ICT in my Classroom

Day one of introducing Google Docs to a class is always an exciting one, I have been fortunate to be able to see three cohorts experience the fun ways to use it. Today we made a start with our Year 5s and had a great afternoon.

The first thing that you need to have ready is a document that the children can work on – a task to kickstart their use of Docs and one that may illustrate some of the features. Spreadsheets can have 50 simultaneous editors, the highest number in the Docs suite of tools, as we were all working at the same time this was ideal. Documents and Presentations have a limit of only 10 simultaneous editors – after that anyone opening them will only be able to view – not edit.  (Check out this Google Docs Help section for more.)

This makes Spreadsheets an ideal first choice for your first collaborative writing experience. Not only is the simultaneous editor limit high but the cell, column and row structure of spreadsheets provides a lovely clear scaffold to shared work. I would always go on to use the Documents in smaller groups later on. (Of course Presentations are also clearly structured, perhaps make something with a slide for each person to edit – either way make it easy for the children to be successful.)

(We used some little sheets for the children’s password and usernames. Feel free to grab a copy.)

I created a spreadsheet called “My Favourite” and shared it with everyone. There is a screenshot below and it basically had, in the header row, lots of different subjects: My Favourite…Band / Fruit / Sealife Creature etc. In the first 2 columns, which you cannot see, are the children’s names. This clear structure works very well.

Preview a blank copy of this document and grab a copy of your own from the Templates Gallery.

This first foray into the use of Google Docs was all about logging in, opening and editing this document and you can see from the picture that they added all of their information. There was a great buzz around the year group as they realised they could see everyone editing in real time, I wandered next door and the same was taking place in the other Year 5 class. The children enjoyed sharing their work together and, often contrary to what some people might think, they were chatting away with each other – speaking to those who had written something elsewhere in the Doc.

I know Google Wave gives us an even more refined real time collaboration experience, but I am unsure about whether it would really change things yet. Google Docs already lets me work in real time with someone else. I suppose the added functionality of what might be created with Wave is where the potential lies.

Children were working in pairs on laptops and I asked them to Sign Out from their session and then repeat with the other person. In this way the children are supporting each other on their first attempts at logging in.

I decided to push them on and we went through the procedure of creating a new document and then sharing that with me. We talked about the idea of “handing-in” your work and the kids were quick to catch on and they spent the rest of the afternoon creating and sharing something.

I think it is really useful to be in the same place as the kids when they share their first document. I put my own Docs home page on the SMARTBoard and tell kids when they have completed the sharing successfully. They wouldn’t get this sort of confirmation when away from class. It just helps them to know they have done it correctly and reinforces the process.

As I speak – a couple of hours after school has finished – some of my class have been busy creating documents and sharing them with me from home.

A quick checklist then for your first Google Docs session.

• Get all of your passwords and usernames ready to hand – you will almost always have to refer to them. If you are using Ed Apps then you will have already made a CSV file for a bulk upload.
• Use a simple sheet to share the username and passwords with the class – writing them out yourself might be time consuming but saves problems with children writing them incorrectly.
• Do a quick login on the school computers using a child’s account – remind yourself of the process. Does it behave the same?
• Remember that on the first login there is a security question in which children will have to enter a spam filtering word. We needed to support lots of children with this.
• Have a document already shared with the class, so that when they open their Docs Home there is something there.
• Use a shared Doc to begin with to demonstrate the collaborative nature of Docs – use Spreadsheets if you are expecting more then 10 simultaneous users.
• Keep it simple and easy like the My Favourite idea I used today.
• Before you get into the document show the children around the Docs Home screen.
• Demonstrate how the different views or filters on your documents changes the view. This is often a problem when children think someone has hacked their account and deleted everything, but they haven’t clicked on ALL ITEMS. Good to take time to demo this.
• Show children that there is a right click menu on the documents.
• When viewing a document talk about how it is automatically saved and how each change is logged and can be viewed.
• Explain how important it is to SIGN OUT at the end of the session.

