My school uses Edline for communication of grades, assignments, calendars, etc. Edline has no forums or embeds and is really only useful for posting grades and uploading assignments. It's basically lame.
We also have Moodle, but I know of no teachers who are actually using it and the kids have condemned it as slow (it's hosted on our school's lethargic server) and useless.
I have been experimenting Ning clones like grou.ps, but have found a reluctance on the part of students to create another user profile and join a network they have to check in on. I've kept it optional to this point for that reason.
The one thing they all have in common is FaceBook. Almost every student and most parents have FB accounts (I teach High School). Herein lies my dilemma... FaceBook is blocked on our campus during school hours. It's not accessible immediately before or after school (until 4pm) and cannot be used by students in study halls. The claim is that kids are wasting school time on FB (most of the kids find ways around our proxy server and get on anyway).
I would like to experiment with FB as a means of connecting my class and communicating outside of the classroom, but I need to make a compelling argument to Admin. Here's my idea so far...
I'm going to video my class responding to the following questions with a show of hands (I think I stole the idea from @intrepidteacher, but I can't remember):
- How many of you blog regularly?
- How many of you are active members of a network like Ning?
- How many of your teachers use Moodle?
- How many of you check Edline daily?
- How many of you have FB accounts?
- How many of you check FB at least once a day?
The idea is to illustrate that we are fighting upstream against a powerful tool that almost all the kids are already using.
I would appreciate any suggestions for other/better questions to ask students and for arguments in favour of unblocking and using FB at school.
