 Hello, everybody. Ross here at Teacher Toolkit. Thank you for joining me. You're either watching this live on Twitter, my YouTube channel or on Facebook. I'm delighted to be showing LessonUp and I'm joined by the company and people that work for LessonUp and a couple of teachers who I'm going to talk to about who they use the product and how they've used it to transform their teaching and learning in the classroom. LessonUp is a community of teachers from all over the world over 800,000 lesson plans, exchanging lesson resources to deliver online content to students. Really popular in Belgium, the Netherlands and the USA. Not so much here in the UK, so I'm really pleased to be able to share this with you. Again, because I'm recording here from StreamYard, I just thought I'd just mention a couple of logistics before we go into more details. If you've logged in to Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, you can leave comments and I'll display them on the screen on your behalf so you can pose questions. I'm going to share some QR codes for you to scan and I will share all the recordings with you after the event itself. Just in terms of LessonUp, they provide lesson plans and a curriculum sequence for teachers to adapt, reduce your workload and improve student engagement in class and online. In this session, I want to go through how it can empower yourself as a teacher, how you can see it works, going to see a couple of teachers share different scenarios and how it can support students in a wide range of settings, I suppose. I'm just going to put my slides up on the screen. Here we are. I'm managing two different screens here. There we go. For people watching live, people who've signed up through Eventbrite, we've got about 190 of you signed up from 30 countries all over the world, which is exciting. In this online world, we now work and teach. Maybe you can see where your pin is here. I'm a bit of a map geek, so it's nice to see all the different people from different places. Obviously, I'm speaking to you here from England, so we'll just do a little zoom in on England here and you can see. We've got a big crowd from Belfast. I'm going to introduce you to Michael later, who's from Belfast Met College. He's obviously got a few colleagues here as well. That's the UK and the agenda. We're going to be over the next hour. I'm picking the land tape from COVID, what it currently looks like from Michael and Belfast and from Anya, who is joining us from the Netherlands. We'll talk about what lesson up is from Alice, who I'll introduce to you later. We'll then show you some engaging lessons from the platform itself, how to sign up also and access all the free material. We'll do some demos along the way. As ever, you're watching on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. If you're logged in, you can leave a comment and we'll pose your question up on the screen to myself, Alice, Anya or Michael as we go through. I'm just going to introduce everybody. I'm going to take my slides off the screen and I'm going to bring in everybody here and we'll start off with Alice, then Anya and then Michael. Alice, over to you. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Yeah. Thank you, Ross. I am Alice. I'm part of the lesson up team and basically I'm here to kind of give you a bit of our story, our mission and how Anya and Michael have so willingly agreed to be a part of this session as well. But really excited to just share who we are, what we do, our mission and vision for teachers and for the education sector with online learning and digital lessons and also engaging students. So that's a little bit about me. Great. Thank you, Alice. Anya, hello. Yeah. Hi. Nice to be here. I'm Anya Rivera and I come from the Netherlands. I'm a teacher. I teach religion, ethics, philosophy, which I think is the greatest subject to teach because it talks about the meaning of life and great discussions and talks with my students. And I also work for lesson up, besides this. But thanks for being here. Thank you, Anya. And Michael. Hi. Thanks for the invite. So I'm Michael from Belfast Met in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I am actually fairly new to the teaching side of things. I have a career in hospitality sort of ranging back sort of 15 years in management before four years ago moving into a role as a tutor assessor with Belfast Met. And so my sort of classroom experiences is fairly new and, you know, since sort of August, September time, I've been using lesson up and found it really very helpful. So we've got an experience and a new user viewpoint. I guess, Michael, don't be so hard on yourself. You know, in hospitality, I'm sure there was thousands of opportunities where you were teaching other people certain things. Yeah, certainly, like on the job training, running kind of training days for staff and stuff, you know, probably trained hundreds of staff. But, you know, yeah, I guess in that teaching world now, it's a lot more thoughtful process for you, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. A lot more planning. Great. So let me just put my slides back up, everybody. And let me just move this banner out the way at the bottom. Here we go. And so before I get started, I've got three QR codes for you here. Now, if you watch on a mobile phone, this might be tricky for you. And again, I'll circulate these later. But if you're on a laptop and you have a mobile phone to hand, you can see what I have to say about lessen up on the left hand side. So scan that. If you want to register, it's a free sign up and play around with the resources and we'll do some demos as we go through. So scan the middle QR code. And if you want a general video introduction, you get stuck, you're not sure what it is, et cetera. Then just scan that QR code on the right hand side. And again, if you've logged in, leave a comment. If I've gone too quick and you missed this or you want to see this again later, just let me know, but I will bring these up at the end. OK, so let's take some slides off. We're just going to have a little bit of a Q&A to begin with. I'm going to start off with Michael and Anja. So Alice, I'll see you in a moment. But Michael and Alice, could you just tell me let's start with yourself, Anja. What's what's been the last two years like for you in the classroom with COVID and what is it like now? Well, in the Netherlands, we have two lockdowns. So we were at home from one day to the next day. We were at home, all of us. And actually, I have to say for me, it was not very different teaching because I was already using lesson up. And so the way I was teaching before COVID and during a lockdown is actually exactly the same, which is great for myself. I didn't have to change my methods, but it was also great for the students because they knew, you know, when we have a class from Miss Rivera, everything is the same. The only thing is, you know, it's online. But that's the great thing, you know, I can switch whatever. I can switch to be an online or in the classroom. My teaching method is the same. And the students involved, the involvement of the students is actually quite the same. So for me, there was not a big difference. Of course, I like interacting with the kids more in class, you know, because you see their faces