Why not explore some more ideas about using Google Docs in the classroom in this presentation. (Let me know if you have anymore ideas to add)

I wrote a couple of guest posts for the Official Google Docs blog about using it in class. The first post has some further information about making a start with small group projects. And don’t forget to explore some of my previous posts about using Docs too. Here are some highlights:

• Using Google Earth, Google Docs and Twitter in this Afternoon’s Science Lesson
• 10 Google Forms for the Classroom
• What my class thought of our Google Docs project
• Peer feedback using the chat feature in Google Presentations
• Marking work in Google Docs
• Creating an emotion graph using Google forms
• Using Instant Messaging to Engage Children with Reading Comprehension

Our Google Docs journey has begun and I know that it will be an exciting one. I hope that you find some of these ideas useful if you are beginning to use it with your own class.

Back in October I wrote a proposal for the use of Google Docs (as part of Edu Apps) to deliver online reporting to parents at our school. The original blog post proved incredibly useful in sparking some debate about the use of such cloud based tools for reporting to parents. It also brought about some challenges and raised questions in the blog comments, again very useful to help me better understand the whole idea.

I have been exploring the resulting responses on and off for the last 9 months or so and this blog post is an update about the project and some information I have discovered along the way that may prove useful.

Just to cover some background once again, here in the UK the government is planning for real-time online reporting by the target year of 2010 for secondary schools and 2012 for all primary schools. According to the previous Schools Minister Jim Knight back in January ‘08:

Real time reporting will deepen the school-parent relations and is not a substitute for regular personal contact with teachers. Effective technology systems can actually significantly cut the staff workloads – but it has to be to be manageable for individual schools and meaningful for parents.

The aim is to develop a real-time reporting system that means parents will be able to access frequently updated information on children’s achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs wherever, whenever they want.

One of the very first things that people said would be a problem was the location of data centres and where the data is held according to EU law. The second issue that recently arose was the idea of two factor authentication for online reporting.

I have carefully explored and researched these two things and have summarised what I have found out below.
Where the data would be held. In the BECTA document “Keeping data secure safe and legal” it stipulates that organisations must:

Ensure that personal data is not exported outside the European Economic Area (EEA) unless EU Model Contracts or (BCRs) are in place.

However I discovered something called the Safe Harbour agreement which is intended to regulate the way personal data from the 15 EU states is exported and dealt with by US organisations. Safe Harbour ensures US companies can compete within these regulations and that they meet or exceed the stringent guidelines for data storage. This is not referred to in the BECTA document but in my opinion should be as it is a crucial. Google have signed this agreement and so it provides the opportunity to work with Google Docs within the guidelines of EU law and what BECTA have suggested.

Two Factor Authentication. Again from the same BECTA document it states that organisations must protect confidential information with two-factor authentication and some people have said to me that this is needed for online reporting, and as Google Docs does not have this it cannot be used. However I have found that:

The type and amount of data that will be made available online to parents is such that they should not need two-factor authentication for online reporting.

Taken from “Good practice in information handling: Secure remote access” BECTA. Although two-factor authentication may not be needed it is important to consider the types of data that will be included in the online report, this will need to be outlined with my headteacher as we work out the finer details.

Each of my pupils will have a personal login to Google Docs as part of our work in Year 5 which could be utilised for parents to access the report as well. In this way it will foster the sense of sharing the report between parent and child throughout the year. Generating logins for all of the parents may cause some issues with management and exceed the maximum number of users for the Google Ed Apps domain – but it is not out of the question. I am not certain which is the best option yet.

I am pretty confident from my research into these initial barriers that using Google Docs for online reporting is safe and within the guidelines set out by BECTA. Also contributing to this is further conversations I have had with representatives from Google and BECTA. I am yet to get a firm decision from my headteacher based upon the information, but I am hopeful of a full year long pilot beginning in the next academic year.

Alongside presenting my research to my headteacher I also offered three basic options for the layout and formatting of an online report using Google Docs. The structure of the three reports is similar in that they each have a space for the teacher, pupil and the parent to leave a remark or make a comment. I think this is important as it has the potential to build up a great dialogue about the pupil’s learning throughout the course of the year.

We have to make a decision about how the rest of the document will be organised and how the comments will be structured. Three possible ways include: based upon individual primary curriculum subjects, in much the same way the current end of year reports are organised. I have my doubts about just taking this old way of working because the way we are currently working is at odds to pigeon-holing learning neatly into subject labelled boxes. (Google Doc link)

The second possibility is using curriculum topics. We are moving to shorter curriculum topics for each half term next year in Year 5 and so there will be 6 different spaces for comments. As there would be no immediate distinction about subjects we may need to consider how clear the information is. I think this structure would provide parents with good signposts along the year as to what is going on in the classroom and also from a teacher’s point of view a simple structure to follow. (Google Doc link)

The last option was suggested by my headteacher, who said why not use the 6 areas of learning from the Rose Review. (Google Doc link)

• Understanding English, communication and languages;
• Mathematical understanding;
• Scientific and technological understanding;
• Human, social and environmental understanding;
• Understanding physical health and well-being;
• Understanding the arts and design.

