The recent shift to online learning came about as a result of an emergency, but going forward the trend will only get more defined. The traditional means of instruction where teachers lecture students in a physical classroom setting might be replaced by a mixed-method approach – one where online learning wouldn’t just be an “alternative”, but a part of the teaching-learning framework. As experience has shown, a drastic shift to solely online modes of instruction has its own challenges, too. There are glaring issues pertaining to access, technology, and equity that need to be addressed. 

The good news is that there’s a middle ground: one where education will be imparted both in-person as well as online, involving the students as more than just passive recipients of knowledge and information. This middle ground is presented in the form of the blended learning approach.

Also referred to as hybrid learning, blended learning is exactly what it sounds like: a “blend” of traditional in-person or in-classroom instructional strategies along with online learning techniques. Both have their own set of advantages, and the idea behind blended learning is to combine the positive points of both, minimise any friction in this combination in order to ultimately offer an enhanced learning experience for students. 

An obvious concern for educators and school business leaders is finding ways to make the distance learning component within the blended learning model more effective. As Professor Stephen Heppell, an English educator who specialises in the use of ICT in education writes, “Online learning is not a subset or analogue of face to face learning; it is different, can be better, and like all learning is complex to get right.” In that vein, it’s important to understand that our digital classrooms will look different from the in-person classroom – and that’s okay. We now have to move more consciously into a hybrid model where we distribute the lessons according to what can suit each mode.

It’s realistic to think that we’re going to stay in hybrid schedules and that even when we’re in the traditional setting, it’ll involve socially distanced classrooms. So it’d make sense for the instructional planning henceforth to take a remote-first approach. 

How can that be achieved? Here are some steps educators can take:

Coordination with publishers to secure digital counterparts of each lesson. Educational publishers often offer online resources to accompany the textbooks and in-classroom lecture plans. 

If curriculum resources have not been made available by the publisher, educators can create their own resources, or collaborate with other educators to find complimentary online resources.

Accessible resources should be arranged for students with disabilities. 

Lesson plans for the virtual classroom components should have an element of interaction, eg. using breakout sessions or check-ins.

Under the hybrid model, the time in the physical classroom should be leveraged for peer interaction & collaboration. Activities could include:
1. Collaboration for problem-solving
2. Sharing peer feedback on assignments/projects
3. Guessing games for scientific phenomena
4. Creative writing exercises
5. Performance of music/short skits/poetry

A BLENDED LEARNING TOOLKIT FOR EDUCATORS 

In adapting to the virtual classroom component under the blended learning approach, technology is going to be key. While not all communication and work need to be synchronous and on-screen, there are several apps and tools that can help you plan, deliver and assess the curriculum. 

The difference between the early-2020 adoption of these tools & an ongoing adoption lies in the decision-making: you should weigh all your options, look at available alternatives, shortlist the most suitable ones, test them out for various features and then choose the one that checks most requirements on your list.

“Technology alone will not improve education, but it can be a powerful part of the solution.” - Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

Apart from the obvious options of Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and Zoom, there are other platforms that come with pre-loaded templates.

Messaging tools for school-to-home communication

Discussion boards and tools for peer interaction

Creating a more consciously inclusive classroom

Implementing a blended learning approach in classrooms now gives us the chance to find ways to be flexible, to connect, and to grapple with the considerations we might have overlooked before. In designing your blended classroom plans, start out with the awareness that education isn’t one-size-fits-all. Then, take measures that can help create an empathetic classroom, providing for students with disabilities or psychosocial problems.

In your quest to design quality distance learning experiences, the obvious problem of equity will surface. Children at home might not have access to a dedicated laptop or may have limited internet access; older children may sometimes be responsible for their younger siblings, parents might have been furloughed or laid off. The question of access amplifies for children with special needs. 

Some simple guiding principles to minimise inequity:

Keep synchronous lessons crisp and short. This way you can keep the lessons accessible and prevent the dwindling of attention spans. 

Make the files and modules available offline by sharing downloadable formats for asynchronous study. Synchronous lessons can exclude many children, so include pre-recorded lectures in your lesson plans.

Try and record the classes for those who find it hard to make it at the specified time.

Try to create lesson plans that can be viewed, accessed and studied over smartphones – these are more affordably available with families.

Online learning also shouldn’t mean that everything is to be done on a computer. Make space for non-screen activities too. 

Technology shouldn’t determine the task. Your instruction doesn’t need to revolve around technology, it just needs to be intentional and organized for maximum effectiveness.

Sort children into the same breakout rooms every time, so that they can establish a continued and comfortable relationship with their peers.

Pre-announce tasks/projects along with their deadlines, so that children can get an ample window of time to turn in the work. 

Whether the student wants to be on video should be optional. Don’t force them to be on camera. Always give the benefit of the doubt: there might be a reason why they want/need the video off.

Flexibility and collaboration are key ingredients in order for distance learning to work. Collaborative tasks in small groups of 2-4 can teach children teamwork, while at the same time give them an immediate sense of audience. They can act as positive motivating forces for each other and flag problems with their peers – the way buddy systems work.