and, you know. And what's this kind of state of COVID in the Netherlands for you right now? Right now, there are no restrictions anymore. So everything is, yeah, we all go to school. There's no restrictions anymore. But I have to say that they are expecting more trouble to come and after the summer vacation, you know, in October, November, and they're warning us already. So I think, you know, winter. Yeah. Thank you. So, Annie, I'll pop back to you in a second. Michael, last two years for you, you know, new teacher and all that. So a tough job all around there. How has it been? Yeah, it's certainly a challenge. Initially, obviously, with the first lockdown in March 19 was that and those students, you know, everything kind of stopped for those guys. We were lucky enough that our awarding body was allowing us to use the evidence we'd gathered to award certificates. So a lot of that time was just spent really. There was no teaching. It was more support, calling, making sure everyone's, you know, keeping themselves well mentally more than than anything. And reassuring them that, you know, don't be worrying about your course. That's all taken care of. But then coming back in again in the sort of September, I was very worried of a lot of my subjects were kind of hands on, there was like tea and coffee service and this kind of thing, which I was aware that that wasn't going to be possible. And if we went into another lockdown, which we did, thankfully, Belfast Met had allowed me along with the course of our own college connect the flexibility to change around the units I was delivering. So I sort of future proof that that I would be able to deliver everything online if I needed to. And at that time, initially, I was using other things that near pod, which was Belfast Met had in at the moment. This was the start of the pandemic for you, this kind of. So this would have been the September, October, November of 2019, just whenever. OK, and then what's the state of affairs for people watching outside the UK, just trying to ensure everyone has a good picture? What lockdown restrictions or code like in Belfast? At the moment, yeah, back to the fairly much regular normal in the classroom and no real social distancing restrictions, encouraging face masks, but back to normal. OK, so it's just good to get a bit of context for everyone. And we'll we'll we'll unpick kind of covid challenges also. I guess my next question, Anja, is why, why, you know, so you've been using it a while, but why should teachers use technology in the classroom? What are the benefits? Oh, there are many benefits, but I will keep it short. And first of all, the engagement of the students is is much, much higher when you use technology and especially the part of gamification. I use a lot of gamification within lesson up. And I notice that that makes them much more enthusiastic to follow your class, because with lessons, when you use lesson up, they cannot lay back anymore. They have to participate, whether they like it or not. Can I just ask for what just for people maybe outside the UK or people outside education? What is gamification? Gamification is that you you use sort of like games for in order to yeah, make make the teaching more accessible to your students. They they think it's a game and but what you're really doing is making it easier for them to learn and to receive that what you want to get across. You know, you want them to to be motivated to learn to study. A good way to hook the students in for your experience in lesson up and technology. How did you I'm assuming you used it much more obviously through the pandemic? Yeah. And I use it every lesson. I use it. OK. And that is there's data, so daily habit for you now. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Now, I'm going to bring Michael in. Thank you, Anja. Michael, again, technology for you. How do you see the benefits for you in your your context, you know, working in the college and through through the pandemic and today? Yeah. So, I mean, initially, whenever I started in education, one of my sort of mentors that kind of brought me in was was talking a lot about blended learning and really kind of pushing the blended learning aspect of that. And so in terms of technology was something I sort of embraced fairly quickly and I was trying to use that as much as possible, like pre pandemic. And I would have to say that I wasn't doing a great job of it. You know, it was very easy just to rely on here's PowerPoint and I can tell you stories and I can talk or we can get our hands on things. But then obviously, you know, COVID kind of changes all of that and it becomes important to embrace. And just for a definition for people outside the UK or unfamiliar, what is blended learning? It's sort of the idea of moving away from a teacher or tutor standing at the front of the classroom and doing what they would call chalk and talk or you just talk at the students where you're maybe giving students work to do, reading to do at home and then bringing that back into the classroom and trying to work on problems or solutions or activities. So the learning is done at home and then the practice of it would be done in the classroom with the teacher. OK, great. And then how are you getting on with lesson up today? So, you know, tell me how you discovered lesson up. You said you're relatively new, so what brought you to lesson up to begin with? So our Centre for Excellence in Belfast met, introduced it. I think it was the beginning of the academic year. And a lot of the support actually came directly through lesson up Alice, actually, send a lot of emails, you know, with support, not just towards all the great resources they actually have, you know, online, I'm not being paid for any of this, by the way. So all of that support was there. And I had previous experience using another system which was good, but I just found lesson up really easy to use, really. Is it something that you use, you know, I don't know how often you see your students but a daily or weekly kind of thing for you? Probably. Weekly. But actually, in the last sort of month, I've been trying to kind of pick it up more because I'm finding the students are enjoying it. As Anja said, the sort of the gamification, the quizzes are really powerful. And some of the stuff that she's going to show this is actually. OK, great. Well, let me bring Anja back in. Thank you, Michael. Anja, I guess the same question. And I know you've used lesson up for a long time. What brought you to lesson up in the first place? Well, I have to say, it doesn't sound very nice, but I was bored with my own lessons. I was so bored and I thought if I'm bored, my students must be even worse than me. You know, right? I was bored and I thought I need something. I was using PowerPoint and textbooks and I thought I'm only sending information and the students, they were not engaged. And if I would ask, you know, did you get it? Did you understand it would be like, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, no, you didn't. And I had no idea how to motivate them until I came across with lesson up by coincidence, I have to say. Right. And because I went to a workshop which I didn't want to attend, you know, we had to from school and lesson that was there. And it was there. Well, I was