 Hello everybody. Good evening. I hope you're well. My name is Ross, teacher toolkit. I'm sure you're familiar with me on my Twitter channel. If you're watching on LinkedIn business or live on YouTube. I'm going to be talking to Chanel and Ramsey from an organization I've teamed up with recently called pick a tail. Find me a teacher that doesn't love literacy find me a teacher that doesn't love promoting books and reading culture in schools. And find me somebody that doesn't love access to free reading resources. I think we'd struggle. So, um, tonight I'm just going to do a little bit of a show and tell with the team from pick a tail just showing you how you can access all these free reading resources and use them over the kind of festive period and perhaps into the new academic year and we'll also talk about some of the things we're doing in the new term in terms of how you can take some of the resources further. So just some technical kind of comments here I suppose if you're watching on Twitter LinkedIn business or YouTube if you've logged in you can leave a comment and we'll put that on the screen and then we'll post some questions to Ramsey and Chanel who I'll introduce shortly and then you can learn more about their software. And so without further ado, I'm going to ask them to come in in a moment but Chanel is a former general manager at TS global so she's got fabulous insights into how teachers use resources some of the issues that all teachers face a global level which is fascinating. And we'll ask Chanel just to give a little introduction in a moment and then Ramsey a former primary teacher who worked in Devon where I'm a little chat just before we came on about the context in which we work and how all teachers face different challenges Ramsey is the the customer manager of pick a tail. Now pick a tail for schools particularly what we're looking at today is a reading tool which offers pupils. A new and exciting way to engage with literature using audio and carries karaoke style tech so it'd be interesting to define what that means and unpick that little bit further. Our discussion is going to unpick some of these challenges that we all face in our schools how we can promote a level reading and literacy etc. And just maybe from a pick a tail perspective, ask Chanel and Ramsey to talk about some of the insights that they've learned throughout the pandemic of working with schools all across the world, not just in the UK. So I'm going to bring them both in here they are Chanel and Ramsey welcome. Hello. Hi there Ross. Good evening thanks for joining me so Chanel can I just start with you can I get you to just introduce yourself to everybody. Tell them what you do but your backgrounds. Yeah. So I'm channel for school I leave the UK sales division for pigtail I've been with pigtail six months now and what really compelled me to come to pigtails that we could actually solve a global problem. Children's language learning is problematic children are reading a lot less and there's about 250 million children globally that can't read and I was super compelled to join on board and to make a difference in an impact. Previously I've worked at TES like what Ross said, super amazing organization learn so much about timetabling software recruitment advertising, really selling into the education sector predominantly for second schools and primary schools. I do fully understand a lot of challenges that schools are facing at school level. Should I put you on the spot can you give us one insight into the pressures that schools face that you would typically hear on your travels. With pigtail right now I think it would be that disadvantaged children aren't being given the opportunity to access books, whether that's at home or at school. It's a really big problem and to access books on devices that they absolutely love and connect with right now. It's kind of really engaged children in that reading journey. Okay, thank you Chanel Ramsey over to you. Hello introduce yourself to everybody. Tell them about your background maybe an obscure interest in fact also. Thanks Ross, bring me on the spot so my name is Ramsey and the education and success manager for pigtail. I'm a qualified key stage two and three teacher. And I spent a long time in the classroom before delving into the ed tech world and working alongside many of the ed tech manufacturers and training teachers, primarily. So, yeah, as I say, in terms of an obscure fact, I'm a musician as well as a surfer. I live down in North Devon and I love the balance of life that I've managed to get at the moment. Fantastic any particular instrument or a bit of everything. Bit of electronica. So yeah, it's involving around sequences and onboard it. Yeah, virtual virtual instruments. So, so Ramsey, let's get down to business and could you tell everyone watching what is pick a tail please. Of course. So pick a tail isn't is a digital reading library aimed for primary school children effectively is reading ages between about four and 12. And it involves a teacher dashboard. So what the teachers then use to assign books, the pupils then go to the dedicated app and then they read the book, either with narration, or they can read silently. And then the books often have a quiz at the end. And then this information is then fed back to the teacher. Nice and simple. Nice and simple. Chanel, can I get you to maybe give us a definition or add a little bit more how teachers can use pick a tail. There's a great piece around this and it's the parental engagement piece. So it's enabling all three players in the children's reading journey