Tom Barrett

The Curriculum Catalyst is about the online education community coming together to produce practical resources that we can all use to support curriculum development.

At the end of last weekend the Catalyst had over 280 topic ideas for the curriculum and over 70 people had voted more that 3000 times for a top topic. It turned out to be SEALIFE and since then I have created an open Google Document to collate our ideas for the topic. (Stage 2)

The document already has over 50 crowd-sourced sealife ideas (thanks for your help so far) for teaching and learning including:

• Subject specific lesson activities
• Books to support the Sealife topic
• Web based resources
• Details of the Ocean layer in Google Earth
• Nintendo Wii games that can be used
• Possibilities for places to visit in the UK
• DVD titles

I hope that it proves useful in sparking some ideas for you and your staff. Please consider adding a short idea to the document to continue developing it. Don’t forget to just explore the 280+ topic ideas themselves (and vote), maybe there is something there you haven’t thought of.

After a week, so this Sunday, I will repeat the process for the next highest voted topic and create a new ideas document to work on. Currently “Imaginary Creatures” is in the lead. All of the weekly docs will be linked from my blog’s Curriculum Catalyst page.

Currently there are close to 30 different presentations exploring Interesting Ways to use a whole variety of different types of technology in the classroom.

Here are a few of the most recent fledgling resources, please let me know if you would like to contribute by adding an idea.

Don’t forget to explore the rest of the Interesting Ways resources.

The Curriculum Catalyst has made a great start, it is only a few days old but 61 people have submitted 193 ideas and cast 1,896 votes. Thankyou to all of you who have helped so far.

Out of those 193 topic ideas will emerge one. For Stage 2 we will take that topic and crowd-source ideas, over the course of just a week, in a single space that will then be a resource for other teachers to use. After that is done we will turn our attention to voting for the next topic to develop and so on…

But which tool should we use to collaborate and gather our ideas?

The most important feature must be the ability to print a well formatted document. The printed page will have more influence, difficult as it might be to admit, to the vast majority of teachers. It can be copied and passed around, pinned on the notice board and shoved into pigeon holes.

Which tool will give us the crowd-sourcing freedom and access as well as the quality printed outcome?

I have been thinking this through and although Google Docs is terrible at printing, if the document is a straightforward heading /sub-heading / bullet list type of document it will export well to PDF and print well too. This will allow us the collaborative power of docs as well as the simple process of contributing a bullet point to a list.

What do you think? Do you have any ideas for tools that would fit perfectly for what we need for Stage 2? I would appreciate your help.

It is clear from our collective efforts as an education community we can create some excellent resources. The “Interesting Ways” series has illustrated how single contributions to a collective can be extremely useful. This has been underlined by the “Maths Maps” too.

The “Interesting Ways” series has focused on single tools and how these can be implemented in different ways in the classroom. I think we can do the same for curriculum ideas around a single topic.

It is one thing seeing individual ideas in the above presentations or in blog posts from teachers who share them, but these are often less accessible to the majority of teachers than we think. They are either too tool-specific or in the case of reading ideas in blog posts they can be difficult to apply to the general classroom.

The Curriculum Catalyst is about crowd-sourcing topic ideas – creating a resource that can be printed off, yes printed, to form the basis for more detailed planning. With the English primary curriculum in a period of flux we are in a great position to push the creative agenda more and more – online networks allow us the opportunity to collaborate on a simple resource to support this.

Stage 1 of this is about gathering topic ideas. Of course these can be ones that already exist that you have in fact already delivered. Perhaps it is a book or film, a subject topic or historical figure. They should not be fixed to an age group so the process is broadly applicable to as many classrooms as possible.

To contribute your ideas we will use Google Moderator which allows for a community to contribute and then vote on different items. Please have a look at The Curriculum Catalyst series over the next few weeks and “submit an idea” or vote for the ideas already contributed.

After a period of voting we will then take the top topic, Stage 2 will be about adding your ideas to support or engage learners within that topic. I don’t have any set ideas for which tool to use for Stage 2 and so would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Ideally anyone should be able to see the document and print off a copy in it’s present form.

