All users now have access to a number of enhancements to the existing infrastructure. These are important steps forward for EZ education we hope that you would appreciate the benefits of this progression in the coming months ahead. The key benefits are:

1. The LZ landing page and course pages have been reviewed to help introduce the new functionality and reduce page content. Part of this includes the removal of the Assignment Hub extract at the bottom of the Landing Page. There is now single click access to the Assignment Hub (left menu or bottom of main landing page) which has been assigned a new icon.
2. Students and the teachers can now upload folders into each unit so that it is possible to access all learning activities (paper and digital) within a single location. This presents some clear time-saving opportunities for students and their teachers.
3. A notes pad that will be available within each unit which will provide students with the opportunity to create, save and import these into unit folders.
4. Teachers will be able to hold their own resources within the course. This may make them easier for the students to access.  An increasing range of free pdf resources will be made available within each unit.
5. Teachers will also have access to each student's folders.
6. The set up will ensure that additional activities open in a new browser tab so that students can easily move between tabs and multi task. 
7. Students will now have immediate access to their grade book via a conveniently placed link within each unit. 

New Assignment Hub icon:

1. How has the service helped you?

"Ezyeducation provided me with and online learning platform for A-level Business and Economics through the form of well-detailed, concise lecture videos, challenging mini-assessments and an extensive range of key examination tips. This service served a major role in my A-level revision as it helped me consolidate my subject content and the plethora of assessments frequently tested my memory recall which helped me retain the information."

The drama surrounding education during the pandemic almost guarantees that teaching, learning and assessment models need to change. Schools are reflecting on what happened and how they can implement a more resilient and sustainable model that will overcome the difficulties of any covid re-emergence or of future novel pandemics.

Prior to the pandemic many of our pioneering schools had already made steps in this direction and had recognised that technology would be the enabler. They have made a lot of progress through the last 12 months and this provides some clear signals for those schools that are currently reflecting.

We have either recently or will soon release the following courses. The courses are all available for immediate or imminent use:

• CIE IGCSE Maths (Core and Extended) - available now
• CIE IGCSE Science (Combined Science and Separate Science) - available now
• GCSE Economics - available now
• GCSE Edexcel Business - available via phased release from 1/5/21 to 30/8/21

These courses all follow the formative assessment approach and provision of unique explanation feedback of our existing courses and have access to our latest infrastructure. 

Complete enquiry form for inspection login and to request any quotation required.

March 2021

Please feel free to make use of this simple excel tool which aims to simplify marking of extended written work and to provide a template for documenting marks.

Download tool 

Instructions

1. Input fields are white shaded
2. Add student name
3. Adjust weights for assessment objectives
4. Consider achievement of assessment objective and enter mark out of 10
5. Add explanatory comments clarifying the mark awarded
6. Save/print 

The main purpose of this approach is to move away from holistic grading. Grading guidelines issued by exam boards are difficult to interpret and achieve consistency with unless there is extensive moderation. A simpler and more consistent approach that is easy to explain and understand might be more helpful and help to minimise moderation tasks and any appeals. 

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for queries. 

Course Statistic Report

Ready and waiting for teacher assessed grades

All of a sudden there is huge interest in building a solid base of objective learning data. Fortunately, there is easily enough time to do this given the switch to online learning and increased student enthusiasm to engage with this now they know their teacher holds the trump grade cards.

I spoke to one of our schools yesterday about TAGs and downloaded a gradebook based on our End of Module (section) Assessments which aim to provide a syllabus knowledge audit. Voila!

Teaching benefits:

1. Objective assessment of students reduces marking disputes
2. As outcomes are penalised by scorecard gaps there is a clear incentive to get a move on
3. Excel download to add to central school records
4. A question-by-question record approach generates huge amounts of learning data to provide teaching insights beyond a simple summative outcome for
5. Filtered report option to evidence outcomes/activity

A solution that can take the heat out of online lessons.

In order to enhance integrity, assessments can be completed within online lessons. An excellent advance relative to the quality of lessons that can be delivered due to onerous online restrictions.

All of our courses provide the same opportunities to support TAG

We are currently offering a 6-month subscription to accommodate this shift in circumstances.

January 2021

Before online lessons commence again there are many grounds for reflecting a little on how these are run, what they achieve and if the experience can be improved.

