Introducing Twiducate

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twiducate.com is a free resource for educators. Developed in 2009, our goal is to create a medium for teachers and students to continue their learning outside the classroom. We attempt to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and

home learners in a social networking environment.

We understand that many social networking sites exist, however the control of content is limited for teachers. Also, many of these social networking sites are continuously being blocked

by school firewalls and administrators.

Our service proudly differs in that only teachers and students may view classroom posts, thus

creating a private network for you and your students and a safer online learning environment.

Many students already use social networking sites. Why not give them an opportunity to develop their learning in this type of environment but with control over visibility and content. Talk

about student engagement!

It is a fact that students will need social networking, blogging and basic internet skills to

compete in today's business world.

As educators with an interest in web 2.0, we understand how education has and will continue to change. We want to provide an opportunity for our students to explore web 2.0 but are

constantly facing barriers with existing social networking sites.

Welcome twiducate.com.

Not only will twiducate.com give your students the web 2.0 skills they need, but also expand their reading, writing, thoughts and ideas beyond the classroom setting.

Safe, secure, private collaborative learning for school children.

Twiducate is a fabulous web 2.0 resource which, with creative thinking, allows educators to present learning experiences in a new, dynamic and engaging way. It is an extension of the way children communicate outside of the classroom so using Twiducate will not involve a sharp learning curve for pupils.

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How To Begin

I just put ‘Bradford’.

I just said ‘class teacher’.

I just put ‘Mr. Tasker’s Class

I just put ‘class6t’

I changed this to Year 6.

You must tick the agree to Terms of Service box before clicking to sign up. You may need to validate your e-mail before you can begin using Twiducate.

Your network has been configured to allow access to Twiducate. You have a valid e-mail address which is accessible in school.

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This is the standard log in screen. You must say whether you are a teacher or a student then type out their ‘splash message’ in the box Your Answer.

When you successfully join Twiducate you can read and become familiar with the Terms Of Service as indicated by the orange arrow above.

You have read the Terms Of Service.

Add Your Photo Or Other Avatar

Just as on Facebook or Twitter having an avatar is important so users can easily recognise your posts. This is the photo I uploaded for mine.

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Add your avatar by clicking Avatar as shown above. You can then navigate to your photo which will be on your local computer and then upload it.

You have taken a digital photo of yourself to use as your avatar and you have used an image editing package to resize your picture to around 100 by 100 pixels in dimension.

Adding Students To Your Class

At the moment your Twiducate account contains only yourself as the teacher. You now need to add each of your students to the account. Click on the Students tab as shown by the orange arrow above. This will bring up the Manage Students screen.

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Type in the student’s first name or alias only then click Add.

The student is added and a password is automatically generated. I’ve decided to change this and give each member of the class the name of an animal as their password.

Lizzy’s password will therefore now be ‘lion’

I’ve now added 5 children and given each one an animal password.

This is now confirmed by looking at the Students tab above. It shows I’ve added 5.

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My five students are shown underneath my own image. As yet the students don’t have avatars yet.

In the top right hand corner under Class Code the ‘active user’ is shown. Since I logged in as myself this is me right now.

To add an avatar for each student I have to log out as myself then log in as them using their user name and password. I’ll log out now then log in as Lizzy with her password, ‘lion’

Please Note : Lizzy only has to say that she’s a student and give her password to log in. She doesn’t need to type in a user name!

Lizzy does have to type in their message though.

Click GO to log in.

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The active user now changes to Lizzy as shown.

I clicked on Avatar then uploaded this photo ( 100 by 100 pixels ) of Lizzy.

If I click back on HOME I can now see that Lizzy’s avatar has been uploaded.

Someone has taken a digital photo of all the students you are adding to this Twiducate account and that each has been cropped just to show the face AND resized to no more than 100 by 100 pixels. The cropped and resized images are stored in an accessible location on your local computer.

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Here’s how the lower right hand panel now looks after I uploaded avatars for my five students. These are NOT the real names of the students by the way.

