Online Real-Time Collaboration Between Primary Schools

As some of you may know from previous posts I have a strong interest in the use of cloud computing technologies in education. In particular Microsoft Office 365 or Google Apps for Education. So it was with much interest that I found myself this afternoon observing some online real-time collaboration between pupils from two primary schools from Newport using Google Apps.

Mount Pleasant Primary School have been using Google Apps for some time at the school, creating an excellent literacy/numeracy framework pupil tracker for teachers using Google Sheets and a utilising Google Sites for cluster transition work. They've also previously done some online work with their students, where I was invited to observe and interact remotely on the work pupils were carrying out, from the comfort of my office!

Glan Usk Primary School have recent 'gone Google', signing themselves up to Google Apps for Education, with I believe the intention of using the various tools to support organisation and management across the school and obviously for its use in supporting pupils' learning.

Both schools organised the collaboration between themselves and I was invited this afternoon to observe online what was happening. Mount Pleasant had 31 Year 5 pupils, along with 1 pupil who was working from home! Glan Usk had 30+ Year 6 pupils involved. The pupils worked together on a World Cup topic, using pre-prepared Google Slides. 16 groups were organised and from what I could 'observe' pairs of children from each school were in each group. I've created a short video which you can view below which may hopefully give you some idea and a feel of what was going on.

As far as I could tell everything seemed to work seamlessly, with no technical issues at all. I'll speak to my colleagues in both schools to find out more about how they felt about the learning and teaching aspects of the collaborative process. Initial feedback from them has been very positive.

"Amazing session. Must do it again some time." - Mount Pleasant
#greatexcitement #greatlearning - Glan Usk Primary School

Mount Pleasant pupils at work on the project this afternoon

Glan Usk Primary School pupils working on the project this afternoon

Comments

Defining Digital Competence

In a couple of previous posts I looked at what was meant by the term digital literacy and what this could mean in the Welsh education context. These were written in response to a recommendation from the ICT Steering Group report , proposing a new statutory Digital Literacy Framework for schools. I attempted to define what digital literacy meant using definitions from groups such as The Royal Society, Becta, Futurelab , Jisc and Common Sense Media. It was very difficult to pin down exactly what it meant but there were certainly commonalities between all of them. This week however, Prof. Graham Donaldson published his report on the curriculum and assessment in Wales, "Successful Futures" , and in it referred not to digital literacy , but to digital competence (which is a term I'm far happier using). I therefore feel it's important for me to try in this post to understand what is meant by this term, look at some definitions and find out if there are any differences ...

Digital Literacy: The Context for Wales & Definitions

At a time when England have introduced digital literacy elements to their new Computing PoS, and with the recommendations from the ICT Steering Group report for a digital literacy framework alongside the new subject of Computing, I’ve been attempting to look closely into what exactly is meant by the term ‘digital literacy’, and ultimately what this could mean for primary and secondary schools in Wales. I intend to put together a series of blogs on the topic, mainly as a way to help me with my understanding around some of the current thinking in this field, but hopefully it will still be of interest to teachers and others. I'd welcome any of your thoughts or comments on this topic. The Context In June 2012, Leighton Andrews, the then Minister for Education and Skills, announced “an additional £3m of funding over the next three years to support a range of measures to improve computer science, digital literacy and ICT in schools and colleges across Wales.” This announcement came ...

The Digital Learning Den

Gareth Morgan Consultancy has now been going for nearly 7 years, providing advice, support and training to primary schools across Wales. Where did that time go? Throughout those years, I've always had an ICT skills ladder that I've offered to schools. It's been updated continually throughout those years with quite a change in focus when the Digital Competence Framework (DCF) was introduced and with the ubiquitous use of Hwb and its related cloud based applications and digital resources. Initially this skills ladder was paper based and at one stage I had four versions of it as the example activities were focused around specific applications e.g., Google for Education / Purple Mash or Microsoft 365 / Just2easy. The problem I found was keeping these documents up to date. Applications would change or I would have new ideas or web-links would die or change. So a couple years ago I moved everything online and created The Digital Den. Schools could buy into the platform for a ye...

Head in the Cloud

Search This Blog