Online Communities for Students

I've been working with a group of high school teachers that have very little technology available to them. They each have a tablet computer and a projector and that's pretty much it. There are no other computers in the room and there are no wireless laptops or laptop carts available to bring in for the students to use. We've built our time together on making the most of the one computer classroom. So, as I blogged about in the beginning of the yearwe focus on using the tablet PC as a presentation tool, a productivity tool, and a tool for the students to use during small group activities and even during whole group instruction.

The more time we spend together, the more this small group of teachers sees how their students would benefit from using technology on a regular basis. They have begun using web 2.0 applications that the students can access from home so that they are incorporating technology into their curriculum - more - just not really in their physical classroom. So the questions of building virtual learning communities for students has come up. I even Tweeted about the other day. Here are the responses I received:

kyteacher@lthumannEither Ning or Edmodo. We use both, depending on the assignment.

Taml17@lthumannDepending on what types of comm and how much, I might look at a wiki first.

khokanson@lthumannwe are having GREAT success with ning at my school as digital portfolios HOWEVER monitoring is KEY!!!!

MagistraM@lthumannmost of my colleagues in FL dept have gone with Ning for flexibility and broad potential.

keisawilliams@lthumannIs it around a project? Or do you want something more Twitter-like?

courosa@lthumannthat's what I'm using.

jepcke@lthumannWhat age students? What type of communication? Ongoing? Community building? For a project/unit?

kristenswanson@lthumannDepends on the purpose and the size of the group.... ;0 Maybe NING, maybe Edmodo, maybe a plain 'old wiki... ;0

Dsalvucci@lthumannEdmodo.com does not require email addresses to join, easy to use and very secure.

keisawilliams@lthumannHave you seen Twiducate? I haven't tried it yet. http://www.twiducate.com/

kyteacher@lthumannThen I would recommend Edmodo.

keisawilliams@lthumannTake a look at Kidblog too http://www.ncs-tech.org/?p=4726

sharnon007@lthumannu can petition ning to remove ads if used for ed w/kids

amandacdykes@lthumannwhat about edumodo (sp?) I just know ning is blocked at my school.

beacantor@lthumannhave you looked at nicenet.org? A bit rudimentary, but very easy to set up and monitor.

keisawilliams@lthumannUsing the SMC technically and pedagogically http://socialmediaclassroom.com/index.php/using-the-smcHave the tchr watch this vid.

kmulford@lthumann: Edmodo, hands down.

lesreilly@lthumannCurious as to what you went w/ as far as student comm. Nigh or basic blog or wiki or maybe google group? What feedback did U get?

nsharoff@lthumann- I would suggest Moodle (FREE) for MS teacher & students

digitalmaverick@lthumannMoodle has an incredibly supportive community - try @iusherfor brilliant examples of its use in many schools

kmulford@lthumann: Edmodo is like Facebook for the classroom. The interface is appealing to kids, yet it is "protected" and much safer.

kmulford@lthumannWe have "reluctant learners" who don't do any homework, but WILL spend time on Edmodo talking to classmates and teachers.

urselle@lthumannHow about Edmodo, Google Docs, Hotchalk for students to communicate. Ning is very easy, though.

Bear in mind that many of these Tweets are in response to my responses to their questions. You can certainly go back and view my responses athttp://twitter.com/lthumann, but the crux of what I was Tweeting was that the teacher wanted the ability to moderate, has no e-mail addresses for his students and I originally was researching for a middle school teacher who I will be seeing next week, but I remembered that I would be seeing a high school teacher who also wanted to pursue building an online community with his students.

Here's the list of possible community building tools that I was able to put together thanks to my Twitter network:

Moodle- "Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites."
Ning- Ning is an online platform for people to create their own social networks
Edmodo- "A private social platform for teachers and students to share ideas, files, events and assignments."
Twiducate- A free resource for educators for teachers and students to continue their learning outside the classroom.
Hotchalk- HotChalk provides a free online learning management system, a library of free and premium digital content, and a portal into today’s educational landscape with innovative articles and the latest news
Google Docs- Safely store, organize, share and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations online
Blog- "is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog)
Wiki- is a website that allows the the editing of any number of web pages via a web browser There are typically multiple editors on a wiki site. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki)
Google Group- Groups provides a method for true communication and collaboration with group members
Nicenet.org- Nicenet is a volunteer, non-profit organization dedicated to providing free services to the Internet community. Nicenet's primary offering, the Internet Classroom Assistant is designed to address the pedagogical needs and limited resources of teachers and their students.
Kidblog- Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with their own, unique blog.

When I met with the High School (science) teacher on Tuesday I told him that I had a plethora of ideas for him but that he needed to be clear as to what the objectives of an online community for his students were. This is what he laid out:

A place for the teacher to house resources and documents from class
An alternative way for students to submit assignments. (Currently many of them e-mail them to him.)
A place for students to communicate with each other in a supportive manner with regards to course content.

Well, this was a start. I was happy to demonstrate some tools that would fit these three objectives knowing the teacher was clear as to what he was trying to accomplish. But our last hurdle was going to be the district filter. So immediately we were able to eliminate several of the online applications listed in the Tweets above.

Our ultimate decision was to sign up one of his classes onEdmodo. Edmodo appealed to this teacher and met his objectives. Fortunately, Edmodo was not blocked by the district's filter (yet...) and the bonus was that it came highly recommended from my PLN. Edmodo seemed to be our best choice.