to come as one and to promote children's reading for pleasure, whether that's in the school setting or at home. Parents are able to get insight into what types of books their children are reading, and they're able to really foster and promote that from the home setting as well. And I think from a senior leader perspective, evidence is something that's quite critical. Senior leaders are able to benefit from analytics. And Chanel, could you bring you back in there? Could you remind people watching more about the mission, how Piccadale was founded? How long it's been established? Yeah, so Piccadale was originally born out of Norway, so that's where we started. We've been around for approximately seven years. Our founder, Sig, actually lived in China, and he's been super passionate to ensure that children are able to actually learn when they're on their devices as opposed to just living this tip top generation and consuming content that actually doesn't help support any type of educational need for the child. So he's created this platform. We're now in, obviously, the UK. We moved here, we entered here in October last year, and we're gaining some really, really strong traction, especially at math level and at individual school level as well. Our mission really, as I've alluded, is to really try and get kids loving reading. It's for us to create a world-class reading platform that's loved by kids, but also trusted by adults. We want to inspire children to discover the joy of reading, whether that's independently or through the support of an educator. We also want to make kids better readers whilst they're using Piccadale and equally become a trusted partner in the reading journey, whether that's at school or at home as well. Great. Could you give us a kind of overview of kind of general stats, number of pupils, number of books, number of users, skills, that type of stuff? Yeah, so currently on the platform, there's over 900 titles, non-fiction fiction and curriculum led titles, across the global piece, Piccadale services around 80,000 pupils. In the UK, we're around 30,000 pupils that are actively using the platform, and around about 6,000 educators, teachers globally that have signed up and have registered, and they're assigning homework. So there you go, folks, a really brief introduction. We're on a formal chat tonight. We're going to do a little bit of a show and tell. So I'm going to ask Ramsey to just show us how it all works in a moment. So just a reminder to everybody watching live, you can leave a comment as long as you're logged into LinkedIn, YouTube or Twitter. And then we can pose your questions to Ramsey and Chanel throughout, put them on the screen for everyone else to see. Or if you're watching this afterwards, then we'll put some links on so you can follow up the resources and access all these free reading books. So Ramsey, how does it work? Could you give us a little show and tell perhaps? I certainly will, but just to expand beforehand, so one of the things we want to try and do is save teachers time in their day to day management of their class. And one of the things I used to find was particularly onerous task was managing the homeschool reading records that used to go to and from the school and the parents. And the parents didn't really know what they were writing in terms of listening to the children read. It was also quite hard managing what books were being read at that time. And so through Picketer, we're allowing the teachers to keep a handle on what books the individual pupils have read. And then as I say, keep that ongoing. And so as a result, hopefully saving them time in the day. I will share my screen now because I'm going to show the two sides to it. So I'm going to show first of all the teacher side and then we're going to divvy into the pupil experience. Okay, I'm going to share my screen. And hopefully Ross, you're seeing the Picketer website. Yeah, we can see it. So I'll just disappear for now and I'll leave you do a little demo. Lovely. So as Chanel's alluded to already, we've got the two sides of the product. We've got the blue parrot, which is the school's product. And we've got the red parrot, which is the family side. A teacher would just click on the school side. If they haven't already registered with us, or indeed, if they have, they just click on register now or log in. And this, if you imagine as a teacher, they may be on PPA time. They may be at home even, and they just wanting to assign a book for a child to then read either at home or in school. So in this case, I'm logging in with just a little demo account I've created. I've come now into the teacher dashboard. And as you can see, I've got classes laid out at the top. I've then got perhaps groups that might have set up. So it might be for guided reading or an intervention strategy. I've then got the overview of my assignments and then I've got the library below. So what I'm going to do first is just show you what a teacher would do with guarding a class. So I'm going to go to a year five class. I used to teach to five lots. And I've got an overview of the reading over the last few months and the average time that the pupils have spent. But more importantly, I've got this export class lists. So if I export the list, this is what I'm going to be providing the pupils with to go back home. So it's going to be either in Google Classroom in this digital age or even for schools going to be using reading records or homeschool diaries with them printer out and place it in. The people would then scan this when they're at home with their parents and then download