 Hello everybody Ross here, teacher talk it up on your screen and I'm just going to give a moment for everyone to get connected logged in and everything is getting recorded. And just to make sure that you are in the right place and you've not clicked random zoom code, we're looking at balance and excellent piece of software. It's a bit of a show and tell session so I'm going to go through those specifics in a moment so if you're watching on zoom for the first time. You can on the top right and corner can switch to gallery view to see everyone or just speaker which is me when the slides appear and there's not too many slides will still appear in the top right and corner unless you're on a tablet. It might be maybe at the bottom so I can point out where's that type of stuff will do some time. Hello in the chat box. So we know we've got people watching from 25 countries, maybe not all right now live and I know people watching this. And so here's your chance and tell me where you're watching from what town village city. And I'll give you a little village town city a little shout out online while we get warmed up and just tell us who you are, you know, what do you teach. What can roll a few little survey questions are going to come your way as well. So while you do that and get connected and where are you so hello Rebecca from Colchester anybody else or is it just me and Rebecca. Hello, I'm Peter Brown head teacher. Thank you Emma. I hope you're well. No, it's very challenging time for everybody. And while you're also doing that I'm just going to. I like a bit of graphics I know Andy does our CEO here from balance so you'll hear from later. And there is our map from the UK so you might be able to see yourself if you're watching here in the UK. So here's another graphic to this one. You're watching from somewhere else outside of the UK, then you might see your little dots here on the map so what we're trying to do is try to keep a international perspective. And I know balance do have some international clients so we'll do our best to keep everything as broad as possible. So in the chat box where are you watching from. Hello Sam what time is it there must be nearly bedtime. Good night. And midnight righty well done you. Thank you Sam. So on the screen also for people watching and I'm just going to put on a little survey. There's just two simple questions. Complete them both and press submit and then I'll share the results with you. So just to get started, and you're going to hear from Rebecca and then from balance who are going to go through some of the demo some of the kind of cool messages. I'm sent to your host so I'll do my best. Hello Rebecca from the Welsh rallies. And so I'm going to get this recorded chat box just comes to me only so I'm just admin the kind of compare of the session, you decide if you want to keep your cameras on or off the recordings going to get shared with everybody in the group. So just to be careful of your background, you know, little children that type of stuff. And then, if you want to unmute yourself, could you maybe hold off until the end of the session and then, you know, kind of, you know, in about 45 minutes time of a Q&A session season in the chat box, or anything specific and we'll answer those as we go through. So I think that's it for me essentially so you'll know who I am so I'm not going to do any introductions. And the reason why we're here and hundreds of schools already benefited from you using balance and then Rebecca will correct me if I'm wrong but I've been aware of balance for two or three years. And at least it's a speedy point in time assessment platform that gives teachers a clear picture of how children are progressing and let's face it, one child in front of the classroom 30 kids is hard enough. Having a bit of software to make that admin a bit easier for teachers is a win for all of us, particularly right now during the global pandemic when things are very tough. So this is a great platform that allows you to make professional judgments point in time assessments, and from a great organization has quite a lot of great products actually out there so we're going to look at balance. I'm going to, before I wrap on I'm going to just ask Ben to just unmute yourself and say hello to everyone introduce yourself tell everyone what you do and then we'll hand over to Rebecca to do the same. And then we'll get started. And I'm just going to put the survey on your screen at while and you do that also so Ben over to you. So thank you very much Ross. Thank you. Thank you for having us. And thank you everyone for joining. And so I'm one of the account managers and angel solutions and do a lot of training with all of our balance schools as as Ross said we've got lots balance schools up and down the country. A couple of international schools one in Malaysia actually in Kuala Lumpur Garden International School and one of them I don't know if you know of them Sam, but they've started recently started using balance. Yeah, my job is sort of account management schools working closely with teachers so you know I was a primary school teacher myself for six years. Yeah and I'm here today to show you balance to you know show you the professional judgments feature and will give you a sneak peek of some of the other little features that are in the system. Thank you for having Rebecca say hello. Hi everyone thank you as bands ever joining us particularly those who aren't on our time zone I admire you for being up at your hours of the evening. And like Ben I am former teacher with eight years in the primary classroom and before moving into ed tech and as my way into balance and this time last year. And yeah we're here to we support our schools up and down the country or international schools as well and from the get go with balance and really embed in that and changing the culture within their school. So thank you, Ben and Rebecca and behind the scenes a couple more of the Angel Solutions balance team who will probably say hello or in the chat box and what have you as we go through. And so start with this question to everyone in the chat box and I say virtually hands up if you like spreadsheets and you like input in data manually and I know people who have been in a profession for a long time. We all we all know that data is critical and but certainly input in that on your own at the desk without children stuff's a bit of a headache and so we know balance. Help reduce this burden and you know a general national judgment tool which will help you reduce your workload so I think what we'll do to begin with, and I'll just take this survey off your screen everyone. Ben, can I just hand over to you first can we just get a quick little introduction and just get everyone excited about what what it is it does, and then I'll kind of pose some hard questions to you, and everyone else in the chat box ping me through your questions, and I'll fire them to Ben and Rebecca and see if I can wobble their nerves a little bit. Okay, so Ben over to you. