Tag: online

6 Actions To Help Your Learners Develop an Online Profile

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developing a positive online profile

After reading about the repair work taking place on behalf of Lindsey Stone’s online profile (Hindsight is a wonderful thing), I was left wondering what it would be like if it all just, went away. I wonder about the fragility of our online profile and the roles they have within our lives.

There is another Tom Barrett. He is an American politician in fact and is the current Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Who knows how are Google search results compare anymore, but if you run a search on “Tom Barrett” thankfully all the images are mayoral in nature and all the links are mine.

In the past I have been tweeted at, accused of terrible social policies or something along those lines. Which is rather unfortunate around election time. I wonder if the Democrat has ever had a conversation about his online profile and how he has to manage his. Presumably I am kind of getting in the way a little.

Learning About Developing an Online Profile

We have to help our students navigate these tricky waters. And they are quite tricky as the charts that are often set soon become obsolete and out of date. The speed with which social and online web development moves, paired with the shifting sands of trends means as a teacher or leader within a school it is indeed tricky remaining up to date.

But perhaps that is often the perceived mindset. We don’t know something so it is foreign and strange and out of our reach. The latest photo sharing app is alien to us, or the way youngsters interact within games feels unusual. However much the technology changes three elements should remain enduring.

  1. A common sense approach to the way we talk to our students about their online profile and a channel to discuss it (this goes for the teachers too).
  2. A willingness to model an open, positive experience of the use of social media in support of learning.
  3. The ability to access and use social media in the school environment so it doesn’t become sidelined or a behind the bike sheds occurrence.
  4. Active development of a public profile in the company of mentors, not something behind a walled garden.
  5. Building personal portfolios is seen as an open endeavour across the organisation, a personal profile in school is no different than an online identity.
  6. A clear, consistent understanding of online ethics is shared across all staff and the importance of an online profile is widely appreciated and wholly embraced.

It is hard to sail into uncharted waters but we can help our students understand the hidden currents and tricky tides whilst with us in a place of learning. If we don’t do this, if we step further and further back from this responsibility, either through a lack of knowledge or willingness, we aren’t helping the students in our care.

If we as educators choose not to care about developing an online profile, if we ourselves are not actively positive about the huge potential it has, running aground might be more common than we would like.

What other key elements of our work with students comes to mind? What other enduring areas of development do you see central to supporting this for our students?

Can teachers stand idle any longer?

Blogging, Networks, Social Media, TwitterPublished onUpdated on11 Comments on Can teachers stand idle any longer?

In last Friday’s Times Educational Supplement an article I had written was published about the use of social networking in schools. It seems to me that we are getting to a point where children in schools are experiencing a hidden social curriculum that we are no longer part of, this is especially the case for their use of social networking. In my own words:

Social networking should be taught more widely and in more depth in schools. No longer are we able to stick our heads in the sand about these communication tools. Nor should educators distance themselves from using them.

The paragraphs that were missing from the piece went as follows:

This is not simply about how much time students spend learning about social networking in GCSE ICT. This is an issue for every subject and teacher, a system wide issue, a social issue that needs the whole school to act, and it won’t just take the one or two teachers who use Twitter or write a blog to do it.

Those of us who are willing should take steps to develop a more supportive and positive ethos around the role of social networking in learning, school and society. Those who are unwilling need to get out of the way, because where we continue to remain idle we further disadvantage our students.

“Teach it, don’t fight it” was published in the TES magazine on 16 September, 2011 

Introducing Google Docs To Your Class: Interesting ways to use Docs in the Classroom 3 of 3

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This is the third and final part in a short series I am reposting from the Official Google Docs blog which I wrote back in 2008. I introduce people to the concept of sharing ideas in the form of the Interesting Ways resources – both learning about the tool itself and sharing good practice about it!
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The mornings are becoming darker and the leaves are changing colour here in England, the Autumn school term is in full swing. We have been using Google Docs (as part of Apps Education Edition) with a new year group for 8 weeks and we are putting into action some of the many things we learned from last year’s implementation.

Whilst in the previous two posts I have explored many of the broader themes that must underpin the way sharing online docs should be approached in the classroom, I am now knee deep in the practicalities of using Google Docs with our classes. This post will hopefully give you some practical ways to use the tool in the classroom, some inspiration as to where to start and some usage tips that will help it all run smoothly.

Over the last year I have begun two presentations that share practical tips in the use of Google Earth and the Interactive Whiteboard in the classroom. I have set the presentations up so that anyone with a practical tip can become a collaborator by sharing editing rights with them. In this way the presentation expands with the advice and tips from real users and from a much wider audience of educators.

All you need to do is send me your email and I will be able to add you as a collaborator to the presentation, so you can add just 1 or even 10 tips for the use of Google Docs in the classroom. (See details at the end of the presentation)

The first five are my own tips, in no particular order, to get the presentation started. It is currently called “[Insert #] interesting ways (and tips) to use Google Docs in the Classroom” – but I hope that you can find time to add your own and share your advice with Google Docs users so that the name changes! Or perhaps you would prefer to just use the presentation as part of your staff training – it is all licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0.

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The Interesting Ways resources have come a long way since 2008 – and this one is up to 34 ideas! I hope that you have enjoyed the short series of posts about using Google Docs and managed to take something that you can apply in the clasroom when you are working with collaborative online tools.

