Live Learning

Dear Parents/Carers,

From Monday 29th June, we are going to be rolling out live lessons through Google Meet. Our students have been away from the classroom and trying to teach themselves with all our support for 13 weeks. We would like for them all to receive a live lesson before the end of the term to provide some face to face contact with their teachers and enable us to teach them something new before the summer.

Before we do this, this week some of our teachers will be trialling this new system with some classes. You will be contacted directly via text by Mr Daly if your child is going to be involved in this soft launch. We appreciate there are going to be questions and so, we are writing today to update you and provide some answers.

We’ll be delivering the lessons using Google Meet which is part of the Google system that your child already uses. Google Meet is very much like any other video platform and it integrates well with already existing student accounts, it’s easy to access and use. They will receive an email with a calendar invite to the live lesson and the link in the calendar will take them through the to lesson at the appropriate time. We are mindful that teaching and learning online with larges classes will be a learning curve for all of us, so we’ve developed some friendly guidance and expectations that will help us all. I’ve attached this document too, it’s called Live Lesson Expectations.

Live learning has the functionality for teachers to record lessons, so they can be made available to students who have missed the session or for students to refer to them. The ability to record sessions also enhances the safeguarding protection for our students. The recording functionality means we will be collecting and processing student personal data, that has not previously been included in our Student Privacy Notice (we are currently in the process of updating this to reflect this change). Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Article 6 requires us to have a lawful basis for processing personal data. Our lawful basis for processing this recorded data for students is for the performance of a public task, which is to support our students learning and to keep them safe.

Students who take part in these live online sessions have the choice to have their camera and microphone switched on. Students can submit questions via the chat function on these platforms and not required to speak during the lesson. This would limit the personal data captured during the recordings. Please be assured that recordings will not be made available to other students if the content is not fit for purpose. Recordings will not be shared to external third parties unless we have a legal requirement to provide this data. (Examples are included in our Student Privacy Notice which you can find on the Academy website) The recordings will be stored for as long as necessary and in accordance with our Record Retention policy. A full list of your rights can be found in our Student Privacy Notice. If you want to contact us about the above, you can contact the Data Protection Officer at OAT, Sonia Pressure via email: [email protected].

We have included, in the attachments, the guidance that we have received from OAT which should reassure you about our approach to live learning. I know that there will be lots of questions, please drop us a private message on Facebook or email [email protected] and we’ll try and answer them.

In the meantime, all year groups will continue to be taught remotely so please encourage students to keep picking work up via SMHW. Our provision for children of key workers and vulnerable children remains unchanged.

We very much appreciate all of the support and encouragement that you have given us as we try and bring things back to a version of normal.

Dr Lisa Mason
Principal
Ormiston Forge Academy

Please follow Government advice by washing your hands frequently and reduce your social interactions – here’s some Government guidance on staying alert and safe: https://bit.ly/2T0FT7j

Download Live Learning Expectations document.

Download OAT Live Learning guidelines.