Doug Dickinson, Honeycomb and Cornwall Teachers and Advisors

Doug Dickinson and I concluded that in the end, it really must be our own fault…

At the beginning of 2008 we both took part in a 2-day Cornwall LA-hosted residential course in Newquay, including a half-day field trip visit we were both really looking forward to at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Looking at the pictures doesn’t even begin to explain how much it rained that morning. I never even got as far as touring the gardens with the others to hunt for mini beasts as I had neglected to bring a paddle, let alone the canoe that was really required to navigate the impromtu rivers that were running through the footpaths of the beautiful gardens that morning.

So, it was that Doug and I found ourselves at Treleigh Primary school, Redruth on Monday morning this week once again during a day of the most torrid wind and persistent rain. “Mildly inclement” was the description of Rob Beadle from Coverack School - with that uniquely-British sense of comical understatement…

Fortunately, safely-ensconced inside the four walls of the school’s ICT suite, we were able to meet with our increasing numbers of colleagues and friends from Cornwall schools and CYPS, to start the second phase of the Cornwall LA pilot project using Honeycomb Online Tools.

This is an unusual project as there are several sub-pilots taking place all at once.

The first group of schools is working with Sally Griffin, Cornwall’s Advisor for Gifted and Talented, to use Honeycomb as a tool to help stimulate creative writing for more able infants. Phase 2 of the pilot is intended largely to build on the positive experience of the initial project.

A second group, working with Jacquie Ashton, Cornwall’s International Advisor, are using Honeycomb as a tool for communication and collaboration with partner schools in India, China, different parts of Europe and Scandinavia. Many of these are British Council-sponsored initiatives such as the Ukieri project linking British schools with Indian ones. A couple of teachers at the session on Monday are leaving for China on Wednesday - and I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how Honeycomb might be used for such Anglo-Chinese school projects.

A third group of schools were initially working independently, with children using Honeycomb as a publishing platform for peer-reviewing their Photo Story 3 videos they had created about their local area, as well as increasing parental involvement. In this second pilot phase, several of these schools may in fact work together, allowing children to publish their work to a wider audience then they are normally used to in smaller, rural schools.

Honeycomb in Cornwall

Finally, there is a fourth mini-pilot, which has been organised by Kim Bishop (with colleagues Wendy Delf and Sue Pike), the Secondary National Strategy Consultant for English and SEN School Improvement Officer, and includes a number of secondary schools from the Redruth, Pool and Camborne EAZ.

Their pilot group in Honeycomb is called ‘Myst Dimensions’ as they will be working with Tim Rylands in the New Year using Myst as a tool to stimulate creative discussion and writing, with Honeycomb being the preferred collaboration and publishing platform to produce the work of the students. The combination of students creating pages in Honeycomb about their Myst stories, with other students also able to collaborate and comment on the work produced, is a truly exciting prospect…

All-in-all, such a diversity of projects, along with a keen understanding of Honeycomb’s potential to get pupils working together independently of their geography, has created an absolutely fascinating and unique pilot group. A number of the teachers had never seen Honeycomb before Monday, but everyone soon appeared to see how they could use it in their own contexts, and were really enthused by its potential.

In the near future I hope to have some examples of pupil’s work in Honeycomb from phase 1 of the pilot. When these are available I will share them via this blog, so look out for these!

So… I’d like to say a very big thank you to Treleigh school for hosting the day, to Linda, Jacqui, Sally, Kim and Uta from County as well as all of the other teachers involved in the different groups for your collective enthusiasm.

Despite the weather (and my 4am start…), Doug and I had a terrific day!

An interesting article has appeared on the BBC news website today claiming that 68 percent of parents would be interested in receiving updates about their child’s education through new technologies such as text or email.  Dr Tanya Byron comments, “Using a variety of digital platforms, such as the internet and text, will enable schools and parents to have a greater collaborative relationship, which can only benefit each child.”

An excellent point and with a move towards implementing more Web 2.0 style technologies in the classroom, maybe parents would be interested in listening to podcasts of their child’s, regularly updated, progress or viewing online pages their child has created themselves? With a bit of imagination, the possibilities of school - community communication can be endless!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7610028.stm

I’ve read an interesting McKinsey article in the last couple of days regarding the growing adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in the business world.

What’s that got to do with schools I hear some of you cry?  Well, there are some interesting parallels between those businesses successfully adopting and gaining benefits from Web 2.0 and how schools might benefit from the use of such technology.

Businesses gaining most benefit from these technologies typically have;

• understanding of the technology’s potential at the highest level in the organisation
• enthusiasm for the technology in the senior management team
• more than half of the employees actively using Web 2.0 in their day to day activities, they use them intensely
• adopted the technology because they want to do things with it, not because the IT department has ‘rolled it out’ to them, in fact it’s the other way around with users often pulling the IT department along
• changed the way their business works and is structured as a result

As many organisations are dissatisfied with the benefits they have gained from Web 2.0  as are satisfied, these companies don’t display the characteristics above.

Softease would certainly recognise itself as a company which uses this type of technology as well as developing solutions based on it for schools.  We use it extensively to communicate with customers and prospective customers (this blog, for example), to share product development ideas and to get feedback (if you want to know more, please let us know!) and to share knowledge within our organisation with people spread across the
UK and with colleagues across the planet.

What would a school gain from this, you might ask;

• allow the users (pupils in our opinion) to experiment
• get senior management team buy in
• get as many people involved as you can, teachers and pupils, collaborating and assessing each other’s work
• find you are doing things differently

If you’re going to do a pilot, make it a big one!

We think easy to use and adopt applications such as Honeycomb make it easy to get a wide range of people in and around a school involved, don’t forget parents and friends!  Honeycomb really does allow users to drive the use of ICT in many subject areas.  Add in its e-safety features, and you can remove many of the objections to Web 2.0 adoption in your school away at a stroke.

You will have to register with the McKinsey site, should you wish to read the whole article for yourself

In this audio recording Linda Prideaux talks about the recent pilot project in Cornwall where schools have been using Honeycomb tools to collaborate on a number of innovative projects, including collaborating with schools in India, and improving writing for gifted and able KS1 pupils.

Linda has written a case study about this pilot project which is available for download at http://honeycombtools.com/downloads/pdfs/inform%20Honeycomb%20Project1.pdf

Thanks to Linda, Jacquie and Fran for a great overview of just some of the many ways that Honeycomb can be used for both curriculum-linked and more innovative purposes.

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