Week Five

The focus of this week’s lesson was online communication tools. The Internet provides a vast array of opportunities for communicating and collaborating with others. Students and teachers can discuss educational topics outside of the classroom, which is a great benefit especially for those needing extra assistance. Through the reading this week, I learned about several different online communication tools that can be utilized by educators to enhance the learning experience, including email, chat, blogs, wikis, VoIPs, microblogs, and virtual worlds. All of these online communication tools have widened the range of educational technology that is available to both students and teachers.

As a high school teacher, I have witnessed firsthand the unique benefits of technology both inside and outside of the classroom. I use online communication tools with my students often, especially through my teacher website and Edmodo. Edmodo is set up like Facebook in that it appears graphically like Facebook, which is appealing to students. I have been able to post assignments, syllabi, handouts, and other documents as well as graphics and videos on both my teacher website and Edmodo. In addition, I keep a collection of online resources in an online “Library” that allows me to easily access my favorite websites anywhere there is Internet access. In the classroom, specifically, I have used Edmodo to post assignments, and students can upload their work directly to the assignment box online. I also use Edmodo to post discussion boards that I want my students to respond to. This is great for students who fear speaking publicly in class, so they can use the discussion board online to ask questions or post comments.

Another online communication tool that I could use in the classroom is a wiki. Many teachers use wikis to post information and allow their students to view and change information. This is great for a class project over certain topics. Each student or group of students could have something different to add to the wiki. For example, if we were covering a unit on Solving Systems of Linear Equations in Algebra 2, each group of students could contribute work on a different method of solving the systems, including graphing, substitution, elimination, and matrices. This would also be beneficial for presentations and future classes.

There are numerous ways to use online communication tools in the classroom. Each student and each educator has different preferences, but when we are all using technology to enhance the learning process, we can accomplish great things!