Online Communication in the Classroom

My only form of technology use in the classroom comes from my own experience as a student, not as an educator.  As such, I am going to date myself here because we did not use online communication in high school – in fact, I vaguely remember learning DOS applications on a Commodore 64 and had never heard of any Windows except for the ones in the building itself.  In college, there were obviously online communication tools out there, but I honestly did not learn much of them as none of my instructors used or required them for class.  Looking back, I find this amazing considering that I graduated from the University of Louisville in 1996. 

Fast forward to today, I cannot wait to use online communication tools in my own classroom!  As I don’t yet teach, I have based most of my expectations on what I have seen my children’s teachers use, what I have learned from my classes at the University of the Cumberlands, and my own ideas of what would work with students based upon what worked for me in the business world and the continuing education therein.  I continuously used online communication during my accounting career and understand how important it is in today’s world.  I want to be able to use that knowledge in relation to the education of tomorrow’s leaders to create students who are comfortable with technology.

Since I do not teach, my thoughts went first to what online technologies I would use with my students at the beginning of the school year.  I think that a Wiki would be a great tool for students to be able to create pages about themselves in an interactive and fun way.  Enhancing the usual “meet and greet” that takes place during the first weeks of school, I would implement the use of a Wiki where I would have pages created for myself and all of the students. 

In addition to our personal pages, I would want to implement pages where students could communicate on what they would like to learn during the school year, feedback pages on lessons that are currently being taught, and collaboration pages for students who are working on group projects.  Another feature that I would find helpful is that a Wiki allows the teacher to also create informational pages that are un-editable, containing assignments, due dates, lesson standards, and classroom information normally found on a traditional Website.  By having everything at one site, it would decrease chances for miscommunication and any potential confusion having multiple sites could create.

Concerns that I would have in using this online communication are the obvious:  that students could change another student’s personal information, that students working on a group project may not agree with the changes made to their contributions, and that some parents may not want their child’s information out there in a public forum.  I researched these concerns and learned that not all Wikis necessarily have to be open to modification by anyone with web access and an internet connection.  They can contain password protected pages where each student would have their own password to change their personal page, can have editing privileges where only group members can edit content, and can be set to private viewing. 

As for peer revision of group projects, the teacher can view who has made changes, but it will ultimately require teaching students how group collaboration and cooperation work as a cohesive lesson in itself.  The first things that students will need to learn is how to create the pages, edit and add information, and access the site using their password.  I would create a PowerPoint presentation of the step-by-step process this entails to instruct students during class, and would make it accessible on the site as well as in printed form for students to take home for later reference.  Class time would initially be allocated to allow students to create their pages as a writing assignment and gain exposure to the workings of the Wiki.