I hope you can help with the first stage of this new project by contributing your ideas and votes. Crowd-sourcing education resources has become a genuinely valuable process. Our collective efforts should be able to generate some great curriculum ideas.

Two years ago I had the idea of using replies from my Twitter network to gather responses about the probability of snow. What was planned as a plenary to a session ended up being expanded into a full hour long lesson. This week I taught the same maths topic and this post outlines the approach I took this year to my lesson.

Context

This was the second lesson in the week – the first was a basic introduction to some of terminology in basic probability of events. We talked about the ways we would describe events such as a deer jumping through the window or a cat wandering into the classroom. We then looked at a load of different statements and positioned them on the scale: IMPOSSIBLE – UNLIKELY- POSSIBLE – PROBABLE – CERTAIN. The Twitter lesson would extend this understanding of the language used by exploring the tweets from my network.

Set-up

One of the things I have written about before is the planned tweets that should take place before a lesson if you want to do this type of lesson. You can elicit responses on the spot, live, but you have much more control over how you use the responses if you allow yourself some time to do so. I tweeted this the day before and encouraged as many responses as I could:

With a good handle on the sort of responses I was getting I could plan to make the tweets into any sort of resource I wanted. Another reason to tweet early is to encourage members of your network in other countries to participate. This was crucial to the probability question I was posing.

As the lesson was beginning I repeated my request which bolstered the responses that were coming in live, indeed it gave some people the chance to adjust their snow estimates from the previous day.

Hashtag

At the end of the tweet you can see that I have asked people to respond using the hashtag #TBlesson. In terms of organisation this allowed me to easily copy and paste from a Twitter search page into a Google Doc. If you leave it to your replies you will have to edit out all of the odds and ends that are not relevant to your lesson which is time consuming.

Resources

• I decided that this time I wanted the tweets to be something the children could hold. I turned the digital into analogue and printed the tweets off. They were laminated and cut into individual cards. We made 3 sets for the different activities in the lesson.
• For the location activity we had 2 floor maps of the UK and Europe. I also had a SMART Notebook file from previous years that had tweets and a world map to work with.
• Finally I cleared some of the tables away and used masking tape to make a great big probability scale on the floor. I printed off some labels using the language from the previous day and placed them accordingly.
• 5 or 6 laptops for the location activity.
• The children’s maths books and pencil crayons.

Introduction

Using the #TBlesson hashtag I displayed a Visible Tweets presentation as the children were coming in from playtime. They were soon enthralled as the responses span and twisted their way onto the IWB display. I listened as the children began pointing out something to a friend or spotting a particular country.

I began by talking about my network on Twitter and how I had used it to find out about the chances of snow across the world. We spent some time watching the random display of tweets from the search and we talked about the language we discussed in the previous day and if we could see any examples of people using it.

I think Visible Tweets is an excellent way to display Twitter replies and I would highly recommend it if you are doing the same. This is another reason to use a hashtag when gathering responses as it is much easier and more controlled if you are displaying a specific search term.

In the image you can see a Tweetdeck column – this is another useful tip. I deleted all of the other Twitter columns and I was left with the #TBlesson hashtag search I had running. A simple and easy way to focus your classroom display on just what you need to show.

Listen to me introducing the session to my class. “Twitter Lesson Audio“

Activities

The children were put into mixed ability pairs and we had 5 pairs on each of the three carousel stations. After a 10 minute introduction I rotated these groups every 15 minutes which would allow some time for a short conclusion too.

Location

I wanted the children to begin to explore the location of the responses and to think about the climate of different parts of the world. The children had two floor maps of the UK and Europe to place a set of the tweet cards on (I filtered the cards appropriately). There was also the IWB which had a world map and a bunch of tweets from previous years.

I put out half a dozen laptops for the children to use to help them locate some of the places mentioned in the tweets. All of the children decided to use Google Earth to help them find the places and they then placed the cards on the floor maps.

