Why Do We Learn On-Line?

In this day and age the internet is an integral part of our learning and sharing.  With the use of technology and the internet we can better understand how small the world really is, and how  much we are alike and different from others.  Technology has allowed us to learn along side of children in our school, school district, and  the world.  We would like to take the time to explain why and how we connect. Please also note we do a LOT of learning without technology and the internet too.  They are just two of many tools that we use to learn.

Class Blog

This blog highlights some of our learning for the world to see.  It can easily be shared with friends and family members both near and far.  In addition to sharing our learning it allows us to connect with other classes through their blogs.  We are able to read and learn from them while they read and learn from us. We visit their blogs regularly, learn along side of them, and leave them comments.  We hope that you will leave us comments too.  

Individual Student Blogs

Our individual student blogs are part of our digital portfolios.  We are sharing our writing and other artifacts with a global audience.  Ms. Lirenman approves everything that goes on our individual blogs but she doesn't correct our writing so that we have a record of our improvements over the course of the year.  We also know that we must not post our last name, pictures with our first names, or any other private information. We hope you will check out our individual blogs and leave us comments.  We love comments.

Twitter

We have a class twitter account @MsLsClass where we  share our learning with others. We come up with simple 140 character tweets that let our followers know what we are learning on any given day.  Sometimes we also share our learning with other classes under a specific label. We use twitter to reflect on our learning by sharing with others.

Skype/FaceTime/Google Hangouts

We Skype/Facetime/Google Hangout to meet other students like us from different parts of the world.  Since we can't visit a class across the province, or country, or world we use this technology to meet them through our computer screen.  We can also use Skype to invite experts into our classroom.  It's the next best thing to connecting face to face.

Global Projects

Ms. Lirenman learns a lot about global projects because she uses Twitter to learn from teachers around the world. If you are interested you can follow her on twitter at @klirenman.  She knows how powerful it is to be a connected educator.  We are exploring this avenue too, in a safe monitored way.  We are also learning how to be responsible digital citizens.  Even though we are young, we want our voices heard in a safe manner. We want to learn from others and we want to share our learning too.  As we take part in a specific global project we will make sure Ms. Lirenman blogs about it here on our class blog. 

During the 2011-2012 school year her students were involved with:

Flat Classroom - Building Bridges - closely with a school in Hong Kong, and the USA ( and many other classes around the world)

Quad Blogging - with three schools from the UK.

Full of Beans -  a plant seed experiment in collaboration with children from Canada, US, and New Zealand

This school year we will be participating in (list will continue to grow through out the school year):

Quad Blogging - with two schools in the UK and one school in New Zealand

Global Read Aloud - with a school in New York City and primary classes in Surrey

Our classblog, individual blogs, twitter account, and  global projects are ways we connect with our friends and family and children just like us.  Thank you for stopping by.