multiple pieces of kit would be needed.  As well as being super portable, one of the best features of tablets is that they come with all the built-in devices necessary, including camera, microphone, keyboard, speakers and screen – not to mention the fantastic video editing software now available.

7.  The trailers provided on the iMovie app also serve as wonderful templates in which to create very short professional quality slideshow presentations. I have made many such videos for assemblies, parent workshops and training events.  These videos can be made extremely quickly and will easily engage an audience.

8.  Microsoft Word has a fantastic review tool. This enables you to annotate work students have sent you, providing comments and suggestions for improvement.  The student can then review these comments one by one and action them as appropriate.  That being said, it is important that you retain the original copy of students’ work, as annotations made will be deleted from the working version once they are accepted or rejected by the student.  This can be done by saving the work under a different name (e.g. Filename original).

9.  Search Engines are rarely used to their full potential by teachers and students. Google for example, can be your go to dictionary (just type ‘Define’), an efficient translator (try typing ‘happy in Spanish’), and the advanced search options provide many more possibilities such as allowing you to refine your search by reading level or file type.  If you’re looking for a mental maths starter on fractions let’s say, you may just be interested in search results that only show PowerPoints.

10.  Remember, with all of these top tips the focus should be the learning and not the technology (unless of course, the learning is about the technology itself). Outstanding use of ICT takes place when technologies are used transparently such that they blend seamlessly into the learning process, enabling students to become creative problem solvers.