This would be a bold move and would be a great opportunity to link up the assessment and reporting with what is going on in the curriculum. As a teacher it would make me look at what I am teaching in light of the 6 areas and engage with the concept on a much deeper level.

(Please be aware that these three Google Doc layouts are very much version 1.0 – I have yet to refine them, so go easy on me! But your comments and suggestions for improvements will be really useful to help shape what we might achieve with the docs.)

I have also added into the Google Docs above a simple mocked up comment to illustrate the idea about our healthy eating unit and some images that could be used as well. Nothing spectacular about that, but it would provide a simple way for such evidence to be linked with and sit directly alongside reporting to parents.

The last thing that I want to explore is the whole idea of the “report”. In my original post I said that perhaps we need to unlearn some things that have been in place for a long time. Certainly the whole concept of an end of year report is in danger of becoming defunct. The online version will allow parents access whenever they want to check on updates and progress throughout the year.

With this in mind my headteacher said to me on Friday that perhaps it may become a “conversation” rather than a “report”. I suppose he is right and that we all want to build stronger, more meaningful relationships with the families of the children in our care. Simply put, we know that more easily accessible information about what is going on in school will catalyse this. Does it need to always be very formalised? I no longer want it to be a case of me sitting down and writing some remarks at the end of a year and “reporting” to parents with a few days to go. The ongoing and timely nature of access will help improve communication and along with face to face meetings will keep the children’s learning at the centre of what we do.

The name “report” is contestable and you will see in the basic versions I have submitted in Google Doc form that I have used “portfolio” – which is the closest I can get to what I mean. It has the potential to be many things including that of showing off work to parents, but then maybe there are better platforms for that such as a pupil blog. Although not hugely important the name will set the tone for what is being attempted – a “report” is one way, whereas a “conversation” is a shared experience. Maybe a “Learning Conversation” is what is needed that allows pupil, parents and the teacher to share what is going on in the classroom, both the challenges and successes.

I believe that the research and exploration I have done (so far) does open the door to use Google Docs for online reporting, I feel confident that whatever decision we make as a school will be based upon the best information to hand. Importantly the use of Google Docs does allow us as a school to tailor the report to our exact needs, the needs of pur pupils and parents. Additionally it is free to use and online reporting with Google Ed Apps could be an important part of an open source virtual learning environment alternative.

This post includes some reflections on the use of Google Forms in data handling teaching and some problems we encountered in using them in the classroom.

For a few weeks now we have been exploring data handling in our numeracy lessons – we have included lots of work to allow children the choice of some current tools to use in their own investigations. In separate lessons we have explored how to use Create-a-Graph, Google Forms for collecting data and Excel for charting data. All of this exposure and practice in using these tools was a precursor to the children making some choices in the design of their own data investigation.

The children were working in small groups of 3s (about 10 groups) and the majority of them chose to collect the data for their investigation questions using a Google Form. I directed one child from each group to author the form and to share with all of their peers within the domain. (This was done by clicking on “EMAIL FORM” when editing the form and clicking on “CHOOSE FROM CONTACTS” and choosing “ALL CONTACTS” from the drop down menu)

I decided to build in some time for the children to complete the forms that different groups were sharing with them. And this is where we began to run into problems. The progress of each group was starting to stretch out – some were completing forms and some had lots of data, others had only a few results because the forms had not been completed yet. The difference in what they may be doing was also beginning to mean that I had no way of ensuring a specific group was at a certain stage.

The simple fact is that I had no way of ensuring that every child completed every form. As a result the pool of data was different for each group.

I still believe that using a Google form is a valid way of collecting data – it also organises info and even produces a graphical representation of it. A powerful tool. But it is difficult when trying to collect lots of data from a year group at the same time. If their are lots of forms from lots of different groups it becomes unwieldy and difficult to steer on the right track. Saying that, I still wanted to provide the choice of tools to the children, attempting to replicate what happens in real life.

