The last two weeks have been challenging for the ‘E-C collaboration team’.

The team have had to make sure all the power points were completed and handed in to the hand in folders on Fronter so that the students can be paired up ready for them to exchange their presentations. This had to be done before the Christmas holidays. To begin the process Saskia put a reminder on the Bulletin board to inform the Year 7 students that their ‘About me’ power points would need to be handed in by the 6th of December and produced a blog to go into the school newsletter explaining the project to the parents of both the involved and uninvolved students.

The team also prepared a presentation of the project to a guest working for the local Authority who was interested in Quality and Improvement of ICT. All team members then presented this to the guest discussing each of their main roles in the project so far.
During meeting 11 the team decided that between Monday 5th and Friday 9th of December we needed to see the Year 7 class teachers to inform them of the students who had not yet handed the power points in and to let them know that the deadline was Friday 10th of December. Everyone was asked to attend service to show the year 7 classes the forums and explain that they should be used over Christmas to communicate with the Chinese students.

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The last few weeks have been a busy one for the ‘E-C collaboration’ team and things have really progressed well.
All the team have been working hard with our three year 7 groups, 7X1, 7X3 and 7Y3 and they have nearly completed their PowerPoint presentations ready for the Chinese students.  We had anticipated the year 7 groups to be finished together but we had anticipated that some might be finished before others! However the team have overcame these problems by creating more ways for the year 7s to add to their slides.  In addition to this, Mark and Connor have been experimenting with sound, and we not only have a way for them to record English for the Chinese to listen to but they have created a tutorial to teach them how to do it.

We have managed to get new members onto Fronter – our 62 Chinese Pen Pals! April sent Andy a list of names and classes of the Chinese students and the group wasted little time and assigned the Lukes to get them onto Fronter. Thanks to the ICT technicians (and a little help from our Project sponsor, Mr Sharples!) they now all have a log in to Fronter.

The next thing our project manager wanted to do was to pair the Chinese students up with our year 7 groups.  With a bit of to-ing and throw-ing we cracked it. The class 7Y3 has 19 students which can be matched with the classes 3 and 7 in China; 7X3 has 21 who match with classes 4, 5 and 6. Leaving 7Y3 with classes 1, 2 and 8 with the 22 students they need.

Ellie and Megan have spent time making the forums for the online collaboration, with a forum for each of the collaborative groups described earlier and a tutorial in simple but brilliant detail. Speaking of tutorials, Jess created one after creating 6 new hand in folders for our year 7s and Chinese to hand in their completed PowerPoints, which as usual from Jess is perfect.

The team have also come up with their key tasks for the project which was derived from our ‘SMART’ objectives: Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic and Time-Bound. This was dependent on us creating our final agreed success criteria. “To allow all LLS Year 7 students to collaborate successfully with year 7 Chinese students using a range of digital tools during the Autumn term 2011”. To help us with our Chinese knowledge and understanding and with thanks to our project sponsor we have new personnel to consider in our project. Mr Josh Wong is a lawyer who regularly visits China and he will be taking part in the Forums with the Year 7s along with Miss Wu and Miss Mark.  This will help us a great deal as we have 3 people to help us with language, affairs, rules and other issues we may face in the future. As all projects go it hasn’t been all plain sailing, but we responded quickly to problems.  We have seen the rejection of Skype from the idea list as Emma and Becky have found it to not be feasible from LLS school and the Chinese firewalls. We also had to wait a while for our Chinese students to get onto Fronter because of matters which we could not control which we overcame thanks to our project manager.  We manage all of our meetings with Andy chairing and the rest of us taking turns with taking the minutes.  One of them was even without our Project Sponsor as he was involed with learning walks elsewhere in school.  We also found that tasks were not being ticked off on Zoho and so had to make sure that everyone was doing that.
The future is looking good for the ‘E-C Collaboration’ team. With Saskia Liaising with our client, Andy doing a brilliant job as Project Manager, tasks being done on time, effective communication and using suitable project software we hope to continue to do well in the weeks to come and succeed with the Year 7s collaborating successfully with their Chinese counterparts.

