We've had the school learning platform up and running now for just over half a term, and it seems to be working well.
Many of the staff are starting to use Google Docs with their classes - and I can tell this because the kids are loving sharing their work with their teachers, classmates, and with me! It's surprising if a day goes by without an email arriving telling me that a pupil has shared their work with me.
The other aspects of the whole school LP have embedded in well too; the website was already well established and continues to receive regular comments from the children and parents, and staff continue to add articles on a regular basis to the site.
Online Tools are being well used - pupils often tell me that they "went on xxxx last night", and many are starting to then put their creations into their learning platforms (in particular pupils in my class are loving adding their own work to their own space in their own time at home).
There is one change that we have made though, and that's to do with the Wiki. We had - since the wiki was launched a while back - given all the pupils access to it to add / amend and delete work on it, as well as giving them access to the discussion and messaging facilities that a wikispaces wiki offers. However, we have had a few - a tiny number - of pupils use the messaging facility inappropriately despite educating them how to use the facilities we offer correctly.
So, I made a decision with the HT's approval, to remove pupils ability to post and message and only view the content of the wiki. This change has had a positive teaching and learning outcome though, because it means that I can now make all wiki members (staff only now) administrators and allow them to make any changes to any part of the wiki.
Since this change, we have a growing bank of MFL resources gradually being added - and once I show other members of staff how to add resources to it, I hope to see the curriculum areas develop (Lower school does already have several sections for this term available).
I should be starting to train staff on Wednesday mornings soon, and once I get them to see how easy it is to (1) post to the website, (2) add resources to the wiki and (3) make full use of GApps, then everything should really take off and make a great difference to pupils ability to continue learning beyond the end of the school day.
As I have said before, it's all new, and we've had teething troubles, but we're now on a positive learning curve and moving ahead in the right direction with this great adventure.
