I first got the idea for this following the European innovative teachers’ forum in Croatia in March 2008. This was from Claire Satchwell from Priory City of Lincoln Academy, UK. More details of this can be seen at the website: http://learning.live.com/ Since 2008 I have been using Messenger on and off to give feedback to students.
I have never blogged about this so thought I would write a post about it now as I have been using it again recently. Some of the quotes can be seen below on the impact that it made:
“It helped me quite a lot, because I was able to discuss with him what I should and shouldn’t do when doing my podcast, how to format it, and how to present it in a way that is easy to use.”
“Helpful when he was online, good to have the support there. It was great to be able to ask him when you hit a problem!”
“I could talk to Mr. ROBERTS and other students in the class to discuss my video or podcast”
The students also suggested the following uses:
“It could be used as a revision aid to help students near their exams.”
“It could evolve to perhaps all areas of the curriculum and that way, all students will benefit in their subjects.”
“I would recommend this to others, because it gives the students to talk to their teachers and other members of their class, and they are all able to assist one another.”
There are obviously implications for online safety for both the students and the teacher. There are ways round this to ensure that you record the conversations. I recorded them and students were encouraged to
record them too. They found this useful because they could then read back the conversation like a script and they used it for reference when they got stuck.
Some questions to reflect on:
How much time does a student in your class have one to one feedback and support to make progress?
Is this a solution to personalised learning?
Is this just increasing your workload or is it decreasing your work load?
I would be interested in what you have to say about this.