ICT in my Classroom

This week we took another step towards a 1 to 1 model of personal computing in Years 5 and 6 at school. With a further 32 laptops (Toshiba Satellite A200) divided amongst the 4 classes we now have a total of 16 laptops per class. Since September we have regularly pooled the laptops between the two classes in Year 5, providing us with more machines. Now we have the option of one laptop per child if we choose to.

I spent the best part of a morning installing antivirus software, configuring the laptops to access the wireless network and proxy settings to get online. After telling the children that we had the new machines I said that we can get online but they do not have all of the software available on the others just yet. One of the children replied:

“But we can get onto Google Docs can’t we?”

Great to hear this from the children and it seems that Google Docs has quickly become another tool for us to use. Much of the novelty has worn off and it now has become just another part of what we do in the classroom. Much like the use of del.icio.us for the weblinks we use in class - when we use something the children enjoy the first question will always be: “Is this on del.icio.us?”

This week has been dominated by Optional SATs in English and Maths but we spent Thursday and Friday afternoon exploring a Geography project involving Google Docs.

We are working on a unit about India and the differences with our own country. Rick and I have planned for the children to define what they want to learn about. In small groups they are going to produce a short presentation about a topic of their choosing. In addition they will design an activity to do with that topic for the class to take part in. After some initial work the children in my class have chosen to work on these five different topics:

• The Himalayas
• Wildlife in India
• Fashion
• Indian Art
• The History of India

Much of this week I have been wishing for the integration of Google Notebook into the Education Apps suite of tools. Many teachers are calling for it and this project of ours requires just such a tool. There is a work round to register with Notebook by creating an account based on the Ed GMail account. But that is too hacky for me - I want the tool right there for the children to use and think it is about time they included it. In the remainder of this post I will refer to some of the processes that are better suited to Notebook than Docs.

The first job for the groups of children was to elect someone to create a single research document that would then be shared with the remaining group members and yours truly. Each child was assigned a colour to give a visual indication of the content they have added and sub headings for their topic were explored and added.

In the afternoon on Friday we had some time to begin the process of finding information about their topics, but before they began I wanted to highlight some of the ways that they could search for it. Intermingled within this was an opportunity to model the searching / selecting / referencing process in a document about Food in India. We will use this doc as a sandbox and exemplar of practice as we go through the project and a place to model some of the processes involved. As this research was to form part of the children’s holiday homework I composed an email with my searching suggestions to help remind them, they were:

• Explore India using Google Earth - switch on the different information layers available.
• Use some of the Google search tips I showed you. “” to search for exact phrases.
• Quintura for Kids - a different search engine http://kids.quintura.com
• Use an image search such as Google images or FlickrCC image search - you can add them to your research doc.
• Search using del.icio.us - use the + sign to search for different tags.
• Wikipedia - a huge reference library.
• Living Library

I modelled how to add a website URL reference for a piece of research in Docs - this would be automatically created when using Google Notebooks. When using Google Notebook you highlight and right click to “Note this” from any site - it grabs the site address and adds your selected content into the notebook. Each clipping is also organised separately and can be reordered. Not forgetting that you can create different sections (sub headings) within any notebook and add notes to these.

The idea then is that the group will work collaboratively on a single doc adding different items of research synchronously or asynchronously. But something doesn’t feel right. It is all very well using the sharing functionality of Docs but it just isn’t the right tool. When I do research on a new curriculum topic I gather my ideas in a Google Notebook. The children would still be able to share the Notebook between the group by much the same process as adding collaborators to a doc. That would be the right tool for this research work - come on Google let us start to use it with our classes!

Once the children began their own research I was pleased to see a variety of information searches taking place: exploring the Himalayas in Google Earth, looking at the terrain and geographic information available; del.icio.us searches looking for popular tagged sites and the use of Wikipedia and more formalised resources like Living Library.

This 25 minute session began to uncover some interesting questions and concepts about the use of Google Docs. A group of boys working on the history of India began very well but soon were having trouble with deletion and overtyping in the Google Doc (this would not have occurred in Notebooks because each clip is saved as a new note). Even though they were working on the same table, next to each other - they were just not talking. They became a bit transfixed with what they were doing on screen. It is important that when you ask the children to collaborate with each other on a document they remember understand what collaborate means. They needed to discuss and talk with each other about what was happening and who was doing what.

