Photo: This is definitely how organised my family life is.
How’s everyone finding it, working from home through the apocalypse?
Also a million browser tabs
One challenge I didn’t expect was a virtual avalanche of constantly updating incoming information. There has been so much to take into account in this transition from normal everyday life to a combination of lockdown, home education and simultaneous working from home.
Soon I had an impossibly unmanageable number of browser tabs open and it couldn’t go on. So here they are: a collection of useful links that I am listing here to clear the decks in my browsers.
Useful Lockdown Links
Home Education: Routine Activities
- 9am on weekdays: PE Workouts for Kids with The Body Coach
- Monday Maths at 10am on BBC Scotland and BBC iPlayer
- 10am – Maths with Carol Vorderman
- 11am on Mondays: Live Music Assemblies with Fischy Music
- Free Daily Audio Stories by David Walliams, released every day at 11am
- 11am on Wednesdays: RhymeTime at Portobello Library
- 11.30pm – Oti Mabuse Dance Classes
- 12noon – Lunch (cooking with Jamie Oliver)
- 1pm – Music with Myleene Klass
- 4pm every weekdays: Newsround on CBBC. This will be the end of each school day for us.
More about Home Learning
- Edinburgh Learns Guidance for Parents and Carers
- Home Learning grid for Primary 3
- Art at Home: Isolation Creation (Facebook Group)
- Intro to Potions (Harry Potter Themed Chemistry)
- Coding Club
- The Body Coach TV
- Home Learning Advice for Parents from a Teacher
- Learn at BBC Scotland
- BBC Bitesize: Maths
- BBC Bitesize
- BBC Bitesize on iPlayer
- Here’s how to visit the Paris Catacombs and go on Disney theme park rides online
- Oti Mabuse Kids’ Dance Channel
- Active Schools A-Z Guide to staying active and healthy at home.
- Home is where the art is: a creative curriculum for kids from National Galleries of Scotland
- Histories of the Unexpected: Slime
- Science with Glasgow Science Centre
- Learn at BBC Scotland
- Science with Profession Brian Cox, Robin Ince and Guests (older learners)
- Wildlife with Steve Backshall
- BBC Bitesize
- Active Streets Minecraft Activities in Portobello
Free Educational Websites for Kids:
For links, visit https://FromABCsToACTs.com
Nice promotional trick too
Working from Home
- GeoSciences IT Services guide to Working from Home
- A Guide for Working (From Home) Parents
- How to Stay Focused and Productive When Working From Home – good tips, though I don’t think they have to keep answering questions or setting up new home learning activities for their kids every 20 minutes or so.
- Women’s New Pandemic-Related Realities Magnify The Inequities In Our Systems And Families – some good time management tips in this
- Blinkist: Getting Things Done, by David Allen
Connecting for Remote Working
- Information Services: Off-site Working
- Information Services: Getting set up
- Remote Desktop: How to remotely connect to your office computer from another device via the University’s Remote Desktop gateway.
- macOS: Instructions for configuring the built-in VPN client on your Apple Mac.
- Edinburgh University Background images for video conferencing
Remote Teaching
- Teaching Continuity Preparation
- Google Teach from Home
- Google Teach from Home Toolkit (PDF download)
Software for Communications and Collaborative Working
- Information Services: Online Meetings
- Videoconferencing
- Communicate with users from other organizations in Microsoft Teams
- Information Services: Microsoft Teams
- Roles in a Teams meeting
- Teams meeting capacity
- Using Blackboard Collaborate for remote teaching
- Blackboard Collaborate via MyEdUse Blackboard Collaborate to schedule a virtual meeting/classrooms with anyone via MyEd.
- Sharing Content with Blackboard Collaborate
- Blackboard Collaborate: Breakout groups
- Troubleshooting Audio and Video in Blackboard Collaborate
- How to create and access a virtual meeting space within MyEd as a student
- Zoom
- The best video conference and chat apps for self-isolation, compared
More Software Links
Technical Support
- GeoSciences IT: Working from Home
- New York Times TECH FIX: The Tech Headaches of Working From Home and How to Remedy Them
From shoddy Wi-Fi to digital distractions, our tech can make remote work miserable. Here’s how to overcome the problems.
Coronavirus Updates
- NHS Inform: Coronavirus
- University of Edinburgh Coronavirus Updates
- Coronavirus page for University Staff
- COVID-19: Our response
Find out how The University of Edinburgh community, researchers and experts are responding to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. - Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now
- Video: The Coronavirus Explained & What You Should Do
Health / Mental Health
- ‘Zoom fatigue’ is taxing the brain. Here’s why that happens.
- Zoom Exhaustion is Real. Here Are Six Ways to Find Balance and Stay Connected
- Scottish Government’s Parent Club: Coronavirus Resources
- Get Unstuck When You Feel You Don’t Have Time to Do Anything
- How to look after your mental wellbeing while at home
- ‘Focus on the things you can control’: how to cope with radical uncertainty
- Gretchen Rubin: On the “Happier” podcast, in our bonus episode “Coping During COVID-19,” we talked about why you might want to keep some kind of journal during this crisis: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gretchenrubin_write-it-down-historian-suggests-keeping-activity-6650417041121558528-rsBI
- Staff Counselling service
- NHS Feeling Good app
- SilverCloud: a suite of online CBT (cognitive Behavioural therapy) programmes that are flexible, effective and easy to use.
- Crisis Support
- Counselling Service: Coronavirus – Mental Health & Wellbeing – Resources
- Health and Safety: A guide to home working
- PE Workouts for Kids with The Body Coach
- 30 Days of Yoga
Ways to Help
- Red Cross Volunteering
- Coronavirus Volunteering Edinburgh
- Volunteer Edinburgh: Covid-19/Coronavirus
On this page you will find information on how to help during the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes advice on how to be a good neighbour, how to do this safely and an FAQ on volunteering.
- COVID Symptom Tracker:
Self-report daily.
Help slow the outbreak.
Identify those at risk sooner. - Ready Scotland: Coronavirus
- EVOC Directory of local resources in Edinburgh
My Links
(Photo: Mothers Working from Home with Kids. Credit: http://www.lyncconf.com/ Licence: CC BY 2.0)
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