USING ICT to COMMUNICATE and COLLABORATE

.             Blogging to boost writing

In many respects, communication and collaboration are the culmination ofactivities described in earlier chapters. Many of those, of course, work best as collaborative activities, whether working on a presentation or making a short video.

The opportunities for communication and collaboration include:

·         Mass access to information, both in school and outside school.

·         Communal participation in the construction and editing of text.

·         Publication and sharing of creative work, instantly, to a worldwide audience.

·         Flexible and dynamic forms of interaction and discussion across a range of distances.

·         A variety of ways of sharing problems, solutions and ideas.

A collaborative activity can make finding a piece of information vital. As has been made clear earlier, students also need to be able to assess the accuracy of anything they find on the internet and detect any signs of bias.

A blog offers a potential audience which as well as the teacher and the rest of the class can include the whole school, parents and even (if you wish) the whole world. And this is an audience that has the ability to respond just as quickly as the writer can publish. Blogger (www.blogger.com) is another very popular blogging service - these are easy to join and within a few minutes you can be writing your own journal.

In the NATE project on 'Making hard topics easier to teach with ICT', two teachers (Martin Brennan and Mark Ellis) found that blogging provided powerful stimulus for some reluctant writers. Both independently found that the free EDU 2.0 for school service (www.edu20.org) provided what they required.

Martin found that once students began blogging, the ability to comment on other posts was a valuable opportunity for peer assessment and he also found that students had their own suggestions about managing their accounts, such as using their mobile phones to photograph their details and so avoid problems with forgotten passwords. Martin concludes: ‘The first thing you need from students to assess and improve writing is simply that: a text of theirs to work from. I now have these.’

Mark Ellis found that the sense of audience was markedly improved. This is best demonstrated in the opening sentences and the well-considered strategies that the students used. Mark concludes with some refreshing advice. ‘You really have to get out of the way and let them do it.... This is an opportunity to save the red ink, and open up a different approach to the question of who should be taking responsibility for the accuracy of work.’  

You can read Mark and Martin's accounts of how they used blogs with their students in the area on the NATE site on 'Making hard topics easier to teach with ICT' atwww.nate.org.uk/http.

2.             Virtually partners

The ability to communicate with other students, even in another continent, opens up many possibilities. Many schools already have international links, and if not, sites such as Global Gateway from the UK Department for Education (www.globalgateway.org.uk) provide ways of finding partners.

The AfriTwin project illustrates what is possible when schools make a serious commitment to international links - and how ICT can help. JemmaDefries summarizes the benefits of the links between her school in the Wirral in the UK and two in South Afrika, which was set up under the auspices of AfriTwin (www.afritwin.net). 'An AfriTwin club is an asset to our school and a great opportunity for the pupils to learn about other cultures. It can open up new experiences for children on both sides of the world who may not necessarily have the funds to travel. it is a modern day pen - pal system that produces thought-provoking discussions'. as the schools developed the relationship, they found a number of interesting links that enabled a range of cross-curricular activities to take place.

An important aspect was the creation of a secure community. The advantage of the learning platform hosted at the English school was that it enabled Jemma to set up a secure blog that only the students involved could access; this kept students safe online and they liked the idea of belonging to an exclusive club. They also enjoyed having contact with more than just one person, in contrast to a traditional pen-pal. You can read her AfriTwin report on the learning platform project area of the NATE site atwww.nate.org.uk/page/lp.

3.             Wikis: working together-anywhere, anytime           

A wiki is, essentially, a website that can be edited by users.For students, the advantage is that groups can create resources collectively, with everyone able to results instantly.

Collaboration is the whole raison d’etre of wiki software, with its facilities to record all the changes made, who made them and when.It also provides the reassuring ability to revert to an earlier version if the authors decide to reject a later change.

One important aspect, whether using a provider such as Wikispaces or a learning platform, is the ability for students to contribute fm wherever they have internet access. This means that work can continue from home (or from the library after school) and that those on school trips or away from school for a variety of other reasons can also be involved. Some schools have created curriculum projects in which students work off-site for whole day carrying out research, conducting interviews and working in groups. It also means, as the AfriTwin project described above has shown, that schools in different countries can cooperate on projects. This involves careful planning, including the provision of facilities (either in school or permits a whole range of activities or research as well as giving students a taste of independent study.

4.             Bringing it together

An experienced teacher knows how to employ a repertoire of skills and resources to meet the specific needs of his or her classes. Techniques and technology are used because they are appropriate. Enhancing other methods or providing new opportunities. Teaching about language, for example, can be enriched by websites such as the BBC’s Voices (www.bbc.co.uk/voices/) and the British Library’s Sounds Familiar: accents and Dialects of the UK (http://bit.ly/te_9) but such resources (though wonderful) need to be integrated within a teaching and learning programme. Louise Astbury’s work with 18-years-olds illustrates a multi-strand approach by bringing together readily available tools.

Her students used a combination of video resources, blogs and PowerPoint presentations to explore language samples as part of their study of language and power. Louise recorded a number of television programme such as The Weakest Link, Jo Frost Extreme Parental Guidance and Hell’s Kitchen USA for students to explore as part of their final examinition prepatation.

Her college had access to a service called eStream, which stores recordings and splits them into easily annotated ‘chapters’ for students to select and annotate the features they observed – allowing them to collaborate in groups by accessing the videos from college or home (YouTube is a less sophisticated alternative). Her objectives were ‘to allow students, to develop their learning outside the classroom, to work collaboratively on analysing video and to allow them to become more independent and autonomous in their activities become more independent and autonomous in their activities’.

To this end they completed private learning journals which Louise could view and also recorded more public comments on a blog in which they could add images and YouTube clips as they prepared their group presentations on their chosen video extract. In their learning journals, students focused on the fact that they were free to explore the data for themselves. One wrote:

The fact that our teacher has had hardly any input has definitely benefitedeveryone as we are learning to be independent and not so reliant on the teachers for help or advice. We were forced to use our own initiative.

They liked the independence and other comments related to feeling more confident in expressing their ideas as they had time to think and process the material rather than being ideas as they had time to think and process the material rather than being under pressure to respond in front of others in the classroom. In addition, everything was available on the learning platform, from the initial videos to the resulting blogs and presentations, which meant that they (and the others in the class) could return to these for revision. Louise conclude that the benefits were not confined to the students to reflect on not just what they were learning but how they were learning. These comments are also useful in forming my teaching for future classes in allowing them to be more autonomous in their learning.’ You can read her full case study on the NATE site: www.nate.org.uk/page/lp.

5.             Wiki wars

Teacher of older students, in particular, face a number of competing requirements when students approach examination. The students are expected to be a familiar with the set texts, moving beyond merely knowing “the story”; they need to be able to discuss and eveluate opinions and communicating a personal response, supporting their comments from the text. Small group discussion offers a way for students to develop their own ideas and a route to avoid the more parroting of a prepared answer. Even it the best regulated classroom, however, unless numbers are very small, it isn’t possible to ensure groups stay on task, avoiding errors and misleading interpretations, and to ensure all students are able to contribute and receive feedback. This is an area where technology, in the form of forums and wikis, offers a real enchancement, giving students considerable autonomy while allowing the teacher to monitor all contributions.