Digication Blog

Technology is playing a key role in various types of communication within the classroom today, changing the way communication takes place in a way that is having real impact upon learning. A different breed of technology, leveraging the power of simplistic Web 2.0 design principals, is proving to finally break through with real impact upon both students and teachers. Technology such as online learning communities are proving to offer a more dynamic learning experience, with direct benefits to both students and teachers. It’s a refreshing change for educators who have struggled with the complexity, cost and practicality of the last generation of technology tools.

In the classroom, we see technology being used for different types of communication. Communication is used for presentation, for class interaction and collaboration. All three types of classroom communication are important motivators for teachers and students. Presentation begins with a simple sharing of ideas or information. Interaction expands upon this sharing of ideas, adding feedback. Collaboration engages groups of people in not only sending and receiving feedback, but also in working together to create, build, and edit.

To accomplish these different types of communication, teachers and students today are becoming less dependent on the big enterprise-labeled communication systems that were popular in the 90’s, such as course management and learning management systems. Instead, they are seeking out simple, inexpensive, easy to use tools that accomplish specific communication tasks. Despite all the buzz surrounding technology, there is not one technology that can do it all. Many teachers are finding it is best to mix and match. The freedom to mix and match technology is possible today because of two factors:

1. Easy accessibility of computers and high-speed internet, and

2. A new breed of web-based technologies often referred to as Web 2.0. (including blogs, wikis, learning communities, podcasts, audio and video conferencing and online office applications).

Make it Easy, Make it Affordable

There are common threads that connect this array of communication technologies. The first thread is price. The majority of these new tools and applications are either free or very low cost. This puts cash-strapped public K-12 schools on equal footing with large universities–both have relatively equal footing to access and use these tools.

An important point regarding this price advantage is that a number of these technologies are fully hosted. That means that no expensive infrastructure (servers, data centers) needs to be purchased, no IT staff needs to be bothered, and end users don’t have to go blurry eyed thinking about setup and configuration. Teachers and students can simply sign up and drive.

This “sign up and drive” concept leads to a second key point of this technology trend—ease of use. This movement is grounded in the principle that less is more. Less “bells and whistles” equals software that does its job and gets out of your way. There is only a small learning curve, if any, for a teacher to jump in and start using the technology in their classrooms. This shift has made a dramatic impact on education. The teacher can now focus on the important question, “why do I want to use this technology” instead of, “how do I use this technology”. Instead of sitting in tedious training sessions, teachers are freed to spend their valuable time investigating technology supported learning experiences and how to integrate technology into their curriculums.

Likewise, students using these technologies find them so simple that they can focus on learning course materials and taking advantage of new communication opportunities instead of on learning a new technology. Most of today’s tech-savvy student generation are actively participating in social networking and other online communities, so they not only understand how to use Web 2.0 teaching tools, they thrive in a classroom environment which integrates web communication solutions.

Web Communication Tools: from the Classroom to the Living Room

So what are these new communication opportunities? How are teachers and students utilizing these technologies to present, interact, and collaborate?

Blogs are simple online journals primarily used to support communication in the form of presentation, and provide a great tool for class interaction. Blogs are easy to set up and free of charge. Some of the more popular blog software used in classrooms are Blogger (www.blogger.com) and EduBlogs (www.edublogs.org). Teachers can choose to have one blog to post teaching materials, in forms of images, files, and links. Or, depending on the teacher, additional blogs can be created for each student to form a community of blogs where members of the class can each present their own findings and discoveries.

Blogs are organized chronologically like a journal, a structure many people find very intuitive and easy to follow. New content is displayed prominently at the top and older information gets archived. Additionally, blogs offer RSS (real simple syndication) feeds which allow anyone to “subscribe” to be notified when new blog posts become available. Comments connected to individual postings on the blog give the author the opportunity to receive feedback from visitors.

These comments could be posted by the teacher, by classmates, by parents-- anyone who has access to the blog. Receiving feedback about coursework from not just your teacher, but also your peers or possibly the outside world, can be very empowering to students. From students’ perspectives, having the ability to publish their writing on a blog suddenly transforms them into authors and publishers.

What if a teacher wants students to be able to work together in an online publishing environment, but needs a tool that will not limit students to organize their work by time? What a teacher needs are tools that will be collaborative in a much less structured way. Enter the wiki. Wikis such as PBWiki (www.pbwiki.com) and WikiSpaces (www.wikispaces.com) are very popular in the classroom today because of their flexibility and collaborative editing features.

Wikis are often used for group-based writing projects, collaborative note taking or brainstorming. Teachers can set up wikis for groups of students, giving them the opportunity give feedback with equal footing, make suggestions and changes, and jot down ideas. Everyone is an author of the wiki at the same time. The authors can start with very informal ideas and gradually edit and create drafts of their writing to be further edited and shaped by other authors of the wiki.

The most well know example of this phenomenon is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com), a content encyclopedia written collaboratively by users around the world. If someone had approached me ten years ago and said they wanted to create an online collaborative encyclopedia, I would have been very skeptical. Without discussing in detail the use of Wikipedia in the classroom, its global popularity is truly a testament to the strength that a collective has when united to communicate, share, and build content together. At a much smaller and more controlled level, the capabilities of a wiki in the classroom can be a broadening learning experience, as student groups build rich, deep content over time.

Teachers looking for more school-specific collaboration tools may be interested in checking out more established online learning communities that can address school-wide or even cross-institutional or district-wide communications. An example would be Elgg’s educational social network (www.elgg.net) that leverages blogs. Another example is Digication’s learning community (www.digication.com), which is based on e-Portfolios.

