As a governor, I’m trying to help to find the best of the remote learning platforms for a small primary school. The staff are looking at Purple Mash and See Saw, both of which are offering free trial periods. Initially it’s for the next few weeks while staff are busy with actual children in school, as a means of setting work and providing feedback.
Any experience of these platforms? Or are there better alternatives? It’s for a school that only has around 60 kids, so no more than 40 working from home.
Purple Mash looks like a computing/ICT resource, for delivering IT through other subjects?
Any info much appreciated.

My daughters school has been using Google Classroom and just putting their normal work up along with links to the other online resources, e.g twinkl, bitesize, sesame street, mymaths, and so on.

I’ve just asked my daughter, year 4 teacher but used throughout school. She has been using seesaw for over a year, More so since lock down. Positives are parental engagement, schedule activities, ability for instant feed back and can be shared with other pupils. Not found any negatives.
Can’t comment on Purple Mash.
Hope this helps

Tried Microsoft Teams?

It seems to be the default choice for schools at the moment and lots of business.

Microsoft will usually donate all the licenses for schools.

Wow – teachers at your primary school are giving the pupils feedback and engaging with the pupils!

How lucky they are. Wish they’d do the same here.

Thanks so far. Microsoft Teams and Google Classrooms are platforms for sharing, what we really need are resources. My kids are using Google Classroom with their secondary school and the staff populate it with tasks etc – with only 3 or 4 teachers, who are now busy ‘at the chalkface’, it’s resourced lessons and potential for feedback that’s needed.
Tracey – thanks for that. It is looking the best option so far from what I can see.

Wow – teachers at your primary school are giving the pupils feedback and engaging with the pupils!

How lucky they are. Wish they’d do the same here.

They were managing, until this week when they are now actually teaching and enforcing hand washing……

IMO, teams is too complicated for young primary school classes. Ours is P1 and can use seesaw more or less autonomously on her kids kindle, no chance of that with teams.

oak academy any use ?

Mrs Peajay recommends See Saw

Ceept – I agree. We have parents who are struggling and can’t/won’t help their kids to access learning, so easy access is key.

Stuey – I’ve been using Oak a bit with our own kids, but the school needs a way of sharing/assigning activities and handing in/getting feedback.

Google Classroom

The staff are looking at Purple Mash and See Saw, both of which are offering free trial periods.

Do that then.

My TA girlfriend has Purple Mash at her school. She says it’s a good secondary tool to back up what’s been taught rather than an online teaching aid in itself.

My primary school age kid uses SeeSaw and we all rate it highly from a punter POV.

My boys are using purple mash and class dojo. purple mash is pretty good, easy for teachers to give feedback, easy enough for my fairly lazy 9 year old to work out also!

Do that then.

It needs to be one or t’other, or something else. Using both will blow some parents minds. Matt – Google Classroom is just a platform for working, not resources.

Thanks. Unless someone suggests an alternative, See Saw looks the best option from what I’ve seen.

You obviously are not in a trust, but how does the school normally collaborate with the other local primary school and the secondary you feed into? It seems a bit late to be asking these questions now?

I’m not trying to be difficult but, as a Governor, you should be asking the SLT/headteacher why this wasn’t in place a month or so ago. Collaboration, particularly for small schools, is essential I would say. What are other schools using in the area, what are local secondaries using and surely the headteacher has already had those conversations? Also what about the local authority? If you are LA maintained or even a stand-alone academy they should be able to offer advice and support.

Sorry I can’t offer any specific advice as my experience is all secondary, but we are using Teams successfully (I appreciate it doesn’t offer what you are after). Hope you get a suitable solution in place ASAP.

I think you’re not far from me- my lass goes to St Herberts in Keswick and they use seesaw. From a parents and 10 year old’s perspective it seems to be very good, easy intuitive interface and good resources so far. If you have any local contacts it might be worth seeing how the teachers/leadership are finding it.

I don’t know about Purple Mash but we use Seesaw and it’s excellent. I helped with the initial staff training as only KS2 used it informally before transferring to use it as a full VLE. Teachers all signed up for the free full access trial initially and we’ve now subscribed.

Parents are very happy and I would recommend. It looks very professional and is fully functional.

We also use things like Screencastify to support and create videos. Year groups have Google Drive accounts to link to saved videos and posting links.

I’m not trying to be difficult but, as a Governor, you should be asking the SLT/headteacher why this wasn’t in place a month or so ago.

Also, this is very fair. For example, we realised (it wasn’t hard if you watch the news!) that the school being locked down was a high possibility. We introduced (one 45 min session) teachers to Seesaw and made sure everyone had a school linked account ready to go.

The message came through 1 hour before the end of the day that schools were closed the next day and we sent the kids home with login details with work going out the next day at 8am.

Only looking at it now raises questions.