the dedicated app to their device. So coming back on to the teacher dashboard, I'm now going to come into the library. Now we've got currently over 800 books. And so one of the things to try and save the teacher's time is I'm just going to go into our levelling system. So this is the Lexar levelling system going from one through to eight and approximately we've got from reception at level one up to year six at level seven. So in this case, perhaps I'm just going to highlight the level six books. I'm going to think about my slightly less able readers. So I might highlight level five. And again, I could open it up for my more able and include level seven. Now we also organize books in terms of topics. So I've got key topics here. We don't align ourselves directly to a curriculum because they do change and it's a bit like building on sand. But again, I could dive down into a particular topic. We find it's really supporting topics within school. So as I scroll down, I'm going to perhaps choose a book and think of an interesting one just to show you all of you who are watching. So I'm going to come into the top 10 weirdest foods in the world. So a teacher can read the blurb quickly, but just importantly, they can see a PDF preview of the book, which is just a quick way of checking is this going to be suitable for my class or cohort. So in this case, I'm perhaps happy with it. For teachers who are unsure about the Lexar levelling system, I'm going to click on the question mark above the level. And we're just going to open it up. And I can see now that a year five, six class is approximately a level six. It's around an eight to 10 expected age range. And if I was going to translate it across the Oxford reading levels, it's about 16 or 17. So we're looking at dark reds in the book band colors. And again, nine, 10 year olds. So I'm happy with this book. And I want to now assign it. So the first thing I can do is just choose class group or students. I can choose whether add a short summative quiz, or indeed I could assign it as a silent reading task. As I mentioned before, all our books have narration built in, as well as the ability to click on individual words and hear them pronounced out, which is especially important for pupils who have EAL. So English is an additional language. Now I'm just going to highlight my Hazel year five class, and we give them a week to read this book and click done. And that's the teacher side finished. That's the lovely thing about it. So if I now come over to the reading app, I've downloaded it from the Microsoft store in this case. And what I'm going to do is just come in as one of these children. So perhaps Rodney T in this case. So I'm just copying his username, opening up the app. And then I'm pasting it in. Let's return to see this account exists. Then placing in the password. And imagine Rodney is at home, or indeed maybe using Piccadile reading time at school. And he's now accessing the different books. So as you can see, he's been assigned a few books. So I'm just going to scroll to the very end of it. And if we come to over here, we should have in this case, we haven't. So I am just going to go on to disruptive volcano eruptions. We're going to come on to here and we're going to then just play this book. Now read out the title. Disruptive volcano eruptions. And because I've got the narration. I'm just going to pause it now. As I say, we've got narration speeds faster and slower. We've got the ability just in terms of accessibility of just having text only on a page, increasing the indent of the text as well as dark mode. In this case, I'm just going to flick through the book. I'm going to be a bit suspicious perhaps of the reading time of this book. And this again is reported on the teacher dashboard. So I'm just going to scroll through the different pages. The great thing is, if I'm unsure about a pronunciation of a word, I can just click on it. And it should sound it out. It's not in this case. And then click on further. We're trying not to leak. So I'm just having some technical issues. I'm on quite a slow internet broadband at the moment. So I imagine it might be that as I come through. I'm going to scroll through. Get to the very end. And then we're going to have a short quiz. Now these are recall based quizzes and multiple choice. So the first one I'm confident that magma is hot melted stone. So I'm going to press that correct there. If I get an answer wrong. In this case, I'm going to place in water and iron. It's going to give me another go. If I get it wrong twice, it's going to then highlight the right answers. So in the interest of this particular webinar, I'm just going to stop that now. We then going to just decide that perhaps as a pupil, I've finished my assignment. And my teachers now giving me a choice just to go in and free read any book from the library. So I'm going to click on the library symbol at the top, the book symbol. Click the search function. Come to category. Go into sports and entertainment, for example. And perhaps I'm really keen on finding out more about Killian and Bapay. So I can just click on Killian and Bapay. I can then choose to read it by myself with the little red symbol. And then this will open up this book and then I can free read any book from the library. Now the lovely thing about this is this data also gets fed through to the teacher dashboard. So the teacher begins to get an insight perhaps into the likes and interests of that pupil. So just briefly coming back into the teacher dashboard, where I've set an assignment. And in this case, perhaps I'm just going to go on use