learning - Academic Conferences Limited

John Jessel
was not immediately apparent, with continued discussion and working through ideas the
communicative and participative potential began to emerge: ‘Just like a real classroom students and
teachers interact in that room like they would in a real one’. On further discussion particular qualities
of the virtual room were explored: ‘If you build into a scheme of work the idea that sometimes the
teams are discussing live verbally, sometimes they are discussing through an internet forum and
there is some kind of opportunity for them to evaluate and compare the differences in the way they
use language within those two different media’. This led to a teaching strategy that could be explored
with pupils in classroom equipped with computer terminals: ‘It’s a simple rule that’s established; when
you discuss online you don’t speak to each other.’
Later on the discussion had moved on to address aspects of pupils collaboration: ‘This is where the
Fronter thing could come in as a sharing forum … so you could have two areas with Fronter. You
could have, like, a forum discussion room where you generally discuss within your team, ideas, and
you could have like a public forum where you could put the whole class to share. So you could have a
shared forum and a team forum, and they’d have to also make decisions about what is appropriate for
each forum and why some discussions would stay within the team and some things go beyond the
team and can be shared with others, and what would be really nice is if they had to make those
decisions themselves about which forum would be appropriate. This is where I begin to see where
Fronter is a really useful way to do it.’
Through having the opportunity to discuss and explore with minimal prompting from the technologyuse
framework the vision had moved from ‘Why are we bothering to use Fronter?’ to ‘being able to
develop a really interactive use of Fronter’.
4.3 General principles concerning the use of VLE technologies
Analysis of the observational data revealed a number of general principles that emerged across all of
five schools that appeared to play a key role in the development of resources and methods of working
with the VLE and associated technologies. These are now summarised.
Embedding - This led on from the principle that the work should be curriculum led. Through
negotiation, existing areas of the curriculum within which to new practices involving technology could
be identified. This ‘linking-in’ to existing learning objectives also extended to existing teaching
materials or learning resources used within the departments. Embedding was not only in terms of
content but also in terms of structure and style of presentation.
Student engagement - This was expressed in terms such as ‘kids have to take a position and have to
argue’. This emerged in relation to the news editing forums mentioned above. It was also recognised
that this is seldom a straightforward process and considerable discussion centred around topics such
as encouraging pupils to analyse video material rather than simply access it.
Enrichment - It was recognised that easy access to a range of resources in different modalities
through the VLE allowed reading around the topic. Alerts to resources elsewhere such as TV
documentaries to enrich were also built in. Blogs were regarded as enriching and encouraged reading
around a topic.
Time and location specific - The VLEs allowed small items of information such as blogs or newsfeeds
to be connected to each page and could be changed when the page was revisited. The need was
expressed to keep these items up to date and to make them time location specific (e.g., ‘The last
lunchtime club this week is on Thursday - don’t miss it!’) Levels of personalisation were regarded as
important and suggestions for these varied in terms of the institution, the learner group and the
individual. ‘If you have a news feed then make sure it is something you put in – not just a link to any
website so that pupils see it as something specifically for them.’
Externally comprehensible - The availability of access to the VLE by a variety of users means a selfexplanatory
context has to be provided because it may be used in different contexts within the school
and outside the school by, for example, pupils, teachers, senior management, parents and carers.
Ease of use / ergonomics - Many suggestions for this arose. These included avoiding ‘front-end’
writing; ‘teachers and pupils do not want to read it, just want to get on with the work’. Another
suggestion was to make as few clicks as possible for students to get to where they are working:
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