A good place to start is the experiences of teachers that have isolated or have had to teach isolated year groups/classes. Almost all of our discussions with teachers indicate that online lessons in its current form help to maintain a timetable and register, but that these lessons can be frustrating, stressful and achieve far less than physical classes. 

In many ways this is because VC tech was not designed for larger meetings for young people with video cams switched off and participants muted or for meetings where you need to understand what everyone is doing and make sure everyone completes the same task. The difficulties shouldn’t be surprising and can be highlighted with some simple analysis.

This week, for the third time, EzyEducation supported the Economics in Action event. This event is principally designed to provide students with access to professional economists and our role is to focus on the approach of exams and good technique.

Due to the pandemic this was conducted online with pre-recorded sessions. EzyEducation's presentation is below. Apart from some useful insights into exams and essay writing this also highlights our new green screen set up.

Examination Support

There are plenty of exam resources within our courses. Here are some complimentary samples:

Data Response Question

Data response Answer Guide

Essay technique

These represent the tip of our iceberg. Book a demo here to see the full story.

Economics in Action - Introducing your students to some of UK's top economists

This event is definitely worth finding out about. This year they had a highly impressive list of professional economists speaking.

EzyEconomics Snapshot Booklet:

The free Augmented Reality app allows students to create a very personalised experience on their phone which can work without a connection. This is how it might work if a Y12 user decided to set up all the videos covering last half term and forthcoming material.

School Enquiries

Individual Purchase

The main thing to appreciate is that the update process cannot delete students or their records. It will simply update the class allocations for students and teachers and add new users.

Things to avoid

• Do not include any school reps in the import.
• Do not create any new classes. The update process will identify and create any new classes and fill with relevant students and teachers.

 How does it work:

1. You need to have School representative permissions to complete this process.
2. Archive any students and teachers that no longer participate in the course. This is best achieved by selecting relevant classes, selecting all students in the class and then use the archive students button (mauve). Check to make sure all students have been archived and that none are remaining in the relevant classes.
3. Create a spreadsheet which includes all students for the current year. This should include name, email, status, school name and class allocation. See below:

4. When the spreadsheet is ready it should be imported as follows:

5. When import commences, the system will identify any existing emails and change the class allocations for each student. Old class allocations will be removed and replaced by new class allocations.
6. Any new emails will prompt the creation of a new user. The system will generate an email confirming login credentials.
7. At the end of the process any redundant classes can be deleted from the system. This will mean that although students will retain access to historic assignments teachers will not.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further support.

EzyEducation Ltd 

September 2020

For most students, engagement doesn’t just happen. In this respect digital is no different to any other activity in schools. Regardless of the quality of digital or other activities, engagement has to be managed and clearly evidencing engagement is perhaps the most important aspect of this.

We have responded to this with some exciting service enhancements which use automation to take all the work and effort out of managing engagement while improving student awareness and accountability.

Effortless 121 reviews in just 2 clicks – rapid access to personalised assignment hub data or student gradebook via links in school management.

A lot of additional functionality has been introduced over the last few months (hopefully you have noticed some helpful improvements). Before covering these, I need to start with some details regarding necessary GDPR actions.

GDPR

During March 2020 we will delete personal data held in our archive. As this should contain students and teachers that are no longer subscribed this should not present any issues for schools.

Please make contact to advise any reason why we should not delete your School’s archive.

Snapshot Booklets - School Discounts

We have upgraded the tech support for these. This delivers a vastly improved student experience.

1. Students with course access can enjoy the support of the Booklet and call up video support via their phone but can also directly link into courses via the screen options on their phone. Students can buy direct for £9.99 a book or enjoy a heavy discount if a bulk school order is made (30 books min). £4.99 a book or £6.99 a book for Combined Science and £9.99 for a set of 3 Single Science books.
2. Please note that the new technology does not support legacy booklets. These can be identified as they do not have any Zap instructions on the front page. New booklets will be required.
3. Overall our expectation is that these books will have significant impacts on independent learning by integrating digital and print via mobile devices.
4. Although we did not have time to produce booklets for Edexcel GCSE or Edexcel iGCSE. We will produce these for the next school year.

Following our first Augmented Reality offer we are delighted to launch a new and much improved range of snapshot booklets supported by our new Augmented Reality partner ZapWorks.  

The App is free and simple to set up and generates AR experiences rapidly. It provides access to a video play or download option, PDF material and links to more detailed video content or formative assessment activities within our courses. All achieved without letting go of your device.