Begin Using Twiducate

To begin using Twiducate make sure you are logged in as yourself, the teacher. I’m going to ask my group an open ended question about what they did at the weekend. I’ve typed in my question and pressed Post To Class.

My question has now appeared as a post for the group to respond to.

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Each student has now told us what they did at the weekend.

Comments Please!

Twiducate makes it really easy for members of the group to comment on statements. In my example below I’ve asked everyone to write a one-sentence comment about James’ post. I’ve told them to actually ask James a question about his post.

The other members of the group all asked a question about James’ post that he played football for his scouts team and won 2.0.

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Here are the questions that the other members of the group asked James about his football.

James Does Some Writing

In this next activity James looks at the 4 question/comments the rest of the group have made. I ask him to produce one paragraph of writing about his football match so that he ANSWERS each of the questions he has been asked.

This is the short piece of writing that James produced in response to his questions. He can now click the Add A Comment button.

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Here is James’ finished piece of writing along with the questions he was asked.

In this first example each student asks James one question/comment about his football match but there are 4 other members of this group who can all do exactly the same as James has done.

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Lizzy tells us she went to her gran’s house in Pudsey for tea. So far nobody has commented on her statement.

Just as before, ask each member of the group to ask a comment/question:

So above are the questions we all asked Lizzy about going to tea at her gran’s house. Now Lizzy will produce a paragraph of writing in which she answers all these questions.

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So, here’s the writing Lizzy did about going to tea hat her gran’s based on the comment/questions she was asked.

Add Micro Bio

Each student/person in the group can add a one-sentence bio to their profile. It’s very simple to do.

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Lizzy logs in and then clicks profile. This brings up the one-line bio and password screen.

She clicks here to save changes.

Her one line bio appears here.

You are able to browse the web with FIREFOX AND your systems administrator has not disabled any of its ‘right click’ features. OR you are browsing with Internet Explorer and your systems administrator has not disabled right click functions.

Twiducate makes it possible to work with images although you cannot upload them directly from your computer, except for your avatar picture. You need to be able to specify an image URL or web address where the desired image is located. Explanation follows.

In the example above I’ve asked the children to find just ONE image (using Google images)

which says something important about them and to insert it into a post. Lizzy wants to be a vet and loves animals so she searches DOGS and finds a picture of dog breeds.

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WITH FIREFOX

Lizzy is browsing using Firefox and she finds the image below. She opens it then right clicks

Copy Image Location. This is very important because this copies the web address of the image into the clip board.

Lizzy now goes back to her Twiducate post and clicks the insert image button shown by the orange arrow

below:

This box now appears and it needs a web

address for the image.

eg http://www.worldofdogs/images/breeds.jpg

Lizzy then right clicks her mouse and selects Paste.

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The web address of the image should now appear in the

box. Lizzy then clicks OK.

Lizzy then has to enter a name for the image and click OK

once more.

The image then appears in Lizzy’s post. She has then

typed a couple of sentences to explain why she chose this particular image.

To add this as a post Lizzy now click Post To Class.

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This is how Lizzy’s post looks with the image inserted.

Since Lizzy has just posted this there are no comment from other members of the group

Using Internet Explorer

Each web browser works slightly differently so, if you are using Internet Explorer, the process is

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Lizzy find an image of some puppies and

she opens it. In Internet Explorer she right clicks and selects Properties right at

the bottom.

She needs the URL (web address) of the

image which she right-clicks and copies.

She pastes the URL into the appropriate

box.

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She gives the images a name and clicks OK so that the

picture appears in her post.

Lizzy then adds a small amount of text to explain why she chose the image.

Each pupil in the group can be asked to insert one image into a new post just as Lizzy has done above and the same kind of question/comment activity as before could take place … SEE PAGE 10. By doing this the learning experiences are being generated by the pupils themselves. They are ‘doing real work’ for a ‘genuine audience’.