In order to refocus the class on this important aspect I stopped everyone and we talked about this example for a moment - I made a teaching point of it. It seemed that the group in question had actually gone backwards and lost work because they were deleting each others by accident - one of the boys told me he could get it back from the “Revision History” which he promptly did. I felt that the children were trying their best but were a little unsure about how to go about working synchronously on a document with 2 or 3 other children - there was a need to model this and show them what to do. After all it is a new skill, a completely unknown process they have not experienced before. Here are some reflections on approaching this:

• Emphasis must be placed on the communication between children when working in the same document.
• Model this process if possible - Rick and I have already planned to show the children what we mean, to be working on a doc together and to be saying, “I am just going to put an image in the second section.” They have to see and hear this in action and understand the importance of it.
• Highlight and praise the smooth running and good communication between a group - be absolutely clear why it is a good example to the whole class. Continue to flag up good practice as the project progresses.
• Just because they are sharing a document does not mean they are automatically collaborating - they have to work as a team and not alone.
• Expect to see changes - encourage the children to begin to appreciate that when other people are working with them the document they see will alter. Perhaps model this with the whole class on a single document.
• Listen and pause - as the children are working they may hear a member of their team say they are going to put a bunch of text and images in a section, encourage them to react by pausing for a moment and letting their own document update. In this way they will not be surprised by a document suddenly changing.
• What is my friend doing? Encourage the children to take an active interest in which section their peers may be working on. This could well be decided at the outset so it is clear who is working where in the document.

After all it is not about the different colours for their names. Fundamentally the children need to use their communication skills to facilitate the production of something together.

And of course I still yearn for Google Notebook in this instance. In my opinion we are settling for an oval when we really want a circle. Most of the issues I have explored above about working with docs in this way would not exist in Notebook. It references, organises and structures the research as part of the process - the children could then export the resulting notebook to Docs and refine what they have done. We will persist with Docs but it is frustrating to know of a very powerful tool that is more suited to the task, but is currently beyond our reach.

Unfortunately it has been a while since I have been fit to write as I have been off of work, away from school with a nasty bout of tonsilitis. On a course of penicillin tablets for it now which tastes completely rancid by the way! I am feeling back to my normal self at the moment and have had a full week in school which has been busy as ever.

Throughout this week in our Year 5 classes I have planned to utilise our class Diigo account for some simple comprehension work on instructions. Diigo is a tool that allows you to add annotations and sticky notes to any web page - making the most text heavy site partly interactive. As the children roll over these highlights or sticky notes they can read the pop-up message or comment. I have used it to pose some questions about an instructional text on making a healthy smoothie. The text itself is on the excellent WikiHow website and is in fact a piece of shared writing I completed last year with my year 6 class when we did instructional text too.

The children have been working on laptops during the group time in our literacy lessons at this task. The activity has rotated throughout the week so all the children can experience it. Once the children have read a question they can view the text immediately in front of them and they have no need to navigate away to a different window etc. In an ideal world I would have liked the children to answer using something like Google Notebook which is still very much my intention. But I thought that I needed to take things slowly and explore the use of Diigo first. So the children answered the questions in their jotters - a more nostalgic notebook shall we say!

They have enjoyed the task this week and have been engaged and motivated - the problems seem to be the tendency to move the sticky notes around the screen, so the order has been a bit lost. One or two notes have also mysteriously disappeared. I have been signing into the Diigo account so we can see our private annotations, but I suppose that if the notes were public and we didn’t sign in then no alterations could be made. They could be viewed but would be protected. Mmm I will test this out.

del.icio.us has proven to be an invaluable tool with so much constant access to technology with our laptops in lessons. Our Year 6 teachers are getting stuck in too, so our school’s weblink resource will no doubt begin to grow and grow. A great tool for any school that I cannot recommend highly enough!

Further to my initial thoughts of linking up the use of Diigo annotations with Google Notebook use I have developed a visual workflow of how a student might interact in this way. The context could be anything from a simple reading comprehension task in a literacy session to ongoing research within history or any other such subject.

Pedagogically Diigo is being used here as a tool to scaffold and support the child’s interaction with a website. When thoughtfully used I think that it might provide a new level of interactivity to those static, non-interactive, information heavy websites. Of course Google Notebook’s part in this process is as a written record, a place to respond for the child without having to navigate from the browser.

Please click on the image for a larger clearer version.

I am pleased with the simplicity of this idea and how it could be aligned to most subjects - the next step seems to be to finalise how the notebooks are organised. I have added some simple Diigo notes to this poem by Charles Causley as an example, but it is not difficult to see how this can be used. One further development in terms of how you as the teacher organises the Diigo annotations is to use the tags to categorise the work you are doing, for example “comprehension”, “poetry”, “inference” - this would be a useful way to help signpost the work completed too.

Please contribute any further ideas as to how Diigo may be used in such a way or perhaps combined with another tool.

There seems to be no other way of actually managing a large number of Google accounts then working through a domain. So today I registered through Google priestsic.net for our school and began exploring the apps that are now available.

To my surprise Google Notebook is missing from the list which is a great shame as I consider it to be perhaps the tool with the most potential to school users. However there is still the ability to personalise the start page (iGoogle page) for a user. So as a teacher I can add locked content (widgetty thingies) and the others can be personalised - this is ideal.

