The 21st Century Classroom

I actually use several of these web-based technologies in my class and they have all yeilded great results in supplementing my in-class instructions. The cornerstone to my web-technologies and my class for that matter is my Blackboard CMS. I use this system as my classroom access to the web. On Blackboard I organize all of my assignments, handouts, recommended external links, class blogs, online textbooks, videos and even quizzes/tests. Making these materials available online has been extremely helpful for keeping an open lane of communication with parents and other support staff. Everyday I post a detailed agenda with all of the homework announcements as well as locations to assignments and notes. Parents and students can easily keep track of due dates with the consistently updated daily agenda. Students that are absent can easily keep up with the class if they are on vacation, or even suspended for a period of time. In fact I am beginning to have absent students come back from an absence with their work completed as if they had never missed class.

Blackboard has been a great help with quickly assessing multiple choice sections of tests and small assignments. When I give tests I normally make two sections: a writing portion along with a multiple choice portion. When giving the Multiple choice portion I always give it via Blackboard. I have created a dependable format that works for both the studnets as well as grading purposes. Students like getting immediate feedback so that they can improve their performance as soon as possible. Additionally it really helps me get back good raw data to analyze class performance so that I can assess both myself and the class.

As for some specific pedagogical strategies, I am currently running my Blog experiment in my American History class. I designed a large encompassing question for the class. Throughout the entire semester students will look at their daily class participation in the light that they are doing research on this question. Instead of giving my portion to the final exam I will have students create a presentation/project that answers the question using information that they have learned throughout the question, that way students will have a idea of how all of the big ideas within the history class connect together. I read in a Marzano teaching strategy that this really helps to best develop student's higher level thinking capabilities.

I have found class forum boards the most difficult piece to implement. I feel that they just create more work for me that is not necessary. I need the organic feeling of classroom discussion to get a good grasp of what students are comprehending. Also I find the grading very inundating, I just can't keep up. Also forums are tough because not everyone is very engaged to the level that a discussion could blossom into an unknown place that is very interesting and useful. Maybe its my stle but the discussion forums just don't do it for me in this situation.

Overall I love all of this technology! What did we ever do before it? Education is so much more fruitful now. Instead of talking about an abstract idea all of these ideas allow for us to easily access an infinite amount of resources and easily discuss them, it truly is revolutionary how fast it has changed in the last 10 years! In the words of my old Enlish teacher Mr Hughes.... "it tickles me pink!"