Meeting The Standards
Standard 2
a. Design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity
The class blog provided a great platform for all of the digital content available from our lessons in the classroom. It rapidly transitioned from a place to post the daily happenings and copies of the lessons to one where students were going to find the current lesson material that we were studying. Students accessed the day's lesson from the class blog, directly on their iPads.
An average day may have seen the students access the site to submit their homework assignment, schedule an assessment re-take, open up the practice questions for their current math standard, watch a 2-3 minute video, and/or review concepts from a day when they were gone.
Additionally, the blog provided a great means of modeling student work and providing examples of what was expected from each individual. This worked towards expanding their creative minds as they realized through the work of peers that they were not confined to showing what they knew in just one particular way, "exactly like what the teacher wants".
Standard 3
b. Communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital age media and formats
Within the first few months of using the class blog on a daily basis, we had 143 subscriptions activated. The majority of these were parent email addresses, but there was close to fifty students as well in the list of subscribers. What does this mean? Every day when the lesson material was published, notifications were sent out to each email. Parents appreciated staying in the loop, tutors working with students in the evenings were able to keep track of school assignments, and students who were absent would come to class the next day already caught up!
Within the blog, a variety of digital media formats were used. These included audio tracks, visuals, videos, and embedded documents.