Collaborative work projects

One of the best experiments I've tried this year with the pupils to introduce new technology into their classes is the use of collaborative tools to allow multiple pupils work on documents at the same time. The tool of choice has been the well known Google Docs - and the word processing tools.

The interesting part has been watching pupils adapting to working together. One common issue I've noticed across many of my ICT classes is the independent tasks that all pupils have been required to complete. There is no team work or incentive to try and complete work that other people will depend on. In whatever job they work on in the future, most tasks they will be completing will be for someone else to support another project. So the idea of creating some group projects really intrigued me.

As it happens, as we started a new topic on e-safety the timing seemed perfect to develop some posters in different groups on the topics covered.

Of course, the first 10 minutes involved lots of pupils work being deleted and modified and some silly comments. But over the next 20 minutes that they developed the work, some fantastic resources started to appear. They're not perfect yet but I've seen enough potential in the couple of classes that we've tried this to know that this is the future of my classes.......