This afternoon we had our first and second conference with the National Archives/. Our primary six classes took part in the KS 2: Literacy and History: Victorian Child Criminals Poetry Workshop one after the other.

In the past we have conferenced with schools in Glasgow, Edinburgh and our partner school in Holland. these provide the children with an audience to present to and let them be an audience for their peers.

todays was a bit different, it allowed the children to tap into expertise from outside the classroom, and virtually visit the archive. From my point of view it was like having an expert co-operatively teach my class.

The connection went through JANET Videoconferencing Service (JVCS) with the support of LTS’s Videoconferencing guy Stuart Oliphant, who gave me a lot of help in getting me signed up with JVCS, setting up and testing. Stuart also provides the bridge for our connections to Holland.

The video and audio were of a much better quality than we are used to and the children were very involved about the lesson, expect some posts from them soon blogging the afternoon and the resulting poems.