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right Russ in terms of I think assessment is so important. But I think spreadsheet spreadsheets is not necessarily the way forward so we have professional judgments tools so that will allow teachers to give a point in time assessment, based on what the children have been taught so far what the teachers managed to cover. It's not about predicting, you know, sort of in the future where the children might be it's about saying right just based on what we've done so far, where it's where is the children's understanding up to. And you'll see when we take you through the system how quick and easy that is how you have live summary bars, how everyone can log in and see that within the system itself you're not having to update spreadsheets, send them to head teachers send them to your group partners, you know, balance does all of that for you, and sort of in the system. I don't know if there's anything you want to add. Now we'll have things will become apparent as we go on we're going to do a couple of screen shares and show you the system and talk as we go really and just see how we can best help make your life easier. That's our main aim design balances very much designed by teachers for teachers so that's our aim is to make. That's my first question to you both as you know with your teacher hat on what are the benefits for teachers what what have you seen in your transition from teacher to kind of working with balance what do you see as those kind of key benefits to begin with. I think I think for me and with balance it's that missing link between so you're planning your assessment is linking everything together it's assessment shouldn't be that. You know that sort of add on that you do at the end of term when you know the head teacher quickly says right where are your, where are your assessments for this term and you're sort of filling in spreadsheets you think oh this this number needs to be a bit higher I think when I was teaching it was levels and it was, you know, you can change some four C's to four B's and, and it for me it felt very much like a number game, whereas balance allows you to do your planning to reflect on what you've taught to look at the children's understanding I think a big part of it is it comes back to the child, which for assessment should be about the child it shouldn't be that, like, like I said add on at the end which I think sadly speaking to a lot of, you know, schools teachers now that they do feel that assessment can become that and just bolt on at the end of a term and it shouldn't be it should be used by teachers to inform where they're going next. And I think balance will allow you to do that. Yeah, very much so and assessment is still a numbers game there's still so many schools that all my child's a three now they must be a four or whatever tracking system schools currently use. There is lots of minds at their balance and Ben and I aim to support our schools and it's taken that journey it's looking at your assessment side of things but we also have a curriculum tool that allows teachers to plan and really think about what they're teaching what they would like to do and very personal for each school. And it's about embedding that not just with staff but also with children and having that growth mindset language and and really all coming together in one nice little package and it's it's not doing data for the sake of data sake which is something I'm very passionate about. I don't know if you've noticed my kind of virtual questions here so what now what so the academic in me then use your first question, you know so so what what why should I use balance. And what could I do with it, I guess. I don't know I think I think you know what we've just sort of covered that it's, it's got to come back for me, it completely resonates it's got to come back to the child it's got to come back to what we're doing in the classroom. I think back you just hit the nail on the head there with curriculum, it's got to start with the curriculum that's what's important at the minute I think a lot of our schools have been using the time, certainly during you know the first lockdown at the minute to say right let's go in there and let's go into the system. We don't want to fit the way the system works we want to be able to go in and customize the system so that it works for us it's what we're assessing is what we're teaching the children in the classroom. And I think that that is so important. You know from a teacher point of view, it's got to be led by the school led led by the teacher and actually, you know where you can led by the children. I encourage the children to get involved with the assessment so that the formative side of things which we won't cover, you know, to as much today but we say, you know, get that up as a classroom display. Get get the wheel up in the classroom and get the children involved, and you know, articulating where they feel their understandings up to. So that you as a teacher know how to move their learning forward because I think when it comes down to it that that for me should be sort of the point of assessment. Okay, thank you. I've got a few questions in the chat box. I'm going to read them out in a moment to you both. Rebecca, I know balance has been around before the pandemic. So can you just give us a quick overview of schools usually before, and how has it maybe been beneficial to schools during the coronavirus pandemic. Yeah, of course so balance is it's been around for a couple of years but it's the newest member of an angel solution so we have several different software out there balance being you know for us in the classroom, and pre pandemic, which seems like forever ago trying to remember what life was like before everything happened last March February time and pre pandemic we. It was very, it's very much embedded in the schools when the pandemic happened, it Ben and I had to reevaluate reevaluate priorities for school at that time schools where you know they were trying to survive teachers were trying to survive teachers children at home teach their children in school figure out what was you know everything was different on a day to day basis. And as Ben touched on earlier we went spent a lot of time particularly last summer working with our schools. Looking okay let's just take a step back what are you teaching why is this relevant to your curriculum. Let's have a look and build this within balance. We have ways to help support them with the formative and summative assessment tools of how they can, and then I'll touch on that in a moment as well but we will, you know how best to support your group of children at home and your group of children at school. And, you know, not just putting data for data sake, what can I do with that and how is that affecting me as a teacher, and how is that having a knock on effective you know when my children return or, or next week and things change again. So it's very much we've worked with schools to kind of reimbared, but from the view of you know with everything that's going on at the moment, how it's best relevant for them and it's working really really well within the classroom. Thank you. So, you know, my, my awareness of balance, you know, haven't seen you know my life as a teacher blogger suppose I get a lot of products sent my way, and I know balance not only looks great as a designer, and but it works fantastically so I'm sure we've all experienced some hideous pieces of software that doesn't plug in, and the password doesn't work all those types of things so not because it looked great but it works brilliantly. My favorite part about it is this overview of your curriculum and threat into your assessment where this drives your assessment rather than the other way around. And Ben and Rebecca some questions in the chat box maybe take a turn at whoever think and answer what. And so question from Joanne, do we set up our own criteria, or are they set up within the system. That's your first question