My advice then currently to anyone planning on exploring the setup of Google accounts is to stump up the £4.91 or whatever it was for the domain name and go through the process of having a central place you can manage the accounts. I think that although there may be some bits and pieces missing in this single sign in, namely Google Notebook and Reader, the time saved due to management outweighs it.

So I am going to create a separate class Google account to share work in other apps such as Google Reader and Notebook. This afternoon I explored how Notebook worked when two people were working in the same login, it seemed to hold out OK, both views of the same notebook updating as the other worked on it. Not ideal, but would allow a class of children to work on research together and get the most from this excellent tool, sidestepping the issue of the app missing as mentioned above.

Further to my ideas related to Notebook, a single sign-in poses a new problem as there is no direct indication of who is adding what. So titles of notebooks could name specific tasks or children, to allow them to add the content in the correct place and for us to properly monitor and respond to what is happening. Imagine then a series of guided reading sessions during a week of literacy work, where children add the answers to Diigo set questions on a specific text - each child opens the notebook via the FF extension and navigates to the correct notebook (either by name or by task) adding their responses which are now labelled due to there location. Complete Notebooks could be archived into Google Docs so the list does not get too crowded over time.

In addition I have also signed up for a class Diigo account so that we can share annotations and signpost online text to children.

So this new academic year we have access to 8 laptops in each of the four top junior classrooms, and I am looking forward to making the most of the free Google applications. One of the great things about holidays or breaks from school is the fact that you get some decent thinking time. I am sure it is the same with you, that during term time and when you are snowed under there is very little time to think clearly and creatively. I like to explore ideas gradually and this summer has been good for that.

So here I will explore some of the ways we can use Google Apps and others - starting with Google Notebook.

This is a great tool for your kids to get stuck into this year. It offers a simple way to clip and save information whilst online, its primary purpose I suppose is as a research tool. But I can see beyond that, this is also a great writing tool. Notetaking skills can be refined and explored, notes can be collected, organised, tagged, rearranged and adapted.

Initially there is a little setup you have to go through to get it going - download an extension to FF or IE and then whilst you are browsing there is a Notebook link in your status bar. Clicking on this opens a small popup window giving you access to your notebooks.

Making a note is as simple as a highlight and drag to this little window - or you can, just as easily, right click on your highlighted text etc and click on the “Note this” option for Google notebook. All of the formatting remains the same which is useful and you can add images too. Each note that you add is kept separate and is collapsable and expandable - but if you drag new text to an existing note it will drop in. I also like the way you can type text into the note or as a new one. Altogether simple and flexible enough to be very useful

I won’t go too far into the details of the tool, but concentrate on the ways it can be used.

1. Collect info and images related to various curriculum topics that the class is working on. Organise these with different notebooks, so an Egyptians notebook for work in history etc.
2. Using the ability to share any notebook with invited collaborators is a great way to build community based research within a class. So imagine asking pairs of children or individuals to research different topics within a subject. Online work can be then saved to a shared notebook which everyone can be involved with and benefit from as a class.
3. All of the notes taken from the web are immediately fully referenced, that is the site reference is included. A simple thing but avoids the, “Wow that’s great where did you get it from?” type question.
4. Notebook would be a great way to use web based text for comprehension tasks. I have thought that if a Diigo account was used alongside the work in Google Notebook it could be very powerful. Signpost and ask questions using the Diigo interface (perhaps a single class login) and then children respond using notebook. So for example in a poem you might ask some questions for each stanza. (If you have a Diigo account take a look at Charles Causley’s “My Mother Saw a Dancing Bear” where I have added some examples.) The children then respond in a Poetry notebook or something equivalent.
5. Independent reading tasks or guided reading of online texts can be supported using Diigo sticky notes and the children’s responses formed in notebook.
6. Teachers can respond to notebooks by adding to the “Comment” box beneath each note. This I suppose is assuming that you have access to those individual accounts, or notebooks either by logging in or being added as a collaborator. Mmm need to think that one through…perhaps adding collaborators is a must learn skill.
7. Notebooks can easily be exported to Google Docs so kids can have this as the bear bones of a piece of text they can really get stuck into, again further collaboration is possible there too.
8. I like the fact that the children are not working in too many places at once, just a little pop up window in the browser, never leave your browser mentality - their notes are very quickly formed and this necessitates a need for higher order note taking skills.

Notebooks can be viewed and managed in a full screen site via a Google account and I have added a iGoogle gadget to my home page so I can access them directly from there. I think that this will a useful tool in the suite of Google apps as it is simple and not overcomplicated but still powerful when deployed in the correct instance.

I look forward to getting started with this in my class and perhaps hearing more about it being used elsewhere, please share your experiences of Google Notebook in your classroom. Talking of the possibilities is one thing but actual successful practice is something different, I will no doubt have a better perspective on managing and utilising this when my class get stuck in.

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