Tech in the Classroom: Blackboard

This is part of a series of reviews of websites, platforms, and social media sites. Some are useful for teachers in a SMART classroom (with a teacher-station computer, internet connection, and projector). Others lend themselves more to a lab where each student has her own computer. Hopefully these can help us communicate with our students, present information effectively, and encourage collaboration, feedback, and active participation. See our previous review of Wordpress, Facebook, PB Works, and Google Drive.

I know that not everyone shares my unbridled enthusiasm on this topic, but let me just get it out there: I love Blackboard!

It's true that the layout can be a little clunky, and the visual aesthetics sometimes aren't where I'd like them to be, but Blackboard is my go-to tech in the classroom tool. There are a lot of moving pieces to Blackboard, so it's really easy to create the level of functionality and usage that you want out of it. It could be simply a place to store documents for students to access, or it could essentially be the place where your students go for much of the course content, giving it the potential to be a tool for a flipped classroom model.

Tech in the Classroom: Google Drive

This is part of a series of reviews of websites, platforms, and social media sites. Some are useful for teachers in a SMART classroom (with a teacher-station computer, internet connection, and projector). Others lend themselves more to a lab where each student has her own computer. Hopefully these can help us communicate with our students, present information effectively, and encourage collaboration, feedback, and active participation. See our previous review of Wordpress, Facebook, and PB Works.


Today, I'm reviewing features of Google Drive (formerly Google Docs).  Here's my Google Drive page:

Tech in the Classroom: PB Works

This is part of a series of reviews of websites, platforms, and social media sites. Some are useful for teachers in a SMART classroom (with a teacher-station computer, internet connection, and projector). Others lend themselves more to a lab where each student has her own computer. Hopefully these can help us communicate with our students, present information effectively, and encourage collaboration, feedback, and active participation. See our previous review of Wordpress and Facebook.

Here's a review of the very first content management platform I ever used: PB Works. 

Tech in the Classroom: Facebook Review

This is part of a series of reviews of websites, platforms, and social media sites. Some are useful for teachers in a SMART classroom (with a teacher-station computer, internet connection, and projector). Others lend themselves more to a lab where each student has her own computer. Hopefully these can help us communicate with our students, present information effectively, and encourage collaboration, feedback, and active participation. See our previous review of Wordpress.

You might be most familiar with Facebook as the distraction that keeps pulling your students' attention away from their work in computer labs or even on their phones. You also might also know Facebook as the distraction that keeps pulling you away from your own work as you're supposed to be grading papers or lesson planning. It has a pretty bad reputation as being a procrastinator's swirling vortex of material, with people going so far as to create apps that block it from computers for specified lengths of time so that they aren't tempted to "like" their friend's latest dinner pic when they're supposed to be writing a term paper.

Setting aside that bad reputation for a moment, though, there are some creative ways to harness the usability and ubiquity of Facebook to be a classroom tool rather than a classroom menace.

Tech in the Classroom: Wordpress Blog Review

This is the first in a series of reviews of websites, platforms, and social media sites. Some are useful for teachers in a SMART classroom (with a teacher-station computer, internet connection, and projector). Others lend themselves more to a lab where each student has her own computer. Hopefully these can help us communicate with our students, present information effectively, and encourage collaboration, feedback, and active participation.

When I first began teaching in a computer-mediated room, I thought the height of technological advancement was that I could load a typed lesson on the overhead instead of scratching it in chalk on the board. Now, of course, there are a multitude of technologies for the writing classroom. 

At my college, students sometimes struggle with access to computers. More often, they struggle to get internet access. It's getting easier and cheaper to get both at home or on their phone; they're catching up with their digital-native peers. Despite the challenges, students seem to understand that technology is an unavoidable part of school, and are more than willing to learn and practice.


Wordpress Blog Review: