Change bLog

I have been teaching for nearly a year now and have been inspired by the other teachers I have encounter on blogs, conferences and podcasts. I’ve tried to use some of the great ideas in my teaching in a school for children with special educational needs, but I have encountered a big problem – the login screen.

We have tried to use Google Apps, email, flickr, etc. However, they all require a login, for obvious reasons. This proves to be very difficult for nearly all of the students I teach. Many of them struggle to spell, with many not even registering on standardised tests. Whilst they can read a bit, use the computers better than some of the staff and create all kinds of media, when it comes to logging in, they just can’t enter the text accurately enough. As many of the children I teach have emotional and behavioural problems, two negative responses from a website can have a major effect on their behaviour for a good deal of time. Once they have logged into something like Google Docs, they can spell well enough to produce some creative and readable work, but a login screen is obviously unforgiving. Even giving the children their login details to copy into the computer isn’t enough for them to get it right.

Whilst I would love my students to be part of the exciting possibilities presented by the web, i’m not sure there’s a practical way to involved them. Any ideas?

Today we started the first of our weekly ICT staff training sessions. After a shaky start (which lasted half an hour) we had some fun with Google Docs, working collaboratively on a presentation. Unfortunately, this shaky start made everything appear far more complicated than it actually was. However, as our staff became aware that they could edit each other’s work we began to have more fun! Pictures were added by dragging photos from flickr onto the document. Flickr is useful because, using an advanced search, photos can be found that are copywrite free, or at least only partially restricted using a creative commons license. We will probably talk about properly attributing a persons work them at a later date (I don’t want to scare them off), as we shamefully haven’t included any in our presentation. The presentation can be seen by clicking on the link below.

http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dcpbrp4d_9cd2d3nfv&invite=hhjxqpt

It was mentioned that this technology could have positive implications for teaching and learning, but no concrete ideas were presented as to what these might actually be. Any ideas or actual proof of the use of flickr or Google Docs in the classroom would be appreciated. Please add your comments!

edit – OK, so the links and picture posting didn’t work. Maybe it’s not quite frictionless yet. But it will be soon.