One of the outcomes from our recent successful Ofsted inspection is the need to improve “improve community cohesion by linking the school with schools in other parts of the country and the wider world so that pupils develop a greater awareness of multicultural Britain”. Given the nature of our school – a small village school in Cornwall – this was something we were already very aware of and so putting in measures to address. To help with this we have linked up with Uphall Primary School in Ilford, Essex; a school very different to ours in lots of different ways. When the children at Uphall were looking at our school website one did ask “Where are all the black children?” which was a very interesting conversation starter here. It is early days but both schools have already used Google Earth to explore the locations of the schools. We also had the benefit of Google Earth’s Street View option to gain a clear idea about Uphall School’s surroundings; the photos were so clear that one child commented that ‘it is like actually standing there’. Unfortunately the Street View cameras haven’t made it down our country lanes yet!
I have found Wallwisher really useful as a means of communication between the children. After setting up the ‘Wall’ with the class (which is very straight forward) and exploring with Google Earth, the children were tasked to come up with questions to ask the children at Uphall Primary. They loved the idea of working at their own laptops and then seeing their posts appear on the IWB via my laptop. The whole class responded well and despite a few teething problems (overcome by refreshing both my laptop and theirs), they were all able to successfully contribute to the ‘Question Wall’ and are already looking forward to seeing the replies of the children in Uphall School. http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/ladockquestions
I can see Wallwisher having lots of different uses in the classroom, this is just one. In the future I hope that its’ use will become more pupil-initiated as their confidence grows.