The children had the option to use the technology to support them if they wanted and were confident enough to know the correct tool to help them. This is a good example of children independently choosing a technology to support their learning.

Probability Scale

There were many fascinating mathematical discussions in this group about the best place to put the different cards on the large scale. The children were having to interpret the plethora of terminology in the tweets and match them to the commonly used language on the scale.

This was a good challenge and the children worked in pairs to support each other in positioning the different statements. All three groups put the statements neatly above and below each other along the scale, even though many were the same. I extended their thinking by inviting them to place them alongside each other if they were equivalent.

A further step was to get pairs to check a small section for accuracy and to look closely at the ordering. I was able to direct different pairs or individuals to review the position of specific tweets that I knew would challenge them appropriately. (For example someone used 0.05)

Language Examples

In the third activity the children simply gathered examples of the language used, writing these out in their books. This would eventually lead us to a major conclusion we made as a class in the plenary.

This fairly straight forward task meant the children were really engaging with the variety of terms used and their records helped them to see the breadth of it.

They recorded fractions, decimals and percentages as well as slang and local phrases used for likelihood.

Reviewing the lesson and the language used

As a whole group we finished the lesson by discussing the different language that we had encountered during the session and shared some of the ways people were using it. We briefly explored the climate differences between locations and heard some examples of places that had an impossible chance of snow.

We concluded that the majority of people used percentages rather than words to describe the likelihood of an event. This lead us to think about the important mathematical link between a number and a word and how even though words are easier to understand they are less precise than giving a numeric value.

The children enjoyed the lesson and the carousel style of activities. After another quick tweet to my network we were able to enjoy some #snowpics to show it really was 100% certain some people were going to get snow!

Lesson Outcomes

The range of activities and the chance to explore the nuances of probability language gave the children a great opportunity to:

• consolidate what they had learned about basic probability language
• experience the full range and variety of terminology used
• begin to understand the link between a lexical and numeric representation of probability

Since my lesson on Tuesday I have already seen two other examples of teachers looking for responses from their Twitter network for specific lessons. Even 2 years on from when I first did this lesson I still think that the opportunity to use your Twitter network to provide insight, responses, input, challenge and data is overlooked by many. What makes it so manageable for us to contribute is that only 140 characters is needed.

A big thankyou to everyone who helped by making a contribution it is really appreciated. Hopefully this post shows you how your 140 characters fit into the bigger picture.

Why not have a look at what you are teaching in the next few weeks and consider making a request for your network to make a contribution. I hope this lesson has given you some ideas and real methods for how this can work and making the most of it in the classroom.

After some feedback and comments from Ben Barton and Sarah Brownsword on my previous post, I have begun to see another side to the third idea I outlined. The web application I proposed  would provide teachers the opportunity to find resources, connections and ideas all in one place – from one search query.

Vortex by phill.d
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However it occurred to me that although there are existing tools that perhaps do these things, they are just diluting the process. Another web application doing this will just multiply this further, resources and people will be in another place to join and search – spreading the network even more thinly.

Maybe I was coming at this from the wrong angle. The emphasis should be on teachers developing network capabilities that allow them to tap into and find all of this and not a tool or system that does it all for you.

I consider the journey to where my network is now to be just as important as anything I gain from it. The experience of virtually meeting and connecting with literally thousands of educators from around the world has been amazing – shortcutting to a prefabricated, ready-made, network denies people that opportunity.

Someone mentioned that this type of web tool (content management and social networking combined) is a sort of “holy grail” – but on reflection I think that the real treasure is a network that invariably yields value for the user in construction as well as in use.

I am just jealous of all of those trainee teachers who are establishing their networks whilst they are training. They are tapping into the insights from working teachers and no doubt benefitting from it in their own practice. Just imagine what their network capabilities will be like when they are 3 years or 5 years into teaching.

Every teacher training course in the world should encourage and teach students to build a network to support them professionally.

I am convinced. It is not a case of finding a single tool, system or platform that seeks out content and connects teachers – it should be down to us to make the journey to those different destinations ourselves and learn as much as we can along the way.

