After five years out of the classroom in various technology integration coaching positions, I've seen hundreds of web sites and apps for the classroom. I might use dozens of them for small projects here and there, when the right use arises, but I think it would be most beneficial to my students, for the sake of classroom routine as well as out-of-class efficiency, if I limited my use to a small number of sites that work best for my class.
As I started thinking about how I will focus the use of technology in my classroom next year, I started realizing that the websites I will use could really work in almost every classroom I've encountered K-12.
That probably is a testament to the diversity of these web sites, as teaching and learning is very different all along this spectrum. Teachers can use the functionality of these sites in very different ways with their students, making them very valuable tools for us to be using with students (and their parents) from Kindergarten through graduation.
1) Edmodo - this classroom management site will be my primary form of communication with students. It is safe, secure, and approved in our district's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Students "opt in" by joining the site with a code provided by the teacher, create an account in less than a minute, and can even specify if they want to receive notifications via email, text message, or on the website. This provides some level of choice for older students, while teachers of our younger students could just have students use the website itself. Also of great benefit for the younger students, Edmodo will generate parent codes, so parents can join the site and see the posts of their own students and the teacher, without seeing the other students' posts. Teachers will LOVE the ease of setting up and getting started. There is little to do in terms of design or layout. You create a class (or several) and give the code to your students. You post messages, questions, polls, assignments or documents, and your students can reply and post their own. Edmodo works a lot like Facebook, having a news feed that comes into your home page from all of your classes, and other discussion groups or colleagues you connect with. It already features a great network of other educatorswith whom you can share ideas.
2) Wikispaces - this free wiki site is approved in our AUP, and can easily be made secure and private, so only members who log in to their accounts can see the page. Students can create and edit their own pages, perfect for collaboration on projects or sharing ideas in brainstorming or organizing sessions. There are also discussion boards for students and teachers to post their thoughts. It is easy to upload files, share links, embed videos and calendars, and much more. I often say Wikispaces is like the bowl that holds the ice cream and the toppings. Students might create projects using a variety of other sites like Prezi or Voki, do work using Office applications like Word, PowerPoint or Excel, or make videos and post them to TeacherTube or YouTube... but Wikispaces is the site where it can all come together and be organized in one place.
3) Google Docs - Teachers can create forms to survey their students and collect information (or do formative assessments) quickly and easily. Students with accounts can share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms with each other or with their teachers for easy collaboration, or paper-free grading.
It also makes it so much easier for students to revise work when it is submitted electronically (or shared) to a teacher who can comment and suggest changes directly in the shared doc. I really like the idea of students doing ongoing work. Google Docs also lends itself well to portfolio assessments. I plan to have my students submit a variety of projects through Google Docs and they will be saved, with teacher and student having access over the whole school year, to track progress and growth. In our district we have our own private label that teachers should use, and we hope that student accounts will soon be added.
4) Kidblog - For any classes with a writing component (and this really should be all of us, to some extent!), Kidblog provides a safe & secure venue for students to write online. The blogs are only visible to the classmates and teacher, and the site is very easy to set up and populate with students (just paste your class list in Excel and save it as a .csv file to upload to Kidblog - the teacher can even create the user names and passwords for the students). Kidblog is mentioned in our AUP as the approved and supported blogging site.
5) Teacher Web Page - in our district, Schoolwires is the website for the official teacher web pages. I will use my Schoolwires web site as my primary means of school-to-home communication. While it is not a two-way communication street (it has web 2.0 features, but it is a PUBLIC website, so not the right venue for the posting of blogs, discussions, original student work, etc.), it makes a great place to post official documents like grading policies. It is also going to be the jumping off point for everything else I'll use in the classroom. My Schoolwires Teacher Web Page will be a "first stop" for students and parents, featuring information about important due dates (possibly pulled in from a classroom Google Calendar?) and links to the great activities and projects we will be doing on the other four sites mentioned above.
That's not all! I'm sure my students and I will do projects with Prezi, make announcements with Blabberize, make video podcasts, create talking avatars, make interactive posters and more, as the situation calls for these programs. I won't be telling them to use one of these given sites, either. I'll be giving assignments based on content, standards, and essential skills, while leaving the means of demonstrating mastery in these skills up to the students. The focus will be on the content. In fact, the name of the game for me next year is going to be FOCUS. I want to focus on using these sites effectively and seamlessly, so my students will not even notice that they are learning the technology as they are engaged in the learning.
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