second question, how does it link with pro monitor, or, you know, MIS ensure it plugs into most single title. And then what curricula can be covered and up to what level of qualifications you got three questions criteria MIS and curriculum qualifications. Yeah, so I think that first question thank you for that I think we've tried to make balance as customizable as possible so I'm going to show you when we look at professional judgments that the different statements and the language the criteria that you use for those judgments is completely customizable. And I think when I start the demonstration I'll show you how to do that. But similarly in the in the curriculum tool in various parts of the system you can go in and personalize it tweak it customize it so that it fits your school. I don't know if you want to answer the MIS question. Balance is for the primary school so and we pull all your information all your school data through from your MIS link from your MIS system and depends on whatever that is pulls straight through into the system there's no manual input from you that's all done automatically. And as Ben said everything is very customizable it opens up to all eventualities and the different ways you work within school curriculum wise we have full curriculum coverage. We have some schools that just use it for core subjects, some that use it for foundation, most for everything so it gives you the option there to really think what do I need and what is best for for school at the moment. Okay, great. And so I hope that answers your question and we've got one more question before we go into a demo just primary is the question I've been asked by the. So I know we're here to focus in on primary so maybe then Rebecca can you elaborate on a particular key stages. We cover everything from year one up until year six so we don't do any years at the moment, and is something that is potentially in our roadmap we've had a few requests from schools and it's something that we have been discussing as a team. And obviously with the early years correct from changing the summer and everything like that so and currently and what will show you today is for year one through to year six. Right, so let's get straight on to kind of we know what the balance is let's have a look at it, please. And then maybe just pick out some of the kind of key benefits to begin with, and then we'll have some of that. So Ben over to you if that's possible. Yeah, thank you Ross. Great I've just got a. Yeah, a couple of slides I'll just share with you and then we'll actually get into the system. Just get that on to do. Sorry, it's not me share that from the beginning, hopefully you can see my page there. Okay so yeah as as we've discussed myself and Rebecca we're very much part of the account management team and just solutions based in Liverpool, and as a company we've been providing schools with innovative software. For the last 21 years I think we've had a lockdown party last year celebrate our 21st birthday. And you may well have used some of these tools before so perspective five minute lesson plan that we've worked close with Ross, watch dead. But today we're here to introduce you as we've said to the newest member of the family, which is balance. Now, to me, balance is it's not just a piece of software, and it's something that means a lot more, and it's something that I'm very passionate about. So as we've discussed it was designed by teachers in the classroom, and it was designed to alleviate a lot of the pain points that teachers experience is designed to reduce their workload. And in doing so, I think it allows teachers to go back to what they do best, which is teaching children in the classroom, ultimately. Oh, sorry, someone else someone else joined, let you deal with that Ross. I think I just asked one thing can you maybe switch to view I know me pushing to do an eyesight and can you make your slides a bit bigger your side for the benefit of everyone and yeah, your side. And I'll do all that have been things don't worry. Yeah, I will to be honest. Ross this was the last time I'm actually going to go straight into the system now but when we look at the slides I will it was hiding under the zoom but wouldn't let me get to it but we'll make sure we do that when we share them again. But yeah that's probably a good time a good time for me to segue into into balance itself. And so this is your fact let me just stop sharing that and share my screen. The question in the chat box folks and I'll ask them on your behalf. Okay, can I just check that you can all see my screen welcome to balance fab got some thumbs up there. Okay, so this is the homepage for balance as you'll see and as we've sort of touched on a bit. There's a lot that can be done in balance from designing curriculum and creating your, your long term medium term short term plans to recording both formative and summative assessments, and then all the analysis that comes with it. And so we've got some schools that they choose to replace their more traditional trackers with balance. So we're going to look at because like say you can do everything within the system, and we have some schools that bind to balance and use parts of it, and use it to sort of complement some of the assessment systems that they already have in the system. So it really is sort of a tool for everyone for any school. Now today we're going to focus on the professional judgments. We do refer to them as PJs in house so forgive me if I slip and and call them PJs you know what I mean. I think said Rebecca is going to have a quick look at some of the other features. So looking at professional judgments when when a new school first buys into balance. They'll have trained with myself or Rebecca, and this is the first place we bring them. And it's to do with that. I know there's a question earlier about customizing that the language statements the criteria in the system. So I come to to say, right, as an admin user before we get started let's just set up your statements for you. And so we have five statements a default in the system. And these are the five that I'm going to be using today. As we as we show your balance as we do the demonstration. But if you look at it and think you know what we only have for we don't want this nearly secure you can just delete that really quick and easy. If you're not secure you'd prefer working out or expected again it's really easy to go in edit that language can even change the color if you're fussing about your colors. And then you can click publish all and that will then go that language will then go through the rest of the system. So when your teachers and log in to record their judgments, they just pick from the language that you as as the school leaders have chosen to use at your school. So that that's really straightforward I think to use that. I'm going to go into that some reason it's not let me pick my tabs full screen. There we go. Okay, so this is our teacher input page so once your language has been set up you'll see here like I said we're going to use those five statements here that they appear there for me as the class teacher to go in and those judgments for the children so we're going to look at geography today in this example, but you can choose from any subject that's in balance like we said we've got all the core and foundation subjects. And just before I show you how easy it is to record a judgment I just want to be clear what we mean by a point in time assessments that sorry by a professional judgment and it is a that point in time assessment. So it's a teacher saying right for this child in my class based on what I've taught them so far of the geography curriculum in this example, where is their understanding up to. And it's a case where you know we encourage teachers to sort of look through the books speak to children. You know, everything is that all round sort of teacher assessment I guess when I was teaching and they will record their professional judgment. You could go in and for each child just record the judgment one child at the time, but that's not the most efficient way and in balance we're all about being efficient and trying to save teachers time. So I've got groups set up in here for example I've got a key worker children group so I know some of my children are still going into school I've got 12 pupils here. And I can give an assessment I can multi select I can select all and say do you know what all of these children are secure currently in geography and what we've taught them so far. I can then go in and say however I know Theodore is he's working well below he's you know, maybe working on year two curriculum, and we've got a couple in here that I know are working below. And maybe you know I know at the bottom of the list here I've got these two children that are actually working at greater depth, and I can save that. You can see how quick that was for me to for that group of children those 12 children I've updated their assessments, and it's given me this live summary bar across the top. Now this is just looking at my key worker children. So I can see that over 50% of my key worker children that are still going into school every day are secure in geography and based on what we've taught so far. I'm going to quickly interrupt you there that I suspect one of the people watching I wondering, can you edit this judgment bar and I know you probably picked up on it at some point but that color coded bar across the top where you've got working well below and all the different assessment. You can be spoke. Yeah, absolutely so that was just the screen I showed previously it was just on here there's an admin page and you can go in here. If you don't like the word secure you can go in and yeah completely personalize that. You can use whatever language you want to use as a school and like so you don't have to have five you could get rid of one of them and just have three or four you can add a new statement if you want to. But yeah, completely customized for schools. And once that's done on the admin page it then obviously feeds through to the rest of the system so all your teachers will see that bespoke language that your school is using. So, any questions in the chat box so far. So we've kind of looked at the assessment points and Ben's kind of given a little overview and send those through in the chat box and I'll find them over to Ben and Rebecca on your behalf. And Rebecca, can I hand over to you to maybe take us a little step forward can we maybe look a bit more detail at some of the other aspects that we can see within balance. Oh, sorry, I can just see Rebecca's muted. I was just if you don't mind Ross I'll just show that the next page of the analysis page and then we'll hand over to Rebecca is that okay if I just show you. Fab. So like this was the teacher input page. And you can see how how quickly these have so much quicker than spreadsheets then having to email these spreadsheets to your SLT. So you're not having to do any of these calculations here. That's all been done, you know automatically in the system. So then for any SLT users out there. I'm going to go on to this whole school analysis page so what the page we just looked at once all your teachers in the school have completed that for their class that will feed this whole school analysis page and give you this overview. It's so useful that the amount of school leaders we speak to who say this is just invaluable it saves them so much time they're not having to collate this, they can look at it, even as the English subject lead if I'm looking at this same for reading across the whole school, did I can you know see the areas that where it's really strong reading the year groups that the areas where maybe we need we need a bit more support and intervention. So I can open these up so for year three here, I can see right if I want to know who are these 15% that are nearly secure, let's do something about it. I can open it up. And this is an example of a two form entry school. You know if it's three form entry you'd have three columns here and it allows you to compare your classes to the sort of year group as a whole, and allow me to come here and I can see right these are my nearly secures these seven are those vital conversations with the class teachers to say, you know, okay, these children talk to me about them, you know, they'll be on the teachers radar what are we doing what, how can we help put interventions in place to try and get them up to secure by the end of the year. And actually, if you click on the names and later on, and I know Rebecca was going to show you some sort of individual pies that will give you more information about those children. So I think it's all really useful. I think we've got filters here as well that this all links to your MIS but you can quickly say right let's look at males, let's look at the boys in reading, and I've clicked apply and that has just changed the percentages there and we're now just looking at our data for boys. So if you've got a governor's meeting that you need to quickly, you know, generate this information for it's there you can save it as a PDF. You can apply more than one filter. I know when I was teaching pupil premium boys was always a thing in reading. And how do we get boys to engage with reading. And you can see, well, you know in your school how are they getting on here. And like I said, yeah, saved as a PDF printed off. You know, you can share it with the names without the names for whoever might want to see it. And you're able to see that over time as well so you could look back and say right let's show me what this was like at October half term show me what it was like at Christmas. And you can compare, you know, when you get to the end of the year how how those judgments have changed. Right, so I told you it looked great everyone didn't I and my life is a parent school leader and the governor and someone that sees a lot of these products. So you'll see that it's not only clean on the eye but you can get pretty much every report and as Ben's just been sharing some of those. Some of the questions that I've got for Rebecca is, and you know how useful would this be for me in a parent meeting setting as a teacher. You know that school leader analysis or perhaps a Senko, and maybe just take it one step further give you four questions at once. How would I use this through a pandemic through virtual school meetings. So this is vital as you know subject lead you mentioned Senko there. And if Ben just scrolls up slightly to the filter out if say for example if I'm Senko I'm coming in we've got a sense status there. As Ben showed with the filter I can just filter all my Sen children throughout school and for each subject I get an overview straight away I'm not having to collect data I'm not having to speak to teachers or pass around spreadsheets and pandemic So for you guys particularly this pandemic we focus on work with a lot of our schools to straight away after Christmas make sure you're awesome to you know PJs