Introducing Google Docs To Your Class: It’s about communication, not the tool! 2 of 3

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This is the second in a series of 3 posts I wrote for the Official Google Docs Blog – in this one I share some common challenges teachers face when students begin working together on collaborative projects.

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2668173081 b62efb9df5Communication is important, not the tool

The success of our own class projects was not influenced by how well the children could use Google Docs. After all, it is not really about the tool — it’s about the group’s ability to work together as a team. My class found this difficult throughout the year. I did not expect that just because we were using technology that the outcome would be any different. In fact even though each child was engaged with a role within the group and a task to complete, the technology exacerbated the lack of communication. The groups were plodding on with their own tasks and when it buffeted with someone else’s they would get upset. They may be working in the same online space, but that does not automatically indicate they are collaborating well.

With this in mind we raised the profile of the sense of communication within the groups and discussed with the children their teething problems and how we can best resolve them. With every resolution I drew it back to the idea of better communication. The class had a fuller understanding from these discussions of what they were doing when working together in Google Docs and some of the ways that their own communication was causing problems. To reinforce this in future sessions I would regularly stop the class to talk about an excellent example I had overheard from an individual or a group. One such example was when the children in one group lowered their laptop screens so that they could discuss the progress of their work so far. I raised it with the wider group ,we briefly discussed why it was such a good move, and through this we then saw the majority of the groups adopting this strategy.

How student personalities and familiarity with technology affect group work

You know what it is like: you try and balance a team and consider the characters that you put together in a group, but within moments they are falling out! I suppose using Google Docs does not make the task any easier. Out of the 5 groups in my class, 2 worked very well together, 1 was OK and the other 2 had lots of problems and struggled. On reflection, the groups that worked least well together were made up of perhaps 2 or 3 strong personalities that would naturally like to take a lead and this caused conflicts and problems as it has in other activities. When the children have their own laptops and a clear contribution to make within a document, that is appropriately structured, in my experience it can help a group work together.

I had children in my class that were very capable at using technology and were motivated and enthused at its use in our lessons but who often struggled with their literacy or maths, they were more confident when collaborating with Google Docs because of their own personal comfort with technology in the classroom. They pushed themselves forward to take a lead and be more involved when in a more traditional paper-based activity they may not have done. Similarly, the flip side of this is children who are very confident and capable in literacy who perhaps have less confidence when using technology. Even though composing groups within your class to collaborate is similar for any activity, it is important to consider the type of characters who grows in confidence when embedding technology in their learning.

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Next: Interesting Ways to Use Docs in the Classroom

Introducing Google Docs To Your Class: Tips for introducing online collaboration to students 1 of 3

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In 2008 I was invited to write a series of blog posts for the Official Google Docs blog. I have decided to repost them here to highlight some of the challenges I faced at the time and in an effort to help you, not only with the use of Google Docs but also other online collaborative tools.

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3068052025 ecfde2145fModelling expected behaviour and good practice first

As our first Google Docs project began to gather pace last school year, I realised that the children were finding it difficult to work together. With hindsight it is easier to recognise that the children were not only being introduced to a new piece of technology (the Docs tool) but also their traditional way of working was to be challenged by the new concept of working collaboratively in an online document.

It was clear that the children were unsure about the way they should be working together. They were each working on their own laptop and it was not the technical side of things that they struggled with, it was the fact they were expected to interact with others in their group as well as use a screen. I found it very useful to model the process. Just as I would if I were showing the children a style of writing in Literacy or a type of stretch in PE. I worked with a colleague on an example document and gave the class a running commentary as to what we were doing. As we worked we talked to each other and I underlined some of the key features of what made that short demo collaboration successful for us.

I think that every class of children will respond differently to the challenge of working together in an online doc, but it proved incredibly valuable to our classes to model what is expected of them. In September, I’ll have a new class and I will be keeping in mind this idea from the outset. Another idea would be to encourage the students to demonstrate the concept to the class – this is much harder to show but valuable nonetheless. I will be planning in time to model the technical and communications side of working together and also reflective time with the groups throughout the project to discuss and review the process of collaborating.

Introducing group collaboration: entire class, working in pairs, and groups of four

With the 9 and 10 year-olds in my classes, I found it valuable to take small steps towards an open collaborative project with 4 or 5 group members. As I introduced Google Docs to the class, we began to work together on documents that everyone could contribute to, revealing the ways that it worked and how it updates. In many respects this could be labelled as modelling the process that the children will in turn use later on. It proved valuable to be able to prove the concept to the children in a simple “step in, step out” controlled type contribution, nothing protracted. We added ideas to a large grid within a spreadsheet, with the children being told to choose any cell to write in – you could also invite them to fill in some information about themselves next to their name in a class list document. This single contribution to a whole class document was our first step.

It was followed by children working together in pairs on one document – a laptop each, sitting next to each other and sharing the document between them both. Finally the children worked in a larger group of 4 in a more lengthy collaboration as part of a Geography project. I believe it is important to progressively build up to bigger group collaboration and for this coming academic year I will be taking the same approach in developing the children’s collaboration experience over the first 6 weeks of term.

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Next: It’s About the Communication Not The Tool