Online Spaces

It's been interesting talking to our two Intermediate members of the e-Learning cluster over the last few days. I have posted previously about Dave (Year 8) where we talked about Social Networking and Digital Citizenship. With Shaun (Year 8) we talked extensively about his online spaces. He felt the same as Dave that he wasn't really developing any spaces in his classroom but I was able to point out after visiting his classroom that he has great 'group' spaces.

He is also starting to develop Writing and Science areas. He has a couch right in the middle of the classroom and he uses this for when he is working with a group and needs to use the IWB.

I suggested to him (and also to Dave) that they explain what the spaces are about and get the students to design the spaces in the classroom.

Shaun has developed some wonderful working online spaces.
His class blog http://brs-year8.blogspot.com/ is a forum for students to post work (and they love comments, so please support Comments4Kids), Shaun also posts diary updates of what has been happening in the school and classroom.
He has managed to get some other teachers on board and they share a collaborative Wikispace http://brs-rimu.wikispaces.com/ This is used for Homework, links and resources for the different curriculum areas.
He embeds student activities in the wiki such as the example below




Shaun makes extensive use of Google Docs in his own planning and student work.
Have a look at his e-Learning page where he is documenting his journey week by week.
His personal blog http://shaunwoodictblog.blogspot.com/ is worth a look as he has chronicled his own teaching and learning experiences over the last few years. I look forward to see how his classroom develops this year and what changes it will make to his own teaching practice and students learning.