By Luke Kelly / Update 24th November

In response to an email from our Chinese client April, we decided to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the new information that we were presented with. The email from April firstly outlined why there had been no contact from her to our EC-collaboration team.  The reason for this was because her computer had broken and this meant that April had not been able to check her e-mails for a few days.   During the emergency meeting, Andy the project manager gave the rest of the group feedback on the rest of the email from April.  For example it was explained that April currently only had 30 students to participate as pen-pals.  From this information we decided to only use three of the Lady Lumley’s School Year 7 ICT classes, meaning that we had a total of 62 students available for pen pals (30 girls and 32 boys). The action that followed this decision was that Andy and Saskia were to email April to ask whether it would be possible to raise the 30 students to 62 from Shengyang so that it could match the amount of students in Lady Lumley’s School.  Similarly, we decided that the pairs were to continue their contact with the three Year 7 ICT groups; Luke and Luke with 7X3; Saskia, Emma, Becky, Connor and Jess with 7Y3; Andy, Mark, Ellie and Megan with 7X1. The final action from the emergency meeting was that Luke, Luke and Connor were to brief these chosen Year 7 classes and explain the whole project. They also introduced the preference slide that was created by Emma and Becky in order to highlight each student’s interests which will used later when pairing up the pen pals.

For our next meeting on 17th October – our last lesson of the half-term – our clear outcome for this meeting was to discuss and clarify all pair roles within the team.  To start the meeting, Luke and Luke gave the rest of the group feedback on how their briefing with one of the Year 7 classes went.  The outcome of this being that they realised that particular Year 7 class knew nothing about the project that has began.  However once it was explained all students seemed keen to get involved.  The Teacher Mr Lech assured them that the powerpoints from this class would be finished by November.  Following this, Connor than also gave feedback on how his briefing with another Year 7 classes.  Connor explained that the teacher Mr Wilks had not been briefed yet about what the project was and how it was working etc.  Connor explained in detail about it leaving Mr Wilks pleased with his description.  This however meant that the Year 7 class were not shown the preference slide made by Emma and Becky, and must be shown it next time Connor is in contact with this particular Year 7 class.  For the rest of this meeting, we went through each pair and discussed their roles, and bringing to like any concerns or ideas for improvement. For example, it was noted that the entire team were keen to have a confirmed end date; another concern was whether the Chinese students’ font would show clearly on Fronter or whether it would be presented in Chinese symbols.  From these discussions, the actions that followed were that Andy was to email April a copy of the power point presentation preference slide as well as other slide titles, so that April’s students could create similar presentations. After a discussion on each pair’s role, tasks were then reached to be completed by the next meeting after half term for some individuals and for every pair.

Update 31st October – by Jess/Mr Sharples

Assembly yesterday. I outlined why digital leaders are important. What will you talk about at a future Interview? What examples of leadership and teamwork do you have? What other examples of leadership in the school – Duke of Edinborough, World Challenge and Sports Leaders. I picture us as living in a new digital landscape, and concepts of leaders helping others to navigate fits well with DofE, and learning to teach small teams of students fits well with Sports Leaders.

If you volunteer as a Digital Leader you will improve your ICT skills; Leadership skills; Communication skills; Confidence; Teamwork;and Networking.

Possible Activities include – Learn to use a variety of ICTs;Regular opportunities to train ‘colleagues’ in your ICT classes; using new software; Support the use of ICTs in other subjects; Encourage more ‘digital homeworks’ in the school; Present at a conference next summer?

And then the competition results – Amazon vouchers for the 1, 2 and 3rd in the Wordle competition (34 entries) and the 1, 2 and 3= and 3= in the Glogster competition (24 entries).

At the end of the summer term we started out on a programme to develop digital leaders at Lady Lumley’s School.  For several years I had been aware of the SSAT work building on ideas from Kristian Still www.kristianstill.co.uk/wordpress/category/digital-leaders/.

