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I’ve managed to set up a joint science group between pupils at my own school and another class at a local mainstream school.  Pupils will be working together on the mainstream site, with team teaching from staff of both schools.

Clearly working in this way makes planning hard, since the staff involved are on different sites 2 miles apart.  In the past when we’ve worked in this way we’ve had to meet up and plan in blocks of lessons, emailing resources and materials between sites.  However this time we’ve decided to use technology to make life easier! I chose Google Sites since we already have a Google Apps account for school, and I’ve used it before for personal sites.

The site is a little bare at the moment since we haven’t planned much of the course.  However you can see how the site is starting to take shape, with individual modules down the left hand side.

Within each topic I’ve added an overview of the topic as a table, and individual sub-pages for each lesson.  Clicking on a lesson brings up an outline lesson plan and all the resources added as attachments.

The real beauty of working this way is that either party can add, delete and edit content, and the site always shows an up-to-date copy of the plans.  Another huge advantage is the ability to subscribe to changes – meaning you can opt to receive an email when changes are made to the site by staff from either school.

As the collaboration develops, we will be using Google Docs to jointly create and edit assessment material, and also to track pupils’ progress.

I’ll keep posting through the year and report on our progress.  I’d also be interested to hear from anyone who uses a wiki or similar to manage collaboration of any kind.