Filtering sorted at last!

Last half term ended on a real high for me. Having advertised very late for two additional members of my ICT team (in order to deliver significantly increased hours of teaching across the key stages next year), we appointed two excellent teachers on the last day of the half term.  One is a very strong NQT, and the other an outstanding Lead Practitioner. I couldn't believe my luck! I shall have such a superb team next year. Such a far cry from the situation I had a few years back when I lead a team of thirteen, only one other of whom was qualified in the subject!

The second reason for my elation was the arrival in the Academy of a device which enables my ICT Manager to control our own Internet filtering.  Suddenly, all of the problems I have been having with the external filtering of our feed are gone. Access to websites can be granted or denied by group (staff/students, KS3/KS4/KS5 etc.) or by individual. Websites are categorized for filtering purposes, but we decide which sites should belong in which category, and how each category is to be dealt with. As far as I am concerned, this is total freedom to use whichever website I choose, and the possibilities now opened up to the curriculum are enormous!

To take advantage of this, I used today TodaysMeet, which I reviewed last month. I had a Y7 class of 28 sitting in total silence, working together in the chat room, deciding what technologies we ought to be using in the Academy, for what purpose, and for what reason. It was brilliant. Apart from the four lads who obviously didn't believe me when I explained the need for them to act fairly maturely, and to resist making silly commentsin the chat room, the whole class rose to the task of working as if they were actually geographically situated apart from each other - hence the silence. The extraction of the miscreants from the lesson, to stand and watch while the rest of the class enjoyed their work, acted as a powerful motivator to any others who might have been tempted to do the wrong thing.

Never before had any of these students chatted online in such a large group, and there was a lot of learning to do - keeping a very careful eye on the arrival of each other's contributions in the room, always referring their chat to an indivdual by name, or referring to a previous comment by the name of the author. After about 10 minutes, the chat was being very successful and constructive, and I had a lot of good ideas to read through. I look forward to trying the same thing with the rest of the year group; after that, to try backchannelling in a lesson.