sitting there and I thought, oh, this is actually really interesting. And so I started paying attention and I thought I thought to myself, I have to get it, get into it. I have to check it out at home and really look into it. What is it? How can I use it? And the more I got into it, the more excited I got and the more enthusiastic I got and because it's also really nice to create your lessons in lesson up like Michael said. So how long have you been using lesson up for? I think five years now. Right. So quite some time. And yeah, does it make your work in life easier as a teacher? Oh, yeah, very much, very much. You know, I have no tabs anymore, open only lesson up in my classroom. Right. Wow. OK. And like I said, the students are much more involved and I like teaching more. I like to teach because of I use less enough. You know, the content I teach is the same. It's the way I teach it, isn't it? Sure. And could you just remind viewers a bit more about your school and the types of students you teach? What age, et cetera? Yeah, the students, it's high school and and they're like the students in school at between 12 and 19 years old. And I teach them from, I would say, 15 years old to. With lesson up, yeah. Yeah, I only took lesson up throughout my books. All right, crikey. So that'll be quite a radical move for some teachers. OK, thank you. I know I'll come back to you shortly. So I'm going to bring Alice in Alice. Let's talk about lesson up. And we're going to start to do a little demo for people. So just before I do, let me just put this screen back up here. Here's our agenda for people joining us. So if you're on a live stream on YouTube, Twitter or Facebook, you should be able to leave a comment and I'll put your question up on the screen. So we're going to move on to stage two now on this agenda and then we'll give you a little demonstration once we hear from Alice. So Alice, let me bring you in. Here we go. Let me just get rid of. I'll make this screen a bit smaller. No, that's the wrong one. OK, let me just take it off for now. Alice, tell us what lesson up is. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Ross, it was just funny. I was just cracking up behind the scenes because poor Michael has probably received lots of emails from me and trying to just make sure that we're supporting him and his team as much as we could. So I just was cracking up when he said, yeah, got a lot of emails from her and then Anja saying as well, you know, I didn't, you know, was forced by my school. It's just about how these stories, how you hear, how, you know, great teachers like Anja and Michael actually find us. So it's just cracking up in behind the scenes. But yeah, moving on to just about us and last up in the team. So, you know, we were founded seven years ago and we are a Dutch based company in The Hague. And yeah, from day one, our mission is basically to empower every teacher to create that most engaging, joyful and effective learning moment for their students, you know, really make sure that their students are having fun while still learning. And the way that we did this, we basically provided and developed a platform that allows you to kind of customize lessons, slides, very similar to PowerPoint, but it fits your teaching style and it fits your students' learning. And then it also brings that engagement and interactivity into the classroom and kind of gives you the confidence that you need again as a teacher. I think we can totally all agree that student attention is probably the hardest thing to to manage as a teacher. And our goal is to really to support you as a teacher to keep your students focused, keep them excited about the learning material and then to engage them again and again and again within your lesson material. So you can go on to the next slide. Let me click that over there. And the way that we do this, again, time is precious and, you know, learning a new platform and and trying to teach, you know, 30 students at the same time and keep keeping them learning is really hard. So we've provided a way to make it very easy to upload existing material like your old PowerPoint slides or, you know, I know Anja mentioned that she was using PowerPoint and got really bored of them. So you can easily up those upload those slides. And then just within a few steps, you can add interactivity, like videos or quiz questions to kind of make it more gamified in that sense. I see this question about devices. I will come to that, Jonathan. We do have thousands of teachers that are already active on the platform. And then we work alongside alongside education partners or content creators like the Van Gogh Museum. So you can access a full library with pre-made lessons. You can save these lessons into your own accounts and then adapt them to to the way that you teach and to your students learning. And what's great, too, if you're running out of time or you have just your inspiration for the day, you can also just use these lessons instantly and start teaching them to your students with our education partners. It's a it's a great opportunity to, you know, find really unique and let's be honest, you know, sometimes inaccessible learning material from museums, you can actually have that accessible to your students and bring a bit more actuality into the classroom. Alice, can you remind me so how many teachers are using the platform at present? Yeah, we have honestly over 100,000. I can't give you exact numbers, but it's it's really on on the high and in terms of the content. So when I first discovered less than 800,000 lessons. Yeah, since then, Ross, we've gotten over to one million or so above a million now. So we have just lots of content created by other teachers across the globe so you can really find unique, you know, learning techniques or ways that lessons are structured. So it's really, really, really interesting. Each amount of results is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm going to let Anja and Michael kind of share the way that they use lesson up, you know, in the classroom. And we've already kind of touched upon it a bit. I know Anja has a few things she would like to show how she engages her students. But I think something really unique about lesson up is that the platform gives you the ability to engage students at different learning levels, using a variety of features. And then you can really help them catch up with the learning material. And then also at the same time, meet students at their own learning level in that sense, you can go to the next slide, Ross. Here, so to answer Jonathan's question, students can participate on any device, Android, Mac, Google, you know, Huawei, any kind of devices. They can basically enter a lesson and start participating just by using a unique PEN code. Teachers then can see immediately who's in their lessons. You can also see who's actually participating, who's passively participating and then as well, who needs extra supports. During the lesson, you can also receive instant feedback. And then if you'd like, you can always review student answers post lesson, post lesson in the lesson up reports. Something that's great as well. And this kind of shows in this these images here is that you can also share lessons as homework tests or independent work. So you can really