Virtual Classroom

Does anyone have experience with teaching grades 6-8 or 9-12 using a a virtual classroom? I am doing preliminary research on offering classes outside of our core subject areas.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Mirtschin on January 13, 2009 at 1:58am

Hello John, this is a topic dear to my heart and an area that I really want to experiment with further this year. We have done some experimenting with it but as the time zones are not ideal for Australia to connect with USA, we have to have the US students or staff joining us from their own homes or staying back in late after school. It just does not work in reverse for Australia, unfortunately. However, that is what we have done - US staff and students have come online in the evening. We have had teachers teach us using discoverE virtual classroom software and have also used elluminate for classroom work. This can be recorded and used by a third party. What software are you considering? What subjects do you teach? Our experiments have been with grade 4 through to year 10. Well, we did have a research scientist from Antarctica linkup with us through discoverE and with the shared use of photos, she was able to tell us about the adele penguins and global warming and that was for grade prep through to year 9 all in the one school, in separate classrooms but all connected with discoverE. That was really exciting as the software developers and other global teachers were also present.

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Permalink Reply by John Faig on January 13, 2009 at 2:27pm

Hi Anne,
I teach 6-8 technology. I was thinking about a pilot where I would offer 2-4 different virtual technology classes. This would give my students more flexibility to specialize. Longer-term, I would love to offer courses that are not part of our core curriculum (e.g., business, investing, etc.). No thought to the software infrastructure yet.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Mirtschin on January 13, 2009 at 4:21pm

Please keep in touch as my background is commerce, even though I teach so many computer studies subjects. How would you advertise or promote it? Would you use wikis, nings? A very interesting idea and one that I am sure will be developed more and more as web2.0 continues to escalate.