“Helping to Make Online Learning Less Isolating”
Oddyssey Charter High School is the high school curriculum made available to students solely online. The students still attend their school in the building, but go to an area where they do all their classes online. The teachers at OCHS thought that the students were not getting enough social interaction time, so they started using Facebook groups for their classes to interact. They found that there was no incentive for the students to join the group and they could not regulate a lot of what was going on their or insure the safety of their students because the students controlled the privacy settings on their own pages. After giving Facebook a try, the teachers turned to Ning, a site where they had more control and the students were safer so their parents were more apt to allow them to join in the conversation. The students participated in discussions of different topics, shared photos, and helped the teachers plan the upcoming units. They also formed groups to help each other study. These functioned as online learning communities where the students asked questions, discussed topics of study and presented each other with information for the class.
“There were three main goals of the the success of the Ning project. The first was to create an environment where students could collaborate without interference from outside influences. The next was to address social isolation by providing a place for students to discuss their personal and academic experiences with peers. The third was to employ dynamic technologies that students were utilizing outside of school as a way to motivate them towards school.”
I see this as a very positive example of how we can begin to implement these types of technologies into our instruction to help form learning communities for our students. They are already spending a great deal of time online statistically, so we should be looking for a way to tap into that interest. I love that these students formed groups to help each other study for tests and assignments. What a great way to build skills that are so necessary for the workplace!
LaDarrah Krogh 