are up to date. That was vital then because they knew exactly where their children were leaving the classroom in December, they get in a January, and then they can monitor and they can use this through the pandemic. So you've got the groups you can set up there so we have a group of key worker children a group of homeschool children, and that can just monitor their progress throughout however long lockdown goes on and you know whether it's the March or, you know whatever happens down the line it's it's vital it can be, you know, done weekly it can be done at the end of the topic at the end of a half term, and it will just then point in time teacher judgments and valuable and can be, you know, brought together through this screen. So I think of a practical aspect, you know, prior to covid if I'm sitting in a classroom 30 kids running around if I have this on the screen and Ross shows me a piece of work it's literally a quicker a quick matter of you know go to the system update the judgment and it's live in class assessment immediate and it kind of builds into the bigger whole school picture and give me some anecdotes or experiences of what teachers have said to have used it or benefits they they recall. Yes, certainly on that point it's worth mentioning that this works and it's been designed to work brilliantly on iPads on mobile phones so you're not restricted to having to be you know tied to your desk and and you're logging on to the school network this can be done. And you know on the bus on the way home you want to do it actually like you say live in the lesson, certainly the formative side of things. And you know with our learning where you can be doing a lesson speaking to the children having that interaction and actually putting your assessments in it you know those point in time at the point of learning. So that's another job you're not having to do you know when you get home sat on on the sofa you know on a Sunday evening, it can be done and sort of you know whilst you're in the classroom with the children and certainly that's a big feature for the formative side of things that our teachers find really really useful with balance. So I could you know thinking about crazy classroom I could go around walking around the classroom pre code and post code with a tablet walking around the time input on the device really good for work. I've got a question here from Rob for either of you and would there be a way to view or consider a group within the lowest stage of judgment and where SN children often end up that shows their progress to a positive view can be more easily seen. Yes. What we'll go on to in a moment so once Ben's rounded up the PJ section, going to have a look at some of the other areas and balance so this is our summative side but what we also provide is a more formative side of balance where we can bespoke and tailor the objectives that are being taught in the classroom and it's brilliant for you know track and progress of my lower attaining children, you know a child is always going to be working you know working well below if you know we've got a statement to child or an FC and D child. It's about you know celebrating their progress and celebrate their movement and we're going to show that. I'm going to walk you through the session everybody so thank you for staying tuned for people watching remotely and we know that curriculum should drive assessment, not the other way around my favorite part. No offense to the end of the CEO is the short term planning curriculum over the side. I know the PJ is a new feature. It looks very great very clean very dynamic. And we get straight into that part Ben and Rebecca can we look at the short term aspect. Let's share my screen here. And so within balance and obviously the PJs is just one section of everything. And as Ben said we provide the curriculum we provide our planning trilogy as we like to call it. And three balance and we encourage schools to adapt the curriculum to to personalize to bespoke objectives to really think about what they're teaching in the classroom. And how that's going to be assessed. Once the curriculum is formalized within balance. And we have some curriculums in there to help you do that and to kind of evaluate what you're doing inside school. And that then feeds through nicely on our little journey and the long term planning so we can break our objectives down into terms and to have terms. We then have a medium section where you know covers all eventualities balance is very good at doing that so whether you plan you know standalone subjects math science history, or whether you are quite you know cross curriculum thematic I've got a unit here I'm going to touch on in a moment called we're all humans, nice cross curricular learning there. This all feeds then into our end point, which is our short term planning, and the joy of the short term planning in my blue Peter style his one I made earlier is that all our objectives that we've decided to teach for each, you know, each week of the school year, you will get a screen that looks like this so I can log on to balance I can come into short term planning right what am I teaching this week in the spring to week one. And it's got my days a week here it's got my subjects but it's got my objectives as well so I know when I was teaching I used to spend a good 20 minutes half an hour every week on a word document copying a piece of my objectives to then print out and share with the staff and you know this is what I'm teaching balance does it all for you, and you can see very clearly what subject but what objective I am teaching. If we pop up to the edit section the top right here you'll see that it's a really nice clean layout Ben mentioned the mobile friendliness of the site previously. This can be done on ipad phones nice drag and drop facility, so if we choose our medium term plan. And you'll be able to see that we've got our objectives over on the left we've got our days the week over on the right and it's a nice simple drag and drop facility. So I can search by key word if I want to look at something specific and find it within all my objectives for the week I can look at the assigned click on unassigned here. The moment and I'm going to look there's three objectives left that haven't been included in my plan and I'm just going to divvy these up now and have a little look at them so I was year five teacher I'm quite biased but and you know a range of devices to build cohesion with a paragraph okay brilliant I'm going to drag and drop that's something I'm going to do Monday as lesson. The next one what haven't we included you know paragraph complex information narratives relevant to the story structure. That's going to be Tuesday so again drag and drop but what I can do. And my last objective here develop the setting characters and plots and different ways to open the story. That's something that I may work on over a couple of days so I can multi and select here. And I'm going to add this into Wednesday Thursdays and Fridays objectives because this is something I'm going to work on we're going to write our, our powerful open into the story based on the text we're looking at. And I can click save there. So you'll notice that everything's been added into our days the week but alongside that I can really start to think about what I am how I'm going to teach things we have a note section which is designed to be very light touch in no way we're typing everything and you know 1000 words in there. So it's for me it's my planning