Under the blended learning approach, flexibility also means dividing activities for in-person classes and online classes based on their suitability in each environment. This gives children the opportunity to work on different timetables, without feeling alienated from the rest of their class. Children can also be extremely inventive with extra-curricular activities online – if given a comfortable space to do so. 

Universal Design Learning (UDL) guidelines can come in handy to achieve the goals of equity and access. For example, if students with sensory sensitivities need to tune out noise, they can choose to wear earbuds or headphones during independent work. Multiple media can be used in virtual classrooms and pre-recorded lessons to make it accessible for the deaf or hard of hearing. Visual tools can be used more flexibly and generously to highlight patterns, features, ideas and relationships in concepts so that these are easily comprehensible. Students should have many options for reading, including print, digital, text-to-speech and audiobooks. Provision of alternate keyboard commands for mouse action and software that works seamlessly with keyboard alternatives can also go a long way in creating a safe learning environment. 

Remember that relationships are at the heart of instruction. We can foster a sense of belonging through peer groups, regular check-ins or one-on-one interactions. At the same time, it’s important to ensure that no one’s left out when it comes to accessing resources. Using mobile-friendly and offline functionalities, balancing synchronous – asynchronous lessons and planning around project-based learning can help achieve this goal.

Kritika M Narula shares a comprehensive guide to the blended learning approach.

A guide to the blended learning approach

Schools across the UK were shut down on 20 March as a preventative measure to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Almost three months down the line, there is a general consensus that keeping children away from school for a long period could have potentially detrimental consequences on their long-term health and academic performance. This concern has been studied to show the direct impact of school attendance on exam performance. Policymakers and thought leaders have also talked about the “summer slide” impact i.e the lag in learning that occurs as a result of long absences from school like over long holidays.

Acting upon those concerns, the government has announced a phased lifting of the lockdown and return to schools. Now, the governing bodies and senior leadership at schools have an array of tough and sensitive decisions at hand. The safety and wellbeing of children are paramount, but the pandemic is an evolving situation; this makes it hard to have rigid structures and plans in place. Certain guidelines, templates and checklists can help in ensuring the wellbeing of children. We look at each of these pressing concerns one by one.

What’s the safest way to get back to a routine? How can the risk of reigniting infections be controlled? 

So far in the study of the pandemic trends, children seem to show fewer symptoms of Covid-19. Yet, there’s no definitive evidence of the role of children as carriers of the virus, or for that matter, the amount of susceptibility they have towards it. Could they be transmission agents for staff and adults back home? We don’t know yet. 

In a way, we are shooting in the dark, so the best practice here is to take all possible precautions as children head back to school. We’ve listed some actionable steps below.

Schools should establish the capacity of the campus for teaching under conditions of physical distancing beforehand. Assessment of the reduced capacity in quantifiable terms will provide a solid basis for critical decisions related to scheduling and management.

In order for physical distancing to work, it is imperative that the physical teaching hours are restricted. One solution is splitting classes into micro-groups and re-arranging time tables to accommodate the reduced capacity. Many classes will only be able to run 2 days a week, for instance. 

Schools should also stagger arrival, departure and break times to avoid crowds and congestion.

In addition to staggered attendance, a blended learning approach will be quintessential to limit the number of children and staff on the school premises.

Health measures specific to COVID-19 would include temperature screening at the entrance to schools and classrooms, sanitisation routines to clean furniture, fixtures and facilities and monitoring the usage of masks or shields.

Schools should come up with detailed isolation and hospitalisation protocols for children and/or staff presenting at school with a temperature and communicate these measures to parents.

Physical distancing would also necessitate spatial reconstruction. These measures would include providing seating that is two metres (6ft 6in) apart, using spaces and rooms like libraries, community halls, leisure centres, conference venues etc as makeshift classrooms to boost capacity. 

Mobility plans should be revamped. The teacher can move from one class to another instead of a significant number of children doing the same. If the school has enough entry points, a one-directional movement path can be set up using tapes and arrows.

Schools should also identify socialising spots where children tend to gather and monitor those areas.

If educational programmes and infrastructural elements are redesigned, they should be made accessible to children with disabilities or from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

School transport should also be accounted for in the plan. With the recommended seating guidelines, each school bus can now carry just seven children. These numbers should be considered when creating new schedules.

Playtime should be reinvented. Solo indoor activities should be encouraged, games involving tossing of balls or exchanging hands should be discouraged. Substitutes can be creatively invented, for example, children can chase shadows of their friends instead of complete physical touch.

How can schools facilitate children who have fallen behind during school closures?

Once we have the safety measures in place, the focus should be on the learning recovery process. We understand that the sudden school closures could have created learning chasms and that these disparities need to be addressed. So, what’s the best way forward? Murray Morrison, a leading education expert and founder of EdTech learning program Tassomai.com shares: 

“I’d suggest avoiding overreaction - schools construct excellent schemes of work for their curriculum and put a lot of thought into their intervention strategies to make sure every child gets the best possible education. We should trust in that rather than indulge in knee-jerk measures that end up distracting the very professionals we're relying on. What does need changing, however, is probably pupil funding to ensure that each can access that support especially when they have less access to the school building. Some of that needs to be on school budgets, but also provision for childcare will be needed to make sure that families can continue to function and parents can keep working too.” 

