I have blogged and tweeted about my genuine love for @YouHueApp over the last few months. As a classroom tool, it has transformed the pastoral aspect of my classroom. As a digital application and tool, they really have their fingers on the pulse. Its effectiveness can be summed up in two ways. The first, by a student in my class: “I like how it’s just between me and Mr. McGrath, because we used to have to put a peg on how we feel. I found that embarrassing.” The second is a quote from a colleague: “I have a way to see how my class’s day starts, and I can actually do something for them before they get upset.”
Having a way for my class to discreetly check in with me or my teaching assistant throughout the day has helped us address several issues straight away. No more lines of children waiting to tell me that something happened during break or lunch. You can read the other blogs I have written about YouHue here:
Now, the children have time and a space to share how they are feeling, and in due time, either myself or my teaching assistant would pick this up. However, I always felt it lacked something after this: a way to help them process this emotion. Often, we would pick up whole class emotional literacy through lessons like this:
Yet now YouHue has improved on what I thought was the unimprovable. Enter the new YouHue. It took me a while to start writing purely because there was so much to delve into. I initially thought about ranking these features; however, it felt so ridiculous because they’re all so good.
The first significant addition, and by far the most significant, is the introduction of ‘Activities’. As mentioned above, the children sharing how they feel was significant; it offered something that never existed before. Though I didn’t know what, there definitely needed to be something after this. Now the activities have answered that question; before I could respond to a child using the response space, now I can respond with an activity for the children.
As we have 1:1 devices, these activities are brilliant. Since its launch, I have set a number of these to help calm and regulate the children. They engage in them calmly and quietly without fuss. They have the option to do it with sound on or without.
These activities are brilliantly written in conjunction with child psychologists, and the kids love the animations. You can search the activities for those designed solely by YouHue or those that involve educational consultants and psychologists.
These activities are short yet impactful. They can have closed captioning enabled with no sound, which is great considering our school has a hearing impairment unit, ensuring the accessibility of the activity. Additionally, if I find myself pushed for time or I want to respond to a particular emotion, I am able to search for an activity based on that emotion.
What’s more, I can sign in on the desktop, and we can engage in it as a whole class activity as well. There have been a few times now, after a pretty hectic morning, when we’ve needed a bit of a brain break, so I opened an activity for us all to complete together.
The next big feature is more of a change in appearance, but one that offers significant functional benefits as well. The redesign, while aesthetically pleasing, also serves some valuable functions. Firstly, I can now see at a glance how my class is doing and the emotions they’re feeling. However, what’s truly great is that the ‘flagged’ feature now also appears above the child’s profile. This is particularly useful for instances when I haven’t yet managed to check my emails in time.
Additionally, one feature that I love is seeing the summary of the flagged posts and keywords used often by the children. This, again, is great for a snapshot of what language is used by certain children and how many times. This would be a great feature as reference in parents’ evenings to provide feedback on how children present in class as well.
Now, along with being able to see snapshots of children’s posts, I can now search via date. I have mentioned before that YouHue allows me to generate reports of the children’s posts either individually or as a class, and these are invaluable. However, I may need to refer back to certain days for a number of reasons. Whether this is new or not, I can now search using the calendar tool, which is a time-saving, handy tool that is definitely needed when we are trying to ensure we keep track of certain children and their mood trends.
Along with these small but powerful changes, another is the snapshot of my class. I can see in what I’m calling the ‘emotion wheel’ how the children feel as a whole class and what percentage are feeling positive or not. I can then hover over the emotions and get a more in-depth look.
I can also get a very clear glance at the week so far. I love that it’s presented as a bar model, but I can see quickly the range of emotions and like the ’emotion wheel’ above I can hover over to get a closer look and drill down into certain emotions and the children sharing them.
Another incredibly small yet powerful feature is that I can now have children in more than one class. As our children are at the end of their primary career, we have a selection of children being paired up with staff to ‘mentor’ the children through year 6. This is not uncommon and is just another person unrelated to the teacher that can be a champion for the child.
However, as is often the case, teachers and staff are always time poor. This can make it hard for children to reflect on things that challenged them or equally positives they want to share with their mentor. Well, now we are able to do so easily. The children being mentored have been placed in their normal class and a mentoring class. When the children choose to check in, they can choose to share it with me, their mentor, or both.
Ultimately, YouHue continues to be an incredible classroom tool.
I am still seeing teachers share things like the above on social media and I make absolutely no judgment as you will ALWAYS know your class better than I do. However, as an adult I would feel reluctant sharing my emotional state openly to the class so I imagine our young people feel the same. YouHue is discrete and allows a powerful open channel between you and the class to share how you are feeling. Good and bad.
Keep checking back for the latest on how our YouHue journey is going.
Thank you for reading. MRMICT (Karl)
MRMICT 
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