and for example in here, I've got you know maybe some key questions some key points in here I've started to talk about the tech that I want to cover with my year fives. We've also got room for links down the bottom so I've got some really useful science resources video links there scattered in the muscles video that's going to go well with my science class. So I love the kind of drag clicking drag functionality in fact that's the kind of replication of objectives which I guess builds my kind of medium or even individual lesson plans, thinking always about that teacher workload. So I'm going to click the F button in the top right hand corner, if line manager for a copy of the plan or an observation or whatever. And what I'm sure you'll come to this but whether it's just in the show quickly now or in a moment. I'm sure it covers all those things but those all to the benefits it has. So we've got two outputs and everything, especially at this time in the uncertainty whether you're a team teacher you know PPA cover or you know, you know, we're poorly and they might be supplied coming in for whatever reason, and from this screen we can grab two different items. So we've got our days of the week here with our objectives, and we can export the notes as well so this can be passed on to my teaching assistant other adults within the classroom shared with SLT if that's what happens at your school. And the other PDF function is you know here's my list of Monday, here's exactly what I'm teaching so if I've got supply coming in around poorly, we can quickly you know this can be exported it can be sent it can be printed, and share with other members of staff. In the pandemic, you could send a parent version for homeschooling. Very much so so you know mum dad whoever's at home, this is what I'm teaching or this is what we're looking at this week and we've got that plan ahead of time we're going to send our work to support that our online videos everything like that but I love that parent homeschooling here we're getting told on the morning you know and I know teachers are under a lot of pressure, but a little notice would help notice would help us prepare lessons a little bit earlier and you can't win them all but so what else can it do this. Well from this screen linking into what Ben's going to pick up on in just a moment, based on my objectives here, we have a tab down the bottom call create new learning event now this links into our formative side of balance. And it allows us to formative formatively assess identified objectives so I can choose my English objectives for example I can do this on a weekly basis a daily basis cross curricula. However it is we want to do this let me just pop in spring to English, and we can choose you know end of the week I'm going to assess this and we can create that learning event. And that leads very over to if I just stop my screen chair there that leads very nicely over to what Ben's going to share next and have a look at our learning events in more detail. Right, so thanks for a better over to you Ben and again remind everyone questions in the chat but I'll ask them on your behalf and we've got that 20 minutes to go or so. I'm going to talk about parts and all the technicalities and I'll bring in Andy, the CEO of Angel stroke balance to kind of answer any questions that you will have. And then, what else can it do. Yeah, thank you, thank you Ross and thank you, Rebecca so Rebecca just showing you how you can get from your short term plan that weekly timetable if you like you can create a learning event. I want to show you another way, because this is really popular with some of our teachers, you can go in and create a learning event that you can then assess for your children for that week or for that topic. And this was designed to work just like a Google search bar so we've got a search box here and I might search for the word graphs. So without doing it's now searching all of balance all the curriculum. And remember that you will have you know customize and tweet it's your curriculum for your school, and it's looking for that word graph, and it is basically narrowing down the content to try and put you at the top of that list in your face what you're looking for to try and save you time. So you're not trawling through loads of curriculum. So even easier we've got these great filters on the left hand side here. So it's showing me that graphs, it appears in maths, but it's actually also told me that it appears in science. And that sometimes can be useful speaking, speaking to teachers they'll say you know I hadn't even thought about doing a lesson, you know I'm covering maths into statistics, and actually, you know balance told me that it also appears in science and, you know, at that point you know what I'll do sort of a cross curricular lesson and I can include both objectives from the math curriculum and the science curriculum, creating a cross curricular learning event. And that's another side that I think is really powerful in balance it really allows and if that encourages that sort of cross curricular teaching. So I might say do you know what yeah I'm going to put these two objectives that are from my maths from statistics, but I'm also going to look at in science because we're looking at line grass I'm going to include that objective as well. And then by clicking on that plus it's basically just added it to my like a shopping basket like your Amazon shopping basket up here, and I've got those three objectives that are selected. And just before I create that learning event I just want to, to highlight these other filters and that they were really designed to make teachers lives easier. I am the year six teacher in balance so it is only giving me year six curriculum year six objectives at the minute. However, if I want to look back and see the if I've objectives as well I can, if I want to look back and see what's in year two because I've got a child working on year two, I can do that, but it's just defaulting to my age related curriculum again to how better just interrupt now at my 25 years in schools and leadership, trying to get an overview of the curriculum was a real workload heavily. And to try and get that in time mode, what are your sevens and history maths and art across the school was a real headache. The obvious thing here is, I can get this snapshot picture what's taken place across the school. And I guess there's no excuse for schools now you can get this at any point any any year group any child. And so what what what would it look like when you press this button. Does it give me the overview of a subject child will die there get in. Yes when I create when I click create it will show me all the children in my class. In fact I'll do that. But when I've I need to add a title in here so again, when we train with schools we encourage putting things like spring to week one, and this is you know line graphs and it's. So some some teachers will create this at the end of a week for what they could that week others it might be topic. And, you know, again you can set this for today. Yeah defaults to today's date but if I'm planning ahead and think you know what this is what we're doing next week I can set this for the next week, and I can click create. I'll just click on the view so that this isn't you know we'd almost need another half an hour to show you all the formative side and the wheels. But this will you know then brings up your class you've got your children you've got your three key assessment points