Thus, the reopening of schools should be seen as an opportunity to deliver meaningful education to every child, including the marginalised children who were at risk of being left behind by distance learning modalities. In simple words, this can be an opportunity to fill the gaps in resources for the hitherto marginalised groups. Since schools will not go back to operations at full capacity in the near future, it is important to look at how flexible learning approaches can be made inclusive.

Student engagement in blended/remote learning: Learning from global perspectives

This moment is an opportunity to test out new pedagogies that complement flipped classrooms, blended approaches, virtual breakout rooms and other technology-based learning models. It is, therefore, the time to protect and redirect education budgets into innovations and technologies. Morrison takes stock of the situation, “I cannot see how it can work without a good deal of remote working, so, with funding to support, schools need to invest in robust, quality and evidenced EdTech to give students the structure to manage self-directed learning.”

In Denmark, the first country to reopen, children operate in small groups, across classrooms, playgrounds, breaks. There is a massive emphasis on hand washing and sterilising. Germany uses the blended learning approach – classrooms can only hold 10 children at a time, so school days are shorter and complemented with online classes. Belgium and Norway have also followed a similar approach. Countries like France and Israel were forced to close schools after reopening, more proof that the way forward has to be blended learning. 

In places like Italy, Portugal, New York and California, schools are likely to remain closed until September. In India, the government is not prepared to take any risks, so there’s a strong reliance on digital education. Guidelines are being prepared for the same, covering cyber safety, capping synchronous interaction to 3 hours and expediting the development of multilingual educational apps.

We are not going ‘back’ to normal, instead, we are headed towards a ‘new’ normal in education. This will impact children in more ways than immediately obvious.

How can we assess the consequences to children’s mental health & to the social development of young children? How can we preserve their wellbeing?

There are multiple precedents across natural disasters and disease outbreaks to help us understand that in an event marked by significant collective trauma, loss or ongoing community disruption, the impact on children extends beyond the actual moments of panic during the event. 

Besides, wellbeing needs to be seen as a psychosocial concept. The pandemic – and the consequent closure of schools – has likely disrupted learning and created a learning chasm (due to lack of access to computer devices), interrupted social protection or nutrition, and distanced children from their emotional support systems. The nature of the pandemic has only aggravated the situation; we cannot ignore the psychological impact of increased isolation and treating everyone as a potential threat. 

Another aspect of the lockdown – and a rather grave one – is the possible exposure of vulnerable children to a greater risk of exploitation or abuse. Kate Young, CEO of the Safeguarding Association, sheds light on this aspect: 

“Some schools will find that their vulnerable student register gets bigger. There are a few things in terms of safeguarding that I think we really need to be watchful of. Number one is the significant increase in domestic abuse. We are bound to find cases where children who may never have experienced it previously – but have now been living with parents who are struggling and therefore losing temper – are now witness to the escalation of ugly family conflicts. It’s a long spectrum – the seemingly harmless but prolonged frustration and skirmishes over less-than-ideal working conditions for parents to serious physical abuse.”

There are other tangential concerns. Loss of a loved one, for instance, could throw off the emotional balance of a family. Young adds, “What if a family member is struggling to cope, or takes to unhealthy coping mechanisms? Some parents have also seen an impact of the pandemic on their jobs and incomes, so factor that in and we can anticipate that people would have taken to alcoholism, too. ” 

Schools should chalk out a wellbeing plan that includes measures like the ones listed below:

Provide robust access to counselling services and regular check-ins with children.

Keep a keen eye for children showing signs of anxiety or depression. All educators can be provided training on mental health first-aid.

Help children build resilience. To alleviate the impact of the pandemic, give them a message of hope. They need to be told that it is possible to ride out this wave – anything from affirmations to chalk messages on footpaths, or signs in the windows will help.

Peer interaction should be encouraged – as long as such interaction is not in discord with the norms of health and hygiene.

All the steps we take for ensuring safety in education in the ‘new normal’ will be underpinned by robust and timely consultation and communication with parents, teachers, children and communities at large. The best interests of children should be paramount. 

The decisions made in this regard are also context-specific and will vary across districts, countries and schools. The overarching aim remains the same – to reopen better, healthier and safer schools to impart education as well as develop resilience in children. 

A guide to ensuring children’s safety in the new normal

Kritika M Narula provides a guide for a safe reopening of schools, centered around the safety of all children.

Early on in the lockdown induced by the Coronavirus pandemic, education secretary Gavin Williamson acknowledged that the continued school closures will have a detrimental impact on children’s progress because of the lack of pupil-teacher interaction. The government has also been in favour of a gradual return to school as against a complete lifting of the lockdown. Thus, the government suggested a phased return, starting June 1st. Children in Reception and Year 1, along with Year 6 have initially returned. 

