An
electronic community allows students to engage in dialogue with each
other, their teacher, other students and teachers in different parts
of the country or the world, and even experts on various topics. The
following resources will help you establishing an asynchronous
or synchronous electronic community in your
own classroom.
Asynchronous
Communities: Message Boards, Threaded Discussions, Listservs
In asynchronous communication, exchanges take place in a delayed format.
Message boards, bulletin boards, threaded discussions, and forums are
all good examples. These terms are generally interchangeable, though
there are minor differences in accessibility and user options.
Freebielist.com
has an outstanding list of free commercial, remotely-hosted message
boards that could be used for classroom discussions. Unfortunately,
most of these feature banner and pop-up ads, unless you are willing
to pay a little more per month. For a professional and easy-to-use
message board that will display ad-free for a low monthly subscription
and can be password protected, see BbBoard,
Proboards, and Freeforums.net.
Want
to build and host your own message board? There are software programs
that school districts can download to their computers, many for free,
that allow teachers to set up threaded discussion on their own school
district's server. You can learn more about these programs at Thinkofit.com.
If
you are slightly more daring and have access to your own server, check
out the list of e board software at allmerchant.com
or a similar list at Mtv411.com.
Familiarity with a programming language like Perl is recommended.
For
a more educationally oriented environment, check out 21
Beat Street, a voluntary community of writers and students joined
by those working for credit from public schools and workshops for
intern teachers. Its creators, Virginia Little and Dirk Flinthart,
help interested teachers set up their own threaded discussions and
virtual classrooms.
The
best site for setting up an electronic classroom, hosting threaded
discussions, and posting ssignments is definitely www.nicenet.org.
Clean, elegant, simple to use, permanent, and best of all, free.
Blackboard.com
is a commercial company that sells comprehensive electronic teaching
programs. Blackboard.com
is used by a lot of universities for online courses, threaded discussions,
and chats. Though the subscription is no longer free, Blackboard still
offers a 60-day free trial period. Before subscribing, you may want
to check out a concise discussion of some of the benefits
of asynchronous education, a short tip sheet provided by Blackboard.
Subscribing
to a listserv is another way to extend the classroom beyond school
walls. A listserv is an electronic community that communicates through
e-mail. Yahoogroups.com offers
free List servesaccounts that can also be used to post files and photos.
You can use Yahoogroups to connect your class to other classes anywhere
in the world. If you are interested in issues of English and technology,
consider joining the English-Tech
listserv hosted by this site.
Weblogging,
or blogging, is a new form of asynchronous web discourse. A blog is
a web diary that can be read by anyone with access to the Internet.
There are thousands of blog sites in existence. Most offer free blogging
(with ads) and ad-free blogging for a subscription. A few popular
ones include blogspot.com, blogger.com,
and blogeasy.com.
Schoolblogs.com
was
co-founded by Peter Ford, a teacher at the British School of Amsterdam,
and Adam Curry. Its purpose is to make weblogs available to the schools
around the world. Any educational professional can create and maintain
an individual, customizable SchoolBlog here for no cost.
A resource for
connecting your class and students to classes and students in other
parts of the country or abroad is epals.com.
This site also does some language translation.
Synchronous
Environments: Instant Messengers, Chat Rooms, MOOs |TOP|
In a synchronous
interactive environment, exchanges take place in real time. Instant
messengers, chat rooms, and MUDS and MOOS are good examples.
Most
students are already familiar with instant messenger and chat rooms,
so bringing this technology into the classroom should be easy. Students
can download AOL Instant Messenger
for free, whether or not they are AOL members, or another chat program.
West Loogootee
Elementary has an outstanding list of educational chatrooms,
as well as some tips on how to use them.
A MOO is a sort of sophisticated chat room, complete with its own
architecture of interconnected rooms, stockpile of manipulable objects,
and cast of interesting characters. Originally used for role-playing
games, the MOO has recently made its way into technologically progressive
universities and secondary schools.
Some
outstanding academic MOOs include Lingua
MOO, an academic virtual community hosted by the University of
Texas at Dallas. Here, anyone may download Hire Wired Encore Version
3.3.3., which allows those interested to create their own academic
MOO.
Diversity MOO is another MOO designed specifically for academic
purposes. Anyone may use its public campus for free, or get permission
to join the Rainbow campus, which is dedicated to k-8 education.
Tapped in is an international community of teachers and teacher
educators. Tapped in has and will host student discussions for free.
It also has a host of helpful services for educators.
The
NCTE MOO is designed
for teachers and teacher educators. If you are a beginner who needs
help, this might be the place to start.
To see MOOs that have been developed by secondary school teachers,
check out the Brave
New World MOO (hosted at LOGMOO) created by Robert Rozema or the
Secondary Worlds
MOO being designed by Western Michigan undergraduate and graduate
students.
For a good history of the MUD and some key terms, check out Jennifer
Smith's MUD FAQ, Rachel's
Super MOO List is another helpful source, featuring an informative
list of educational MOOS.
A
very interesting and recent development in educational technology
is the use of avatars, or representative icons. Bruce Damer, author
of Avatars! offers a good overview in Avatars:
Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet.
