Web 2.0 in some Primary Schools

Some schools and teacher training establishment have taken on board the excitement and the potential that Web 2.0 offers:

I regularly run CPD sessions for schools/teachers often on 'teacher days' or for 'twilight' sessions and need to get teachers quickly into the contexts without any technological fiddles. Attention time is often at a premium and so I have taken to building blogs in which I have just placed the links that I want the teachers to view (as part of the session). All I need to do then is give them a single url and they can get started straight away, and, they can easily access the materials anywhere they wish, and, they can let their children have access to the url if they wish.

A very simple example of the materials for a teacher day involving science and term 1 can be found here

Newbridge Primary School offer a 'mash up' site that gives a flavour of what can be done.

The Porchester Junior School in Nottingham appears to have it all built in to their web site: RSS,audio announcements, a school wiki, blog comments, user poll, Typepad for article posting ...

Some of the things that Miles Berry says are very apt as far as education is concerned. You decide.



If you don't know it a really good read is the collaborative book edited by Terry Freedman entitled Web 2.0, Coming of Age:An introduction to the NEW worldwide web ... this link from Chris Smith's Shambles site.

Here Brian Kelly reports on Andy Powell's use of Facebook in the Primary School. Another example of a 'mash up'.

Sandaig Primary School is rife with the use of Web 2.0 applications.

The best blog I have seen for a specific curriculum context comes from Marin Country Day School ... just wonderful stuff !

Meanwhile, in New Zealand at Stratford Primary School they explored the good, the bad and the ....

So listen to Paul Harrington from Cefn Fforest Primary school in Wales and his use of Web 2.0 in the primary classroom.



You could go here and see the links that East Carmuirs Primary School in Falkirk have saved on del.icio.us or even read their blog.

In New South Wales, in Australia del.icio.us is widely used.

St Vincents Catholic Primary have a separate blog for each class which lays out clearly what the terms themes with objects etc and links for parents to use at home. Then there are weekly updates and reminders. The Foundation stage blog gives a good idea what its about. It's lively, informative and gives lots of websites for parents to share with the children related to this terms work. The link to each of the other class blogs is at the bottom of their class page.

Some schools are using applications such as Slide to show parents and friends photos of school visits ( after checking the school and LA policy on such things)

Teachers TV has run on blogging ... well worth a watch and a listen.

Scotland seems to be forging forward. Read and mark Ewan McIntosh's blog to keep up with things

And so on and on and on ... and just as an aside while you are making up your mind about which/what/when and where ...

My colleague Tricia and I have now cracked most of the problems that we had at first associating the University's VLE, Blackboard, with FaceBook... with the help of the University's e-Learning team and the guys who developed the widget/app ... CourseFeed. Already students on the PGCE course are signing up so that they can use the VLE from within their social networking set up.

This opens up a number of interesting questions about how people see their access to the materials that they want to use. One of the current questions that I get constantly asked by teachers, SM teams, and LAs is 'Will it work within our portal/VLE/LP etc ?' And I am thinking that this is probably the right question the wrong way round. How about 'Will your VLE/portal/LP work within my social network app?' . Because I want to start from where I am and not necessarily from where the institution is. I hadn't thought too much about this until recently but the stuff I have been doing in the last few days has caused me to think a good deal about it. Is it a matter of who leads who here? or 'what leads what' ... chicken and egg syndrome come to mind !

Which brings me to my 'new definition' of interoperability ... I want to be able ( and I want childeren/students to be able to) to choose where I start but also want to get to the same place whichever way it is. Is this a long step on, or as the FaceBook/Blackboard experience seems to suggest, something just around the corner?

Are you there yet ?