kind of provide different differentiated lessons if you want or really engage your students in different ways in the classroom or remotely or online. And then again, if you don't want to use interactivity or if you feel like you would just like to use lesson up as a presentation tool, you have that option as well. So you can just teach in the class with full attention of your students to your slides. So that that's also an option. And then lastly, basically, yeah, discover more at lesson up.com. Please feel free to register and create a free account. Ross, you already mentioned that you can receive a 30 day free trial with our premium features. So for example, the homework and reports is a bit of the premium features. But if you'd like to get in contact with me and the team, no worries, we will be sending a follow up email with some free resources as well. So so I got a question on the screen here from Camilla. Thank you, Camilla. I'm hoping Alice is compatible with most tools. So we've got one here about Moodle and one file. Yeah. So what's great about it is that each lesson has a unique link that you can basically embed into any kind of system. So Moodle or Google Classroom. And so you can easily just embed this link and the students are easily able to just access that link and join via the PIN code or they can use their Moodle emails or G-Mails and then join via a unique link that you send through an email or through that link. So fantastic. And then just to remind everyone, some people watching, there's my three QR codes. So the middle one will take you to register and play. There's an introduction to the right hand side and the blog post from me on the left. So if you've got double devices on you, so you're watching this on a laptop and you've got a phone to hand scan those. But I will circulate the slides and attach them to the recording on YouTube and to Eventbrite users. Alice, I'm going to come back to this question here from Jonathan on Facebook. Do you need devices in class to make most of this work on a day to day basis? No, again, so I mean, you can obviously use devices if you'd like, but as a teacher as well, you can just create the slides yourself and then be able to present on a board or with a laptop. Students can also just use a web browser on anywhere so they can access a lesson via web browser or we do have a free app that you can download if you'd like, but it's not necessary. But again, teachers are able to, you know, just use it on a presentation board if they like as well and then students can still participate. Now, most I know what it's like to develop a bit of software. It's hard work and the secret to try and make it compatible with as many different things as possible. Are there any things that you don't yet do that you're working on that you could let people know that this is in the pipeline, so to speak, or is it pretty much it can do as much as anything as possible? Yeah, I think something we're trying to be a bit more compatible in the sense of working with Google Suites and the Microsofts because we know that a lot of schools are part of those packages. So we are as a development team working to make it a lot more seamless in the way that you give lessons to your students via those systems. But at the moment, you can still easily just use a link and then share it however you like. But then again, you know, the more embedding features is still to come. So that's something that we're working on. Sure. OK, so I guess what people are wanting, they want to see the actual resource. So I'm going to bring Anja in in a moment for a little demonstration and creating lessons. And then I'm going to pick Michael's brain as well and learn more about how they actually use it. And thank you to people watching live. There's lots of questions coming in, so I'm going to hold fire with those for now and I'll return to all your different questions as we go through because they're starting to really flurry through. So if you're watching live Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, connect online, pose the question and I'll put them on the screen. Thank you, Alice. I shall see you shortly. So Anja, I'm going to bring you in here. I guess, you know, thinking about the benefits of lessing up and how to create, you know, really nice learning moments. I'm going to put your screen up here. Can you talk us through some of the things that you do? You know, maybe some beginner versions or something quite complicated. Can you tell us what kind of level it is for a teacher user and tell us the benefits of each of some of the tools? OK, I will. Thank you. OK, and this is one of the examples and I would like you to, if you can enter the code, you go to lessonup.app, like your students would do, lessonup.app. And then here you see a code. If you enter this code, then you will access these questions, what I'm going to give to you. And, you know, it would be really great because then you really experience how your students will view lesson up and how will they experience lesson up? I see already one student in. Thank you very much. The code is 854 426. So you go to lessonup.app and then you can participate. So you also know how and experience how your students will experience this when you use lesson up. So I'll just wait for a few seconds to start. I'm going to explain just a little bit before I start. This is called a spinner. And you just get started. Is it possible for you to just maybe share the code? With me or with users so they can get more people. So I see you've got eight people connected, but is there a link that I could share with people? No, they're. Oh, it's an actual app. Yeah, it is an app lessonup.app and lessonup.app. OK, and they can download that off the app store. Yeah, they can, but you can also go through the website. You know, if you go to lessonup.com and then you see your student login and then you go and go from there. OK, so I'm just going to put the chat in the display. So here it is here, just the pin just for people to see. So that's the right code, eight, five, four, four to six. OK, so 16 people. So over to you, Anya. Yeah, thank you. And while the spinner you can use in many different ways, the easiest way is just to put it in there. And when you do that, then all the names of your students that are entering with in with the code, all the names of the students come in the spinner, which is really great. So you don't as a teacher, you don't have to add them. They just immediately, I'm out of here in. So that's really great. I have two spinners. This is from one of my classes of Buddhism. And the first spinner I'm going to start now. The first spinner is with questions. I put questions in here. So if you don't want the names of the students, you just mark elements and then you can put questions in. What is the name of Buddha's teaching? Not, and I did another spinner, this one. And here are the names of the people that are of your students. So in this, too, I won't bother you with the question. You don't need to answer. But here you see that you can use in different ways. So I have now two spinners, but you can also just use one with only the names because as teachers, we know that as so many times students say, oh, you always pick me. Why me? Oh, it's always me. And now the spinner is choosing