There is an interesting discussion going on inside Google Wave by both educators and students about how Google Wave could be used in the classroom. One of the most interesting Waves currently on-going is titled Uses of Google Wave in the Classroom, it was started by Stuart Ridout and I really encourage you to give it a read and join the discussion if you’re a student, educator or just generally interested and opinionated.

In this Wave the conversation starts with the following assumptions:

• We’ll work on the basis that Google Wave is open to all and that students are able to register immediately.
• We’ll also work on the basis that the preview allows Google to ‘scale’ Wave and that all features are available in the final version, including the online indicator which seems to have been disabled at the moment

They then move quickly into ways that Wave could indeed be used in the classroom:

• I think we could have great success in smaller groups collaborating than whole-class waves which could get quite chaotic quickly. I can see it being used by small groups collaborating on a piece of homework such as a research project. This would allow leadership and management skills to develop as within each group someone will have to make the final decision on what’s in and out.
• Real-time international exchanges. Using the translation bot, students would be able to communicate with students in other countries without the additional pressure of language barriers.
• Without needing to be talking to foreign pupils, the translation bot will surely be useful in the Languages classroom.
• Curriculum planning
• Lesson/activity planning
• Rapid prototyping of e-learning activities
• Collaborative composition (sonnets, screenplays etc.)
• Planning presentations. Each blip can represent a slide, draft content, speakers notes and insert any images into each blip. Replies can be relevant to an individual blip/slide. When all parties are happy with the presentation a single person can create the final presentation.
• Planning school trips – great for staff & students to collaborate in the planning process.
• Taking and sharing minutes of school council meetings, the waves could be published back to the rest of the school.
• Deeper than usual Maths collaborative thinking / investigation via the use of the Wave Alpha bot.
• Report cards? Shared between staff, student & parents.
• Creation and collaboration of a students e-portfolio
• blogs
• wikis
• forums
• Also enhances the possibilities for parental engagement in the students e-portfolios – for example, a parent either contributing to, or commenting on their childs blog, or learning journal
• Tech documentation and help files

They have listed what they feel will be some anticipated problems with Google Wave:

Internal politics – especially in larger institutions.

Privacy issues.

Content vandalism.

Legal (e.g. Blackboard patent, ownership of collaborative content)

Confusion & fear factor – it gets hectic in here sometimes!

Finally they have given Wave Developers a wish-list of extensions and/or Google Wave enhancements:

Ability to group contacts.

Scheduling the cloning of waves.

Scheduling invitation of groups (of students) to individual waves and groups of waves.

Full range of embedded media gadgets.

Directory of embeddable learning objects

Directory of group interaction objects

Ability to ‘freeze’ blips (for rubrics, core content, set exercises etc.)

Coloured text-based on user

This is, as I said above, a great ongoing Wave. But there are some others that you might also want to read. Here is a list of some of these other classroom related discussions which are equally insightful:

• Blackboard Vs Wave
• Computer systems and internet technology class notes
• Google Wave as a collaborative learning tool
• Google Wave Lesson Demonstrations
• Social Networking in the Classroom
• Software Roles in Education
• Student-side Class Management: a Wave template
• Wave in Class
• WAVE to all the educators!
• Wave for Notes

All this discussion is encouraging and it will be very interesting to see where this leads and what Google Wave looks like when it does get adopted into the classroom.

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