The Trial of a Parent Lounge

Communicating With Parents

Communication is an essential part of the home and school relationship and it's long been known that parent involvement relates positively to student achievement - including interest and motivation. Learn-Now now has the means to finally bring parents alongside the journey their children are on. We're trialing with one school team of parents to start with - where a team of 28 students are enrolled in Learn-Now.

Launching the Parent Lounge

This week launched the online community built especially for parents with children enrolled Learn-Now. The Parent Lounge is exclusively for parents to connect and share information and thoughts around their child's experience in Learn-Now. The lounge is designed to be as much a source of information as it is interaction... It's new though, and it's a case of make-it-up as we go, but hopefully the invited team's a forgiving bunch. It's a trial and much will be determined by how well we can engineer Elgg's functionality, as to how long it may continue, or at what point we invite a second team of parents in.

Communication Beyond The Projects...

Understandably, project life will be shared, but it's more than that... It's sharing the energy behind the beauty of what teaching and learning online now involves. It's involving them in the fun of it - actively so if they're open to it. It's taking the distance out of what can often exist between home and school. It's inviting them to also take part in what the students are doing, perhaps for most not directly, but in ways that'll enable them to at least get a taste. Above all, it's about building that community of practice (CoP) - their children aren't just 'a class', but members of another whole community...but just who? The lounge will share...

...and then there's Twitter and Facebook

Online Parent Lounges should have a place in all schools and beyond, on a platform such as this, via Twitter and Facebook, or combination of all - it's great way to reach plugged-in parents. Newsletters sent home in backpacks are so old school. We ourselves need to be more active with our Twitter and Facebook account (and will)...but neither give us much scope to really chat out the Q/As, insights and shared content matter. Tis a shame the students can't drive them though - being under 13 years old and legal about it, has its downsides...

Meanwhile though, bring on the Parent Lounge!

Learn-Now parents can now enjoy the journey with us as well.

Socialising the learning - young.

Meet Anthony - he's 13.

Socialised learning is alive and well for him. He just doesn't know it - yet. But in tuning into the socialised learning that a team of NZ 8-10 year old students are into, he's about to become the recipient of some wonderfully socially enabled interaction.

28 students at Solway Primary School in Masterton are virtual tourists in a Cyber Field Trip to Uganda - now in its second year. Led by Lucy Ward, a 19 year old NZer in Uganda, the students jump from focus to focus. Recently they were introduced to Anthony, but he's since lost the smile in this photo and his Dad's adopted a worried look... The cost of school fees are almost out of Anthony's reach. Our journey into Uganda takes a new direction and we're travelling on a new vehicle into its midst.

Thanks Elgg!

We've adopted a new tool for Learn-Now students in Lucy's field trip and Elgg has become that bees knees tool/learning platform. It's the vehicle we're travelling on, into Uganda. The latest vehicle, was Ning. But it wouldn't let students under 13 years old aboard. So, that cut the whole primary, elementary and intermediate sector out of getting aboard some serious socialised learning online. (Though in fairness to Ning - it's a great vehicle for staff groups to socialise their operations - especially when working remotely from each other...). Elgg however, is a great vehicle to foster community based learning for all ages.



Socialising the learning online
Hosted by the Ministry of Education in our case, Elgg gets it. The eLearning department at the MOE gets it. Social learning is now possible, beyond a blog and a wiki for under 13 year olds.

What do the kids love about Elgg? The 28 students at Solway Primary are one example. It's very facebook'ish (but with teacher-student access controls if desired); they take the lead in personalising their space and lo and behold, they can create their own groups and run their own interactive, learning based communities. They drop their jaw at the amount of widgets they have available to them and manipulating pods around a dashboard, is as simple as drag and drop.

Life's finally not all about blogging. Nor do they need to jump sites to wiki'fy co-construction of knowledge into eg: Wikispaces; run polls in Surveymonkey; or be banned from Flickr etc for photos, as is common in many schools. They can now have their own photo albums and shared ones... Elgg has become quite a cosy one-stop shop. Yet, like a teenager learning to drive a car, these young students have to be taught how to drive their online space; learn how to be passengers; learn and personalise the 'Cyber Road Rules' and so on. It's a work in progress.

