Member Article

North East Businesses Partner to Support Learners Worldwide

Two North East businesses dedicated to the professional development of teachers and students have joined forces to improve learner outcomes worldwide.

Video insights software developers, VEO, and professional development programme providers, Evidence Based Education, have partnered.

The VEO app allows users to record their lessons, training, and interactions to gain valuable insights via a set of interactive tools. Since spinning out of Newcastle University’s School of Education, the platform has been embraced by users in over 20 countries.

Developed to meet real world challenges and improve learning and teaching at scale, VEO has grown rapidly through recommendation. Students, teachers and coaches around the world are gaining value by using the app, as evidenced by greater than 100% renewal rates.

Sunderland based, Evidence Based Education, developed the Great Teaching Toolkit with the ultimate aim of providing teachers with high-quality feedback, training and tools in the areas that underpin great teaching in the classroom.

Ultimately, the toolkit seeks to guide evidence-based, sustained and sustainable professional development in schools and colleges. More than 13,000 licences have been taken up since the launch in 2021.

Shared values, ambitions and aims brought VEO and Evidence Based Education together. Both businesses recognised the strengths in collaboration and partnering.

Paul Miller, Founder of VEO, said: “At VEO we want to work with likeminded partners to develop best practice. As we were both founded in the North East and we both have close links to universities in the region, our paths have historically crossed.

“We’ve been in talks over the actions we could take to further enhance learner outcomes. The launch of the Great Teaching Toolkit provided an excellent opportunity to collaborate.

“Historically, to educators, video was perceived with nervousness. Our software has helped flip this perception. Teachers who use VEO for reflection see it as an extra support in the classroom to gather insights on their teaching methods, without adding any extra work to their busy days.

“Both VEO and EBE have seen a huge increase in schools who’re open to innovation, video and technology. That’s why now felt like the right time to start our work together.

“VEO is now available to all who’re currently paid Great Teaching Toolkit users as an easy-to-use video reflection and feedback tool based on the Model for Great Teaching.”

Jack Deverson, co-founder and managing director of Evidence Based Education added: “The Great Teaching Toolkit has been incredibly easy for users to adopt and we’ve had some amazing feedback since our launch. It’s been great to see how many schools are open to online and video solutions to enhance and support their staff’s professional development.

“Our users identified that they’d like to be able to use the toolkit to improve how they conduct observations in schools.

“VEO was the obvious solution and will allow users to bring the Great Teaching Toolkit to life in their classroom. Each teacher using the toolkit will be able to record snippets of themselves teaching, with nothing more than a smartphone or iPad.

“Any recordings will remain private to the teacher in question. From there, they can be shared with other colleagues, to enable collaboration on a certain element of the Model for Great Teaching. Users will be able to watch, tag and comment on the video to give helpful feedback and improvement suggestions.”

To find out more about VEO, Evidence Based Education and The Great Teaching Toolkit visit their websites.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Vida Creative .