Etherpad in the classroom
After my initial experiences with Etherpad, I was keen to use the tool in the classroom. We had an opportunity to do so this week… with some pleasing results and some interesting reactions from the children!
The situation:
We have started another unit of persuasive writing, which requires the children to write persuasive letters. Last year, we wrote a number of letters to various people about banning plastic bags (as it was a regular topic in the press), and the children received lots of responses (with replies from the Queen, the Prime Minister, celebrities, local / national shops etc.). This was a fantastic unit, and it gave the children a real purpose for their writing.
This year, I wanted to repeat this activity, but give the children to opportunity to think of possible topics for their persuasive letters first. Etherpad seemed like a simple way of collating the children’s ideas. As there is a limit of 8 users per Etherpad and I have a class of thirty (working in pairs on laptops), I set up one document to gather ideas, and another one where children could collect persuasive words and phrases from examples given to them (including letters from local / national newspapers). These could then be used when we write our letters later in the unit. So, we actually had two Etherpads on the go at the same time!
The positive:
Etherpad, and our school’s wireless network, coped perfectly with sixteen machines collaborating on two different documents. There were one or two occasions when a few of the children’s laptops lost the connection to Etherpad, but clicking on the large ‘Reconnect Now’ button which appeared solved the problem straight away.
The site provided a fantastic tool for gathering these ideas. It allowed the whole class to contribute, sharing their points of view / findings, and building up a large collection in very little time. In just over twenty minutes, the class had gathered nearly 80 different ideas / persuasive phrases for use in our future lessons. These documents were on display on our interactive whiteboard, so we could see what everyone in the class was doing as the lesson progressed. They are also stored online, allowing us to access them during our future lessons.
The activity was also a really interesting opportunity to see what issues were important to the children. Some of them suggested new additions to the school grounds, whilst others were concerned about national and global issues (such as the environment or animal welfare). Many of the children were worried about money-related issues (e.g. prices of food / people losing jobs / shops closing down), showing their high levels of awareness of the current economic issues.
A few problems:
Despite the overall success of the activity, there were a number of minor issues which arose:
- Although the children were given a demonstration of the collaborative aspect of the site at the start of the lesson (with myself and my TA using different computers to edit the same document at the same time), the children were initially a little disturbed when they started seeing others editing ‘their’ document. When they work at school, they usually have control over their work, and a number of them found it disconcerting to see their work being edited by others! I am sure that these concerns will ease with further practice, as they learn to trust the collaborative features of the tool, and take advantage of the opportunity to work together in this way.
As we were making lists, the children numbered each of their entries. However, some children typed in the number of their idea and were then slow to think of an idea and / or add it to the document. In the meantime, other pairs were able to ‘hijack’ their number, adding their idea at someone else’s number. This caused a little concern for the original pair, as their number had been stolen from them! The pace at which the document was edited meant that this happened on a number of occasions. The numbers also got a bit jumbled (see the image on the right!).- A few of the ideas were repeated, but as the documents became quite large, this wasn’t surprising. The children were extremely keen to add their ideas, so I wasn’t too worried about duplicates appearing.
- There were a small number of complaints that others were deleting some of the ideas. In many cases, ideas were simply moved around, as new line breaks were added to (or removed from) the document. Having said that, I’m sure that a few little fingers may have removed one or two of the sentences (accidentally or otherwise!). With repeated use, the novelty of this will soon wear off (I hope)! By saving revisions regularly however, it is possible to go back through previous versions of the document to see if anything has been removed.
Tips for the future:
So, when I’m using Etherpad in the classroom again (which I would definitely like to), I might try some of the following to make things run a little more smoothly:
- Stop numbering ideas – it only added confusion in this activity, and the numbering can easily be done later by an adult, or by a child given a moderation role.
- Use sections – if the activity is to simply gather ideas, it might be useful to split the document up and give each child / pair a section within the document… where they (and only they) add their text. Although this isn’t really developing the collaborative aspect of the tool, it may ease the children’s worries about others editing their work.
- Encourage children to type their names into the document itself. Unfortunately, once a person has left the Etherpad document, their name (and their associated colour) is lost from the contributor list. By typing their name at the top / bottom of the page, it’s possible to save a record of the children who added each particular idea.
- It might have also been a good idea to give the children a chance to ‘play’ with Etherpad before doing an activity like this. By giving them some time to explore the tool without the pressure of completing a task, they would be able to discover what it can do, and learn to collaborate in this way. This may well reduce the occasional incidents of silliness in future activities, as well as increase the children’s confidence in seeing others adding to and editing their contributions.
I haven’t linked to our Etherpad documents on this blog post, as (at the time of writing) they are still being used in our lessons. Despite the few problems which arose, the activity was incredibly successful, and Etherpad is an amazing addition to our classroom toolkit. Have you used it in your classroom yet?
This is a great idea for using Etherpad – thanks for sharing. Have sent a link to a colleague of mine who was asking me about Etherpad earlier on today.
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Hi Mark
Great idea! How do you feel Etherpad compares to using a wiki?
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Mark Warner Reply:
March 15th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Etherpad is text… and text only, but it’s a fantastic way of getting multiple users to share their thoughts / ideas. It also incredibly easy to set up – just make a new pad and share the link.
Wikis have lots more power… the ability to add images / video / audio / links to other pages and documents etc. But setting them up (and setting up editing rights for others) can take more time.
Both have huge potential!
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Aha! I can see the power of setting up quickly! It’s interesting reading classroom case studies – not having my own students (working in a City Learning Centre) it’s really useful. Thanks! :O)
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I tried it out with 2 different classes and had contrasting results. With my class, who enjoyed sharing ideas and found it easieer to handle seeing their ideas adjusted. They collaborated quite well considering this is the first time they had used it. They are eager to use it again. With the other class in my year group, they found it difficult to collaborate and wait for other children to finish typing their ideas. Some became quite distressed when their idea was changed, other were frustrated that they didn’t get a chance to share their ideas.
I am definitely going to try it again.
With wikispaces, which account do most of you sign up for to use with your class? Want to try it with my class.
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Mark Warner Reply:
March 15th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
In the past, I’ve set up a single ‘member’ account for children to use… lots of children can use that account at the same time but it doesn’t allow you to track the additions of particular children. It might be better to set up individual member accounts if you want to do that.
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Interesting isn’t it how wikis and etherpad are taking us into a new model of writing – collaborative. In the past I think collaborative writing has meant taking turns or one person writing whilst the other has ideas. This way of writing is different: it is transparent, we can all see the typos or any other spelling/grammatical mistakes and we can make decisions about others’ work. We can re-organise and can change anything we want. With collaborative writing comes responsiblity.
I am about to use etherpad for the first time in the classroom and must thank you for your description of how you used it and what you would do differently. I will only be working with 6 children in a guided session but need to think more about how I set up the activity and prepare the children.
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Etherpad sounds like a great toolkit addition. My kids are using Wikispaces, but often run into the problem of losing work while editing at the same time. Using Etherpad sounds like it would be a great alternative! Looking forward to checking it out. Thanks for posting your experiences with your kids, they give the rest of us great ideas (and cut down on our own trouble-shooting
) !
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Hey Mark:
Great site! I have a question about your subscriptions. How are you offering subscribers to get the RSS through email? Is this a special option with the program you’re using?
Please reply to my email at:
Danitarussell@gmail.com
Thanks!
Danita
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What a fantastic tool!! The possibilities are endless with this. I’ve been searching a long time for something that doesn’t require sign-up. This is a wonderful addition to the classroom.
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