| | Thu Jul 26, 2007 6:17 pm | | | | Comments: 0 Views: 171 |
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Many early primary educators want to connect their classrooms with others Internationally. This is an excellent goal for a classroom and educator, however, practical methodology needs to be established before a high quality exchange between classrooms can happen. Before we can enter into a discussion about collaborations we need to determine what a classroom should look like online and what the web can do to practically improve results in the classroom and at home. If this isn't done international classroom collaborations become a bit like trying to coauthor a book in a language both can't even speak. This post will go over some fundamental applications for the web that improve the classroom in ways that actually save time and create real results.
Content is information that creates the web
Your classroom is full of content. Assignments, schedules, field trips, assemblies, class notes, syllabuses, tests, quizzes, grades, seminars, conferences, course material, and communication with parents, students and coworkers are part of any educators day to day. These things are content that teachers are privy to and make up a fundamental part of every child's education even if they're not aware of it. Some of these things don't have any need to be made publicly available others can't be shared enough. Teachers are very aware of this and make distinctions about who has access to to their content every day. What hasn't been made clear is that the web is a good place to store class content and in doing so it can make an educators life easier.
All content can be stored on the web if you have the ability to control that information
If you're an educator you no doubt have a lot of things going on every day. You're probably constantly struggling to avoid information overload as it is and the thought up creating a website that holds all you coursework is ridiculous. You're right, it is. As with anything educators need tools that fit their needs and make their lives easier and not more complex. What I'm proposing here is not another thing to throw on the pile. It's a tool to pick up the pile and sort it out. Once the pile has been straightened out it will be more clear what to do at any given time.
Part of controlling content is knowing what to do with it once you have it. It's pretty clear what to do with a syllabus once you've written it; print it out and hand it to your class. If parents are on top of things they'll be looking for it. However, I think in most cases parents aren't really aware that the syllabus even exists. Maybe it's important to you that parents are aware, so you send it home with students expecting a parent signature. Unfortunately, that's yet another thing to keep track of. Every time you try and communicate with a parent, and make sure they're getting the message, you have to set up a whole tracking system in your grade book to determine if your efforts are at all successful.
Establishing a place online where parents can go to get content about your class and making it a place where they want to go is central to the idea that properly controlling your information on the web and it will save you time. There are many simple daily tasks that can be done more easily online simply because it is more efficient to distribute, monitor, and even control content.
Your content is an extension of yourself
There's a lot of hype about web 2.0 and how it's going to revolutionize everything including education, but I think what people I talk to tend to miss is that educators are an infinitely more powerful instrument than any web application can ever hope to be. All the web can do is distribute and control content but educators have insight and knowledge about what is going on in the classroom. That's the kind of content students, parents, and coworkers need to see, not widgets that hold your mail and suggest the newest blog posts to read.
Imagine keeping your students' grades online in a secure place where parents have the ability to post comments on them. Imagine being able to hold a whole conversation about those grades and what the student can do to improve or maintain them. How much better is that than being able to access your bank records online? How many parents will become more involved with their child's education if they can go online and see how their child did that same day or in real time? It doesn't take much to find out; educators just have to decide to securely organize their content and make it available.
Establish what the Web can do for your classroom
The web can do many things and your probably more capable of doing all of these things than you realize. However, looking for a series of tools that get what you want done isn't the answer. One tool should be able to handle all of your needs on the web. Using two tools is sort of like using separate computers. Tools on the web don't communicate between each other except on a superficial level no matter what the Web 2.0 gurus tell you. If you use more than one tool on the internet you're probably wasting a lot of time.
Some schools implement blackboard or moodle and in addition teachers will create their own blog and use wikis for class projects. That's just not practical for early primary. The infrastructure and time requirements to create and maintain these things is very high and the benefit to students is questionable. I think it should also be pretty clear that each of these tools doesn't connect well. You have to force a connection between them by creating links and perpetually pounding the existence of all three tools into the heads of students and parents who may or may not sue them. If you've got more than one site you've got PR problems aside from content management problems.
When you choose a tool for the web you can only choose one if you really want to control the content you create. It has got to be the place where you can communicate, post content, and have security settings for content that shouldn't be publicly accessible (like grades and meeting minutes). You need to be able to control and organize the content as well so the right people can find the right information at the right time.
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