Let’s take a look at how this phased return has turned out, so far. Official statistics from the first week of June showed that just over half of primary schools in England reopened and only a quarter of the children from these three year groups managed to return. It is important to note that even through the lockdown period, most schools have remained open to vulnerable children and the children of key workers. In keeping with this fact, the Department for Education figures report that 91% of educational settings were open in the first week of June, a sizeable rise from 80% in May. 

It is especially important for these three year groups to stay on track with their educational journey. As Dr Stephen Curran explains, it is important for Reception and Year 1 children to learn uninterruptedly for the development of their basic numeracy and literacy skills. The same argument extends to Year 6 students, whose junior school experience would otherwise be tainted and their skill development impeded.  

Murray Morrison, a leading education expert and founder of EdTech learning program Tassomai.com connects the dots, “There is certainly a need to get children back into formal education as soon as practically possible – the risks around a widening attainment gap that disproportionately affects poorer children and the increased pressure on families to support home-learning for months are two compelling reasons to push to restart.”  

The question, then, is simple: what does the return to school entail? What plans do the school management and educators have, if any? Are the parents and/or children scared or are they looking forward to it?

While parents are palpably worried about the impact of these events on the children, they’re also positive about the return to school. One parent based in Portsmouth expressed her concerns about the transition, “My oldest is due to start school in September and I’m worried about how the pandemic will affect his transition.” The fears about the transition after a prolonged distance come from the potential dissonance it could create – it is bound to be an adjustment for children who have been housebound for weeks – and not necessarily from the idea of return.

It is the same concern echoed elsewhere, too. Dr Kate Mason, who is a parent and a clinical psychologist herself, believes that this is a ripe time for a parenting lesson in resilience, “I'm seeing lots in the media about the likelihood of our children developing anxiety and depression with lots of scary statistics, but it's not necessarily the experience of COVID and the lockdown that will dictate whether or not anyone develops a mental health difficulty; it is about how they process the experience and bounce back.” 

It is a matter of providing children with the right tools, but for the most part, children are extremely happy to be coming back. Danielle Fletcher, a digital strategist/coach in Leicester and a single mum to two boys aged 4 and 7, shares, “As soon as it was announced that the schools might be reopening, I knew my younger son would want to go back straight away. He is quite advanced for his age, so he needs to go back to learning. I knew they were going to put strategic measures in place. They play football while observing social distancing, they are washing their hands – so I am not worried about the health risks. But my son is extremely excited and eager every night before school. He is even ready in the morning, hours ahead of school time. For me, it's been the best decision to send him back to school. He was missing his friends, he needs structure, he needs to be learning.” 

Experts generally agree. Over 120 experts in the field recently signed a strongly-worded open letter, addressed to the education secretary, invoking the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (article 3) that calls for the authorities to look at the best interests of the children. The letter urges the government to change social distancing advice in such a way that summer play schemes and education providers of all types are able to open.

It is evidently clear that children need peer interaction and routines for their wellbeing. Despite this, Fletcher shared that in her son’s class, the attendance was still fairly low.  Even though the class was split, only 6 children were present in the room. 

For schools, operating at full capacity while also maintaining physical distancing is not possible. As an example, each school bus can now carry just seven students. This means it is only feasible to carry one-fourth of the usual number of children. Bringing children back to school in larger numbers can be extremely tricky, logistically. Kate Young, CEO of the Safeguarding Association, sheds light on the other, lingering challenge, “All of this is compounded by the health-related fear that a single case of coronavirus infection could shut down the entire school.”

Schools can try to accommodate different students on different days of the week. Schools can also look towards blended learning strategies. None of the solutions, however, come without their unique set of challenges. 

Morrison takes an incisive look at these challenges, “The issues, as I see them, are around irreconcilable problems of school capacity: that is, teacher and timetable capacity and the physical space available. We know that it will not be physically possible to accommodate students while maintaining existing social distancing and safety guidelines, so for education to work at all, we need to see some considerable funding to make sure a blended learning strategy can work, with software and hardware provided, along with some better support for families who will inevitably need to still host their children at home for a portion of the school day next year.”

Now that the governing bodies are slightly more familiar with the pandemic, planning ahead for the next phases is highly recommended. Young, too, acknowledges that this is a tough task nevertheless – figuring out how to launch into operations in a shifting, precarious landscape without any guidelines. She suggests that the governing bodies and senior leadership at schools should chalk out these plans with inputs from everyone and then be extremely communicative with all parties involved – educators, parents and children. 

In order to effectively and safely move forward, schools need to strike the right cadence. Children will learn through interaction and play, but they simultaneously need to abide by the social distancing measures for public health protection. 

The UNESCO Framework for Reopening Schools looks at six dimensions: policy, financing, safe operations, learning, reaching the most marginalised and wellbeing/protection. Policy considerations and financial requirements together create the enabling environment needed to support each of the other dimensions. Young agrees with this approach, “There’s a need to have an open and fluid conversation, keep a good working relationship and the finance departments might well have to lead the conversation around costing of all these measures.” 

How can this approach be implemented effectively? All schools did not manage the lockdown in the same way, so their responses to the lifting of the lockdown are also going to carry some disparities. At the same time, every child had a different experience of the lockdown. Thus, safeguarding children at this point would mean taking actionable steps that are in line with the safe operations, learning, reaching the most marginalised and wellbeing/protection dimensions of the framework. Some of these steps would include:

Providing them robust access to counselling and mental healthcare, as it is possible some children were exposed to varying levels of domestic abuse or alcoholism.

Staggering the different elements in the schedule: start and close of the school day, mealtimes, breaks.

Holding school in shifts, to reduce class size.

Retaining and reinforcing all accountability structures as before.

Rethinking mobility and movements, for example, the teacher can move from one class to another instead of a significant number of students doing the same.

Schools can try unconventional approaches too. Young recollects one school that has physically reopened, but was still teaching through online tools. That way, the children can meet their friends and socialise, and at the same time, study in a safe environment with minimal physical interactivity. 

Heading back to school is in the best interests of the children. However, with physical distancing and hygiene measures in place, going to school will have a vastly different connotation for them than it did pre-pandemic. Communicating with them and checking-in with their feelings will be just as imperative as placing appropriate safety measures within the school premises. 

Kritika M Narula shares what a return to school can look like for students across the world after coronavirus.

Back to school: What does a return to school during the COVID-19 pandemic look like?

As a teacher-parent, it's not easy juggling schooling your child and completing school duties at home, says Sarah Mullin

You’ve just completed your first week as the headteacher, classroom teacher, caretaker and lunchtime supervisor of Home School Academy. As a qualified professional, you might have dreamed of this very moment, when you could use your repertoire of skills to teach your own little treasures. 

The only problem is that you’ve also been working remotely: setting work for your students, writing reports and attending virtual meetings.

As teachers, we know how to work under pressure, meeting the needs of multiple students and juggling our multifarious roles and responsibilities. But teacher-parents are now encountering a whole new set of challenges.

Coronavirus: Parent-teachers working from home

Here are just a few of the wins, wonders and woes of juggling home working with home learning.

1. Your colour-coded Covid-19 timetable didn't go to plan

Daily chores, morning walks and academic time: you've created the ideal timetable for your dream routine as a teacher-parent. 

It was all going well until day two, when you realised that it’s just not possible to take an important call while also supervising your youngest making a tower out of toilet rolls. 

None of us has ever encountered a pandemic before. We are learning to be flexible in the face of adversity. So, if baking cakes puts a smile on your child’s face, it’s OK if the timetable doesn’t quite go to plan this afternoon.

2. You set up an Insta-worthy home classroom that has hardly been used

You cleared a workspace and organised your child’s books neatly in the corner. Highlighters, pencils, pens and rulers were carefully positioned against some brightly coloured Post-It notes. You took a quick photo and shared it on social media, feeling proud of your parent-teacher study area. 

After five minutes, there’s a bowl of cornflakes resting on the maths homework and marker pen ink on the walls. 

School classrooms are designed to meet the needs of multiple learners. But some of the best learning experiences happen when children feel comfortable and content. So why not try dissecting the parts of a flower in the garden, or having fun with fractions using some fruit in the kitchen? 

And if you need to resort to CBBC so that you can manage an hour of work duties, that’s OK, too.

3. You thought celebrity exercise work-outs would be a great family bonding experience

It’s 9am and you’re lunging and stretching in front of a YouTube screen. What a way to get fit, while spending time with your nearest and dearest. And fitness means productivity. 

Pity it also means that you now can’t walk up the stairs without whimpering in pain. Who knew PE lessons could be that painful?

4. You miss your team of amazing colleagues

As a home-working parent-teacher, you’re making lunch while helping the eldest with their history project, supervising free play while checking your emails and tidying up Play-Doh while planning tomorrow’s lessons for your students

The best part about working in a school is being part of a tremendous team: from the caretaker who keeps us safe to the school nurse who keeps us healthy and happy. 

Where would we be without our teaching assistants, lunchtime supervisors, cooks, admin team and bursars? Doing all their jobs ourselves is where.

Thanks to technology, keeping in touch with your edu-buddies has never been easier. But you still look forward to the day when you can laugh with your colleagues in the staffroom once more. 

It may be chaos at times, but it is important to appreciate spending time with our loved ones in the comfort and safety of our own homes. 

We’re no longer sitting in queues of traffic on the daily commute, and exercise feels like a treat rather than a challenge. We’re preparing home-cooked meals for the family, and taking pleasure in spending time with one another.

Board games are coming out of storage, and books that sat on shelves for years are brightening up our evenings. Watching the news has taken priority over watching Netflix, and acts of kindness are abundant in communities across the country.

This period has taught us that our health truly is our wealth, and that the most important things in the world are family, friends, community and love.

Sarah Mullin is a deputy headteacher and doctor of education student. Her book, What They Didn’t Teach Me on My PGCE, is a bestseller on Amazon. This article has been reproduced from TES with Sarah Mullins' consent – thank you to Sarah and to the wonderful TES team.

