What tools was I using?

Teams - Well, like a lot of us, Microsoft teams didn't mean anything to me a few weeks ago. 3 weeks ago, after our February holiday, we had asked students who had been in affected areas to stay at home for 14 days and so one of my colleagues teaching higher level wanted to include one of those students in his classes. I would guess that 3 weeks ago he told most of us about teams for the first time. Three weeks later, we ran a whole school on it from home. There was a bit of trouble this morning as it appeared to creak a bit under the pressure. If you are office 365 users then you can all use it (and again, I suspect I am playing catch up here). I have a team for my tutor group and all my classes and so far it has been a really effective means of communicating. We are asking students and teachers, where possible, to keep to timetables. Students are asking questions via the chat or via video and we have had a nice sense of community.

Google Docs - I have been a google junkie for a long time now. Each of my classes has a 'Class journal' which is a simple google doc. I have set it up with headings for each week of the year so it can be easily navigated from the 'View document outline' menu. I put lessons plans, instructions and links etc there as wel as relevant pictures and screen grabs of what we have been doing. My online lessons are outlined there. It seems a bit low tech given the plethora of platforms out there, but having tired most of them I find that the simplicity and flexibility of this is really effective. Some simple editing makes the look a bit sympathetic and it is really so easily to use. This much has been a degree of continutity.

Email and Managebac - Of course, these staples are established means of communication and I hope (so far so good) to establish clear protocols for use of e-mail now that we have teams.