I am sure you have had moments when you discover your inner inventor too. Here are three web based applications I have much pondered and if I had more time, money, expertise would probably have made by now.

StoryBook Earth

Inspired by my work on storytelling using Google Earth and WeTellStories, StoryBook Earth would be a place to share, develop and create geotagged stories. When we write or tell stories we are picturing a location, a setting. In combining the imagery of Google Earth, the ability to add text, audio and even further media to specific places, you have a powerful storytelling form.

StoryBook Earth would develop the idea of “story” and “narrative” and to connect students in different parts of the world. It would also be an attempt to explore how the local becomes the global: to provide an appreciation of students in other parts of the world. It would provide an alternative way of “seeing” and “reading” the world, and possibly introduce students to young people who have experienced:

• Very different lives and personal circumstances
• Conflict
• Natural hazards
• Different climates and natural environments
• Alternative cultures and traditions

I remember watching a 9 year old in my class tell a story to a friend whilst looking at his street in Google Earth, there is something very immediate about such narratives – similar in part to historical walks that explain a story in the places they occurred.

In partnership with the Geographical Association, StoryBook Earth was entered into the Google GeoChallenge grant application process but unfortunately was rejected.

(Thanks to Alan Parkinson at the GA for all his help developing this idea.)

My Reading Diary

In our school the children use little paper reading diaries, similar I am sure to many other primary schools. In it they record the books they are reading, their progress and there is a place for pupils, teachers and parents to make written comments too

So for this one think: Shelfari for kids. A learner centred online tool that would allow children to do all they could with a paper diary – without the worry of losing it! But it would also have a database behind it that would allow children to tap into further reading recommendations. Children could read reviews from other users and discover new genres or books they may not normally.

I would imagine that My Reading Diary would have the potential to integrate with library management systems, so children could read a review or see a recommendation and immediately know if it is in school – and if it is available to read or someone else has it out already!

A further unique feature of My Reading Diary would be as a reading portfolio for children as they progress through school. With simple book profiling it would allow teachers and parents to see the types of books any child is reading and make future suggestions.

I think there is huge potential in this to not only provide a manageable online system to track reading progress throughout school but to also engage children with reading and a social, smart, personalised reading diary.

This idea was sadly rejected by Channel 4’s 4iP which is an innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media (beyond television) across the UK.

Firespeed by kwerfeldein
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Connect Collaborate Content

I don’t know what I would call this application but I think it could be very important in the way teachers work in the next 5-10 years.

I would propose a single online place for teachers to find curriculum resources and ideas, connect with colleagues teaching the same topics and a platform for collaboration.

Ian Yorston quite rightly said that this place is the web. It perhaps is a matter of pulling streams of different information together, but I just don’t think there has been a purpose built online space that does all of these.

I am doing some work on the Victorians next half term – with my proposed web idea I want to be able to do a single search for “Victorians” and see a multitude of things that we regularly look for and seek out in further web queries elsewhere.

1. Resources - planning, images, video, notebook files, PPTs, worksheets, that sort of thing.
2. Ideas - the resources found on the web do not often come with the narrative behind it, I want to be able to read blog posts and summaries of experiences from those who have taught my topic already. My search results would draw in comments from Twitter and other platforms too.
3. Connections - so many schools, teachers and pupils are working on the same topics, I want to know who is actively doing them too.
4. Collaborate - once I have discovered that XYZ are doing the same topic, I want to have the means to collaborate and work with them.

We have a myriad of educational blogs to cover the ideas, places like Gareth Pitchford’s Primary Resources, Classroom 2.0 that does much to connect teachers and then there is simple tools like Teachers Connecting from Ben Hazzard that is a platform to connect and work together.

But we need one place to do all of this from a single search query, that would be the unique feature. You enter a single topic key word and your search results provide everything.

Another aspect that is important is what happens as we share our current classroom work. From blogging about my topics at school this year, for the first time my network has brought resources and ideas to me. Not as a result of me asking, but because they “read a post a few weeks back that I was doing sealife”. If we are all more aware of what topics colleagues are doing in their classes our sharing of ideas and resources can be more purposeful.