Meeting Paul Hynes again at the North Yorkshire Education Conference in July gave me the extra impetus, and I used Paul’s ideas on Digital Technologies looking to engage with the wider program www.ssatrust.org.uk/newtechnologies/Pages/Studentdigitalleaders.aspx.

I picture us as living in a new digital landscape, and concepts of leaders helping others to navigate fits well with DofE, and learning to teach small teams of students fits well with Sports Leaders.  I have colleagues who ensure both of these programs are a strength at Lady Lumley’s and they have been encouraging with the links between programs.  Doing it as a blend of face-to-face amd digitally is the challenge.

I outlined initial ideas on Digital Leaders in an assembly to the Year 8’s (next year’s year 9s… ) and offered them two competitions – using Glogster (multimedia posters) and Wordle (graphical display of words).   Having introduced the year 9s to Glogster, our enterprising students immediately saw the potential for their geography homeworks so we agreed a third competition, resulting in:

1. Best use of Wordle for “showing something Interesting

2. Best Glogster Poster – what I did in the holidays

3. Best Glogster Poster – used for a subject at LLS

– with prizes of amazon tokens for the best three in each.

As part of our programme, we have already promised one lesson of every month as a Digital Leaders Lesson.  The first was all about ancouraging students to enter the competition and students showed how they had been using Glogster:

We have the award assembly and the first Digital Leaders meeting scheduled just before half-term.

At the meeting we will discuss future activities and the digital-leaders’-way that we do them.

Activities will be a mixture of what needs to be done and what catches the interest of the leaders.

The digital-leaders’-way that we do the tasks will be worked out with them but initial ideas are around:

• an aspirational plan of at least two digital leaders per Y9 class
• leadership skills (with inspiration from Sports Leaders and Duke of Edinborough)
• working with teachers to encourage use of Digital Technologies
• working together collaboratively
• collaboration on all projects using the school VLE

Chris Sharples
14-10-2011

We are a group of year 13 students in the second year of our Applied ICT A-level at Lady Lumley’s School in North Yorkshire.  We are fulfilling the tequirements of our Project Management unit by working as a team on a project we have called E-C Collaboration.

It involves connecting together our year 7 students within our school in England with the equivalent year 7 students from our partner school in China – Shenyang 165 Middle School.

We are going to explore and test out the different ways of communicating online. We will use the “About Me” powerpoints which are already part of the Year 7 scheme of work with slide topics titled Welcome; Family; School; Sport; Interests; Food and Something Special. Students will use the same titles and topics in both countries, be paired up accordingly, and then be able to find out more about living in either country using a variety of online tools.

Map of Partner schools and LLS, North Yorkshire

Due to this we have come up with the team name EC-Collaboration.

This team name is important as it has a double meaning. The ‘EC’ being the initials for the two countries involved, England and China, as well sounding the word ‘easy’. We have developed a main aim for our project; this is
“ To enable all LLS Year 7 students to collaborate successfully with Year 7 Chinese students using a range of digital tools during the Autumn term 2011”.

We will be using the school VLE Fronter which we already know the Chinese students can access successfully through the help and support of their teacher, Wang Yingchun. We will be prototyping using Fronter for email, sharing resources, and forums and possibly using skype and msn.

Our team consists of eleven students – five pairs of students and the project manager – all with identified roles after each of us completed a skills audit. As project manager, it is Andrews’s job to ensure the projects success; to monitor the progress of the project especially the critical path; to make sure everybody does the tasks they are assigned and preferably on time and to motivate the rest of the team. If Andrew is ill, or away for another reason, Saskia is deputy project manager.

Rebecca and Emma have the role of pairing up students who they think will have an interest in communicating with one another.  This will be done by preference, as we have asked each student to make an additional slide with a number of preferences for what they would like to have in common with their chosen partner. They will also be investigating the use of Skype for face-to-face communication between the students.

The Lukes training us on Zoho

Luke Turnbull and Luke Kelly have the paired role of managing ‘Zoho’ which is online task management software accessible in real-time by all the team. The Lukes have identified these features for us to try: Task Management; Progress Reports; Project Calendars and Meetings; and Time Tracking. Next are Ellie and me, who have the role of focusing on each of the topics involved and prototyping the use of forums by students in both schools. Connor and Mark are prototyping different forms of multimedia starting with a request from the client that students embed sound files in their powerpoint.

