Teacher Guide

What is the Participate website?

The Participate website is a tool kit, which will allow you to create a lesson around the environment and environmental monitoring. There are three types of activities that are supported via the Participate website:

  1. Making a 60-second film
  2. Making an online poster
  3. Collecting sensed data and visualising the data via the web using Google Earth and Google Maps

In the resource section of this website you will also find the details of how you can run each activity, plus tips for making films, posters and sensing data.

What can you control via the site

  1. You can set up student groups
  2. Select what types of tasks you want your students to work on
  3. Add exemplar content
  4. Store, save, review and publish work
  5. Moderate and add topics to the discussion forum
  6. Collaborate with other schools in the Participate network

What do you need to get started?

td note - once netsight has added above; add line to say teachers can add exemplar content this way

Everything you need to get you started is documented within this website. We advise you to go through the website with your ICT co-orindator so they are aware of what Internet privileges you class will need. Once you have the required Internet the other main pieces of kit you will need include:

  1. Digital Camera
  2. Editing software - e.g Photostory
  3. Sensing kit

The details of how to install and get this kit are available via the ICT guide in the Resources section of this website.

How do you set up student groups?

Creating a new student group is as simple as logging in, clicking the Create Group arrow in the right-hand menu and following the on-screen prompts.

After you have entered the required information you will be provided with a username and password for the group, which you should make a note of for future reference.

You can then provide these details to the group, or use them yourself to log in and create exemplar content.

Guidelines for Moderating Discussion Forums

The Participate website is moderated by the teachers involved in the project, plus members of the BBC, Participate team.

Each individual school remains solely responsible for the content of the messages posted by their student.

Moderation is a manual process and we ask you to bear in mind that removal of offensive messages etc may not always be immediate.

Moderators (teachers and BBC Participate team) have a right to ban anyone from the forum boards who is seen to cause extreme conflict/harassment in written posts and continues to do so after a warning from the moderators.

As a teacher moderator your aim is to ensure the smooth flow of topics, remove inappropriate or offensive material and discourage sidetracking.

Moderation involves:

  1. Keeping discussions on track by supporting students to keep focused on the topic
  2. Putting up new topics for discussion
  3. Ensuring that all material posted to the discussion forum is owned by the users or you have consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. If students quoting articles from newspapers or websites they must include appropriate references to the article quoted.
  4. Welcoming new schools members (this is something all members can do)
  5. Sharing ideas and communicating with other Participate school members

House Rules for this site are:

Please ensure that your school's contribution DOES NOT contain anything that:

  • Is likely to disrupt, provoke, attack or offend others.
  • Is racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable.
  • Is a swear word or other language likely to offend.
  • Breaks the law or condones or encourages unlawful activity. This includes infringement of copyright, defamation and contempt of court.
  • Advertises products or services for profit or gain.
  • Is seen to impersonate someone else.
  • Is a link to other websites which break these House Rules.
  • Describes or encourages activities which could endanger the safety or well-being of others.
  • Is ‘spam’, that is posts containing the same or similar message posted multiple times.
  • Is off-topic for the particular project or discussion forum.

And finally, please remember that you MUST NOT include in your contribution: any personal and/or contact details such as people’s full names, phone numbers, postal or email addresses.

These rules may be revised from time to time as occasion demands and in order to respond to the needs of members of the Participate school website.


Online Questionnaires:

We have designed online questionnaires to help us to evaluate the Participate Schools activities. They are being delivered as pre- and post- test, to allow us to compare responses before and after your students have taken part in the activities, as well as to get their views on both the activities and technologies.

Please would you therefore get your class to fill in the pre-test questionnaire as a first activity for the project, and the post-test one as a final one (ie, after all your work on the project has been done and you are about to move on to another topic. These questionnaires are not intended in any way as tests of the students’ abilities.

Please assure them that for our purposes, there are no right and wrong answers, as we are only interested in comparing their responses before and after they have taken part in the project. This information will be very valuable in helping evaluate both the value of the activities for educational purposes, and the usability of the associated technologies.

Click here to fill out the pre-test questionnaire (the first activity of the project)

Click here to fill out the post-test questionnaire (the last activity of the project)

Click here to view the Terms & Conditions

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