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The GagglerVolume VI • Issue II • October 2010

Gaggle’s New Social Wall

Curriculum Corner

Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, and now in the movie theaters, and while it’s a popular tool, most schools don’t allow access, and frown on friending between students and teachers. But no one can deny that online social networking is a huge phenomenon among today’s youth, as well over 73% of teens participate. So what’s the appeal? Social networking can help students feel connected and part of a group, which is extremely important to them, especially in middle and high school. It also allows opportunities for expression and communication. With a single click, anyone can share their thoughts or a link to a video, song or almost anything with everyone in their network. Students are used to being able to instantly connect and share with their peers, and this could be one way to help educators connect with them, as well, and leverage this technology for educational benefit.

So after many requests from educators, Gaggle developed our safe Social Wall. Using the safety features, filters, and access control Gaggle is known for, the Social Wall lets students connect within the school, or across the district, and gives everyone a forum for sharing feelings and ideas, as well as information. As is true for all of Gaggle’s features,

educators can determine what kind of access students have to the Wall. Students can be allowed to add friends within just their classes, their school, or the entire district. And of course, the Blocked Word list and the Anti-Pornography Scanner apply to all postings and comments. Teachers can also drill into a student’s Social Wall through their User Data, even if they aren’t one of the student’s approved friends.

The Groups feature on the Social Wall is where schools can really take advantage of the tool to support students educationally and emotionally. When you create a group, you can decide specifically whom you want to invite to be a member, and that page will be private to only those members. So a teacher could have one for each class for discussions or study groups, or create a group for struggling readers to support each other. A guidance counselor might create a cross district support group for students who are dealing with a difficult issue, like divorce or mental illness. The football coach may have one for the team to post practice info and motivational postings. The possibilities are endless, and we’re excited to see what creative uses our Gaggle educators come up with.

Need a quick Gaggle training? Register for one of our many free webinars. Visit our Webinars blog at www.gaggle.net/blog/webinars, or use the convenient Portal Link on the panel in your account to see all of our upcoming offerings. The webinars run about 45 minutes and are offered at multiple times so you are sure to find one that fits your schedule. If your school gives credit for attending these trainings, please email us after participating and we can provide documentation of your attendance. Our regular topics of “Welcome to Gaggle” for teachers, and “Welcome to Gaggle – Administrative Training” are available. And this month we are featuring two special webinars: “Educating and Connecting with Students through Gaggle, “and “Digital Locker, Zoho Document, and the Homework Drop Box.”

Our new training videos are also on their way! We have over 65 new videos covering everything in Gaggle from Adding users to Zoho Documents! You’ll find those on the left panel in Gaggle Apps, and even students will have their own collection of videos to view. Our new videos are all under 5 minutes each, so you can get a fast tutorial on a specific topic whenever you need it. We’ll update and add any new videos every few months.

Free Webinars

You can create as many Social Wall groups as you like, so it’s a great place to have ongoing discussion and collaboration for an entire class, or for a small group. Since collaborative learning can be so effective, use a social wall group to create student cohorts. You can select groups of students across multiple classes or even multiple schools to work on projects together, and help each other with learning and understanding material. Politics could be another good topic to create small groups around for discussion and debate.

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The Gaggler Volume VI • Issue II • October 2010

School SpotlightHester Junior High, Franklin Park School District 84

Franklin Park District 84 is a small K-8 district in the Chicago suburbs. Hester Junior High serves over 400 students in 6th-8th grades. The school made the decision to purchase Gaggle accounts for all of their students last year, and is really taking advantage of the many features Gaggle has to offer. Integrated Enrichment Teacher, Christina Analitis, says, “It not only engages students, but makes learning fun!”

Christina focuses on enhancing her student’s learning in other classes through the use of technology, so she’s done a number of projects using different tools, and has even more ideas for the upcoming months. Last year, she used email quite a bit to facilitate communications on group projects. And Gaggle’s chat rooms have become an important tool for test preparation. For a unit on Ancient China, she split the students into 5 groups, one for each dynasty. After researching their dynasty, the students used chat to answer questions and review for the test. While the test prep was the objective, they also learned research, technical, and collaborative skills at the same time. This year her students must take and pass a state-required test on the U.S. Constitution, and she’s planning on leveraging the chat rooms to get them ready.

Christina also loves the homework drop boxes. Her students like being able to work online, and they don’t have to remember to print or bring in a paper assignment, so their work is more likely to be turned in. It’s also a great way to save paper.

Last year, Christina used the student blogs for an ongoing current events assignment. Students reviewed and selected current events online and created a blog posting about it. Then they read other students’ blogs and were required to post comments on at least two of them. This kept everyone up on numerous events, while only being responsible for learning about one. This year, she is planning on increasing the scope of the blog use to include other topics like science and language arts. She hopes to encourage personal reading by having her kids post book recommendations for their peers.

Its obvious Christina Analitis is passionate about motivating and engaging her students with technology. And as she shared with her Gaggle account rep recently, “With all the new features Gaggle has to offer, students are able to use the technology tools that they love, and find relevance for them in the classroom.” For another perspective on Gaggle, check out our Guest Author article, written by one of Christina’s students.

