Monday 27 June 2016

Chris N's short-term project at SAH

Action Plan for a short-term project:
Before summer holidays - hold a session with the current class seven (the group who will have their computing induction in September 2016) to find out their current needs/ concerns/ levels of awareness.

September 2016 - hold three workshops for students around highlighted concerns, and create media resources that explore these issues.

Will update the blog in October!

Chris N's reflections from today...



Ideas generated from today



Pupils (Short Term) – Gain an understanding of online safety
Medium Term- Introduce pupils to the world of blogging to share their interests with others
Long Term - Equip pupils with the skills to be able to manage themselves successfully online

Teachers – Short Term – Up skill staff and enable them to have a better understanding of their own digital footprint
Medium Term- Enable staff to have the confidence to expose pupils to the online world effectively and safely
Long Term – Increase the use of IT throughout the school by developing the staff digital competency.

Parents -Short Term – Signpost parents to guides regarding online safety
Medium Term – Engage parents through the use of virtual contact with the PRU

Long Term- Ensure that parents are able to engage better with the PRU and enable a dialogue to be meaningful and constructive to help support the pupils at the PRU. 

Update from SAH

Here is a brief update on the blog post of Digital Citizenship at SAH, that we posted on the 26th of January. 








Ideas generated from today

After today's session I have thought about various things that could be implemented in future at school:
 
Pupils:
  1. Short Term - Provide lessons for the new year 7 (September) and opportunities to refresh knowledge of other pupils.
  2. Medium Term - Continue with safe internet practices workshops and to introduce new technologies.
  3. Long Term - Development of a positive footprint showcase.
 
Teachers:
  1. Short Term - Continue with Google Classroom training and produce an audit to see highlight what is going on throughout the school. Make staff aware of the Byron Review.
  2. Medium Term - Create a Digital competency group to ensure that the topic is delivered throughout the school.
  3. Long Term - Development of departmental Blogs, Social Media or Websites.
 
Parents:
  1. Short Term - Social media awareness.
  2. Medium Term - Produce newsletters / social media feeds.
  3. Long Term - Create showcase events on different topics.
 
 

Update

Its been a number of months since we last attended the Wise Kids training however I have been pretty busy trying to implement my ideas at the PRU.

I have been trialing the use of blogging with a couple of pupils at the PRU and hopefully use those pupils to help me introduce and develop blogging with other classes. Given the specific behavioural difficulties that pupils have who attend the PRU, initially it was a difficult task. I found the main barrier to their learning was their low self esteem and the 'I will never be able to do that' attitude. I broke down the sessions into 30 minute workshops with two pupils rather than a more formal lesson structure which allowed myself and the pupils to problem solve together as a group rather than being too teacher led. This built up their self esteem and promoted a culture of trust between us all. There was no stopping them once they had learnt how to set up a blog and understood the purpose of blogging. The pupils chose the topics of 'off road biking' and 'minecraft' I''m sure that you can see that their interest was captured by the ability to blog about a topic which they had a passion for and were very knowledgeable about!

The pupils created their own blogs and enjoyed the whole experience.

My next step is to roll blogging out to staff at the PRU and see where they take it with their own classes. I will update the blog as it develops in the new academic year.

Ideas from today's session.


Where are we now

Since the last time we met things has moved on a bit at Lewis School Pengam.  We ran our safer internet programme with both staff and pupils in February to coincide with the UK's safer internet day in which I developed a PowerPoint quiz based upon the popular social media apps that pupils are using. To compliment this we had our police officer coming in to talk to pupils and staff on certain topics depending upon age and a follow up lesson by myself in PSE lessons to reinforce the issues.
The school has invested money in purchasing 40 Chrome books - developing a mobile IT classroom. With more investment being made for September. Every pupil has been introduced to Google Classroom and all staff has received training on the basics.


Plans for the future is to create a digital competency project for year 7 and for them to create a means to show off a positive digital footprint by the time they leave school by either building a website or a blog.

Updates and further progress made

Hi all,

Its been a while since I've blogged but just to update everyone on what Blackwood has been up to in its quest to raise awareness of digital literacy/citizenship within the school.

First off all we have a PLC 'digital literacy' group, whereby a member of staff from most departments within the school attend a meeting every 6 weeks to discuss ways of moving digital literacy forward within their own department. Some staff have chosen to use 'Hwb' and have created blogs, collaboration projects etc with students. Other departments have chosen to use Ipads within their subject and the use of apps to raise pupils skills within the subject and digital literacy skills. Other staff have chosen to use Chrome Books, this is becoming  increasingly popular in school, with Google classrooms being set up and pupils collaborating on projects. An example is recently when, for an ICT project pupils task was to create a virtual tour of a country of their choice and act as a tour guide, a group decided to do theirs collaboratively using Google Docs, not something they had learnt to do in ICT but in another subject, which shows that pupils are transferring their digital skills learnt from other subjects.  This is all good progress, but the difficultly is getting consistency through all departments, although this could be achieved with the new framework due out in September.

We have also recently sent a group of Year 8 pupils to 'Digital 16', a conference held in the Celtic manor. Pupils enjoyed their time there and took part in some great activities and hopefully would have inspired them for the future.

A group of year 10 pupils also took part in the Young Enterprise Welsh finals last week. They created a defence video and used social media to advertise their business. A great way for pupils to see a different use of social media, unfortunately they didn't manage to win, but a great achievement nonetheless.

Two classes (one year 9 and one year 10) also took part in a three week research project with Oxford University regrading pupils online habits in gaming etc. Only two schools in the UK took part in the research, and it was very pleasing that Blackwood was one of them! I look forward to hearing the outcome of the research as its a great insight to how the pupils use the internet socially.

I am sure there is more but I cant think of anything off the top of my head. I shall re-post if I think of anything.