Online Teaching Experiences

In an elementary setting, I could use the Educational Blog as an online experience with my students. Blogs could be incorporated into any subject area. Students may blog about a book that they just read and comment on books that other students read or even record scientific observations on a blog. Furthermore, students may come up with mathematical story problems while other students solve these problems by commenting. Student writing may be published onto a blog for others to see. Using a blog opens up the doors for collaboration and allows students to showcase their work and ideas. Not only can students comment on each other's ideas, but teachers can comment as well as parents. Since this experience is online, parents can easily view their child's educational ideas and progress.

Teachers should have their own blog where they can model how a book report should look or how a story problem should be formated. This can be a place where students can look for examples and guidelines for different online blog post assignments. Also, a teacher may post a historic scenario, a math problem, a scientific discovery, or even an educational video that students may all comment on. In turn, this may develop an interesting discussion among the whole class.

Since I teach elementary school, I think that some of these online experiences would be difficult to use with my students. For example, a Learning Management System would be very complex for elementary students. I think that students need more practice using individual, basic technologies like Microsoft Office, blogs, and WebQuests before using a management system where many different experiences come together and are all used. This would be better in a high school setting to develop online skills to prepare students for what they may see in college. Also, the Career Planning Tools online experience would be unnecessary in an elementary setting. This type of experience would apply to high school students who are trying to figure out what to do in the future.