Scott McLeod writes about changes needed in the future for education and share resources for integrating technology in authentic ways into the classroom.
Collaborize Classroom is an online Web2.0 tool that allows teachers to facilitate and create distributed learning communities for their classes. This is a forum for students to blog on questions from class and extend their learning beyond the classroom.
I've been CC pop up more in blogs. People are really starting to use it. I want to take another look at it over the holiday break and use it for next semester. Anything to generate more discussion.
Hmmm, have never heard of this before, but I like the look of it! I think it's great that a site like this can offer a UDL twist to online work for students, while also cutting down on grading time for the teacher. As a TA this semester, I have finally seen firsthand the incredible amount of time that goes into grading! I never understood why teachers hated it so much, but...I do now! I'm sure most web 2.0 classroom discussion tools have this sort of tracking feature for grading purposes (like ELearning here at UNI, for example). I love that this is a free tool!
I do wonder how successfully students would utilize threaded discussion or other online learning environments such as this one in K-6 environments. I think it would be fun to experiment with and perhaps do some serious research and publishing on the results of such an experiment. All about being a teacher-researcher, and this is certainly something I could see myself trying to bring into my own classroom, especially if I was ever teaching in a flipped classroom environment...
I like the setup of Collaborize Classroom and definitely see the advantages of using it in the classroom. Unfortunately, I think our students are overwhelmed with new LMS systems, web 2.0 tools, and websites that they would probably not be very receptive to this site. If CC was easily integrated into a LMS interface, then I would consider using it, but at this point I will keep it on my radar for future use.