Since the spread of COVID-19, education has been changing rapidly. The restrictions of lockdown have urged schools to rethink their delivery channels, which has subsequently triggered a renewed sense of urgency for technological advancement within education.
At Nova Pioneer, we take pride in being a forward-thinking school network focused on teaching 21st century skills in an affordable way. This requires us to constantly think of better ways we can teach and deliver content to students that remains true to our strong instructional leadership culture.
Student-facing Google Classrooms
So in order to meet the need to now teach remotely, teachers across Nova Pioneer began creating their own Google Classrooms. Google Classrooms helps students and teachers organize assignments, boost collaboration, and foster better communication. This has enabled us to shift from physical classrooms to a digital classroom environment.
Class Assignments
Our grade 4 to 7 students have been completing their assignments completely digitally and submitting them back to teachers. What is amazing about this is that students are learning to use digital tools like Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, which are building essential collaboration and digital literacy skills for the future ways of working. What sets innovators apart from others is that they use technology as tools for active creation and collaboration, rather than only for passive consumption of content.
Weekly Live Check-Ins
Every week teachers are connecting with their students via Zoom or Google Meet making sure that teachers remain connected and in relationship with their students as they move through the curriculum at home.
Weekly Lesson Videos
“Technology alone does not transform education. It’s the school culture and the pedagogy that is transformative. The technology is merely an enabler for change”
One of the distinctive features of Nova Pioneer is our strong instructional leadership culture. Coupled with education technology tools from the G-Suite for Education, Nova Pioneer has been set up to deliver engaging learning experiences for all Novaneers remotely and at scale.
In partnership with our learning design team, teachers and instructional leaders, we are building out a library of rigorous enquiry-based lesson storyboards, which are helping guide our Novaneers through the Cambridge and CBC curriculum at home. We have been thrilled to see the engaging learning moments that have been happening across Novaneer homes!
Students enjoy receiving pre-recorded lesson videos every week per subject from a team of passionate teachers at each campus, which are delivered via their Google Classrooms.
Student Engagement & Personalization
As students watch the lesson videos, they are able to respond with emojis and leave comments to questions posed in the lesson video. This helps make our lessons active learning experiences. Another thing that has been spreading like wildfire is teachers creating their own personal avatars using the Bitmoji app and using them in lesson videos. Create your own by downloading the app: https://www.bitmoji.com/
Teacher-facing Google Classrooms
At Nova Pioneer, we have been getting classy with Google Classrooms for a couple years already. We have been using Google Classrooms to deliver lesson plans and materials to teachers across the continent.
We also use Google Classrooms to provide self-paced, video-based training for upskilling our teachers with EdTech tools.
Parent EdTech Support Sites
We understand that the shift to a completely digital environment can be challenging for our students and parents alike. So to help make this transition easier, we have built an EdTech Support Site with the necessary videos and instructions to help make the transition to Google Classrooms. You can visit this website by following this link: bit.ly/phase2parents
