Motivation and Engagement through International Links #ililc3

My other presentation was on my favourite topic of International Links.  There was a strong focus on the benefits of eTwinning as I'm such a fan and an eTwinning Ambassador (also that is where I have most of my experience in working with schools across Europe). virtually.

Here is the presentation, also if you search for the eTwinning tag on this blog, you will find out lots more about eTwinning and how it can benefit your pupils and you as a teacher.  Enjoy...

International collaboration from Helena Butterfield

Using Google Apps for Education #ililc3

At the weekend I was extremely lucky to have been a speaker at the ICT and Languages conference 2013.  Having attended as a delegate last year, I bit the bullet and submitted proposals to present 2 sessions this year and was over the moon when my submissions were accepted.

Session 1 was my first talk of the day about GoogleApps for Education.We have this in our school and it's used extensively between staff for sharing information, good practice and general communication, and also it can be used with pupils.

Over the last year I have tried a variety of activities using Google Docs to help my pupils communicate and collaborate more easily and thought that others deserved to know how totally amazing it is.  We have a Google Edu account so we have greater security settings and we can share from outside of or to that account from elsewhere.  If you have a similar set up, you may not be able to see the presentations made by the delegates if you are logged into your school Google Apps account at the moment.

My presentation (made in Google Docs) is below, together with a link the wikipage where delegates could access presentation documents to collaborate on.  Please look at them - I found the innovative ways that their schools were using ICT fantastic and also gained lots of ideas from them...including mobile learning envy!!

Additional notes are below the presentation...

Firstly, here is the link to original google doc presentation

Now here is a copy of the presentation, as I had problems embedding the original presentation for some reason...

Google apps for pupil collaboration from Helena Butterfield

For the pupils, one of the best things about using Google Docs is that they don't have to keep saving their work. Once it's created a document is automatically saved every few minutes, no "Miss, I forgot to save my work" at the end of the lesson!

Diagnostic marking is also very easy via Google Doc as you can give general feedback through the "comments" at the top right of a document AND highlight individual words so that pupils can see where corrections can be made.  Furthermore through the threaded comments a dialogue can be established between teacher and pupil, as a document is edited.

However, for me the most powerful thing about Google Docs is that you can have groups of pupils working on the same document at the same time and it updates in realtime.  Therefore pupils on opposite sides of the classroom can collaborate...in fact pupils on different sides of the world can collaborate at the same time, without having to attach, download, upload (and forget to do all of that as well!!!)

My top tip; if pupils are creating a resource themselves, get them to create, give it atitle then share immediately to me (otherwise they forget to share!!)

We didn't get onto Google Forms as I had hope but suffice to say that they are brilliant for pupil voice and extremely versatile and easy to use!

Here is a link to the Wiki where the presentations can be found and I think you'll agree that the delegates did a wonderful job of collaborating - in fact I think that two of the groups didn't even physically speak about their presentation at all, it was all done via the comments (you'll have to sneak a look at the comments as well!)

Oh I almost forgot...I'd also set up a Google Spreadsheet for the delegates to suggest uses for Google Apps in their (or anyone else's classrooms) but we also didn't get round to the plenary (I hope Mr Wilshaw or anyone else from Ofsted doesn't see this!!!). There's a link on the wiki and now here as well. Please feel free to share your ideas.  Again, if you are a school Google Docs user, you may have to log out of that account in order to view or contribute.