March 2007

PARITOR LAUNCHES
ONLINE SCHOOLS COMMUNITY

Paritor has launched Schooble; a global schools community. It's completely free to join. Schooble users (schooblers) receive a set of web pages for their school, including a page for each group (class or club).

Groups can put their projects online. Each project has a display board for pictures and a blog where pupils can write about what they have learnt. Pupils can go online at home to show their parents what they have been doing at school.

‘As a parent of three small pupils, I love going to their school and looking for their work on the display boards’ says Simon Dutton, MD ‘the only problem is that I don’t go to their school all that often. If I could look at online display boards, it would help me to be more informed of and involved in what my children are doing at school.’

the schooble home page

In putting their work online, pupils are making web pages. An easy-to-use uploader tool lets them add pictures to their pages, and the blog tool includes a spell checker. This was added after a testing session in which pupils worked in pairs to make group pages with projects and blogs. It soon became apparent that a spell checker would be really useful, and a number of other changes were made to schooble following these testing sessions. ‘It was really useful to watch the pupils using schooble on their own’ says Simon, ‘we learnt more from watching them than we did through testing it ourselves.’

The pupils involved in testing particularly liked the ‘make friends’ features. It didn’t take them long to find the messaging facility, and they were really excited at the prospect of being able to make friends with other pupils all over the world.

a schooble group page

Schooble is a great way for pupils to learn about the internet, and to make web pages in a controlled environment. There is a system for reporting abuse, which can be anything from bad words to offensive behaviour.

If a school is reported, their pages are temporarily disabled while we look into what has happened. If anyone is found to be abusing schooble in any way, their pages will be removed without warning. ‘We have to be really strict about this’ says Rob Lawrie, Schooble developer, ‘we operate a zero tolerance policy because we don’t want pupils to be exposed to anything inappropriate.’

Schooble is suitable for schools of all types, so Music, Dance and Drama schools are more than welcome to join in. Go to www.schooble.com to register your school and add your groups!





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