She is going to use weebly (www.weebly.com) to build a custom website for her classes. This site will include an interactive syllabus, links to online articles, videos, lesson plans, and other curriculum materials. The site will also include a blog for her and a discussion group site for the students.
We are not set up across the institution for these sorts of tools. Weebly appears to be perfect for us because it offers all of this for free.
I will be very curious to see how things go with these tools in our program this summer. I would love to adapt them for the courses that I teach in the Music Education Program. Rather than do so much of our communcations via email, the students and I might be able to create more of a community online. We might be able to continue our discussions in various formats and forums outside of class. We might be able to share resources differently.
I know that friends of mine who teach in other institutions regularly use tools like these in their work. Perhaps I may end up joining them….
What I am interested to know more about is what is lost and what is gained by using these tools in one’s teaching. What, if anything, ends up working less well or being less effective? What, if anything do we end up missing out on? What are the benefits of using these tools? What do they offer that other environments and technologies do not? How does using these tools change the way that I teach, and the way that my students learn?