Coronavirus: 5 lessons from a teacher-parent at home

As we enter what feels like the 100th week of working from home, the SCR Tracker team reflects on what it means to work from home, putting together tips and tricks for you, and sharing anecdotes from our time in isolation. 

At SCR Tracker we decided to send our people home earlier than Boris Johnson declared lockdown, so that we could efficiently plan the transition in order to put the safety of our people first. This extra time in isolation has given us lots to adapt to, and so we wanted to share a few funny stories from our team along with tips and tricks that we have learned along the way.  

Image source: Zoom screenshot (Zoom has always been our preferred method of conferencing, so it's been so nice to be joined by the rest of the world on it!)

When our team was asked for tips and tricks to work at home productively, our Director Gary Le Sueur shared: "Distractions are plentiful. You need to get into a routine, set working hours, get your partner to adhere to them with you, and close the office door. Maintain a to-do list (Trello or other) and just power through it."

Keeping set work hours, as well as adding these to your email signature can help you to differentiate between work time and home time. Just remember to stick to them! You may find that, depending on your company culture, people's expectations of response times vary, so it might be useful to add a note into your email signature on whether you are expecting a response, or whether this is not time sensitive. Shared calendars are often a huge benefit to remote teams to see others’ availability. We use tools like Zapier to update our employee’s Slack status based on Google Calendar entries, which gives us the space to be unavailable whilst we are busy. Using Slack's status 'Concentrating' or other custom statuses have also been useful for our team. 

Technical Director Ben Gale shared: "Try and keep to a schedule. It's easy to let routines slip when there aren't other people to plan your time around. It’s easy to get sucked in and end up sitting still for 8 hours – you need to make sure you get up and move around. Also, the dogs get frustrated if you don’t look up for hours at a time."

Remember to get up, move, walk around and not be chained to the desk for the entire duration of the working day. It’s very easy to get sucked in to being more sedentary than usual as your working life and connections are all online. Consider using your (former) commuting time as exercise time, preferably in the fresh air. A walk/bike ride/run or any exercise you enjoy also “bookends” the working day effectively, helping to provide a mental separation between home life and work life. If you are struggling with your time management, see what Adam Grant says about 'attention management'. 

Head of Business Development Julia Nielsen shared: "Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your dining chair will keep you sat straight and productive – it will just give you backache!"

You’ll want a comfortable chair, but not too comfortable. If you try a dining chair you’ll find a newfound respect for even the cheapest office chair. And consider ergonomics! Check that your chair and desk are at a good height, and that you aren’t reaching too far or flexing your wrists at a bad angle on your keyboard. If you can, use an external monitor or raise up your laptop and use an external keyboard. Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) is a real thing, and if you’re a bit more stressed than usual you’re likely to be tensing up and placing more strain on your back, neck and arms. See this NHS advice pieces on preventing RSI here and NHS advice on good sitting positions for working here. 

Co-Founder Luke O'Dwyer shared: "Have a morning routine, eat breakfast and make sure you have a lunch break away from your computer. I've been eating a lot better as I cook every day rather than finding the quickest bite to eat. And don't watch Netflix whilst working!"

Your brain might rebel if you’re not used to working from home. Try to make your working environment different from your usual hang-out places to emphasise the differences. Somewhere new, even if just a different chair, will make it easier to promote new habits and not just want to keep putting the TV on. Home is usually your sanctuary from work so you may find it harder to motivate than expected. Try to prepare lunch for yourself ahead of time if possible and eat as healthily as possible! Do not be tempted to wear your pyjamas to work, or spend your workday on the sofa. It will put you in the wrong mindset for work. No need to wear a suit, but find a comfortable medium that makes you feel comfortable at your new working spot, but also makes you feel professional and motivated. 

A new everyday: but is it the new normal?

When asked to share details of how their lives had changed, our team shared some intimate thoughts and details from their life. Gary shared: "Luckily I’m used to working from home! But I’m not used to the wife and boy being home every day, and they aren't either. They get bored easily it seems."

We have previously written up a full tool-kit for home learning during these times, full of hundreds of links to keep your family entertained and educated simultaneously. And remember – it's okay if you're working from home and your kids start yelling in the background while you’re on a call (or they casually walk into your home office/bedroom to ask you for something!). And it's also okay if you accidentally forget to hit the mute button and we hear you scream across the house for those same kids to be quiet! We're all human. 

Ben shared: "I’m looking forward to seeing what new traits we have developed permanently and what things go back to normal. I wonder how the world will adapt to our new habits."