It will be intriguing to see what develops with mycurriculum.com from the QCDA and whether it will be able to build the critical mass of users to make it truly worthwhile – and also if it is smart enough to do some of the things I have outlined.

It has been an interesting process getting these ideas down in a post – let me know what you think of them and if they would have value in the educational world we work in. The ideas are there, feel free to go ahead and make them, just let me know you have so I can use them.

~ Contact “X” ~ by ViaMoi
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I have 5 weeks left at my current school and then I will be moving on to my new appointment as Deputy Head at John Davies Primary School. It is an exciting time for me and I am looking forward to the challenge of establishing my role in a new school.

Recently I visited for the first time since the interview and had the opportunity to talk to Steve Bowler, the Headteacher, about future plans for developing a modern, relevant curriculum for the children at the school. It will be very exciting to work with the staff and children in exploring this and I hope to use my experiences of new topic planning we have done this year.

In my new post there is greater expectation for me to lead the school. This is the opportunity that I have been looking for over the last two years. One challenge for me is to crystallise my ideas in terms of how technology can enhance and transform teaching and learning. But my first job will be to establish positive relationships within the school and the wider community.

I feel lucky to have this space to be able to reflect on what will occur over the next 6 months, consequently edte.ch will begin to spread it’s wings to include posts about leadership and the role technology can play across a wider school community.

pay heed by most uncool
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Children in my class cannot use YouTube at school, but as soon as they leave at the end of the day, they will.

Since the exponential growth of the online video giant I have never once used a video directly from YouTube in my classroom. It is exempt from my teaching routine. On reflection I find this fairly incredible.

In England each local authority can choose which sites are open to use in the classroom. YouTube is blocked by many due to inappropriate content, which includes the comments accompanying the footage. However I have never been shown, read or offered an explanation by my local authority about their reasoning.

At the end of school children will go home and use the website, open to the inappropriate content we block in school. Not only is YouTube exempt from my teaching, I am exempt from helping children better understand, process and find value amidst a mass of video content. I am exempt from demonstrating and educating the children in my class to appreciate the power of such an information source. Apparently that is a good thing.

In my opinion it comes down to some hard decisions. The longer, more protracted path of educating young primary school children in dealing with open content on the web (including YouTube) is too hard a path for some to consider. The easy route is to block it. And that is what has happened.

It is hard to fully appreciate the effect this will have on years and years of children not being given guidance about open content, from the very people who are best placed to provide it.

I consider YouTube an unprecedented source of information in the form of videos. Does the blocking of access to this information infringe on our rights? According to Kimberley Curtis,

Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights holds that freedom of expression includes the right to information.  Specifically, it states that

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

It goes on to admit that governments can place certain restrictions on these rights, but only if necessary.  This has long been understood to cover access to government information, such as rights covered by the Freedom of Information Act in the US.  But increasingly some are starting to include access to knowledge, particularly in regards to the internet, in this rubric as well.

No hands ma! by OLD! (NEW! http://flickr.com/codooautin)
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I take it then that governments have given school’s local authorities the freedom to choose what to block “if necessary” and YouTube falls into this category and the easy short-term decision is easy. So what would I want to see? What would I do with an unblocked, unfiltered web? I would invest the money from filtering in high quality guidance, training and materials to provide teachers the ability to properly guide young learners in the web they use at home anyway. Bringing some parts of our teaching force up to speed with the internet their students are using, and equip them with the basic principles for teaching and using an open web.

Having complete access to knowledge will after all benefit an economy in the long run, right? The Every Child Matters aims and objectives state that whatever their background or their circumstances, every child should have the support they need to:

• be healthy
• stay safe
• enjoy and achieve
• make a positive contribution
• achieve economic well-being.

With a filtered version of the internet are we providing children the best possible chances to feel they can make a positive contribution to society? Is their protracted exclusion from a growing information source such as YouTube  actually detrimental to their chances of achieving economic well-being? Would an unfiltered web make children more or less safe?