this one here, the history of Halloween. I then get insight into how the pupils have done. So I can see that the average time perhaps for these pupils was one minute 46. As I mentioned earlier is a demo account. So I haven't been able to get a full picture of the whole class, but it will pick up how long they've been reading for. If they had any questions wrong, it will have students have trouble with. And then the questions from the comprehension quiz will pick up there. And then any words they've clicked on will then be highlighted at the bottom. And I might go off and do then some linguistic work perhaps around vocabulary, looking at the content from the books. And as I looked at the very beginning, if I just came into the class, I then get a picture of the overall reading time, as well as drilling down into individual pupils. And in this case, I can see Chloe and Steph are by far the most voracious readers in my class. And that's it in a nutshell. So we have the teacher dashboard in a browser and then the dedicated app for the pupils to read both in school and at home. So stop sharing. Yeah, that's fabulous. In fact, Ramsey, can I ask you to put the screen back on if that's OK? There was such a wealth of information there. And I know that people probably want to have a little spy on it again as we talk about it. But I guess I've got a tricky question for you because there's lots of a huge abundance of books. There's loads of levels. Yes. Where would I start if I had a pupil, an EAL pupil who was new to English? Is there something that you could recommend? I think I would start down perhaps in L2 or perhaps L3. And as I say, the lovely thing about this, because it narrates the book, it's actually an audio book. So perhaps if I'm just going to scroll down, again, we're really conscious about things like PSHE. So we've got a huge amount of well-being books and so on. So I might want them to talk about that. Or perhaps I'm just going to get them just go in and just read a little novel effectively. So in this case, I've got my dad is a superhero. This is from the teacher side. So I could assign it. But if I come into the pupil side, I'm just going to come out of my Kilianambape book. I'm going to sit, search, and I might just place in dad and then search for that particular book. Oh, that's because I'm searching. Do you see? And if I now come back onto this, we now will have my dad as a superhero further down the screen. So in this case, I'm just going to come down. We can see here is superhero. For an EA or kid, I'd recommend initially perhaps they read it with the audio. So I'm just going to click on that now. My daddy is a superhero. Would you like to meet my daddy? My daddy is a superhero. And obviously you said earlier you could slow that down. That can be slowed down, exactly. It's a bit of creepy crawlies. Whether it's a spider or a fly, I cry out. Daddy saved me and he takes a creature. And then if I'm unsure about the word, I want it repeated. Creepy crawlies. I can then just click on that particular word. Creature. OK. Fantastic. Chanel, can you give us any insights as to how schools, families might be using Piccadale? So from the school setting, we found that these schools are using it as a whole class reading tool. So they're setting the book, accessing it on the interactive whiteboard and using the carry-on caneration feature. Also, there's a buddy system going on throughout the day as well for approximately 15 minutes a day at some schools. So older children are actually supporting younger children with their reading for pleasure, as well as TAs supporting that reading journey. From the home setting, what we're finding is that parents are having to support their children, especially younger learners, with that. And actually, heads are seeing that there is this parental engagement piece that's actually coming through from the analysis. Now, Chanel, the trial, the 800 books, are they all free access? Yeah. All of our books in these schools platform is completely free for educators, for teachers, for parents, for people. So anybody watching this now could literally go to this link I've got on the screen. Yeah. Piccadale.co.uk forward slash for schools and sign up and access these within the next couple of minutes. Yeah. It's really simple. It's really easy to use and access it pretty much straight away. And tell me a little bit more about, do you have a kind of premium service where you might have to pay a little bit more and you get access to different features, more content? Is there anything like that? Yeah. So we were born out of the family life, which is the Pink Parrot. And that actually has around about 1,700 books on there. We've got audio books in there. We've got partner exclusive content in Disney, Marvel, Star Wars. There's bedtime stories in there. There's just book zines as well. There's just so much for parents to access from the home setting. I mean, I absolutely explore that with my own son. He loves... I was just going to say how many books have you got through as a parent? Of course there's loads. But I also get to see my own parent dashboard. So I'm able to really steer that love of reading from the home setting there. What we decided to do was that, you know, you can get a 30 day free trial as a parent there, and then you pay £6.99 a month. So that's where we actually monetize the business. But because we actually create our own content and apps like Netflix with the original piece, we're able to bring all of that original content into the school setting and essentially give that for free. So there you go. So just a