Remember that, as we all eagerly anticipate what the 'new normal' (have we used that phrase enough yet?) might look like, these are things to be aware of right now:

Trust your team – they’re doing their best and want to balance their work and their obvious concerns about friends & family

Balance neglect vs. being overbearing – you must give clear output-driven guidance as you will not be able to task manage as effectively

Diarise the formal stuff and have informal “check ins” to stay connected – try to implement regular touch points (we have shared some ritual suggestions below)

Setting expectations – make sure your teams know when they are expected to be available to each other

Presence – now that we are connected all the time, presence indicators can be less useful, but setting a precedent about how this is used can help

Overcommunicate – invest time in telling people what’s going on as you don’t have the watercooler opportunities to disseminate information

Luke shared: "I do miss interacting with my lovely colleagues – Zoom calls aren't quite the same! Also, the coffee machine at work is a lot better than at home. I'm really looking forward to having a lovely macchiato when we go back to normal."

It's important to check in with your friends, your family, and yourself throughout your time working from home. We've shared advice on looking after your children's mental health and well-being, and also advice for school and university leaders on supporting community health and well-being. Please also see the below resources:

9 ways to stay positive during the Coronavirus Pandemic 

Understanding and avoiding armchair epidemiology

Mental Health considerations statement from WHO 

When the team was asked what they missed about the 'old normal', Ben shared "I miss KFC." And when they were asked what they don't miss, Ben laughed: "I don’t miss the guilt of eating KFC." Gary shared "I miss Nando’s, my parents and being less fat." Are you beginning to see a theme here? When they were asked what the first thing they'll do when they get out of lockdown might be, Ben said "KFC and Nando's", and Gary agreed: "First I would like to go clay shooting with my Dad. Also Nando’s."

Pre-lockdown our team had built up several strong rituals (mostly based around chicken) to work together more effectively. We would highly recommend continuing your company rituals throughout lockdown – and possibly even setting up new ones based around your new methods of working:

Team Standups. To ensure your team feels connected and supported, it’s important to quickly check in with each member at least once daily. Some teams like to have a casual standup conference call, while others prefer an agile scrum on Slack. How you do it isn’t important, but gauging accountability and tracking progress is. We have used an automated slackbot and love it!

Catch up on email. Avoid future “Have you followed up on this, yet?” emails by encouraging all of your team members to zero out their inbox at the end of each workday. Trust us, your clients and vendors will notice and appreciate your team’s accessibility.

Plan your tomorrow. This tried and true productivity method is easy to integrate into your team’s daily routine with a slackbot.

Casual Chats. Remote employees may need to be reminded that they work and interact with real human beings. Make sure to integrate efficient (but sincere) personal conversations into your work week by asking about kids, pets, trips, hobbies, or anything else that is exciting or unique about your coworkers. If you’re not "naturally chatty", block a quick one-on-one chat with each of your team members into your calendar or randomly pair employees with each other (including yourself) to connect during a scheduled time.

Live Meetings. Every team, regardless of size, should come together at least once a week to report, plan, celebrate, and problem solve. How you connect (phone, video, in-person, or other) isn’t very important, but uniting over shared experiences or goals is.

A Celebration. Recognise another stretch of a job well done with a celebration of some kind. You can start simple with extra compliments on Slack, then eventually graduate into Friday afternoon parties or breaks. Fun goals, like this, often make it worth getting through a tough few days and recharges everyone for the next week.

Progress Reports. Voluntarily providing updates communicates trust and confidence, so make sure to offer some kind of reporting to your followers, including progress summaries, important news, and forecasting for the next month. It’s up to you to decide whom to share these reports – just your team, a department, the whole company, or even your entire community. Again, the message is more important than the medium, so don’t get too caught up in format or distribution tools.

Unprofessional Activity. Forget about work and deadlines and clients for a minute and just do something outrageously fun or fulfilling together. Some teams host a Fitbit challenge, slack book club, or happy hour video call to enjoy together. Be creative. Tap into your company’s branding or common interests and goals for inspiration. This will not only support your company’s mission, but strengthen it.

Temperature Gauges. Check in on your team members one-by-one to get an idea of how they’re doing in general. Think of it as an agile scrum, but for their big picture: Are you satisfied with your progress and accomplishments this month? What blocks are you noticing that are hindering your creativity? What can I do that might help you accomplish your goal for next month? If you choose to share responses publicly, make sure to follow up your posted response with a private message to display individual concern.

Employee Evaluations. During standups and meetings, topics are usually discussed on a micro-scale, so this is a good opportunity to zoom out and look at the big picture of each worker’s progress, satisfaction, concerns, and goals. To encourage transparency, create a casual and comfortable environment, be open to any responses (positive or negative), and be as honest and compassionate as you expect them to be with you.  

Personal Gifts. Remind your team about how much you appreciate their work and value your professional relationship with them by sending them a little something every now and then. Budget these into your necessary expenses, so if a special occasion pops up or morale seems to sink, you won’t have an excuse to hold back.

Establishing rituals with your team might be the most direct path to becoming a more engaged and productive remote leader. With consistent habits and rituals, you will notice a higher rate of employee satisfaction and a more positive vibe to your company culture. 

Julia shared: "I find that one of the things I miss about being with colleagues whilst you're working is the occasional interruption: a question asked, a coffee shared, a problem shared. So at home, I've used productivity apps to keep me focused for set times throughout the day with short tea breaks in between. My favourite app is Forest!"

