The original assignment was to plan, risk assess, execute and document an educational event as a group, liaising with an outside organisation. This was to be a lesson on habitats found in the local environment held at a nursery school. We chose a habitat each that children in the area would be familiar with, urban, garden, rocky shore and woodland. The plan was to imitate the habitat in a safe environment, the nursery, with the children searching amongst the habitats to find the animals which live within them receiving a certificate at the end. This was based upon the Key Stage 2 curriculum requirement of exploring the surrounding environment, but due to COVID-19 we were unable to do this.

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Emma Holland came up with the idea of creating a series of online lessons, on the side, based upon the knowledge we had acquired throughout our degree to help parents educate their children at home. She asked me if I was happy to help and I gladly agreed. Our tutor was informed, and he suggested that this become our new assignment and we submit our lessons by email for checking before posting.  Emma and I created the first few posts in the first week informally detailing the different groups of animals, but as this became an assignment, other W.E.M students became involved. 

 

I consulted the Department of Education's Key Stage 2 National Curriculum's requirements to create a list of suggested topics we could cover and produced the timeline and workload plan detailed opposite. This timeline was uploaded onto OneDrive and shared with everyone involved so we could see who was doing which subject and when it was to be posted. This plan allowed us to group the subjects in a cohesive manner and post them accordingly whilst ensuring that the educational aspect of this assignment was adhered to by following the national curriculum for the chosen age group, whist keeping our tutor in the loop as we were all working remotely from home. 

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The posting of the daily lessons onto FaceBook went smoothly, baring one technical hitch due to internet failure.  Emma volunteered to post each day and she was supplied either by email or OneDrive a copy of every lesson once it had been approved. This allocation of responsibility worked well, removing the possibility of other team members forgetting which day they were responsible for posting and increasing the appearance of  professionalism on our page.

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Each of us produced work individually on the subjects we had chosen within the workload.  I created five lessons for this project on different subjects covering insects, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, a garden habitat, Easter and terrestrial plants, incorporating different methods and formats and ideas into them. Details of this can be found in Gallery No 1.

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Emma Holland created the first post on our FaceBook page with relation to W.E.M School. I then used a few images from our initial posts to create an image to attach to the post for marketing purposes and to give a visual idea of what it was we were doing. This post has to date (01 May 2020) reached 8003 people and been engaged with by 338 people. In the first week we received comments on the insects and invertebrates lesson, one asking for permission to share to a primary learning portal and one to thank us for creating the lessons. Evidence of this can be found in Gallery No 2.

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On the 8th April we received an invitation to participate in an interview with Breakfast on Radio Cornwall detailing who we were and what we were doing. Emma Holland volunteered to do the interview. This can be heard on BBC Sounds 10/04/2020 at 3 hours and 21 minutes into the programme   (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p087r9y9).  Evidence of the initial interview message and the additional visitor traffic it generated to our site can be found in Gallery No 2. This was excellent as it proved that our reach was large enough that it had been picked up by a local media source.

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The first graph in Gallery No 2 shows that there were two peaks in reach for our site over the project timeline. The first was in the week we initially started the project with the reach sharply increasing to nearly 2500, however it sharply dropped off in the following week. This could have been due to the Easter Holidays and parents choosing to stop schooling for this holiday, or due to the lack of knowledge and therefore lack of integration with the teaching packs given by schools to parents.  The second peak was in the week shortly after the radio interview with figures rising sharply again to the 2500 mark but quickly dropping off again. If we were to repeat this it may be beneficial to remain within the school term dates and liaise with primary school educators.  This was an on the spur of the moment idea, but in future it may benefit to pre-advertise educational activities using the events section.

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The second graph in Gallery No 2 shows post views over the full project timeline, it follows the pattern of the first graph, but with far fewer numbers. It shows that the maximum post views were only 40 and that was in the initial week. There are a few peaks around the radio interview but only increasing to around 25 views. This could indicate that although our reach was relatively large,  we were not generating enough interest with our lessons to warrant people opening them. Alternatively, it could be the method of viewing, laptop, phone or tablet, with a larger screen it may not be necessary to open the post.

 

The third  graph in Gallery No 2 shows the page followers over project timeline. The number of followers before the project began was just over 100 and by the beginning of May it has increased to just under 200. Although these are not large numbers it does show an increased following and as we have posted little else this must be due to the educational lessons.  

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Overall I felt this was a well planned adaptation of the original project (even if it was miss-timed) given the limitations of being under lock-down such as remote organisation, internet and technology failure, lack of access to University resources and remote supervision.

 

The execution could have been improved, however, with a set design for all of us, giving the project a more cohesive and professional appearance as well as mistakes being made, as can be seen in slide 10 of Gallery No 1. 

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