Here is a possible solution that we have thought of:

1. Children work in small groups of 3s
2. Generate a question for their investigation eg “What is Year 5s favourite lesson?”
3. Plan for the process and choose from a range of tools that have been covered in previous lessons. The children still have the autonomy to make a choice, which is key.
4. Draft their investigation question – a single multiple choice question.
5. Teacher/TA or children from the different groups author a single form including all of the questions from the different teams.
6. Form is shared with whole class or year group.
7. Children are given time to answer all of the questions in the form via their GMail- this way you can guarantee that all of the groups have responses.
8. Once all of the responses have been submitted then the resulting spreadsheet can be shared with the whole class. Children would then be able to view a single column of information for their own question.
9. Further graph work could be completed from then onwards.

I recently had a great conversation with my teaching colleague Rick about the use of technology to engage children with reading comprehension. This post is about my lesson I taught today as a result of that brief yet productive talk.

Although we have been reasonably successful in addressing how we use our available technology to support the development of times table knowledge, reading comprehension has been much more elusive. This afternoon both Rick and I explored two different ideas we had, regarding the use of technology to engage and support the practice of comprehension skills. 

Rick was using the Flip Cameras in his lesson, he had about 3 available to him and was looking for the children to generate their own questions about a text. After talking with a partner and drafting the question on small whiteboards they recorded the question to camera. When there were a few Rick showed these to the class and worked on modelling the answers and then setting the children off to find the answers in pairs. By all accounts an engaging way to explore text.

We have used the discuss tool in Google spreadsheets and presentation chat before to peer review presentations. 

I worked with a Google Presentation and wanted to engage the children with the text through the use of the instant messaging window that is available. All of my children love using MSN and Google Talk/Chat, it is the one application that they all use very regularly. For two years now both of my Year 5 classes who have been using Google Apps discovered Google Chat in GMail by themselves and have got busy using it.

So how was this all setup? There are some things that we have in place that have helped. Firstly the children are using Google Apps for Education and have a unique login. Secondly we are working in my classroom on laptops.

1. I created a presentation, which is in effect our text, in my Google account.
2. I shared the presentation with the class as VIEWERS. This is important as it will mean that the children will immediately see the file in presentation mode and not in editing mode. Loading time was slow today, although once all loaded we had no other problems.
3. The instant messaging window will open when they click “View with others” (Bottom right hand corner) you will see their names appear in the “VIEWING NOW” box on your own presentation.
4. We then did some shared reading of the text about Spies and Gadgets. I used the “CONTROL THE PRESENTATION” tool available to me as owner of the document. As I clicked and moved through the presentation everyone’s laptops updated. This was immediate in every case, not bad for sixteen wireless laptops and proved useful for whole class work.
5. Once we had a good look through the text as a class, and some initial discussion, I then explained the question answer process. I would add a question in the IM window and they needed to navigate to the correct page and respond with their answer, also in the IM window.
6. As I typed I muted the projector image so kids didn’t get a head start, that was helpful.
7. The children answered in the IM window and I could see their name with the response showing ownership.

You may be thinking that some children may just look at other people’s answers. I talked to the class about this and encouraged them to engage with the text themselves, nevertheless seeing their peers answers proved a valuable function of this group IM session. Children were commenting on other answers and it caused some to question their own accuracy if they saw something different.

Of course there was the odd smiley! But that is what the children do when they IM, I was kind of entering their world. It is a delicate balance. I want to harness the engagement that IM brings and yet not make it too schooly so they switch off. I ensured that when they answered anything all of our usual literacy standards applied and the class responded well to that.

We worked on about 10 questions together and all of the children were totally engaged and motivated to find the answers and use the IM to form their response. They also maintained this engagement for considerably longer then when we work with paper and pencil.

As the answers rolled in I was able to immediately give feedback to different children, asking them to look again at what they had written. One particular question about the reasons why we use tables to present information caused the children to respond about the content and not the purpose. I discussed with the whole class what the correct answer might be, gave the children the start of the sentence in the chat window and asked them to answer again.

Beyond this one lesson I think that if the children were to use the Google Talk client then we could be looking at a variety of different texts and not just something created in Google Presentation. With the chat window open and a website or film playing it would allow us even more flexibility. In fact it could work with any other type of available application.

