Cloudlearn has been a research project, funded by the Nominet Trust. The catalyst for this research was a growing awareness of a deep schism developing between those schools who were embracing social media and portable devices (specifically mobile and smart phones) and those schools maintaining a policy of banning, locking and blocking.
The research team's concerns were twofold: the embracing schools were achieving greater engagement, a significant component in improving standards, and that opportunity was lost to the locking and blocking schools; secondly, they had an acute concern that locking and blocking might be potentially dangerous, for a number of reasons, a concern which the research reaffirmed.
What emerged from the research was the headline that many teachers, departments, schools and individuals around the world had arrived at very simliar sets of common sense, professionally evolved, cautiously applied, effective and tested policy guidelines for using social media and portable devices safely, effectively and engagingly. Phones, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more are being harnessed effectively and safely. Cloudlearn.net has aggregated this shared experience, to produce a safe, tested starting point for others also seeking the engagement, the effective practice and the resource savings that follow.
This session explores the methodology - crowd sourced research - and points to some of the clear, practical, effective and tested advice that emerged.