Over the last 12 months, your students have been very busy. Over 3.3m questions answered.

As a result of this activity, your students will now reap the rewards of all this work with a QLA empowered gradebook. 

The new gradebook is planned for release on Monday 23rd December 2019.

When students next login after this release they will have access to a new gradebook. This provides:

1. Activity time and assessment count/outcome data - see "Activity Summary".
2. Access to their personal line held in teacher grade books - See "Course Summary"
3. Question level analysis with access to feedback/explanations for every question attempted by clicking on question cells - see "Learning Gaps"
4. The gradebook includes filters to help students improve focus on specific parts of the course.
5. Report download options.

Some additional benefits:

1. Immediate review of assessments after attempts.
2. Rapid navigation between questions and feedback to accelerate and personalise revision.
3. Works on tablets and handheld devices.

Although this has been thoroughly tested please do let us know if you run into any issues over the Xmas holidays at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Finally, we would like to thank all our schools and their students for their support this year. Our business relies on your support and we hope to continue to meet the needs of schools in 2020 with high quality, time-saving and data-driven learning system that takes the heat off teachers and helps them to help their students achieve more.

Happy Xmas and best wishes for 2020

EzyEducation Team. 

Today some changes to the Assignment Hub were released. These apply to student users:

• Current Assignments (previously assignments set)- any assignment that has not been completed will be accessed under this heading. There will be an option to start or resume
• Other Assignments  - all completed assignments will appear under this heading. There will be an option to retake assessments (24-hour rule applies) or replay previous video assignments.
• Colour coding relating to due/overdue has been removed.

 A more significant change will be a new student gradebook. This is scheduled for release on 21/12/19 and will provide a single Html page with details of

• Total time on the system and total assessments and average outcome with subject splits.
• Access to data on video and assessment records with options to filter to narrow the focus on specific parts of the course and generate pdf reports accordingly
• Access to learning maps for EVERY assessment completed providing individual question outcomes and immediate access to question feedback. This is a big step forward and could transform exam preparations, but only for those students who work hard and complete assessments. This opportunity will depend entirely on the number of assessments completed.

 This will enter the final test phase soon thanks to the help of some of our student users. Watch out for updates. 

This week's edition of the Weekly 5 recaps some important business stories of the past week. If you are an A-Level Economics student there is an interesting article about UK productivity, as well as a story on global tax systems and standards.

The main stories, as chosen by our team this week:

• Pizza Express - We take a look at the recent warning signs in the latest financial accounts of the restaurant chain.
• UK Productivity - We take a look at the most recent data surrounding the UK economy on the economy's productivity performance.
• MNC Tech Firms - We take a look at the proposals from the OECD on how to reinvent the global tax system to help recover lost tax revenue from MNC activity.
• Lidl - We report on the leaked news that the supermarket chain Lidl is to launch a new ecommerce platform to sell their products over.
• Dyson - We report on the scrapped electric car project of Dyson and discuss some of the reasons for this. 

This week's edition of the Weekly 5 recaps some important economics stories of the past week. If you are an A-Level Business student these topics will help prepare you for the Global Business section of the course.

The main stories, as chosen by our team this week:

• Japan - We take a look at the recent increase in Japan's sales tax in the context of an economy that has battled deflation over the past decade.
• Tesco - After the announcement that the Tesco CEO will stand down at the end of the year, we assess how effective he has been in turning around the company's fortunes.
• US-EU Trade War - We take look at the recent trade dispute between the United States and the European Union (EU).
• National Living Wage Pledge - We report on the planned policy approach from the Conservative Party in relation to boosting the National Living Wage to £10.50/hr.
• Saudi Arabia Tourism - We take a look at a recent policy initiative from the Kingdom to increase the number of tourists  to the country each year.

Alongside these stories you will also discover some additional features such as:

• UK Economy at a Glance - Summarises the state of some of the UK economy's most important performance metrics.
• Economy of the Week - A look at the story of how China re-invented its economy to become the second largest economy in the world.
• Chart of the Week - We look at a chart that reports on the dramatic weekly decline in the value of the FTSE 100 Index.
• Concept of the Week - We discuss the key knowledge requirements of trade tariffs in light of the story of the trade dispute between the United States and the European Union. 
• Challenge Zone - Five questions that challenge readers to use the information and data in the newsletter to practice technique. 

Click here to access the full PDF version

Stay tuned for further editions of the Weekly 5 released weekly during term time!