My target in the lesson was to engage the children with reading comprehension using technology we use in our classroom. I think we did that. It is taking what the children enjoy doing and harnessing that engagement, attempting to merge and utilise the skills they use outside of school to impact on their engagement with their learning. 

In November 2007 I began the first of a series of Google presentations gathering together some ideas about the uses of different tools for the classroom. I thought that the easy manner of sharing Google Docs was ideal to collate thoughts, tips and suggestions from teachers and educators all over the world.

I began with interesting ways to use the interactive whiteboard and the family has since grown to include, tips for Google Earth, Google Docs and the most recent Pocket Video Cameras. It has been great to watch them evolve as people get in touch and I add them to the document and they make their own edits.

Here is the family photo

My intention from the beginning was that there should be many authors of the presentations and that teachers and school staff could happily take the resource and share it with their colleagues. As it is in a simple presentation format it seems to have been successful in doing that.

In total we have collated 100 101 suggestions, tips and ideas for the classroom! (I can’t type quick enough and people keep adding more ideas!) It is fantastic to be part of that collaborative effort to share what we do.

The most recent on pocket video cameras seems to have really hit a rich vein of classroom ideas – so far 29 ideas have been shared by people all over the world and I only started it 3 days ago. I haven’t had chance to add an idea myself yet! Perhaps this wealth of ideas illustrates the power and potential of video in the classroom – which isn’t particularly new but pocket video cameras give us, and the children we work with, much easier access.

Who knows what the next 100 ideas will be about but I hope that you can be part of it – please take some time to take a look through some of them above, let me know if you have used the presentations with your staff. If you want to add an idea to any of the above presentations just let me know your email address and I will add you as an editor.

In this post I welcome James Mansell, a fellow primary school teacher here in the UK, who explains about a wonderful resource he has created and brought to my attention that addresses the use of APP in school.

APP or Assessing Pupils’ Progress is the new (?) national approach in the UK to understanding children’s learning needs. There has been a whole heap of related links and materials released through the Primary Strategy site and no doubt if you are Literacy or Numeracy coordinator you will be (or have already) attending training in the UK. I will let James introduce himself further and explain more.

My name is James Mansell, and I work at Earl Soham Community Primary School in Suffolk. We are a small rural school with just three classes. I am currently teaching Years 4/5/6. I have been using Google Docs for my own planning for about a year and a half now. I have found the flexibility of being able to access my plans from anywhere, and link to resources from them, has made my job easier and helped me to be more organised, as I no longer get to school and realise I’ve forgotten to transfer my plans to my memory stick or left them lying on the table at home! In the last year, I have also begun using Google spreadsheets to keep an assessment record. This again has meant that I can access and add to assessment files without the need for carrying bulky box files between home and school.

Download you own copy of the APP Guidelines Doc

With the advent of the new APP materials from the Primary Frameworks for Literacy and Numeracy, I wanted to stick with my new paper-free way of working, but was unable to find an easy solution as the APP guidelines were only produced as PDF’s (ideal for printing, but not much good for working with online). So I decided that I would need to spend a bit of time taking the guidelines and turning them into something that I can use in Google Docs. After much copying, pasting, and reformatting the result is a spreadsheet which contains all of the Maths, Reading and Writing APP Guidelines currently available (Levels 2-5). Each Guideline is set out in the same way as the original PDFs, each taking a different sheet in the spreadsheet, but with two important differences: they are now editable and stored online.

There are a number of ways that the materials could be used, but this is how I intend to use them:
As APP is designed to be used with a sample of six children from across a range of abilities, I intend to select my six pupils and create six copies of the APP Guidelines, with the filename as the child’s name. I will then select the appropriate guideline sheets for each pupil and delete any unnecessary sheets (cutting the number of sheets by a third). Whenever I wish to make an assessment, I can highlight the appropriate statements in the grid, by changing the cell colour, and use the comment feature to reference any evidence I have used in making my judgement. It is then a simple matter of entering a Y or N in the appropriate box to show whether they have reached a particular level. If used with a class laptop, comments could even be made during a lesson when working with a small group or individual child, so that a bank of evidence is built up to support the assessments.

I hope that other teachers find this resource useful, and if you have any ideas for how it could be improved, please feel free to contact me. mr.mansell+app (at) gmail.com

I am sure you will join me in thanking James for the hours of work that has gone into the APP Document and for being willing to share it to help other teachers. Please let us know if you find it useful.