which students is going to answer the question. And that is really great. I think it's very great because you avoid all those questions. And with this spinner, I always start with the question spinner because when you start with the question spinner, what is the fourth noble truth in Buddhism? When you start with the question spinner and all the students have to pay attention because they could be picked by the spinner. And I always I also call it the Wheel of Fortune. Ahmed, in this way, you're the lucky winner. And I always say, you know, it's the Wheel of Fortune because the lucky winner can say is allowed to say the answer. So I use this in two ways. You can use it even with more ways you can. And the reality of the classroom is you've got 30 children all around you. Are you trying to play on this software? How easy is it to edit in the moment? Oh, very easy to take a child's name off in case they're absent from the lesson, for example. How would you do that? When they're absent in the lesson, they they don't get in the spinner because at that time, when you teach the lesson, when you want to give the lesson, then at that point, you have to enter the code. And those students, only those ones are in the spinner. Right, understood. Yeah, understood. OK. So I'll continue to my next one. Please do. That's this one. This is an example of a mind map. This is about Van Gogh's art and his Japanese period. And then the students have to I'm glad already somebody's answering and have to see what similarities do they see in these two paintings. And what you see here is that it's all anonymous. I cannot see the answers yet. I cannot see what they answered. And I'll just wait until I get some more answers. And then let's see, four times the same. That's great. Three times the same answers. And let me just wait a few more seconds. And then I'll close it. Like I'm going to do right now. And then it says show all the words, you know, you can do it all. You can turn and flip them around all at once, but you don't have to. And here you also see it's it is you cannot see the answer. I turn it around now and the person says, great. If I want to see which of the students of mine answer this question, I click on it again and then I see the name and and that is great. Because if you want it to be anonymous, of course, it can be. It depends all about the subject you're teaching. I mean, if you're talking about depression, you know, or about bullying in class, then you want it to be anonymous, you know, that that that is about a safety in the classroom. But if it is a topic that is just, you know, like, like, for instance, this and it doesn't matter if it's anonymous or not anonymous, I'm going to show you all the answers, flowers. And if there's always a student, not always, but you might have a student that you think, oh, my goodness, I don't really like the answer. The answer is just to make fun of the class or to be funny. Then you can drag. I'm sorry, whose answer this is. I'm sorry, it's not personal. I'm going to drag it into the garbage bin. And that is really helpful, because if the students see the answer, that is a stupid answer or whatever answer, they keep focusing on that. And when you drag it to the garbage bin, it's gone. And they don't think about it anymore. So as a teacher, it's really a great tool. I guess the nice thing here is also if Ross gets the answer wrong, no one gets to see it's me. Exactly. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. So I'm going to go to. Yeah, let's go forward. I've got lots of questions coming in, but I'm going to hold fire for now. OK, one great graphic. This one is it's from a history teacher who also works in lesson up. And this is about the big war, the great war. And it was a lot of a lot of text they have to read. And for many students in the Netherlands, I don't know if it's anywhere else in the world. When there's a lot of text, they get a little discouraged and they don't feel like reading because they don't like to read. And this was created because there were refugee kids in his class and they didn't speak the language, Dutch very well. They didn't read it very well. And then when you have a huge amount of text to read, it can be very discouraging. So I put it in hotspots, a little text here and then a little there, a little there and then some pictures, you know. And and so it's much easier for them to read in this way instead of a whole, you know, a big amount of text that you have to read. So this is not interactive, this they can do by themselves, but it makes reading easier. Especially how can you control the entire content on this image? Yeah, you can change whatever you want. Yeah, OK, and you can choose any, you know, I'm really acting very naive. So I can choose any location on this image and have a pop up or a new image. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, well, we got. OK, yeah, this is also a drag and drop question. And this is true or false. This is also for my own class. And so I'm going to start it right now. And then you can see who was in it. And I can also see here who didn't answer yet. And that's really great as a teacher. You have full control of all your students and you can say, you know, hey, Job or Matthew, why didn't you answer? I want you to answer the questions. There's no escape. That sounds a little harsh. There's no escape. But as a teacher, you want all your students to be involved and you don't want that there are always a few that don't want to be involved. You want every student to be involved in your teaching. And this is a great way that you, you know, you can see who didn't. And also when you see, like, for instance, Liz and Alice, they're they're they're they're dark green and within the the V behind it. So that means they're finished. So as a teacher, you can see who's still busy, like when they're moving and they go from blue to dark green, then they're still busy. So you can see they're not done yet. So the dark green is they've completed the task. Yeah, they completed it. It doesn't mean that they answered correctly. That's what we're going to see later. Right. And you can see that they're done. So if I'm in school, doing it like that on the board, on the screen, or if I'm at home teaching from home because of a lockdown or whatever, I can I still have the same control and and I can engage the students in the same. And you're from Kevin, watching on YouTube. In terms of the spinner, you know, if you pose that question and it's responded, does the does the question remove itself from the spinner? No, not automatically. No, no. OK. So I guess you have to edit that manually. Yeah, yeah. No, but you can you can put it in beforehand if you want to. You can do that. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Great. So I'm going to bring Michael in the moment and ask him, pick his brains about how he uses it. I'm just going to end here. There's the end. You have the results. You can also turn this up if you don't want it to be a competition. You can turn this off. So. OK, fantastic. If you maybe leave those on the screen and I guess Michael and thank you, I know it's brilliant, really useful. Michael, how have you used lesson up? Initially, I was using lesson up a lot in terms of like the quiz questions, you know, pick an answer A, B, C or D and sort of more closed ended questions where, you know, there's a simple question and then there's one right answer out of a choice of four. But in my student group, so they're between 16 to 24 year olds, a lot of neurodiversity within the class. Sure. Some some people, the course I teach on is all about overcoming barriers and getting people back into education. And one of the biggest tools I found was actually the mind map, where I would have my students in front of me. And some of them just wouldn't be comfortable speaking in front of the class. Maybe English isn't the first language. And with the mind map, I could just pose a question, give them a moment and they could type their answers. And then as a class, we can discuss from there. Some people might not use lesson up in that moment. They might just start speaking and I don't demand that they type anything. But it's there. And how easy is it? You know, if we think our most vulnerable learners, students with special needs, how easy is it for them to kind of log in and get engaged, Michael? There's a number of sort of ways to access there. I mean, we saw with Anja, it's as simple as going to the app and putting in the pen code. Right. You can have your students obviously download the app on their own device. And then the other option is if you're working with different groups, you can set up your own classes. So I would be working two or three groups at a time. And I would have assigned certain lessons to certain classes. So if I tell them to take out their phone or their tablet and log on to lesson up, as soon as I. Put the lesson to that class, I think it automatically sort of comes up for them. And for people watching, you know, you're in Belfast, Anja's in the Netherlands. What is just showed us? Is that something that you can do in your classroom? Are there are the very similar kind of methods and tools? Yeah, absolutely. There was the thing, actually, there were some of the examples when we met yesterday that was shown us and that really made me think and the photograph, the history photograph there was the limitations for people to see just the history. Yeah. So, Michael, I guess the question is, are the resources ubiquitous could to be used in lots of different contexts across the world and as a teacher teaching different age groups? Yeah, absolutely. I think, actually, one of the biggest limitations on this and up is your own imagination. Right. If you can imagine something and you're creative, you can, you know, come up with a lot of different sort of varieties of tasks for students. And let me ask you both a question. How much does lesson up reduce your workload? You know, give us some kind of real kind of sense of, you know, you're reducing hours and lesson plans. Maybe you're not planning too much content on a Sunday night. It's just, you know, I don't want to put words into your mouth. Anya, how has it made your life easier? Because one of the reasons is it's an all in one tool, you know, that's for me is great. And it's like what Michael also said in the beginning, it's very easy to use, you know, you don't have to be a computer with like I'm definitely not and you can create a really nice content. And and you can also, of course, search from other teachers what they have done, what they've made. But to be honest, I have to tell you to tell you that what I'm teaching, like religion, ethics and stuff, there's not that much to choose from. So and I like to create my own thing. So that's also and it's pretty easy to do. Oh, very easy. Oh, yeah. And Michael, what about you terms, you know, new teacher? We all know when you're a new teacher, the workload's incredibly high. But how has lesson up made that a little bit easier for you? And I would say there's been moments where I have created PowerPoint lessons maybe two years ago. And when I get to the day of using them again, I kind of think this isn't really up to the standard that I am now. Haven't gone through this journey. And within sort of five or ten minutes, I can drop that into lesson up, make an interactive, take the YouTube videos that would have been embedded in them, insert, you know, quizzes and questions and mind maps throughout that. And there have been days where I have maybe like 20 minutes before a class starts, looked at a PowerPoint that was going to deliver and said, I've got 20 minutes, I can do this and have been able to create an interactive class. What kind of difference have you seen in your children in terms of, you know, behavior, focus, Michael? Well, as Anja was kind of showing with the spinner, you know, having the ability to kind of make sure that everyone is engaged, that they know that they could be called on at any moments is really powerful that there isn't an opportunity to kind of like just let the lesson pass them by because they could be called on. I don't have the part of skip the spinner. Sure. Let's just one example. I'm going to bring Alice back in in a second and ask her just for some insights, you know, because, you know, part of the teams, you'll see how teachers are using lesson all across the world. I guess my last question, Anja, is there something in lesson up that's not yet there that you'd like to see? So you mentioned there's not a lot of ethics type material. Yeah. Is that something you would like or something else? Yeah. Ethics, philosophy, religion, but then, you know, really good quality. That's what I really would like to see much more of those kind of lessons to involve the students. Yeah. Michael, what's not there that you'd like more of? And, you know, I think I'm pretty early on the journey with lesson up. So I know there's a lot more back there to scrape and actually just seeing some of the stuff, but the stuff that I just showed us today is fairly it's nice and easy to access some of the stuff she was showing me yesterday. I was kind of thinking, like, that's just pure imagination and pure it's she's invented that herself. And it kind of shows you the possibilities of what you can do if you kind of are creative. Yeah. So there you go. So just for everyone's benefit, let me just put this back up on the screen. So we've done a little demo. We've heard from Michael and then I'm just going to pick Alice's brains a little bit or Alice, you know, the insights that you see the data on your side, kind of what are the patterns, you know, from covid's the number of lessons being produced, one or two things that Michael and Annie would like to see in the future. I know there's lots of questions there, but just give us a general picture of what you see from your side. Yeah, great, great question, Ross. No, I think so, basically from on our side, just with the teachers we've been chatting with, with working with Anya and Michael, we've really just seen how teachers are kind of getting more empowered again in the sense of the way that they can kind of take control of the contents that they had before and then make it the way make it more interactive. Or like you said, Michael, be a bit more creative in the sense of how you actually show the material to your students. And then in that way also just be able to understand exactly how your students are doing with the material as well, getting that instant feedback through the lesson. And then looking