As am sure you are aware, you have three main types of Users on the Learning Platform: Staff (both teaching and no-teaching); Pupils; and Parents (or Associates as they are termed in the KLP).
While the temptation is to issue these all in one go and hope for the best, this could, not only generate limited engagement but, also result in increased problems with logins. A tailored approach with each group will help reduce login problems and increase engagement within each of the target audiences.
Teaching staff and non-teaching staff might be issued their login details along with a set of activities to achieve when first logged in, for example: Completing a survey on what they would like to the Whole School Interest Space used to communicate, Finding their class lists and viewing the information being made available to parents from the school's MIS, creating subject focused discussions for pupils to contribute to and of course create their v-me.
Pupils could be issued their logins as part of an ICT lesson where they could complete tasks such as replying to the discussions teachers have created, completing a home Internet access survey, setting up their directory structure in their shared files of their E-Portfolio, viewing to see any Interest Spaces and Learning Spaces they have been made a member of.
Parents might have their login details issued at parents' evenings or via an invited session on the Learning Platform where they have the opportunity to login there and then to interact with targeted content with the hands on support of staff. They too would require set tasks or directed activities during any introduction session which may include, finding their child's information from the My Space page and checking if they are correct, completing parental survey, accessing news and calendar events from the whole school or parents spaces and reading/commenting on a heads/deputy heads blog.
Each of the above suggestions would require clear planning and proper materials and while in the short term will generate a volume of engagement to be proud off, you will need to start thinking about long term engagement (i.e. creating a purpose for engagement)
Monday, 11 October 2010
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Too Many Interest Spaces...
A possible problem to consider:
While it is extremely easy to create Interest Spaces within the Learning Platform and hand over “Full Control” to the member of staff who asked for this space, there is a risk that individual staff will start to create their own sub interest spaces. Clearly, this presents its own difficulties both in terms of quality control and the effective delivery of information and communication within the Learning Platform.
Since members have no control over their membership within an interest space there is a risk that a student or staff member could find themselves a member of 40+ interest spaces. This could reduce the effectiveness of the core interest spaces and result in key information being loss within less important content (for example: if every news article added within these interest spaces are “targeted to members”, the News within My Space will become less effective).
There is also a risk of information duplication.
Information for the different Document Libraries:
Each of the created Interest Spaces will provide a document library, it is important to establish the appropriate content for these. In to which document library will you put each of these documents? For example: where might “letters and Notices” for parents be held, might these be better in the whole school document library or in Parental Space?
While it is extremely easy to create Interest Spaces within the Learning Platform and hand over “Full Control” to the member of staff who asked for this space, there is a risk that individual staff will start to create their own sub interest spaces. Clearly, this presents its own difficulties both in terms of quality control and the effective delivery of information and communication within the Learning Platform.
Since members have no control over their membership within an interest space there is a risk that a student or staff member could find themselves a member of 40+ interest spaces. This could reduce the effectiveness of the core interest spaces and result in key information being loss within less important content (for example: if every news article added within these interest spaces are “targeted to members”, the News within My Space will become less effective).
There is also a risk of information duplication.
Information for the different Document Libraries:
Each of the created Interest Spaces will provide a document library, it is important to establish the appropriate content for these. In to which document library will you put each of these documents? For example: where might “letters and Notices” for parents be held, might these be better in the whole school document library or in Parental Space?
Monday, 28 June 2010
Before you Start - Planning for Implimentation
Firstly, welcome to the first entry in this Learning Platform blog. It will initially be aimed at those schools who have yet to start embedding the Learning Platform but will quickly start to be used to demonstrate how a School such as Woodhey is using the functionally within the Learning Platform to improve our use of ICT both as a communication tool but also as a Teaching & Learning aid.
Strategic Planning is the name of the Game:
Before engaging with the administrative tasks associated with implementing your School’s Learning Platform there are a number of tasks that may be worth considering:
• Identify Core Information Providers within your school (for secondary schools this may be one person from each department)
• Consider the different Interest Spaces your school might require (SLT, Pastoral, English, Science, etc) Draw a flow diagram from where these new spaces will nest from. For example, if you create a Interest Space from within Staffroom and click "Inherit Memberships" then all the members of the Staffroom Space will be automatically members of this new space.
• Identify the membership of these individual Interest Spaces including which member(s) might become Administrator of that Interest Space. Also consider the permissions of the other members – will they be readers or contributors?
• Which non-teaching staff (if any) might need to be designated as teaching staff within the Learning Platform? Since only teaching staff have access Learning Spaces, for example.
• What information is readily available (such as calendars, policy documents, etc) that could be uploaded or entered in the Learning Platform once you are ready to populate key areas?
• What other valuable services might you provide through the Learning Platform – for example you might provide an additional calendar page to act as a booking log for the school minibus, Library or ICT Suite
• Identify the lead departments who will immediately start using the Learning Platform for T&L, sharing resources, communication and collaboration, whom other departments might benchmark against - What incentives might they have (time of timetable to develop a working model)
• Identify the administrative staff that will need to be involved with content population (this might be weekly staff bulletins, cover duties, calendar amendments, etc) - Can these duties be adding to job descriptions?
• Discuss with SLT what information is appropriate for all audiences, teaching staff, all staff, pupils, parents as this will impact on which Interest Space this content is held
• What graphics have you got available for each main Interest Space?
While this is not a definitive list it should give you an idea of some of the planning and strategic decisions you will need to undertake over the course of your learning platform implementation
Strategic Planning is the name of the Game:
Before engaging with the administrative tasks associated with implementing your School’s Learning Platform there are a number of tasks that may be worth considering:
• Identify Core Information Providers within your school (for secondary schools this may be one person from each department)
• Consider the different Interest Spaces your school might require (SLT, Pastoral, English, Science, etc) Draw a flow diagram from where these new spaces will nest from. For example, if you create a Interest Space from within Staffroom and click "Inherit Memberships" then all the members of the Staffroom Space will be automatically members of this new space.
• Identify the membership of these individual Interest Spaces including which member(s) might become Administrator of that Interest Space. Also consider the permissions of the other members – will they be readers or contributors?
• Which non-teaching staff (if any) might need to be designated as teaching staff within the Learning Platform? Since only teaching staff have access Learning Spaces, for example.
• What information is readily available (such as calendars, policy documents, etc) that could be uploaded or entered in the Learning Platform once you are ready to populate key areas?
• What other valuable services might you provide through the Learning Platform – for example you might provide an additional calendar page to act as a booking log for the school minibus, Library or ICT Suite
• Identify the lead departments who will immediately start using the Learning Platform for T&L, sharing resources, communication and collaboration, whom other departments might benchmark against - What incentives might they have (time of timetable to develop a working model)
• Identify the administrative staff that will need to be involved with content population (this might be weekly staff bulletins, cover duties, calendar amendments, etc) - Can these duties be adding to job descriptions?
• Discuss with SLT what information is appropriate for all audiences, teaching staff, all staff, pupils, parents as this will impact on which Interest Space this content is held
• What graphics have you got available for each main Interest Space?
While this is not a definitive list it should give you an idea of some of the planning and strategic decisions you will need to undertake over the course of your learning platform implementation
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