In my science lesson this afternoon we used Google Earth, Google Docs and Twitter to help us get a better understanding about how day length varies across the UK, and an insight into the differences around the world.

As part of our introduction to the concept of day length I used Google Earth and the sun/shadow layer to illustrate the movement of the Earth’s shadow. We played the animation for the day and talked about what we could see in the way it moved.

What did Google Earth do to enhance the lesson?

• This tool allows you to control the Earth’s shadow – that is a powerful simulation in the context of this lesson.
• The timeline at the top of the screen shows accurate timing of where the sunrise/sunset is during a given 24 hours.
• You can play through 24 hours of sunlight and darkness in a matter of seconds.
• It offers children a global perspective on day and night – and yet in the same moment you could be focused in on your school and explore it on a more local level.
• If I was to continue this unit further I would consider a more prolonged and individual use of Google Earth and simple data sets of sunrise/set times. This would provide the children the link between the times and a visual representation of the Earth’s shadow.

In pairs the children worked in Google Docs on a set of sunrise and sunset times for UK cities. They used a simple formula to help them calculate the differences and so work out the day length in hours and minutes. They then looked at ordering the cities according to day length.

What did Google Docs do to enhance the lesson?

• The children were able to share document ownership of the day length calculations.
• Docs remembers to save the progress regularly – data loss is very rare.
• Children’s completed spreadsheets were “handed in” to me to review by sharing with me as a contact. The docs will then appear in my own list and I will get an email message too.
• I was able to model on a shared copy of the document displayed on everyone’s laptop screen. The changes that were made were updated in real time on their copy. When they went to make their own copy the modelled examples were part of their own.

As a longer extension to this task I asked on my Twitter network to provide some real locations for my children to research and find sunrise and sunset information for. 

I have used Twitter in a similar way in the past and once again I was thrilled to get so many responses that challenged my class. The locations were from right around the globe – India to Australia, from Thailand to Scotland. As an extension my class chose one or more of these locations as they appeared in my replies window on TweetDeck, and found out the day length.

What did Twitter do to enhance the lesson?

• Real data, from real people in real locations. I would just explain a little about the person Tweeting if I knew them. Real connections.
• Purposeful challenges from real people.
• It may only be a short 140 characters from those who contributed but it provided a hugely engaging task that made us think beyond our shores.
• I cannot think of any other tool that would allow me to connect to so many teachers so easily.
• The contributions were from so many different parts of the world that it provided us with day lengths that we could compare and contrast with our own. 
• The teachers that connected with us naturally asked other questions and challenges that allowed us to explore other things. 
• It provided the whole class an opportunity to think, if only for a few minutes, as global citizens.

It was an great hour or so and I believe the tools we chose to use to support our learning were the correct ones. I was of course pleased to see the children engaging with Google Docs so effortlessly, it is just part of what we do now.

Curiously Google have altered the process of creating a copy of a document, removing the “Copy Collaborators” step. This caused us no end of headaches when sharing a doc with many students, as they in turn copied the document and also the 60 collaborators. You can imagine the burgeoning number of copies! I hope our efforts to share what we did contributed in a small way to that development. 

Every teacher should use Twitter, not only as a networking tool to help them learn – but in regards to connecting to the wider world to support learning. It is easy, it is fast and in my opinion peerless. Thankyou to all of you who contributed to the lesson with your messages – I hope that this post provides a context for your contribution.

What follows is a proposal I submitted to my headteacher regarding a trial of the use of Google Docs (as part of the Education Apps) to deliver online reporting to the parents in my class. I have spent considerable time working with Google Docs both on a personal level, organising planning files and within the classroom as a tool to support learning. The ease with which you can share a document is central to the idea that I could share a collaborative report throughout the whole year – updated at times when units of work are completed or at opportune moments of review.

My headteacher gave me his consent for me to explore the idea and I suggested to him posting the original proposal for reaction from a wider audience, he was also keen for this to happen – as this post and hopefully your reactions will help us develop and refine the whole concept.

What is the proposal?

I am proposing to use Google Docs as a platform to trial the delivery of online reporting to the parents and children in my class for this academic year 2008/2009.

What is the National Picture?

