On an e-journey with generation Y

As I am a member of www.projectsbyjen.ning.com, a recent discussion by @kimcofino re a request to list student blogs allowed me to meet Paul Bogush (@shaggyhill). He was looking for student bloggers to work with his students at Collaboration Nation. We had just set ours up, so I volunteered my year 9 and 10 group as they really enjoy blogging. After collaborating on posts, we decided to chat live. However, time zones are always a problem. They are EST and we are gmt +10. Paul felt that his students would be willing to be online at home, when our students were at school early in the morning. He suggested that we use yackpack which is embedded on his wiki. As I am not at all technical, I felt I could handle that. However, then I received an invitation to join http://coveritlive.com - a live blogging tool. That was a lot more stressful! (for me)

Today, we had a trial run, 9am our time, 7pm their time. First skype worked, (our distress line), so I could let Paul know that I was ready. We then logged onto the live blog at the given url and it worked beautifully. We were in instant chat mode, with three of his volunteer students online as well and some of my year 10 students. However, our school has yackpack blocked and despite the technicians unblocking it, there must be futher filters blocking its appearance on collaboration nation’s wiki. (That has to be rectified before Friday when we have our real session together, sharing our teenage lives, cultures, school, country etc)

My dependable colleague Jess McCulloch, (thanks a heap Jess) helped me through it (and did a trial run the previous day). After the test run, we decided to test it with my year 10class. This has given us a sounding board for the huge potential that this tool may be used for. Click here to see the results of that live blog where basic questions were asked re their ownership of various technological gadgets and online presence. Note the way the polling results come up. Arent they great and so easy!!!

What we liked:

• moderation capabilites - the moderator has the power to allow, disallow or block unwanted material before it is published.
• Moderator has a full panel of promt tools, but paricpants only have a text chatting window
• Moderator panellist sets the questions or prompts. Students can immediately respond via text
• Polling ability - with easy formatting. Students may be prompted for a yes/no answer or a comment or ???
• Can share music, images and video immediately for audiences or evaluation or polling
• Can be finally published, edited and shared on website
• Despite some ‘crashes’ with the computers, it allowed students back in and prompted them for the poll that they have missed out on when they had to restart.
• Students worked well with this technology

Possible uses (full capabilities will only be determined over time)

• great live collaborative tool for powerful, media rich blog
• Sharing of media for polling, evalutation, opinions etc
• instant results for surveys or polls
• students interacting in real time
• educationalists can work collaboratively for a powerful blog post. Comments and contributions are instant
• powerful learning and educational tool

Any other suggestions would be warmly welcomed.