technical question for people watching. If you want to pose a question, please do so in your kind of platform that you're logged into. And I can pose that on your behalf. I guess a final question from me, Ramsey. As a teacher, what do you think other teachers would get out of the system and also maybe some of the insights that you've learned from schools and teachers using the kind of Pickettells product? Where do teachers enjoy using it the most? I think they've certainly, you know, we've had a wealth of really lovely communication with teachers. We're really inviting teachers on this journey with us. We're really hoping that through these interviews, through these chats, we're going to help shape the platform and it's going to really evolve into something that's just really going to add extra gravitas perhaps to how they're delivering different literary content in class. Now, the feedback primarily is that they've found that certain individuals within their classes who perhaps are unengaged readers have suddenly become quite enthused through reading on digital devices. And it's just a light bulb moment for us. I'm an avid bookworm. I love my physical books. I do have a Kindle now, but then suddenly actually over perhaps the next couple of decades and going forward, we are going to be accessing more and more content on our devices. While we don't recommend that pupils read on phones, we are aware that there are certain families that will only have a phone in the house. They won't have any physical books, but they will then be able to access this library and read with their children and really gain out of it. And I suppose it's the support often for parents whose English isn't their primary language. And so they're able to go into that experience. It's interesting how the technology is changing and how the challenges of helping the literate families, children, accessing books to the general population of pupils is a challenge in how it's emerging over time. It's an interesting one. Fascinating landscape. Any final comments, Chanel? I just think, from my perspective, we've launched something that has the gravity task to create such positive impact globally. From our perspective, we don't want to leave any child behind. And we feel that this resource gives teachers, educators, parents, pupils the opportunity to access just so much more, to engage with so much more. And again, at the start, I mentioned this karaoke style and I think Ramsay's clarified that for me. It's almost like you're singing along with the words that are highlighted, aren't they? But in this case, reading them. Tell us what we've got planned in the new year, Chanel. What loads. We're going to be on the road a lot. We're making some product developments as well. We've been listening to teachers, listening to senior leaders as well, and maps. So we're going to be really accelerating the growth of Pixel in the UK while making some additional changes to the future. We've also got for people watching or watching this live or watching this later, we have got a webinar planned with Teacher Talk and Picketel in the new year where we're going to go into deeper and look at all the dashboard features and books available so you can see how you can best use this, at least a free service and then consider the paid for service if you think that's something that your school can use. So thank you both for your time. I guess my final question to Ramsay first, what book are you reading at the moment? What book am I reading? The Invention of Nature. Yeah, fantastic book and I'd recommend it to absolutely anyone. Can you give us a brief synopsis? It's a delve into the wonderful world of Alexander von Humboldt, who started to understand the world as a more holistic world rather than an individual pieces. And he was a fantastic explorer as well as a scientist. There you go. Yeah, carry on. And Chanel, how about you? I've actually just started to pick up The Seven Habits by Stephen Covey. Yeah, brilliant one. I really liked the urgent matrix. That went straight in my office when I was a deputy head trying to reduce my workload burden. I guess for me, I've actually got my book here actually without trying to knock everything off my table. Let me just get it here. Social media for academics as I'm trying to navigate my kind of doctoral research and get into groups with Twitter and everything else and attempting this research world that's unknown to me and it's quite a big beast. So there you go, folks. Pick a Tale for Schools. A great service. 800 free books. A reading tool which offers pupils a new and exciting way and for families too. You can engage with literature, use an audible. You've seen all some of the features that Ramsey has demonstrated for us and we'll see you in the new year. So I hope you find that of interest. And Ramsey and Chanel, thank you very much for your time. I know you're on the other road at the moment and you're both logged in from somewhere unfamiliar to your normal surroundings. So thank you for doing that and I shall look forward to seeing working with you again in the future. Thank you for joining us. So there you go, folks. Thanks for watching any questions, support at teachertalk.co.uk. If I just put that little link here on the comment box, there it is there. So pick a tale.co.uk forward slash for F-O-R hyphen skills forward slash. That will get you access to a great resource with 800 free books. I hope you find it a benefit. I hope you can use it in your school tomorrow. And thanks for watching. I hope you're safe and you're well and I shall see you very soon. Bye for now.