Case Studies
Broadway Infants
Considerable development of the structure of their Merlin area has taken place, but their main focus was to use Merlin as a tool to communicate with their parents. With that in mind an area was developed for sharing information and pictures. Two parents information events were held where the parents could come along and obtain their child’s login, which would enable them to access the site.
Wellesley
Initially this school’s focus was to use Merlin as a tool with staff and to aid admin. The school decided in the first instance to use the Merlin calendar as the school diary, staff upload key dates to the calendar and using the alertsfunction within Merlin admin staff can book supply in response to staff being out.
Marshfield
The school are using Merlin to upload videos children have made demonstrating mathematical strategies. Children therefore have a useful resource to refer to when doing homework and they can share class methods with their parents. A custom list was set up so all videos could be loaded to one library and then filtered into the correct pages. This would enable the library to grow to include videos in other subject areas.
Hawkesbury
Children have been using a blog to reflect on their learning. Each child has a post which can be edited each week. Permissions are set so the post can be viewed only by the child and the class teachers. Comments on progress can be left by the class teacher. A document library has also been used to allow children to have a folder each to upload homework to. The class teacher can then check out the homework and leave comments which the children can then read.
A news web part has been added to the children’s area for use as a place for children to share achievements. Children add something they are proud of to the news section which can then be shared on a Monday in class - a sort of on line show and tell.