First Lessons
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First Lessons with DB Primary
Let the children do the work
When you first start using the Learning Platform, you may want to nominate a core of super keen children as your ‘Computer Whizz Kids’. Once you have trained them they can then help you to teach the other children in the class, initially helping them log on and navigate around the platform.
Perhaps they could also help other year groups. Their names could be announced in Head teacher's assembly, and be presented with a scroll and/or a badge. The following site is very useful for creating your own bespoke badges:
In the early stages you may also want to introduce the platform to a small group of teachers and have a feed-back session before moving onto the next stage.
For further details on how to introduce the platform during your first year, see the example first year rollout plan. Of course it will be extremely useful to share good practice between classes. This could be in the form of a 5-10 minute slot at the start of staff meetings every week or two, when a teacher shares an instance of how they have used the platform in the classroom.
Creating your own avatar image
Teachers may like to create an image for themselves that doesn’t involve uploading their photo. How about creating an avatar?
A Google search for 'make my avatar' will return a number of sites where it is possible to do this for free online.
Preparation
- Teachers create a community for their class and add the pupils’ names and passwords so that they can login. Refer to the Creating_Accounts help page for instructions on how to do this.
- Create a simple page welcoming students to community: perhaps a welcome message and a picture if wanted. For advice on creating your frony page, visit the Page_Creator help page.
Here is an example:
- Create a forum and include something light-hearted to stoke the children’s interest. For example:
- Set a task for the children in your class. Visit the Taskmanager help page for more information on how to do this.
A good initial task, if not completed already, may be to ask the children to draw a picture of themselves using the draw tool:
Click on the assessment tab when setting the task and you will have an option to have the children self-assess.
For example you could ask ‘Do you think your picture looks like you?’ and add the options ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘a little’.
First Lesson
Teachers demonstrate the platform to their classes/groups, and the children log in to access their homepages.
Children will:
- Edit their details to change colour/image/nickname
- Write a blog entry
- Write an email to another class member
Again, see the first year rollout plan for more ideas on a week-by-week progression of how to introduce the platform throughout the school.
Creating Communities: Tips
Communities are the heart of the learning platform. They encourage collaboration between users through discussion and sharing work. For detailed information on setting up a community, please take a look at the Community_Admin Help Page.
When designing your community front page you could use a variety of images to draw in the reader’s attention:
- How about creating some fun logos & titles for your front page using the free tools at http://cooltext.com