It is clear that the government is positioning itself to deliver real-time online reporting by the target year of 2010 for secondary schools and 2012 for all primary. According to Schools Minister Jim Knight:

“Real time reporting will deepen the school-parent relations and is not a substitute for regular personal contact with teachers. Effective technology systems can actually significantly cut the staff workloads – but it has to be to be manageable for individual schools and meaningful for parents.” Jan 2008

The aim is to develop a real-time reporting system that means parents will be able to access frequently updated information on children’s achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs wherever, whenever they want.

According to this announcement from the DCSF Primary schools must meet the basic requirement to provide information to parents covering achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs, on a timely and frequent basis – this should be at least once per term by September 2010 and the real time requirement by 2012.

According to Tanya Byron:

“Schools already using online reporting methods have noted that teachers spend less time in total producing three reports each year online than they did when producing just one by hand. The anytime, anywhere aspect of online reporting allows teachers to have greater control and flexibility of the use of their time. And, importantly, online reporting allows teachers to see the ‘bigger picture’ for each student because they are able to view grades and progress in other subjects.”

Why Google Docs?

This tool presently has three main advantages:

1. It is already in place to be used within school, therefore no new software or programme has to be installed or found.
2. It is free – we will not need to buy into any contracts or purchase new software.
3. It delivers the real-time aspect of the online reporting requirement. This is because parents and children will have complete access throughout the year to the document. It is always on.

What will be the differences with the current end of year system?

We will have to unlearn some things. The sense of a formalised report at one time of the year will no longer exist. In this proposed system the parents (and children) will have continued and timely access to a single document that is the child’s report. That document will be periodically updated by the teachers as various units of work are completed and key assessments are finished throughout the year – not just at the end of the year. There will be key contributions from the children as they also comment on the work they have done and explore their own targets for improvement. Parents will have room to make comments based upon the contributions from teachers and children.

Will it increase the workload for a teacher?

For many their first reactions will be that it will, as you are in effect reporting throughout the whole academic year. However in my opinion the timely nature of reporting extends to the teachers too. I believe I will be able to better report to parents if I have the opportunity to just write comments about, for example, a history unit completed at Christmas time. As opposed to doing it 2 terms later alongside all of the other subjects. I believe I will find it easier to write subject comments if it is all fresh in my mind, consequently this will increase the quality of reporting to parents.

When would the report be updated?

I would expect that comments are updated when major units of work are completed in Design and Technology or History for example. Specific times throughout the school year must be negotiated for adding comments about Literacy and Numeracy and some of the other subjects.

What about parents who do not have access at home?

Although more and more families in the community have access to the internet, due to lowering costs, not all of the children in my class (2008/09) have access at home. For the 2 or 3 families that do not have access I will operate an open door policy in terms of the access to the report document at school. The parents will be welcome to come into the classroom immediately after school and access the document.

What is the teacher’s role?

As the year progresses I will schedule times that I will add comments about particular subjects – at the end of units of work, after major pieces of work in the unit are completed. I will also plan time for children to add their comments about the work that has been completed and support them in adding examples of what they have done. I will also collect evidence that is suitable for the online form of the report. I will notify the parents when these updates have been completed or if there is something that needs their attention.

What is the parents’ role?

In the document there will be room for the parents to add comments and feedback about the examples of work and subject comments about their child.

What is the children’s role?

The children will take an active role in updating the document with examples of their work and comments about their learning. At the end of units of work a structured class activity will see them remark upon what they have learned from a subject unit and the highlights from it.

What is the headteacher’s role?

The fourth collaborator on the report document will be the headteacher who will act as overseer on the process throughout the year. A final end of year comment will still be present but the document will be open to any comments from the headteacher throughout the year.

What might the report look like?

The report will be similar to the existing paper version with areas for subject comments. Room must be made for comments from all of the different stakeholders. Photos of the children working will be able to be included as well as examples of work. Links to other online documents and work examples will be used.

What needs to be in place if we were to begin?

• Parents consent.
• Email addresses need to be collected from the parents.
• Schedule of commenting mapped to curriculum.
• Information letter to parents.
• An agreed report layout in Google Docs – what would we want to include in the report?
• What will happen to effort and achievement grades?
• What do we need to unlearn about the current reporting system.

Last year it was in the Summer term that I finally got my act together and began using more cloud based computing and relying less and less on my memory stick. This year has started with barely a shred of paper in sight and I actually do not know where my memory stick is. I have been pleased to see that Google Docs is beginning to deal with imported Word files containing tables much better and so in this post I share a couple that I use.

