Dear Colleagues, 

On behalf of the ACCS SEN Sub-Committee, I wish to remind schools that following the SEN Seminar in October 2020, ACCS has established an MS TEAMS forum which seeks to identify, explore and share best practices in leading SEN in our schools.  

There are approx. 40 schools registered on the TEAMS forum so far. Any SENCo who has not registered but would like to participate in this forum should email Elaine Mooney in ACCS Head Office at emooney@accs.ie. All participants will be contacted going forward using the email which is linked to the MS TEAMS forum. 

For any school which uses a different platform from Microsoft, you are registered by Microsoft as an external user who does not have access to MS 365 so there are a few extra steps to go through. It’s very straightforward though. You will receive/have received an email stating that we have added you to the TEAMS forum and asking you to choose your own password for the site. 

Take a look at this video – its only 90 seconds – to see what guest users are asked to do:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/join-a-team-as-a-guest-928d1eef-61e2-49ec-b754-c2fe86b34824?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us

The TEAMS forum will be used for posting resources and documents which may be useful for participants in planning and managing SEN in their schools. 

The first event which is scheduled for this group is a ZOOM Webinar on Thursday 14th January 2021 (10.00am-11.30am). The webinar will introduce the plan for the group during the remainder of this school year and will include a follow-up presentation by Ms. Deirdre Madden (UCC) on assistive technology specifically designed to support students with additional sensory and physical needs. Deirdre presented at the October webinar to much positive feedback. This session was recorded and is available on the TEAMS forum for schools to share with colleagues on their SEN teams. During the webinar, there will be an opportunity for participants to introduce themselves and their schools and all participants will be asked to share with a group their own experiences of assistive technology and how this is used successfully with their students.

Delegate Registration is required for this Webinar:

Register in advance by clicking on the link below:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rfumuqT4pH9DR2ZdgpHKu02TKtsJN_rMa  

You will receive a confirmation email from ACCS <no-reply@zoom.us> immediately after registering, containing a link and passcode to join the webinar. 

John Irwin, General Secretary, ACCS