As part of our project for this year’s model, it is compulsory that in groups we create a google classroom learning environment on a given subject for sacred heart school. I and Ashok Philips are creating an E-learning resource that allows teachers and students to communicate, participate and learn in a safe online environment. Although there is no school council currently at Rutherford House, we understand that this is something that the school are keen to implement and we hope this resource may help. The purpose of our classroom is to aid the school council in being more accessible to the whole of the school and to be able to share and communicate activities and ideas. Although Rutherford House has an early year’s department we have decided to restrict the resource to KS1 and KS2 due to obvious reasons.   We are currently half way though the project and had the opportunity to present out work to the school to see what changes they would like to see happen. Below I will give a brief description on what the school have asked to change, and how we are going to develop our learning platform.

 

What was said?

• There is a heavy emphasis on a photography and there are lots of competitions going round. Every child currently is having to email in their pictures, it would be nice for them to have somewhere the can post these and all the images can be judged by either their peers or a set of judges in 1 area.
• It’s really good to see that there is a section on E-safety, but the children are still quite young, could you create a video explaining this so that it is more child friendly?
• I  like that you have taken into consideration current topics that the school are looking at such as the renovation of our playground, give children a budget, get them to post ideas, have polls, videos of what they would like.
• I like the competitions you have for the recycling, is there a way you can put these all in one place to view?

 

Moving forward with the project

We have taken into consideration these ideas and have some ideas on how we can improve our resource to make this more child friendly. For example we are going to create a video of ourselves for the E-Safety section with small captions and images to gain children’s attention so that the content is more accessible. Furthermore, we are looking into creating slideshows and galleries to store images therefore they can be accessed by everyone even staff more effectively. The content that is currently on our classroom is quite text heavy and while it is simple text will not engage the users effectively enough for the purpose of the activity. It’s important that this is modified before the deadline to ensure we are taking into account our audience better.  The feedback that was given has shown a clearer idea of what they are looking for in this project and I look forward to moving forward with these ideas.