back at the reports and then again, reviewing how your students are doing just just really helped, you know, for a lot of teachers so much. And then some things that we also really noticed, too, is kind of the ability. And I think Michael, you touched upon this a little bit, is the ability to give a little bit of differentiation as well to your students. It was really interesting. I shadowed a classroom think a couple of weeks ago and it was a teacher teaching Spanish and she mentioned to me directly that she had lessons ready for those who were, you know, beginner level Spanish speakers. So they were doing their own lessons on the app and just going through the material on their own time. And if they had questions, they would ask her. And then while they're doing this lesson, she is teaching live and using lesson up a different lesson for the more advanced level speakers. So she could then basically work with them, get them going, make sure that they're understanding the more advanced level of Spanish, but then still be able to help these kids who are not at the same level. So when I was part of this classroom, I was just, you know, flabbergasted at how smooth it seemed to have gone for her in that sense and providing that kind of differentiated level to her students. So it was really, really, really interesting. Alice, I've got a question, one more question, and we'll maybe start to look at all the responses online and we'll try and address one or two. But give us a sense of direction in terms of the next three months where lesson up is moving towards so that people can, you know, expect, you know, new software updates, new features where what's happening next? Yeah, I think our main goal is to make the experience, the user experience of Anya and Michael and anybody else who are using lesson up as seamless and easy as possible and then being able to use content from other teachers, you know, being able to embed interactivity as quick as possible and then getting those responses. I think for the next three months, that's been our goal. And then, you know, there's always the moment where your laptop crashes or, you know, for some reason, your Digi board doesn't want to work with you that day. We also want to be able to make sure that it's easy to access lesson up offline and then, you know, just make it just all around more accessible for teachers and students. On that note, I've got a question here from Kevin again on YouTube. So the live teaching and kind of offline model, there are offline features, aren't there? Yeah, yeah. And again, you can send these lessons just to your students via email and then they can just do it offline as homework or independently on their own. And then also, if you are offline and working on a lesson, it keeps all your changes, shall I say. And then once you get back online, it automatically saves again. So you don't lose anything. It's not like a Google Docs where it says you're offline. Good luck, you know, you can actually create, still edit, still do the things that you want to do and then it'll save once you get back online. So there are ways to kind of keep it, keep your lessons going in that sense. Sure. OK, I've got another question here for you, Alice, from Christopher. Is there a limit to how many students can access the slides at once? No, so you can have, I don't know, we could literally have the 190 people who who joined or signed up for this webinar. They could all willingly and lovingly participate in lessons and via that pin code. Could I could I put it in an assembly with the whole school? So let's say I squeeze a thousand students in the hole or with a device which could be chaotic, but that's not going to crash on me. No, like there's there's literally no limit. I'll be honest, I don't think we've ever had anybody do a thousand students. I would be very curious. And if somebody does that within this webinar, please ping me. I would love to know. I'm just going to bring Annie and Michael back in. Has it ever broken or let you down in any shape or form? No, when I was teaching in the first lockdown, I had more than 100 students at once in one of my classes. Right. And we're completely fine. Michael. Yeah, I've not had any issues yet. OK, well, that's a great review. Alice, I've got another question from Jay Kelly on YouTube. I won't put it on the screen. But they ask her what what differentiates lesson up with and I won't mention someone else's name, but with similar products, I guess, what's your unique selling point? Yeah, that's a really great question. I think the unique selling point is it's really up to you on the way you want to use lesson up. If you want to be creative, you can. If you want to use other lessons, you can. It's really putting you back into the driver's seats and then getting those instant feedback from your students in the lesson and then post lesson. I think we're also very much just what do you call it, agnostic to curriculum so we don't follow any kind of curriculum. So again, it's up to you on the way you want to create your content, structure your content and then teach it to your kids. So it's it's very much all all all everything's in your hands in that sense. So OK, now I've got one, I guess it's a very important question. I think of student data. There it is on the screen there, the GDPR policy in the EU regulations or people using it in other parts of the world. How does all that data collection and management information stuff work, Alice? Yeah, we are fully GDPR compliant. That's the first thing we did as a platform to make sure that we weren't collecting any unnecessary data and that we were compliant to the GDPR regulations. I know in the States, it's a bit more of the wild wild west with the data, so we really wanted to make sure we were strict with the data and we only collect teacher data. Student data is very much not collected in our platform. So we're very hesitant on using student data in that sense. OK, thank you, Alice. So just just for people watching live, your last chance here to pose a question and then I can display it and pose the question on your behalf. But thank you for joining us. I guess I'm just going to start kind of formalities here and start to say thank you to Anya for your brilliant demo and your clarifications on the resource and sharing how easy it is. Despite my naivety to get started. Michael, you're past that beginner's itch and you're now using it. And it's been really good to hear from you both. I guess Anya, any kind of concluding remarks? Now, I would say to all the viewers, you know, start with lesson up, you know, and you'll see how your students will be much more involved in your class and you will benefit from it as a teacher. Yeah, great. And to Michael. Yeah, actually, whenever Alice was given the sort of the unique selling point, I was kind of thinking for me, it's how natural lesson up feels and the ease of access. It just feels like this is the way it should be done. Yeah, I also wanted to add to that, too, just kind of the user friendliness. But also, I think what's great is that you also can learn new techniques. So, for example, Michael, I think just learned a new technique from Anya on how to engage. So I think that's something that we really want to make sure that teachers are able to to to get