Developing Communication With Purple Mash 2Email

Spent some time today looking at a relatively new feature available in 2Simple's Purple Mash platform. 2Email is basically a safe place to teach young children how to use email. The interface comes in two 'flavours', one for the foundation phase (KS1) and the other for KS2. Each being tailored for those groups (see images below)

Foundation Phase Interface

KS2 Interface

Teachers can set class permissions on where emails can be sent - to others across the school, to teachers, or to their pupils in their class. Teachers can also 'approve' each email that a child may want to send. Therefore lots of control over how you want your class to use it. There is also a 'Report to teacher' option if a pupil receives an email that is inappropriate. This email is then deleted from the child's email and the teacher is alerted and can view it (and the email conversation) from their email account. A very neat feature.

If you don't want pupils emailing each other, there are the 2Respond Activities within 2Email. This allows the pupil to have an email exchange with a character. For example, an email exchange at KS2 with Zara who emails the pupil firstly asking for a list of labels that are needed for a classroom play area. The pupil replies and Zara then sends another email asking about the some rules for playing in this area.

2Respond Activity - Class Room

In the foundation phase an animated dog walks across the screen when an email is sent, and pops up at the bottom of the screen when an email is received. Pupils are also able to use the address book and send emails to various characters such as 'Dragon', 'Genie', 'Queen', 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Wolf'. Once an email has been sent they can then 'Switch to Practice User' and become that character and send a message back.

Some of the characters in the address book

In my opinion this tool is quite a nice way to practice using email functions. Everything is there for the pupils, address books, cc, subject line, the message body, forward, sent, favourites, draft and deleted box. You can even attach pictures or your Purple Mash files which the recipient can preview! With the new Digital Competence Framework on the horizon, it looks like it could be quite a valuable resource to those schools using Purple Mash and wanting to develop the communication and collaboration aspect but maybe are afraid to do this with younger pupils using other cloud technologies.

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