for that week. And then you've got your learning wheels here, which you then assess and that then feeds through to the analysis page that I know Rebecca is going to cover finally for us to show you know some of those individuals profile and you know showing off their if you like their strengths and areas for development. Okay, great. So thank you, but I've got one question from the end to hear on the objectives pre loaded now going back to maybe what Rebecca showed early when you were taking in dragging all those objectives. I guess at some point you have to input those or are there some things already there available. Yeah, no, that's a great question. So we have curriculums pre loaded in the system. So we've worked with subject specialist specialists for mass it would use first for math for English it's the literacy company. You know we've used various subject specialist to put together some really great creative curriculums in the system, and they're all there they were ready for schools to use. We also encourage schools when they buy balance to just go in and have a look and have a little tweak and an edit just to make sure that it is fit for what they're teaching their children that it matches their own sort of long term plans and what's being taught and some of that English and math is very little needs tweaking because it's from the national curriculum, but for things like art you know key stage based subjects schools might want to go in and be creative have a bit of a play. Maybe how some of your international schools are using it, the predominantly British based international schools or wider mix. Yeah, no, the British base are using the British curriculum certainly and the schools that we have currently. Yes, so they found that the curriculum does just work for them, you know, but at the same time if they have a module that's maybe in addition to what an English primary school might use, they can go in and just add that module in. That's, you know, very quick and easy to do and we work with schools and that subject leaders when we first, you know, train the schools when they buy balance and show them how to do all of that and you know run those virtual, virtual staff meetings at the minute virtual training sessions. But yeah, no works. And so Rebecca, anything else that you need to let everybody know and conscious of everyone's time and then we'll thank all the live lots of questions and then talk about some costs and we get demos and have a little play around the software. So Rebecca, anything else we need to know. Oh, you muted. I'm going to fly and start there very quickly now you can all hear me and Ben and I have gone on about both sides the assessment and you know all this information you can put into balance. And balance doesn't just tell you about things that balance that you do something about things so that if I click on this screen for example, when we were looking at the professional judgment screen and the analysis area on and that lovely SLT drop down. I didn't mention that if we click on a child we have something called the pupil analysis for pupil pies. All that data and all that assessment that we're putting into balance allows us to look here and to see exactly what a child knows. So if I go to my class for example I've got two examples to quickly share with you. And the first one being Kelly Kelly is one of my higher retaining children in my class. So we can up her pupil analysis area the pupil pies as we call them. And we can see you know each of my curriculum subjects here, what coverage we have so if we pick on maths, particularly, and we can see here that I can see exactly what's been taught 45% of the curriculum, you can look at anything that I've secured on my, and added on my learning wheel. So by clicking on secure the several stages to the learning wheel as Ben said we could go in we could talk about this all evening but you, especially our later international schools will definitely be asleep by that point. So with Kelly here I've clicked on secure it's showing me exactly what objectives Kelly's understood Kelly secured in the classroom and she's confident with it's then got several stages I've got one two three four to six seven and nine so you know, and if I click on my seven to nine here these are objectives that we've covered. She's kind of got she's very nearly there a little bit of more of a push I think I needed with X, Y and Z. And this screen is really useful for celebrating what a child knows but also showing okay in terms of parents evening, and we mentioned sending targets and objectives through to parents of things they need to cover one of the frequent questions drawn parents even when I was teaching is now, what can I do with my child at home how can I support them what, and it was always a very generic set of targets that we used to give over with balance it allows me to you know select my my lower score on the learning wheels with four to six for example, and this shows me what we covered in class, but this child hasn't quite got yet we need a little bit more work here. This can be exported as a PDF and we can send this to home to mum dad whoever's at home to say, right here's Kelly, here's what she needs to work on. And there was a question earlier about my scnd statement to children I've got will down here I'm going to share. Here's information with you as well so well as a statement to child within my year five class we've all had a child like this, you know, if we look at the year five curriculum, they're not access access and age related material. There are professional judgments that always going to be working below or working well below they're always going to be in that section, but this allows us to really break down what this child knows and celebrate that progress. So I know that will for example is working within the year one curriculum I commit learning events based on objectives that specifically cater for his needs and you know what he's working on. And if we focus on maths we've got, you know, we've talked 20% of the curriculum is doing a much slower pace we're spending our time to really delve in and we can click secured here. And instead of saying it will, you know, a well below child actually we're looking it might be a lower age related curriculum, but our depth of learning secure look at all the things we'll can do let's celebrate all the objectives that he can achieve here he couldn't do this in September, because he can look out to 24 hours back. I'm conscious of Sam watching quite a long time he's staying up very late. That's the question here. Can we see the whole class overview again the formative assessment not just for individual students, if possible once you've done. And if we can hide API needs to be covered for the whole class. So we've got you can see pupils on a whole within each of the different subjects here. We also have a pupil analysis area which I'm sorry a class analysis, which we can have a little look at and this would take, as I said, I'm very conscious of time. If we just click on analysis we do have a class analysis which allows me to to drill down subject module and sub module and objective what children have and haven't got there. There's a whole wealth of analysis that we can pull through from balance and we can look at our subjects and as I said, really drill down into that. That is something that we would very happily cover with schools and teachers and a different demo. This is very as you said, Sam from Corolla lump is probably, you