those resources and get those kind of new inspirations within the classroom and learn from us as well and from certified educators like Anya herself. So, yeah, I think we're really a hands on people. There's not much to like at all. Free, easy to use, really useful in an online and offline context. You know, that blended learning approach also. So I guess give it a go. Last call for comments, people. Let's see, I've got one here from Emma. Can you use it as an individual teacher? Does your whole school have to take it on? That's a really good question. Thank you, Emma. Yeah, you can sign up as an individual. You can work in teams or you can get your whole school involved. If you like, it's really up to you, but you can for sure start creating your own account as an individual for free and kind of mess around as much as you like within lesson up. And I guess I've got that awkward question, Alice. You know, if there's a cost at all or the free trial or subscription, what does that look like in terms of financials, trials, you know, we need to ask those questions just in case. Yeah, definitely. No, so when you do sign up, you do get a 30 day free trial of our pro license, which means you can also have access to sharing homework, tests and then get the reports as well. And then Michael mentioned how he has created classes within lesson up platform to kind of just make sure that his lessons get sent to his specific classes. You can also do that a pro license depending where you are. But I'll just say within the UK, it's 59 pounds per year. There is a monthly subscription as well. So if you don't want to pay all up front, you don't have to. There's options for monthly subscription. And yeah, it's it's if you don't want to do that, it's free as well. The monthly subscription on top of the 59 pound. No, no, no, you can either pay 59. All right, you pay monthly, we pay 59. So we're looking at about five pound a month. Yeah, yeah. And if I teach, I'm just doing some quick maths here. I teach 25 lessons a week. That's about 20 pence a lesson, I believe. Yeah, and you get unlimited lessons. There's no storage or, you know, how some some platforms kind of limit you on that. There's none of that. You get unlimited lessons, unlimited interactivity. And that sense, I guess one last question is if I was a school leader and I wanted a license from a whole school and I, let's say, had 73 teachers in the school, what are the costs there? So we start at 10, 10 teachers. And basically, again, it's up to the school on how they would like to on board their teachers. But basically, we start at 75 pounds per teacher. And what we make sure is that we start with smaller groups, first get them on boarded, you know, make sure they're really engaged with platform. And I think Mike can speak for this because we did that for Belfast Met. And then if the school would like to, they can actually on board more teachers one by one. It's not a tiered or it doesn't depend how many your college. Everyone has the access. Your college is taking it home. And I'm not too sure about how many people have access. I think as far as I'm aware, they must have looked at the people that were using the previous platform that we're using and then picked out the people that had been using it most, give them licenses. OK, so I guess to answer kind of some questions for people that might be watching this to think, well, I don't want to pay it for myself. Could I go and bend my arm and bend my school leaders arm and they could probably pay for one license at least. That would be a good starting point. Play around with it, try to show it off, share it with other colleagues. And I guess, as you said, Alice, you could maybe get five or 10 licenses to begin with. Yeah, and what we make sure, again, is we offer for school licenses a two month trial. So again, we make sure you feel comfortable with the platform before you commit for a whole year. And then in that sake, you can either commit then for the year and then add licenses one by one if you'd like. OK, so I guess, you know, come into the end of the start of the exam season, you know, once that exam season starts to slow down, that's probably a good opportunity to start that two month trial and have a good play with it over the summer period for September. I'm going to just say to people watching, this is your last chance to pose a question. I can see a flurry of things coming through. So if there's anything relevant, I'll pose it on your behalf or display it on the screen. OK, I said this before, but this is any last comments, Michael, Anja. I think everything is already set. Like you said, your last words were play with it. And that's what you need to do. That's how you figure it out. OK, great. And I've got this nice comment here from Jay Kelly. Lesson offers more freedom in my opinion. So I think that's a good place to finish. So everyone watching, if I just say thank you to Anja for your brilliant demonstration and your wisdom and Michael for sharing your context in Belfast and for, I guess, giving us that new user or new teacher approach. It's been really interesting. And it's been lovely to get to know you both and hear your stories. And I guess from me as a former teacher, thank you for all the amazing work that you do with all your students in your communities to make the world a better place. And I know teaching is not easy. So thank you very much for all your efforts. And to Alice, thank you for sharing the resource with everyone and thank you for all the stuff that Lesson Up does. You know, over a million resources is incredible. And you're a relatively new platform, aren't you, to be fair? And 100,000 users. So that's incredible, really. So if I just bring things to a close, everybody watching, there's the QR codes from me. So you can read the QR code on the left scan that and see what I have to say about the product. You know, everything is there's loads of links and loads of resources in there. That little QR code you can register, sign up, have a play around and decide what you want to do next. And then you've got a little introduction. There's loads of more stuff on the site as you can see. Ross, like I said, we'll also be sending a follow up email with some free resources you can use as well within the platform. And then actually we do have a job opening for UK specialists. So we'll also be sharing that information as well. So if anybody's interested or know of anybody interested. There you go, a job. No, we didn't expect that one. OK, so I'm going to share all the links for people watching all on the YouTube recording only, not on Facebook or Twitter. And for people watching through the event by ticket system, I'll circulate the slides and I'll leave a link on YouTube. Father, matter how to do that, too. That's it. So thank you, Alice. Thank you, Anya. Thank you, Michael, for your wisdom. I'm going to say goodbye. Thank you for joining me again. I love sharing great resources and great ideas to make the classroom an easier place for us as teachers and ultimately to try and make a difference to engage our kids and to make that classroom a more fulfilling place for them to help them learn. So that's it from me. I'm going to press and broadcast. I'll see you again in the future. Bye for now and keep safe. Thanks for watching.