The links I have provided to the docs should give you access to your own copy – what you see will be yours and not a shared or published version. If you have problems with the link I have added another link where the document is currently published online.

Those of you in the English primary schools will appreciate the fact that we have new literacy and numeracy frameworks to work with and this is an example of a weekly literacy planning document that you could use.

You will of course have to remove the information that doesn’t apply and it is currently filled with a few days of planning from last week just to illustrate how it is used- this is the general style of planning we do for a week.

I like the fact that a digital document that remains as such can take advatage of the links that you can add. Once it is printed those links are dead.

Get your copy – Weekly literacy plan. If you have trouble with link you can view the document here.

Our timetable changes every week, as well as we accomodate different things going on in school we deal with staff absence, courses etc.  Rather than use an online calendar we use a simple weekly timetable that outlines what we are doing – this year we have also added links from the subjects to their respective planning documents too.

Get your copy – Weekly timetable. If you have trouble with link you can view the document here.

Rick my teaching colleague and I are using Google Docs to organise, author and share our planning for this year and it is already proving useful as we make changes during the week to planning. But the person you share it with will of course always have access to the most recent copy.I look forward to the further development of the template resource currently in it’s infancy within Google Docs so that I can make a template from my Docs home screen and generate further copies from that.

I hope you may find some of the Docs useful – let me know if they are and if you have any of your own to share.

Tomorrow sees us begin our Autumn term here in Nottinghamshire, England – most of the English primary schools will be back by next week at least. I just wanted to explain the road ahead for me in terms of the ways I will be using technology in the classroom this year, my classroom cornerstones. These tools/ideas will be sticking around for the course of the year, either because they have become part of the fabric of how we support learning in the case of the first two, or they are areas I want to explore the potential in more depth, the latter two.

Group media collaboration tool: Voicethread - this has become such a great tool to use in supporting children with speaking and listening. Beyond the basic group collaboration, last year I saw children grow in confidence due to the protracted use of refined talk and voice recording in Voicethread. Children who would usually not utter a thing when in a whole class situation were more willing to contribute and speak in front of the class. There is a lot going on when a child decides to record a comment in a Voicethread, most importantly for me is the fact that they willingly and independently vet and refine what they say. We will be looking to consolidate the use of Voicethread in the classroom this year, especially in the use of peer feedback in the writing process.

Office 2.0: Google Apps/Docs – I carefully documented the steps we took last term to use Docs in the classroom and I have even had the opportunity to contribute to the Official Google Docs blog in a post about introducing online collaboration. We will continue to use Docs as a cornerstone technology in our classrooms this coming year. The classes we were with last year have moved onto Year 6 and I look forward to seeing their work with the tool continue and the teachers alongside them develop their knowledge and understanding of the technology. Last year we did not have the opportunity in the Autumn and Spring term to use Docs so we will have a whole bunch of new opportunities to utilise the tool to support learning in the best way. I am looking to use Google Forms more and to reach beyond the school in bigger international collaborative projects – please let me know if you have a similar age class using Docs.

Timeline tool: Mnemograph - Last year I stumbled upon this great timeline tool just as we were finishing our Ancient Egyptian unit. We will repeat this unit, beginning before Christmas and I am pleased to be working with Will and Michael from Mnemograph in some development of new features which will perhaps make it easier for a whole class to work with the tool. If you have not had an opportunity to see it in action I would strongly suggest you take a look – it is very useful for Ancient history as it is one of the few online timeline tools that allows you to go back that far. I am looking forward to unleashing my class on Mnemograph and putting it through it’s paces this year.

Class blog: ???? - I have yet to decide about the tool that we will use this year for our class blog. I know that it doesn’t matter a great deal and it is more about the content. 2 years ago we ran a class blog for the Year 6 class I was with and found we had problems remembering usernames and passwords and the whole process took too long. I have been exploring the use of Posterous - a blogging tool that just needs an email sending to a simple address and that is it. It deals really well with all of the media a classroom could possibly throw at it. Of course a Blogger account has a similar email address to send updates too – still undecided about the best way to go yet.

I think there is enough there to keep me out of trouble for the year to come (there is of course about 10 other things I didn’t mention) – what are you focusing on this year in your classroom? What will be new for you? What are you going to consolidate and explore in greater depth?