Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Transitioning from blogs to?

After using blogs with my classes for almost four years now, it is a little disturbing to think that soon the format I use will be gone. My school has made it clear that they are not committed to maintaining the Manila system we use, but has also reassured me that they won't leave teachers in the lurch even though they have had some security issues recently.

So after coming to this realization, I spent part of an in-service day learning about Moodle. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to the hopes I had for it, but it did get me thinking about what I would want in an ideal online class site.
Here's the list I came up with:
The ease of use, and hyperlinking capabilities of a blog.
Testing, polling and quiz applications.
Chat room capability.
Discussion capability like a blog that can be open to the public.
The flexibility to determine what is public.
Social networking for teachers like Facebook (with groups that bring together content areas).
The ability to turn on focused social networking for students.
Ability to upload content (including video) for both students and teachers.
The capability for a group to create a document and track changes like a Wiki.
Ability to import quizzes from textbook companies.

A system like this would empower both teachers and students to interact and share their knowledge far beyond the classroom walls in a much more effective way. Is any of this currently out there?