Anthony - behind the scenes
With Elgg as a vehicle/tool for learning, it is up to us to design the learning theme and content, then manipulate its functionality as a team of facilitators and students. Naturally the Cyber Field Trip 'Uganda in Action' led the way. Lucy socialises their learning as she

1. blogs aspects of her life in Uganda;
2. involves students in authentic learning experiences with real people, real buzz factors and real plights;
   
3. poses questions in her blog to further develop the thinking skills of her students;
4. links questions in her blog to forums enticing 24/7 access to discussion, or the processing of information;
5. tunes into student responses and further facilitates their thinking;
6. becomes a substitute for 'Googling' for information - she's real, on the ground and very relatable;
   
7. models the making of an impact;
8. shows how skills learnt in NZ can be transferred more globally;
   
9. is a wonderful example of a global citizen...

Meanwhile, the teacher who facilitates the students through Lucy's programme

1. seeds discovery eg: navigates them to new material from Lucy;
2. scaffolds the skills they'll need to interact with Lucy;
3. introduces the 'Pages' functionality for wiki-like co-construction of depth;
4. asks 'how can you make an impact'. Take Anthony for example... where to with him?
   
5. hypes them up almost mercilessly, but rarely pushes her own agenda - opening up the means by which students might come around to decisions themselves, with facilitation;
6. is about to open up a parent lounge online for parental involvement;
7. has allowed students to set up and run their own 'student lounge' to experiment with site functionality (knowing that it'll be viewed as 'just playing' - but is secure with her agenda - it follows an edge that's enabling, cognitively challenging, multi-tasking in nature and so on - the playing now, will be applied learning in Uganda in Action, their upcoming Bagz4Tagz enterprise and so on... It's making learning fun and when the going gets tough (or boring as students might say) they've plenty to draw on to up the anti, further personalise their learning and be responsible for making things happen - not spoon fed - but to take the lead.
   

Chaos reigns upfront...
Maturity seeps below...
Face2face, the students are talking over each other and can't really be heard when tuned into Uganda in Action, but online, there's a maturity in their voice as they form an impact, consider the challenges, use knowledge gained and in time, apply a social impact outcome. They even have the notions of scalability and sustainability in their impact, in mind. Not bad when remembering that these students are 8-10 years old. Already, they've become enterprising, are forming teams to divvy up the work ahead, are evaluating, reflecting and calculating. They're already on the road to success after 5 weeks of a single 2 hour slot per week. The security of Anthony's life at school is about to change for the better - the chat, the banter and even the 'dancing around' behind the scenes is social learning.

Owning the learning

The students' quest for knowledge now isn't just Google or YouTube. It's Lucy. It's www.xe.com (eg: how much are Anthony's school fees?). It's learning is powered by Elgg and an emotional urge to help, work together, own a project and exercise their own thinking skills. It's socialising the learning. It's social inquiry - not just 'inquiry learning'. As facilitators we're busy - immersing them in concepts, background info, tools of the trades, authentic scenarios and what if's eg: what if we were to Skype Lucy in from Uganda?

So, how about ISCT now?
Should ICT really be ISCT?

I believe that we should be adding S for Social into the now age-old reference of ICT. Once, the hype was IT, before evolving into ICT. Now, as learning as become more social this factor should form the notion of Information, Social Communication and Technology. We could in fact drop the T - technology is a no-brainer these days.

Much is made of digital classrooms, pods of laptops and mobile learning in education. The 'T' of technology is alive and well in 'ICT' amongst the contacts I have here in NZ and across to the US, UK, Australia and many parts of Europe.

The 'I' of information is almost at wow-factor levels in some schools too, but when it comes to 'communication', aside from perhaps a blog or student-teacher responses, today's hell-bent socialising factor is less obvious. How many classrooms have to 'be quiet' when learning? How much of the blended learning is discussion based, where the teacher talks less?


Digital Classrooms: Leaders? Models?
Are the likes of Digital Classrooms in particular - leaders of socialised, community based learning? Or are they full on with the technology, still very teacher directed? Are they working outside the 4 walls of their classroom, with students in other schools, or guests in other communities? Are they creating partnerships with other communities online? Do they have 24/7 access to their learning? Can they contribute after school, during the weekends and holidays...? Are they having a say in what they learn, who with (outside those 4 walls) and with which tool?

What is a cutting edge Digital Classroom? We'd like to think we are one ie: Learn-Now, but truth be known, we're trying our best. We're lucky too - the customers/schools who have adopted us make it easy. They've got the technology in place and let us manipulate it to the extreme as we know it too. As we too learn more, we'll stretch it further...and further. But, we need more partners. More schools, more students beaming in from homes and more projects to adopt.

We're tackling Elgg week by week - there's not that much of a life in there yet, but that's how it is when the participants are in training - they're just warming up to being so public with their presence. Being socially 'out there' is just as nerve wracking as it is in new environments face to face.

And where are we at the moment? Here in Frontup4Impact

...having fun,
really trying to socialise the learning!