Andrew, as project manager, is liaising with Ms Wangyingchun in Shenyang. Finally, and very importantly, Saskia and Jess have the role of coordinators with our client, our language teacher Miss Mark who is responsible for “Promoting the global dimension” at Lady Lumley’s School. All of us have other responsibilities such as helping with Year 7 classes through the term, taking minutes, improving certain skills etc.

As a group EC-Collaboration have agreed ‘Standard Ways of Working’ and we, as a group, think that it is important to do things in this way so as to succeed with the project. We also need to apply the Project Management theory with have learnt about, in particular, to avoid many of the ways that projects can fail.

As the project that we have chosen to do is such a large project involving communication across the globe, there are many aspects of the project that could cause it to fail.  For example, technical problems could become a big issue within the project, as risks such as China’s firewall could stop the students communicating.  Other technical problems could occur with the programmes used within the project, as updates could be made to programmes that the users are not familiar with. Drift within the project in relation to time, could also mean the project takes longer than planned.  Time differences between the two countries means that the times available to collaborate are restricted, not only with time differences but also within school hours, therefore contingency time is needed, usually estimated at 20%. Without one of the most important aspects of the project, the clients, the project could fail drastically, as without either of the clients (Miss Mark and April) the project would be difficult to complete. Finally, the project sponsor not being available due to falling ill would be a big risk to the projects sustainability, as there would be a loss of funding and leadership.

At the end of the school term, and therefore the finish date of the project for our group, we plan to have tested several communication technologies between the two groups of year 7 students. We will have evaluated which ones were successful and which weren’t using feedback from the year 7 students to help us. Although the project will come to an end for our team, we anticipate that there will be further opportunities for the students to collaborate later in the year.

Megan Hackett / Chris Sharples
7th October 2011

The course I would like to do at university is called Information Technology Management for Business (ITMB) and having been to the Manchester University open day, it is now my first choice.

Whilst I was there I met Andy who was in his second year of the course. He explained how much of the course was group work and working in a team to solve a problem for a business. I told him that I am currently undergoing a Project Management unit in my ICT A Level course where we split up various tasks between a group depending on the skills of the individuals and this seemed very similar to what Andy was describing. I also highlighted that in the ICT course, we work with clients to solve problems for them or analyse their IT systems. He told me that businesses work extremely well with Manchester University and in particular with ITMB. He used examples such as IBM, Land Rover and BBC coming to Manchester’s ITMB students with problems for them to solve. Andy also mentioned that in his year of Industrial work that comes with the course, he will be going to work with Accenture, a huge business in the world of IT. The fact that the course gives you the chance to work with all these world wide known businesses and the chance to make these contacts was a huge selling point to me.

He said that by listening to me talking about the ICT course I have taken at Lady Lumley’s School, I will be very well equipped to do well in Information Technology Management for Business at Manchester University.

Mark R. Williams
Y13 ICT student at LLS
2011-10-11

Assembly yesterday. I outlined why digital leaders are important. What will you talk about at a future Interview? What examples of leadership and teamwork do you have? What other examples of leadership in the school – Duke of Edinborough, World Challenge and Sports Leaders. I picture us as living in a new digital landscape, and concepts of leaders helping others to navigate fits well with DofE, and learning to teach small teams of students fits well with Sports Leaders.

If you volunteer as a Digital Leader you will improve your ICT skills; Leadership skills; Communication skills; Confidence; Teamwork;and Networking.

Possible Activities include – Learn to use a variety of ICTs;Regular opportunities to train ‘colleagues’ in your ICT classes; using new software; Support the use of ICTs in other subjects; Encourage more ‘digital homeworks’ in the school; Present at a conference next summer?

And then the competition results – Amazon vouchers for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the Wordle competition (34 entries) and the 1, 2 and 3= and 3= in the Glogster competition (24 entries).