Hi there 👋

Outwood’s Digital Services Team has been Highly Commended in the Pearson National Teaching Awards for its innovative use of technology in schools.

After eight years of iteration on our original schools CMS, we’ve just finished migrating all 32 Outwood schools to new sites 🙌 Eight years is a long time on the Internet. I made the first git commit to a simple block-based CMS for our (then) 8 schools in January 2013. 2,145 commits to the main branch—and 32 schools—later, we retired the original “OGAT CMS” after eight valiant years of service. ...

This summer, in the face of uncertainty about how COVID-19 might affect in-person results days, we wanted to ensure our students would have the opportunity to access their qualification results online. That meant we needed a digital solution that could quickly, reliably, and securely share many thousands of results slips. All Outwood students have a school Google account, conveniently including access to a document-sharing platform: Google Drive. We used Drive and some simple scripts to create a straightforward yet effective solution that leveraged our existing infrastructure. ...

After two years of planning, collaboration, and phased rollouts, Outwood has successfully completed its migration to GSuite—marking a major step forward in how we work and communicate 🎉 Our migration journey: Initial adoption of Google Classroom Trust-wide rollout of core Google productivity tools (Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides) Staff training and development Phased email and calendar migration Our decision to move to GSuite was driven by our commitment to providing the best possible digital tools for our students and staff. The initial deployment supported our adoption of Google Classroom, championed by curriculum leads in Computer Science Colleagues across the trust quickly expanded that remit after experiencing the more flexible collaboration offered by GSuite. The difference from our previous on-premises solution was especially pronounced, coming from fragmented systems, with siloed document sharing and calendars increasingly frustrating trust-wide collaboration. ...

We’re delighted to be recognised as “Ones to Note” in this year’s Edtech50 yearbook from The Education Foundation 🙌 Our inclusion stems from the “oCloud” suite of tools we develop and its impact on the ground, helping staff improve student outcomes. Our yearbook entry notes: The Software and Data Team of OGAT have developed software, (oCloud) that has changed how easily the Trust can track and monitor students, ensuring accurate and timely interventions and reducing staff workload alongside. ...