Exploring Technology - Session 8

There are so many interesting and useful technology tools that I want to use in my classroom.

One that I'm working on is a google site for my class. I had a class website in 2009 that I found really useful. It contained a page with announcements, one to download lesson ppts., a countdown the Regents, and a calendar of assignments, links, etc. However, this year I would like the website to be more interactive, so maybe I will try to incorporate a blog component. Last year I didn't need to make a website because my whole school used Edline which was an amazing resource. We basically all had our own webpage and once the student logged in they could easily access any of their classes. It even linked up to our online gradebooks and we could give quizzes and assignments online, score them online, and they would automatically load into our gradebook. While this resource was great, it was expensive and the school had to purchase the subscription for the teachers to use it. Google is free and just has as easy to organize so that looks like my best option right now!

Another on the list that I found interesting was Wikispaces. I'm starting to make my Wikispace right now but the formatting looks like it will take a little getting use to. However, it does look like it will be a nice platform for student discussion and collaboration. I will link to this from my website and perhaps make assignments for students to post. It's great that this resource is free. It seems a little daunting to get all of this set up now before the school year starts (because once it starts there's no extra time for anything) so I think it will be important to get the students involved in posting and creating pages. That way, they are involved, they can show off their tech skills, they can take ownership over the site, and it reduces the workload on me. One hurdle will be getting all the students to be members of the wikispace and set up using it. One technique that I learned was to have a couple "experts" that assist their group members in doing this, and that should make the initial start-up easier.

I would be lying if I didn't say that a lot of this seems like a LOT more work, but I definitely see the richness it adds to my teaching and know it will be worth it.