Jack Balkin from Yale University explains,

Access to knowledge means that the right policies for information and knowledge production can increase both the total production of information and knowledge goods, and can distribute them in a more equitable fashion. The goal is first, promoting economic efficiency and development, and second, widespread distribution of those knowledge and informational goods necessary to human flourishing in our particular historical moment– the global networked information economy.

I repeat: It’s not just a trade off between equity and efficiency. We are not simply fighting about how to divide up a pie. Access to knowledge is about making a larger pie and distributing it more fairly. Or, at the risk of extending this pie metaphor well beyond its appropriate scope, access to knowledge means giving everyone the skills to make their own pies and share them widely with others.

(“How to make a pie” returned 23,500 results on YouTube.)

Beyond the filtering of YouTube there is massive inconsistency across UK schools about which sites are blocked and which are open. I work in Nottinghamshire, for some reason many of the sites that I use for educational purposes are open to me in school. For many of my colleagues across the UK it is different. Would my development of learning technology use have been completely different if I was 30 miles further North,  South, East or West? Of course it would.

Similarly children in one school will be able to use different learning tools in the classroom than another. As someone said to me recently this is a sort of “learning technology postcode lottery.” Inevitably those teachers that consider certain web based tools crucial to their teaching will think twice about a post in those local authorities most effected.

I want to hold a lens up to the inconsistency between local authorities in England. I have started a Google Spreadsheet with a list of 80+ web based tools used in the classroom and the opportunity to state OPEN or BLOCKED for your local authority.

Web Tools in English Schools > Blocked or Open?

Ollie Bray has been working on something similar for Scottish authorities – perhaps when both documents have reached a critical mass they could be amalgamated to create a full picture of web filtering in schools in the UK.

I would be grateful if you would complete the spreadsheet for your own location (unless Google Docs is blocked of course!) and help encourage others to do the same, this way we will build up a complete picture.

Five things I am hopeful for:

1. This will continue to keep the issue of open web access on educator’s agenda.
2. Local authorities will look at the list and question their own decisions. “Why has Nottinghamshire left Wordle open and we have not?”
3. I would like to see teachers who are using these tools become part of the process of deciding upon filtering.
4. Explanations why sites are blocked are provided to teachers and not some random category. We have reasons we want to use them in a positive way, LAs ostensibly have reasons why they are blocking them – that debate needs to be had.
5. More consistency for what the web looks like for teachers and for students.

In the past week or so our literacy work has focused on a short sequence from the comic Spiderman #1. Our Superheroes topic is going well and in this post I explain how we have used Voicethread as a creation tool, a writing scaffold and as a way to do peer marking.

We began with the sequence in the comic where Peter is attending a science fair at a local school and is bitten by spider that has been zapped by one of the radiation machines on show. I wanted the short 5 panel sequence to be the focus of an extended narrative. I liked the tight focus on a few moments and the action and comic imagery would really help us to write some interesting narrative.

To begin with we made some notes about the short sequence as a whole class, mainly key words, things that just jumped out from the images and from the facial expressions of Peter.

The next step was to import the five panels from the comic you can see in the above image into Voicethread. I just used a screen capture tool and created some separate image files for each. The Voicethread was to be a collection of first ideas. At this early stage of the writing process I think Voicethread plays it’s hand superbly.

The children have the opportunity to say their ideas aloud. To articulate, listen back, correct and re-articulate very easily. All of the children in the year group worked on writing and recording ideas for the Bitten! sequence and as you know they are privy to all of the comments from their peers in real time. We used the vocabulary above as a stimulus throughout this early task.

After sharing literally hundreds of narrative ideas for the sequence, the children were put with a writing partner. Often we focus on writing in solitude but I think the support and insight children can get from working together is hugely rewarding. They get to see how someone else might approach the same piece of writing.

I modelled the up-levelling or improvement of some simple starter sentences for each of the panels. We worked together as a class to extend and improve on them using the language already collected. The children used Google Docs for their work and I encouraged children to also have open the Voicethread of ideas that we had created. The 5 panels acted as 5 simple paragraph changes. In this step the children are using Voicethread as a source of ideas and as a writing scaffold. They listened and read back the comments others had left and I think found these really useful in kick-starting their work.

