By Ben Dowling, Unloc Director
Like many social enterprises, Unloc has been faced with the challenge of no longer being able to do what it normally does due to COVID-19. To meet the challenge head-on, Unloc has quickly pivoted from working with young people in schools and colleges to working with young people through digital means. This has meant rapidly finding innovative new ways to engage young people through digital means whilst supporting schools and colleges in any way possible at this difficult time. As well as utilising ‘traditional’ digital teaching tools such as video conferencing and Google Classroom, Unloc has successfully launched Unloc.online, a new interactive e-learning platform, providing a series of online short courses designed to encourage students aged 11-19 to explore entrepreneurship, employability, leadership and career pathways from the comfort of their own home. We’d love to share just a few examples of how we’ve adapted.
Unloc.online
As mentioned above, Unloc.online is Unloc’s new digital learning platform. The platform launched on Monday 27th April 2020 with a series of four short-courses, each comprising 4-8 hours of content depending on how fast the student works through the tasks. These courses are not deeply academic; instead, they encourage students to explore new topics, think critically and challenge their own thinking. These have proven a great alternative to in-school careers and enrichment work.
You can find out lots more about Unloc.online by clicking here.
Digital Debating
A number of schools and colleges are working hard to continue their enrichment provision for their young people. Unloc has been supporting some institutions with this by facilitating digital debating sessions. These sessions are facilitated through Google Meet which allows for students to interact with each other in their teams to discuss and plan their arguments before joining together in a larger video conference for the main debate which is chaired by one of Unloc’s trained team.
Student Forum Summits
Google Classroom is a great online tool for creating an ongoing digital environment for students who are collaboratively working on projects over time and provides an all-in-one solution for making resources, both interactive and downloadable, available to right people at the right time. Members of Unloc’s student forums, such as the Council of Portsmouth Students and the Cambridgeshire Student Forum, would normally have the opportunity to get together for four large-scale events each year for collaborative working. This has not been possible in the Summer term but Unloc’s use of Google Classroom has meant that the collaboration and school-to-school learning that is fundamental to Unloc’s forums has continued.
Student Voice Days
In areas that have active student forums, such as in Cambridgeshire, Unloc hosts an annual Student Voice Day in partnership with the young people of the Forum. These events spread the concept of student voice to a large audience, they celebrate the achievements of student voice across local schools, they provide skills-boosting workshops for young people and they raise awareness amongst decision makers across education as a whole. This year, Unloc will host the first ever fully digital Student Voice Days through a dedicated mini-website which will see interactive talks, videos, activities and more available throughout the day. Whilst this will be very different in many ways, it will still achieve those four key aims as well as greatly increase the number of young people able to directly participate in the day as there will be no limit dictated by a building’s fire regulations!
