I have been using many online tools to communicate with my students for quite some time now.
Let me start with a blog that I follow of a teacher that uses all the latest and greatest tech tools and then blogs about them. I have mentioned it before, but to me... its so good that it is worth mentioning again. That is FreeTech4Teachers. It is a great site for teachers of ALL subject areas to follow. He uses this blog to let others in the world of education know of great tech tools that educators can check out and see if they want to use in their teaching and learning.
As far as someone who is using these tools with students... for that I would like to discuss what I am doing with my students. I have used discussion forums, wikis and blogs with my students. I use the discussion boards on Moodle, which work great for having students turn in assignments. I have used Wikispaces, which was a nice way to basically have a class website where all could contribute to it. And now I am using kidblogs, where my students each have a blog that I monitor and they can post and comment on each others blogs.
If you haven't already... check it out.
Another tool I just started using that may have some potential is Edmodo... also one to look into.
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I'm glad you have found kidblog such a positive experience. They have truly created it for teachers to use...it has the safeguards built into it so that teachers can set it up to approve the posts before they are listed.
ReplyDeleteThese tools really support the writing process and kids love to be able to post their thoughts online. I know you have also noticed how much more your students are willing to write...and that they write all the time...day, evenings, weekends, etc. When you give them the avenue to communicate in a way that engages them, they are more than willing to use it for educational purposes!