As we were working in Google Docs I dipped into their work as they were busy writing. I have written before about how this is less obtrusive than looking over their shoulder or taking their books off of them. I added a header to the Google Doc and then used CTRL+M to add a named and dated comment. I would back this up by a quick chat with the pair if needed to ensure they would act on my advice and feedback.

The children had of course shared their Document with me and their writing partner. In my Docs home screen I used the star label to show which Docs I had marked and which I hadn’t. You can read some more ideas for marking with Google Docs in this blog post.

As part of the writing process I explained we would be publishing some to the class blog. I wanted the feedback from the blog to be part of the improvement process for the children. I think that if you plan to publish examples of work in this way, and the kids know this before they begin, you are not just bolting it on afterwards. The children know that the blog readership will be their audience.

We were able to publish 80 percent of the work from the class, those that didn’t were just unfinished. The comments that we received were fantastic and greatly encouraging for the children involved. We would revisit these later in the process.

Although the children have a finished piece of work at this point we are only part of the way through the writing process I had planned and this is where we turned back to Voicethread again. (We kept a printed copy of this first draft.) I have often said that the use of PDFs in Voicethread is overlooked. Clearly the use of images and video is very engaging, but adding PDFs is really useful functionality.

I did two things before exporting the children’s work from Google Docs. Firstly I added their names next to the title of the work. I knew from who shared it with me who the owner was, but as a plain PDF it would be missing that. The second thing was to increase the size of the text so that it was clearly visible in Voicethread.

Voicethread allows you to zoom in to text or images, but when you need to use the pen highlighter it zooms out. With a full page PDF the writing can sometimes be too small to see. Ensuring the text size is set as high as possible is really important if you want to take advantage of the pen tool.

Once this was done I exported all of the Docs as PDFs (no need to worry about the file names as you added their names to the text already) and imported these into a new Voicethread. I noticed that some of the pages were jumbled, in other words if a piece of work was over 2 pages these pages were split. Naturally you want them next to each in Voicethread - watch out for that, however it is easy to move pages about from the upload screen.

Saying that, it is hard to see from the thumbnails which belong together – maybe that is something for Voicethread to work on. Either a magnify function on the upload page for each thumbnail or better assurance PDFs will stay in the correct order.

Once the Voicethread was ready to go I asked each pair to record an audio comment of one of them reading out their own work. This is a simple step you can take to allow all of the children in the class to access the different pieces of writing. If they struggled reading it, there was an audio version! We talked to the children about adding comments and feedback and I stuck to a simple 2 stars (things they liked) and 1 wish (something to improve) which we have used before. I encouraged them to use the pen tool to highlight words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs that they were referring too and this proved very successful.

Interestingly the process of reading your own work out aloud and recording it made the children realise where they could improve their own work.

The final step was to revisit their original writing and complete the editing process. It is sometimes hard to find time to review work in light of comments but is essential in helping children improve. Those with blog comments on their work were encouraged to look at what was written. Everyone had numerous comments on their own work as part of the Voicethread - they went back to their Google Doc and made alterations and improvements based upon the feedback from me, their peers and the wider audience on the blog.

I went to every single pair and asked them to talk through some of the alterations they had made and guided them to focus on anything they had overlooked.

In short the sequence looked like this:

1. Reading the focus sequence
2. Gathering initial vocabulary and feedback
3. Voicethread of sequence – children add ideas
4. Writing begins – using above resources
5. Writing is published to the class blog and uploaded to Voicethread
6. Voicethread of work – children add feedback
7. Edit in light of teacher, blog and peer comments

This was over the course of about a week and half to two weeks. This sort of timescale really allows you the space to establish some quality and immerse you and the class in the piece of work. After all, we were only writing about a very short moment in time.

It may have only been a few fleeting, painful moments for Peter when he was bitten, but we found this extended writing and review process really successful.