EDCI 5825 - Week 3

1) One of the best ways to manage the opportunities afforded by the internet in terms of publishing student work, it to create a class website (or wiki). There are many sites that can help teachers in getting started, as well as the students themselves may know much about creating websites. The class could keep the website up to date and the teacher would be there to advise the students. This is important given that comments and feedback may come from many far reaching sources. Teachers should help with "what to publish; when to publish; and how to help students make meaning of feedback" but should not give up control as "publisher and editor in chief" (November, 2001, p.39). According to November, some sites that are useful in getting started with creating web pages include: www.schoolnotes.com, www.blackboard.com and www.apple.com (2001, p.35). An example of a teacher who uses a wiki is "The Cool Cat Teacher". Here is a link to where she describes her use of the class wiki, including as a place to put class work: coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-i-use-wikis-what-do-you-do.html.

2) There are various ways that the internet can be used allow students to relate to complex world issues through authentic work. Usually the way to make the work real and living for the student is to involve them in a real problem that interests them. These problems can be found in a variety of ways including talking to parents and businesses in the community. The expectations of what students involved in solving real world problems that they are interested in should be very high. The person with the problem (the client) can be invited to visit the classroom so the students can ask questions and become familiar with the problem and the desired output from their work. In this way the student can become engaged and feel ownership of the problem (November 2001). Teachers can also work with other teachers, authors or business people around the world to come up with ideas to work on together. This way the students can be exposed to other cultures and experiences beyond their town or state. This link has some ideas about getting students involved in a global way: www.edutopia.org/technology-global-classroom.

3) Some new collaborative relationships for teachers due to on line learning include the "anonymous reviewer" and new ways to interact with parents. The anonymous reviewer has proved useful in many ways. The students and teachers learn things from people that live no where near them and that they would normally have never interacted with. This includes people from other countries. The impact on students has been that they seem to be more willing to accept critical evaluations and don't worry so much about making mistakes when they don't know the person supplying the feedback. Collaboration with parents has always been important but not always been easy. Sharing videos of the school day with parents can be very powerful though (November 2001).

The following website link is to a website dedicated to providing training to teachers to get started in creating professional learning communities for collaboration:www.teachercollaboration.org/.