Recently, we got the message through that we could start to use workspace with our intermediate students. Now this made me perk my ears up as I have been keeping track of the intermediate work by them linking their documents onto a shared spreadsheet. This had positives and negatives, but the main negatives for me were the nagging to get them to link up their work and the fact that they could all fiddle about with each other's links on the spreadsheet. The idea of using Workspace to be able to have access to all their work in one place was a definite bonus for me. (as Tech teachers at the college, we can't see the student work on Dashboard as they are not "our class's" )
Having a go with Workspace with the intermediate classes was a good plan for me in other ways too. It means I can practice with them before I try it with my college students next year ( a kind of no pressure, no judgement environment as we are all learning how to do it together ), and I can use it next year to keep track of my senior students work as this has been a major issue with me this year.
I have set up a Workspace for my Wednesday and Thursday intermediate classes and we had our first "play" this week. ( thank you to the teachers of these classes as they had to put the students into the groups on my workspace for me)
Link to workspace here
So far, we have filled in two templates from the workspace to see how to go through the process.
It went quite smoothly. The problems came from me not the students (no surprises there). They were calling "I have submitted!" and I was getting totally over excited to see the work come through on the activity summary tab.
I have embedded the workspace into the new class site I have started for next year and I have started putting together workspaces for the Year 11 and 12 students for the first projects that they do when they come back in the new year.
Next steps - sit with a member of staff who has been using workspaces for a while and bend their ears with the list of questions I have got after our first play this week, with assessment and marking being top of the list.
Learning... learning.
