Viki Allen, Assistant Head, Tollgate Primary School in Eastbourne, UK
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Pobble
Innovation Overview
What is Pobble?
Teachers are under constant pressure to deliver high quality education that can be evidenced.
Teachers spend a lot of time and energy finding suitable literacy resources, and creating engaging lesson plans. What's more, it can be challenging to motivate children to produce high quality pieces of writing if they don’t see the task has a clear and inspiring purpose. And, finally, in creative subjects such as writing, it can be difficult to measure success.
Since 2013, Pobble has sought to improve global literacy by working to inspire writing and save teachers time. Pobble began as a teacher-led initiative with the philosophy that learning should be exciting and teachers should be freed from unnecessary admin. Pobble empowers them to spend more time facilitating learning in the classroom.
Using Pobble, teachers have access to great teaching resources, combined with writing samples to demonstrate to students what amazing writing looks like. In the lesson, pupils engage with the work of peers around the world for inspiration and to provide constructive peer to peer critique. Teachers upload each student’s written work to Pobble, where it can be shared securely with parents, friends and even other students around the world.
This motivates and excites children by giving them a purpose to write and an audience for their work. Pobble provides an opportunity to deepen understanding, refine skills and boost confidence. In the process, the online platform enables teachers to build an evidence bank for each pupil, enabling them to assess and moderate collaboratively.
Pobble provides a school support package which includes the development of a school action plan, staff training, assemblies, and writing and commenting workshops for students. This additional support provides the additional assurance that envisioned results will be realised.
Pobble is an award-winning innovation. Pobble recognition includes: winner of GESS Best paid-for ICT product (2017), winner of EdTechX Global Super League of Startups (2017) and finalist for a BETT Award in ICT Tools for Learning, Teaching and Assessment (2017).
HundrED Academy Review
Rather than focusing purely on optimising skills, Pobble puts excitement first. By generating excitement around writing, Pobble aims to encourage a different attitude and approach towards learning, which ultimately leads to motivated students and better results.
ImpactSchools are encouraged and supported to give writing a bigger profile; they do assemblies around Pobble to engage parents and local communities in the excitement of writing.
As well as improving outcomes in education, Pobble provides a platform for international and cross-cultural exchange. The security of the online platform allows children to explore online relationships in a safe way and to have positive interactions with children from across the world.
Pobble is used mostly in the UK and Ireland, although educators across Europe, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, China and Malaysia are also using the innovation.
While the platform is mostly used by English-speaking schools, international and bilingual schools also use Pobble.