Tech TalkMoodle Integration

Ask Admin…Question: My students and I have just started using the social wall. I noticed there is an option to create groups. I created a few groups for my classes to use, but it doesn’t look like all the students I added are in the group. Why don’t they all show as members?

Answer: Social wall groups act differently than user groups or classes that you may have created. When you create a social wall group, an invitation is sent to the users you have chosen to add. The user has to accept the invitation to join before they will show in the list of members on the group page. If you’d like your students to accept the invitation, you may want to let them know ahead of time that they should be expecting an invitation from you.

Please do not hesitate to contact Gaggle’s Sales orCustomer Service staff if you have any questions!

800-288-7750admin@gaggle.net

If your district is using Moodle CMS, it is very simple to integrate Gaggle’s new Moodle module into your installation. The Moodle module creates a new multiple instance block type called “Gaggle Widget” that allows for several of Gaggle’s most popular home tab widgets (Inbox, Social Wall, etc) to be added to any page in your Moodle environment.

To use the module, your district will first need to set up Trusted Server Authentication by contacting Gaggle customer service. Installation consists of simply extracting the contents of a zip file to your Moodle blocks folder. After the module is installed, you will need to enter your Gaggle DistrictID, Trusted Server password and domain name on the options screen. Once that is done, all that remains is to add blocks anywhere you like in Moodle. Users will then see the widgets for their own Gaggle accounts without requiring a separate login to Gaggle.

For districts that are not using Moodle, Gaggle will be launching support for systems like Blackboard and Sharepoint in the coming months.

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Gaggle, Gaggle, Gaggle. The new and advanced Gaggle has changed over the summer and now features much more. The new elements also include e-mails, profile pages, chat rooms, message boards, and zoho documents.

Let’s start with zoho documents. This neat aspect of Gaggle is used to work on projects with a buddy. You don’t have to be with your friend, you just need to be on Gaggle. You and your friend open the document, and then pick a spot or sentence to write. You cannot work on the same part as your friend at the same time. As you type your work, it shows up on your chum’s screen. This characteristic is helpful in projects, homework, and essays. Use this helpful tool and never again worry that your room isn’t clean enough for company.

If you think that Facebook is the only place where you can manage your own website, you’re wrong; you can do that on Gaggle too. Only on Gaggle it’s called Profile Pages. You can share your favorite websites, books, games, quotes, and music. Your chums also have instant access to your favorite’s websites. They can also rock along with you as you listen to your favorite songs. View other student’s profiles and have some fun with those.

The Social Wall is even better that the profile pages. You can upload photos and images. Blog, comment, laugh and have a good time. Crack jokes with your friends as you post a funny picture. The social wall brings friends, teachers, and classmates together to share poems, art, and games. You can show your favorite websites or leave a comment about a funny photograph. Whatever you do, it’ll always be interesting!

GaggleTube is another feature Gaggle has. GaggleTube is filtered YouTube. It is meant to be useful for students and blocks out most of the offensive videos. You can watch the funny Mr. Bean episodes or historical documentaries on explorers, though, I am sorry to say the filtering took out a lot of harmless videos. To use GaggleTube, scroll down on your menu until you find the label GaggleTube and a cartoon TV above it. Click on it, and the GaggleTube search engine will appear. Type in your query and soon you will be enjoying a video.

As you see, Gaggle has tons of fun, resourceful, and helpful features. You can use it at school, home, or the library, for projects, fun, or learning. In my opinion Gaggle is the most wonderful student e-mail website that has been ever made.

Guest AuthorWritten by Mati From Hester Junior High

Gaggle’s IT department is truly the backbone of our organization, and Nicholas Aplington-Johnson has been a very important part of that team for over 2½ years now. As a System Support Engineer, Nick takes care of all kinds of things for our own staff, and for our customers. He works extensively with our customers using automated data integration, helping them fine tune exports from their student management systems and setting up the import process on our end. You could say Nick is responsible for creating and updating hundreds of thousands of user accounts every day! And on top of that, he’s always willing to help figure out a tricky technical issue, or translate something highly technical into plain English. He’s also the office go-to when something strange pops up on a computer screen.

Nick is a very active guy who loves riding his motorcycles (always wearing a helmet!) and plays on a local soccer team. His favorite website is Woot! And he has a great collection of interesting items and t-shirts he’s gotten from them. It’s not unusual to see the occasional Woot monkey fly across the office, or to get hit by a flying foam missile from his USB launcher. Nick does a great job of supporting all of us and our customers, and has a fun time doing it.

A Gaggle Introduction

Gaggle.Net, Inc.1-800-288-7750P.O. Box 1352, Bloomington, IL 61702Copyright © 2010

*The following article was written by a student Gaggle user. It has not been revised or edited by Gaggle, but some content may have been omitted due to space limitation.*

The Gaggler Volume VI • Issue II • October 2010

New in Gaggle• You can share Digital Locker files to our Built-in Address groups, like All Students. Find them on the drop down menu at the

top of the Digital Locker sharing box. Please note that an email invitation will not be sent when these are used.

• Receive text reminders for your Gaggle calendar events. Register your mobile device on My Account and when you create an event, select Text for reminder type.

• Your school or district has a new option for text access. On the School Setup Page, you can turn texting completely on or off, or select Social Wall Texting Only which will let student’s text to their Wall, but not allow teacher/student texting.