When Joanne Geldard, ICT co-ordinator at Lancaster Lane Primary School in Leyland, Lancashire, was off school ill, she never lost touch with their pupils. "The children would email me - it was a nice link to them. I would log on at home and at school, the children would email back to me," she recalls. One of the best features about using information and communications technology in schools is its ability to bring people together, regardless of place or time, and for them to be able to communicate or collaborate in a variety of ways. Over the years, a number of initiatives - some public, others commercial - have sprung up to help bring parents, teachers and students together, both at home and in school.
One of the best, GridClub, was set-up by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in 2001 as a safe online community for primary school pupils in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. GridClub, is run by Grid Learning Ltd and offers some 500 curriculum-linked educational games and activities for children aged 7 to 12. The games include learning how to play chess, speak a foreign language and write stories. There are also animations of classic stories. GridClub has proved a big hit with children and teachers and has won various awards both for its content and its safe environment.
Join the club
GridClub offers a free "taster" area and a subscription service for educational games and activities. The fee is £3 per pupil for a year's subscription, with reduced subscriptions for longer periods. Children can log on at home and teachers can also use GridClub with their family and other staff. There is also an annual home subscription of £29.99. In England, the service is eligible under the electronic learning credit (eLC) scheme. Such is the popularity of GridClub, that around 6,000 schools are subscribed to it, including some based overseas in countries such as the US, Australia and Hong Kong.
And such is the success of the GridClub concept that it's looking set to expand its operations overseas. "We're talking to agencies in countries around the world about how to make GridClub widely available there, so we will need to adapt and develop content to address their cultural needs," says Simon Fuller, managing director of Grid Learning Ltd.
"There's lot of collaboration going on much of it multi-faceted," explains Simon "for example, one game, Spin 'n' Groove, encourages children to create music together and various schools have worked jointly on this. Teachers are also having lots of discussions on GridClub."
SuperClubs
GridClub SuperClubs is available to schools in England and Wales, which pay £4 per key stage2 pupil per annum, with discounts for subscriptions made for longer subscription periods. The service is also eligible under the eLC scheme and is managed by Intuitive Media. GridClub SuperClubs has more than 150,000 members, comprising of teachers and children aged 7 to 11. "It's a protected environment with peer-to-peer mentoring," explains Bob Hart, "it's like having a classroom with 150,000 children in it."
GridClub SuperClubs offers various facilities including email, personal home pages, collaborative pages to which everyone can contribute, and discussion forums covering everything from "My favourite pet" through "Sports" to "Harry Potter".
It was through GridClub SuperClubs that Joanne Geldard kept in touch with her students. She's a big fan of online collaboration. "The children gain so much confidence from emailing each other. Some girls have horses and they've made home pages and contacted others who share the same interest," she says. "The children can take collaboration as far as they want and those lucky enough to have internet access at home can really take it very far."
Other services
Intuitive Media also runs two other online communities, Gold Star Cafe, an online service for 11 to 14 year-olds, with email, instant messaging, home pages, forums, zones and electronic magazines ("zines") - launched this month [September 2005]. And SchoolNet Global which is a free service that has involved more than half a million children in 34 countries working on a wide range of collaborative projects.
Another product on the market is Think.com, a free and protected online service provided by Oracle for primary and secondary schools in a number of countries including the UK, US, Canada, China, India, Italy and Australia. There are email services, personal home pages for teachers and students and facilities for project groups, forums and discussions. Children at St Mary's School in Lancashire and Steelstown Primary School in Derry, Northern Ireland have used Think.com to work together on a creative writing project based on the theme of legends and myths - the King Arthur cycle and the Cucuhulain Ulster cycle.
Teacher tips
- The various online services are easy to use and you don't need programming skills to create exciting web pages.
- Enthusiasm is a useful ingredient! It's infectious and children will soon share your enthusiasm for online collaboration.
- First focus on one or two elements, such as email and home pages and then branch out as confidence increases.
- Setting up an online community does take time at the beginning, but the effort does pay dividends.
- Once you've got your online community up and running, don't be afraid to let the children take control - they get a huge buzz out of teaching their teacher!
- Get pupils to come up with ideas and share them.
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