Part 1 - Account management

If your school uses NTLP, you can request for our team to check and provide your class’ NTLP usernames and passwords, and if needed, get passwords reset.

NTLP users can contact support@ntlp.org.uk, but please give good notice (i.e. not the day before your lesson) as while we attempt to respond to job requests as quickly as possible, at busy times we cannot guarantee an instant response.

If your school has it's own Google domain you will need to contact your administrator for information about student accounts and passwords.

 

NTLP Account management

If students forget their password, all teaching staff in all schools should have the ability to reset student passwords for individual children in their own school. Here’s how:

The child should enter their username / email address as normal on the login page at ntlp.airhead.io  

 

Click next and on the password entry screen, then click Forgot password

 

Tick the option for ‘Unlock by teacher in (name of school)’ and click next.

 

 

Authenticate the reset by adding your own username and password, then click Next to complete the process.

 

 

 

Part 2 - Set up a class group 

It’s also advisable to get a Google group set up for your class, this will save a lot of time later and give you the ability to email the whole class and share documents or sites with them all in one go, via a group email address, for example: schoolname.class5@ntlp.org.uk

When you share a Google document or Google site with a Google Group it automatically shares it with all members of the group with the same levels of permission. This can save a lot of time adding email addresses when sharing.

NTLP users can contact support@ntlp.org.uk to request a Google group to be set up for your class, but again, please give good notice as while we attempt to respond to job requests as quickly as possible, at busy times we cannot guarantee an instant response.

If your school has it's own Google Domain, your administrator will be able to create groups for you in the admin console > Groups > Create Group

 

Part 3 - Create the planning documents

First, create a folder in your Google Drive for this project. It really helps to be organised and have all the documents you need in one place so you can find them easily later.

 

 

The first part of this unit involves the students working collaboratively to research your chosen topic. This is best done using Google Docs. Organising the students into groups and setting up their planning documents before the lesson is vital.

 

Step 1

Assign groups and collect their email address together into a Google doc, e.g:

etc

Separate the email addresses with commas, this will then make it much easier to just copy and paste them when it comes to sharing docs and sites with the whole group later.

 

Step 2

Create a template Google planning document. Each group will get their own copy of this to use for their research. You can adapt the topic to cover anything you are studying with your class that is suitable. You will also need to consider the sub-categories of research that each group member will focus their research on.

Here’s an example document on the topic of a local history project for Wallsend. How much of this you provide for your students in your own version will depend on their abilities and how much time you have for their research, but we'd definitely recommend having at least a few websites to get them started.

We have split our planning document into coloured sections using tables. This just makes it a bit easier for students to find the section they should be working on, or that you refer them to, e.g. "Now move down the document and work in the pink section."

• The YELLOW section asks them to add their names, choose a group manager and assign their initial research roles. 
• In the GREEN section It gives them some safe web links to get them started with the different subsections of their research. It is definitely a good idea to give them a few quality sites linked to your topic in this area. It will speed up their research and also increase the quality of their work if they have a few quality sources. This doesn’t mean they are the only sites they can use but it can be a strong starting point before they look for, perhaps more specific things, elsewhere.
• The PINK section is their notepad area where they should begin to collect information together as they research the websites they have been given, as well as anything they find from books and other resources. 
• The BLUE section is for planning their website and should be completed at the end of their research, in lesson 2.

 

They should not include images in the planning doc but may include a list of images they want to look for or create. They may also include links to other useful sites they find. 

You can take a copy of the example document and change it for your own needs by opening the document and going to File > Make a copy and it will duplicate the document and save it to your own Google Drive. Alternatively you can just make your own. 

 

 

Make a copy for each group

Once you have created your template, check and double check you are happy with everything on it. When it's good to go, you will need to duplicate it so each group has their own version.

Open your template 'master copy' and go to File > Make a copy. Rename the copy ‘group 1 planning document’, and change the title on the document to show their group name.

 

 

Repeat the process so each group has their own planning document. Keep a master copy for yourself as well.

Prior to the lesson share each planning document with the correct group members so each group only has access to their own group's version.

Take your time with this. Open one group document at a time and click Share in the top right of the screen.

 

 

Then copy the group members' email addresses from document you prepared earlier. 

 

And then paste them onto the Add people and groups box of the share window.

 

 

You can then add a message if you want to, check they are all listed as Editors and then click Send, and then Done.

 

 

You can then close the document. The students will then get a notification email and the document will be waiting for them in the Shared with me section of their Google Drive.

Repeat this for the other group documents.

 

Creating the sites

We advise that you also set up the empty Google sites for students before the project starts so you ‘own’ the sites and therefore maintain management and control of them.

A new version of Google Sites was introduced in 2018 and you can now create and manage them directly from your Google Drive. 

 

 

In Drive click on New and go down to More, Google Sites

 

 

This newer version of sites offers a simplified user experience that should steer the students to creating a cleaner and more modern looking website. 

 

 

Name the site, in the top left of the screen.

 

 

Here we are looking at the empty homepage:

 

 

For now we aren’t going to do anything to the site except make some copies of it, one for each group you have in your class. 

Save all the websites into the same project folder you made at the start. (tip - if you open that folder before you create the sites, they will automatically be saved in that location.)

Once you have your master copy of the empty website in the folder, right-click it and choose Make a copy.

 

 

Wait for the duplicate version to be created and then right-click that version and choose Rename and rename it for your first group.

 

 

Repeat this process for all the groups until you have the correct number of sites, all named with the group numbers, plus your master copy so you can demonstrate with that version.

 

 

We won’t share them with the students yet. Wait until they have completed their research before doing this (see lesson 3 below).