Lesson 5: Use of Online Communication Tools

When first trying to answer the question of whether or not I've used communication tools in my classroom I thought it was a no brainer. Of course I've used them! I email every single day in school. Then I started to realize that my idea of online communication tools were wrong. I realized that I never have used online communication tools with my students.  I email people every day and sometimes parents, but never to my students. The fact that I don't really correspond with students through email is why thats not a communication tool for my students. I've only really used it as a communication tool for my colleagues. To be honest a lot of these communication tools can be a little overwhelming at first, because I'm not sure if I always have the avaibalbe resources.  I would love to use discussion boards with my students, but I don’t know the first thing about how to get them started or if it even costs money.  When I was researching discussion boards in the classroom, I came across the Microsoft Office website that mentioned about downloading a version of a discussion board.  It looked really confusing to me and I’m sure it would be for my students.  Because of this class, I know that blogs are out and easy to use.  I like the site that we used for this class.  I would think that my students would enjoy creating their own format for their blogs.  I could definitely use blogs next year in my instruction.  I also think Wikis are cool, but once again they are a little confusing and I would need someone to show me how to create one.  So the reason I haven’t utilized all of these tools is due to the lack of resources as well as the lack of know-how.  Our school’s new webpage is supposed to provide teachers with these tools, so I’m excited about this summer’s technology professional development.
If I had to choose one online communication tool to use in my classroom, it would have to be blogs like the one here on blogger.com.  I know they are free and fairly easy to operate.  I think my students would enjoy them.  I would want to show my students blogs using a whole-group step-by-step approach.  Towards the beginning of the school year, I would have my students go to our class webpage to find the blog site.  From there, I would walk them through choosing a username, a url, background, font, font size, etc.  The urls would be similar so the students wouldn’t forget them.  I could even get the computer teacher/media specialist help me with the teaching the studetns this new resource. The first blog I would have them do would be an introduction about themselves; I've seen this done in some of our UC classes and I think it is a good starter. I would show them how to navigate to each other’s blogs with the right guidance, this could allow for some great peer review of assignments. I would want them to do this at the beginning of the year, so that they were proficient in it by the time we began using it on assignments.