Following the face-to-face session

The objective of this course activity is to make contact with participants of the face-to-face session and have the opportunity to share ideas emerging from the course so far.

The course forum is available to all participants in the course after the end of the two-hour facilitated session. It will be moderated by your facilitator.

Go to the forum and go the discussion called ‘welcome to the course’. Post a message in response to your facilitator’s welcome message to the other participants. You may wish to reflect on the course so far, or post some ideas about whether you have thought more critically about document sharing using Office Live or Google docs. You may also wish to think about whether your first use of shared documents will be with learners or school colleagues. This will inform what you decide to do for the workplace activity which follows. Respond to other participants who will also be posting their thoughts about the course and application of the course content to their professional practice.

The objective of this course activity is to make use of shared documents in school, either with colleagues or learners.

The first step is to identify a suitable project through which either colleagues or learners could access and contribute to a shared document. You may have decided in the face-to-face session that this facility lends itself to joint planning or other activities that you undertake with other members of your school-based team. You may also have identified an opportunity to select a small group of learners to make use of a shared document during a class-based activity.

Create the document(s) that are necessary for this project and upload them to your chosen shared workspace. Add the individuals who you would like to access the document. Make sure those who are sharing the document fully understand what they are expected to contribute.

Monitor how well the document sharing works as a way of collaborating on an activity. If working with learners, are they more or less likely to engage with an activity around an online shared document? Could you envisage this working with a peer assessment model?

If you have focused on sharing management documents with colleagues, could this open up opportunities for models of distributed management or more collaboration in planning? Reflect on your experiences of using shared documents and any thoughts that have emerged for its potential in other contexts by posting in the forum. Respond to other participants who are sharing their experiences of using shared documents.