Forest is one of many productivity apps that can be downloaded on the app store which forces you to put your phone down for specific lengths of time (and grows actual trees in the world for you), but we've put together a list of productivity apps in case these work for you:

15Five – named after the 15 minutes it takes to complete a report and the five minutes it takes to read it, this gives either you or your team a macro analysis of performance each week.

Todoist – replacing your paper notebook is this smart to do list, which processes natural language to understand what priority your tasks are and when they’re due.

Any.do – different programs work for different people, so while this is another digital to do list, you can access it from anywhere, including a smart speaker, and it comes with a really clean, simple interface.

ClickUp – full-featured project management tool with native time tracking that allows your team to stay in sync on projects, deliverables, tasks, and processes.

Asana – a project management tool to help you stay on top of priority tasks, the Chrome extension allows you to create a workflow from any web page and share it with team mates instantly.

Timpler – another powerful, simple task manager, this one helps collect your thoughts throughout the day, organise tasks and schedule work for the future.

OKRs App – OKRs are the new KPIs, in that it’s a name for you to call ‘targets and performance tracking’, this app promises to make hitting them more likely by helping you stay on top of them.

Droptask – a project management tool that works by dragging and (as the name would suggest) dropping tasks into your workflow, it’s a user-friendly way of seeing all the moving parts of your business in one place.

Effortless – a nice Mac app which will focus your mind, simply set your goal, set a time limit, and go for it.

Slash – a productivity app that forces you to do one thing at a time, useful if you’re in the middle of something like a meaty search, get interrupted by a phone call, and usually struggle to get back to what you were doing, this app’ll sort you out.

Collect – a nice tool to request documents and data from your clients or your team. You can easily track responses and make sure you get everything back.

And remember, it's okay if you’re new to working remotely and we can see everything in your closet behind you. Or if your wifi goes down and the call drops, twice. Or even if your dog starts barking in the middle of your sentence and your main presentation point is completely drowned out. We're all human! There are a few things you can do in order to prepare for these situations:

Find out how to manage the “mute” – your collaboration tools probably have tools to help you mute one or even all of the participants on a meeting. Experiment with different audio inputs/options, what sounds best when you record it, and how to do multi-media sharing: screensharing, video sharing, using the chat, etc.

Can you “blur background”? – it’s not always possible to work in a quiet and distraction free space, not everyone has a home office. Blurring the background behind you can help keep focus in the meeting and also means no one has to see the mess we all inevitably actually live in! Fun alternative: use Zoom's virtual backgrounds!

Create symbols for your family – is there a sign you can put up, a light you can turn on, or a flag you can raise to show your family when you need quiet time to work so they can do their best to avoid disturbing at the critical moment.

Get some headphones or earbuds ready – if there is a lot of background noise, then it’ll be potentially difficult for you to both hear and be heard. Using some decent quality headphones will help on both ends! Make sure you’ve set them up correctly in advance of the meeting (especially if they are Bluetooth headphones!). Tip: we've been using the excellent Krisp software, a new AI technology that drowns out background noise and only shares your voice. Yes, it actually works!

Use video wherever possible to discuss team actions and help you feel connected to your office base and your colleagues. It's nice to see a friendly face!

Thank you to our friends at the Remote Work Survival Kit who have happily let us share their resources and excellent advice. We will leave you this funny story from our Co-Founder Luke when asked what funny things had happened to him since lockdown:

"I had a surprise 30th birthday on Zoom, meticulously organised by my girlfriend, where we were supposed to play an online game with around 25 people but the game didn't work... So we had 25 people (mostly strangers to each other), dressed as characters from Tiger King all wondering what is going on – it all worked out in the end though. Definitely one to remember."

And finally, a throwback from less socially distant times – all our best wishes from the SCR Tracker Team!

Gitlab guide to having an all remote company

Best practices and tips to help you stay sane

The recent COVID-19 outbreak has presented a number of unprecedented challenges — there is the obvious threat to our physical health and wellbeing but then and there is a less obvious threat too — that of anxiety triggered by a combination of uncertainty and disruption to our routines. The necessary but unusual series of response actions to the global pandemic — social distancing and isolation — can seem scary, especially to children. 

Not only are children finding themselves in unfamiliar circumstances (which can seem a lot like a punishment), but this is the generation that was already dealing with anticipatory grief, eco-anxiety and the like. As educators, parents and guardians, it is important for us to preempt the severe psychological impact of these changes during the coronavirus-induced distancing as well as in the aftermath of this crisis, when we will try to find the ‘new normal’. 

Cath Knibbs, a Cyber Specialist and trauma psychotherapist shares that her foremost concern in the current situation is the nature of exposure to information that children have:

This is a fascinating piece by SCR Tracker (www.scrtracker.com) on how to look after children's mental health and safety during a global crisis. Would recommend you give it a read!

Kritika M Narula discusses how to look after children's mental health and safety during a global crisis when everything seems like it's spinning out of control.

This is a fascinating piece by @SCRTracker on how to look after children's mental health and safety during a global crisis. Would recommend you give it a read!

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