know, looking at a school ready for bed. So it's, it's there we can pull this information through and it gives us a whole wealth of data. You know, in terms of analysis week we've only really just scratched the surface in terms of what balance can do. And but yeah it's something that we're very happy Ben and I can talk about this till you know all day every day. Okay, well I'm going to bring things to a close 10 minutes for me let's spend five minutes talking about costs and I'm going to bring in the very handsome. Good look good looking intelligent and again to talk to you about the kind of critical questions that you probably all got. And then we'll spend the last five. If you want to just unmute and find random questions over and we'll kind of click that part of the recording off the session if you want to turn the line. Any questions to Andy, Ben or Rebecca. So, Mr Kent over to you. Thank you very much. Well, if you're an English based school then obviously you may have heard of us already we work with 19,000 schools we actually process all the early years phonics key stage one data for every child in the country and always have. We used to work in a local authority for two years before I set up Angel 21 years ago, you know my wife's a teacher I'm a government free schools so a lot of the stuff you may have heard of what stead or the five minute lesson plan we built with Ross. So with balance being the newer member, what we were just doing today which the wonderful Ben and Rebecca have just own is a teaser overview. Everyone in this room is going to be in a different position some of you might be using spreadsheets or you might have needs that aren't being met by current tracker, you might be happy with your tracker but looking for something that you don't want to correct them or planning. There's a quick summary. You've got your professional judgments, which is that really light touch and again you can do that on your phone your tablets, says you all the time to do the analysis. We've even got up and coming and be released any time now. The transition matrices because you can look at your prior attainment against those professional judgments so we're still there to support you with your analysis that you need. So if you're part of a multi Academy trust I know we think we had Osprey learning trust in here. We can even take schools professional judgments and aggregate them across the whole trust. So many schools here are part of the group. We've got tools as well that will help you see that across the trust. You've got your long medium short term planning you can do units of work you can customize your curriculums. You've got all that wonderful browse and search and of course we're celebrating the progress of individual child's you've got your learning pies is great for your parents evening so as a quick just real highlight. As a typical price prices start from as little as only 1000 pounds a year, and that includes as many users as you want in your school. MIS integration so all your staff your pupils your classes groups will come in automatically all the updates throughout the year so any new features that's all included and all your trainings included so there's no hidden costs. We base all our pricing on number on role so of course a larger the school pay more because of course their funding is different. So as an example on the screen, if you're a two form entry school around 30 children in each class, you're looking at around about 2000 pound a year for everything, which is less than three pound 50 per teacher per week for that typical school. If, as a result of looking at balance today on top of that we want to offer as a just because we like Ross 100 pound off the price of balance, whatever your personal price will be, we can send you a quote through. But if you place an order before the end of March will also give you another 100 pound off just because we like Ross. But you can also if you're a maintained school in your new budget doesn't kick into the first of April we get lots of schools you want to start now, and we'll happily invoice after April we've been doing this 21 years. No loans debts or overdrafts we've grown organically there's 50 of us based in Liverpool, all the team that you deal with will be based in Liverpool and you can come and see our circus themed offices when we're allowed back out again. So for us, we've got a lovely nice simple little link we're going to email you all with some options. Anyone who completes the survey we can give you a free balance like curriculum tool, which lets you have a little play with the English reading and writing and geography and history as the foundation subjects. But I imagine for lots of you you might not be the decision maker or you've got some questions specific to your school, or you might want to know what the price is for your number on role. If you fill in that survey, then we can give you either a personalized demo we can arrange a time where maybe you and your colleagues can see it and ask specific questions. Equally if you're ready and you just think you had me hello and I love the replacement for the spreadsheets just the PJs, then let us know in that type form. You can follow us on Twitter balance underscore edgy where you can see all the updates for that link now if you want to crack on with filling in the survey that link on the screen now which Ross or somebody can post in the chat will be there will be the exact same link that we send you when we send the type form through. So hopefully today what Ben and Rebecca have shown you is something that might replace a tracker definitely would replace spreadsheets, but it might also compliment your tracker and hopefully you just had enough of an overview today that will either let you go. Actually I'm interested in exploring this further, or this is the worst tool I've ever seen and I wish I hadn't stayed up till midnight, and I want to go to bed now. Thank you Andy and mistakes, I'm going to throw in 100 pounds myself also to any school that signed up before March and I'll play that back to Andy. And I'll also throw one of my books and my plan to each two for that person that school to make things a little easier. And so that's it folks formally I just want to say thank you to Rebecca and Ben for their kind of expertise. Let's face it balance we all need a better balance in our lives mentally physically and remotely. And there you've got a perfect example to make life happier for teachers in school. And I told you it was a nice looking website not only is it functional but it's going to make a big difference to your workload. And that curriculum overview is fabulous I know I'm biased those professional judgments. Imagine walking around your classroom in that lovely little iPad or your phone doing in class assessment and then when the school leader says there's your deadline you've already done it fabulous. And so we're going to put some links in the chat box over the next three or four minutes for people still watching you watching this recorded. And so the link there is on the screen at bit.ly forward slash balance PJs make sure you put in the capital letters that short code to work. And I'm Ross McGill I've been your host at this is kind of full recording finished. So I'm going to press that button there in a moment. So thank you for your time if you want to log off and disappear and feel free to do so we're all very busy people. And everyone else from tuning in from wherever you are and we hope to see you again and get into.