One of features that Elgg offers that is unique from the other technologies mentioned is that it allows schools to run and host their own social network locally, on their own servers. If a school has the necessary expertise in supporting such a network, they can download the software free of charge and have complete control over the underlying code.

Digication’s e-Portfolios follow the format of more traditional websites, but with customizable navigation, giving teachers and students the ability to personalize their content to share and showcase. As one of Digication’s founders, I obviously have an interest here. However, I am not touting Digication, but showcasing it as one of the tools available to educators seeking to tap the collaborative learning power of online communities.

Brian Beard of Bellaire High School in Houston, Texas offers a great example of the impact online learning communities can have in the classroom, utilizing Digication as part of his day-to-day communication with students. Beard recently started posting his students’ work online on his class’s Digication e-Portfolio website.

“I’ve organized the content by class so it’s easy for my students to find, and they tell me that they enjoy looking at their published work, and reading their friends' work as well.” Said Beard. ”We’re now working on a personal narrative project as part of a unit of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. When I announced that they would be writing a personal narrative, they wanted to know if it would be published on the site. It motivates them to work to the best of their ability, because there is a huge difference between writing a paper for the teacher, and writing one for your peers."

Recent movements in the world of online office applications can offer access to software for cash conscious schools. For example, the Google Tools for Educators (www.google.com/educators) and other less known web-based office tools such as the Zoho Office Suite (www.zoho.com) are starting to match—and even in some cases exceed—the richness of traditional office tools such as Microsoft Office.

For starters, these tools are free of charge. But aside from cost benefits, since these tools are available online, it means that any user who has even the most basic computing equipment can now access office tools, such as full featured word processing and spreadsheet software, without ever having to install anything on his or her computer. Furthermore, because these tools are web-based, they allow multiple people to edit the very same documents in real-time. By real-time, I mean that when a collaborator or a student is typing in a piece of text, other collaborators - potentially miles away - will see the text appear in the document as it is being typed. Nobody needs to hit “Save“ or even refresh their web browser.

New Media Drives New Teaching Potential

Another exciting aspect of today’s technology is the feasibility of including rich media as a teaching, learning, and even collaborative medium.

With the increase of bandwidth and hardware available in schools, podcasting gives teachers and students an audio distribution and syndication ability to share their research, perspectives, and stories with an audience beyond their classroom. Teachers are discovering many cross-curricular projects such as conducting interviews, creating classroom news broadcasts, recording class discussions and explorations, sharing feedback about books and discussing papers they have written. Through podcasts, English as a Second Language students and those with learning disabilities now have the chance to review lectures at their own pace for better comprehension.

Although podcasting does have a bit of a learning curve and requires some additional hardware such as a microphone and sound editing software, it is much easier to deal with than video. Audio files take less storage space, less production preparation (sometimes even less than the written word), and still provide very engaging materials. So engaging, in fact, that teachers like Lars Brownworth from Stony Brook School are becoming podcast celebrities. His podcast on the Byzantine Empire was listed as one of the top 50 most downloaded podcasts. Who knew a high school history lesson could gain so many listeners?

Teachers are also finding ways to engage their students in real time conversations about projects with students in other countries via audio conferencing, or even video conferencing. MSN Messenger (www.msn.com) and also Skype (www.skype.com) offer free or inexpensive ways for teachers and students to connect with other classrooms. With a single laptop, a webcam, a projector and an internet connection, a teacher can broadcast the classroom and begin collaborating with any other classrooms with similar setups. While this requires access to a high-speed internet connection as well as hardware, the cost of entry has dropped by a significant amount. This is a very progressive use of technology in the classroom, as the price of high speed internet continues to decrease, and more laptops come equipped with cameras.

Collaboration Drives Creativity, Motivates Participation

Logistics aside, why do classrooms want to talk to other classrooms? Utilizing technology to communicate and collaborate across different countries can create a more global learning environment, allow for cross cultural studies, and provide a better understanding and appreciation of education in contexts other than one’s own.

The myriad of technologies adopted in schools today, including blogs, wikis, online learning communities and online office tools, are keeping teachers and students connected in and out of class. They are creating opportunities for groups to share, collaborate, showcase, and grow together. They are allowing for the exchange of information and ideas to happen not only within the confines of a classroom but across schools, districts, states and the world. The new generation of Web 2.0 solutions are easier to use, more engaging, and are making a larger impact upon collaboration and communication in the classroom than complex technologies of the past.

For many teachers, the first step in collaboration is providing opportunities for students to share processes, progress and work. As an educator who works closely with other teachers across the country, I find that they are amazed at how simple tools for sharing work and ideas can positively transform the classroom. Web tools are extending communication well beyond the classroom, to allow continued learning and collaboration anywhere, at any time. Students who may avoid live class participation are leveraging new communication forms to become more active and “vocal” in class. The freedom to publish and share ideas creates a learning environment that empowers and motivates both teachers and students to become active participants in the educational experience.

About the Author

Kelly Driscoll is an active educator, helping teachers to develop effective technology skills for improving the teaching and learning experience. She has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Bryant University and the Rhode Island School of Design, including current courses titled, “Integrating Technology into the Classroom” and “Visual Literacy in Digital Media.” Driscoll also has extensive background in web application development and user interface design, and in 2001 co-founded Digication to develop free, “Simple by Design” ePortfolio and online classroom technology. For more information, visit www.Digication.com or send the author an email at kdriscoll@digication.com.