Integrating Education networks at the Middle Grades

[Jim Leesch]

Setting up a network for a middle-grades class is a chance to increase students' understanding of internet responsibility and netiquette. What other uses does such a network have?

[Amy]

Collaboration, connections, creating with one another and with the world are words that come to my mind when I asked myself your question. I am looking for an opportunity for my students to make connections outside the classroom walls and be part of a global community.

[Diane Peters]

I am looking for some schools to partner some writing projects. We are a 7th grade in Oregon if you want to collaborate.

[Amy]

I teach seventh grade English in hot St. Pete Florida. What ideas do you have in mind?

[Kim Kuruzovich]

Are you still looking for schools to partner with? My school is in St. Pete Florida. We are a small Catholic school. You can email me at [e-mail]

[Ruth H. Johnson]

In what kind of writing projects are you interested? I have middle school students who do journals, various kinds of compositions, research papers, autobiographies, etc. Right now I am setting up a challenge for writing the absolutely worst first sentence for a novel possible. Would you like to have your student collaborate with us on that?

RHJ

[Jim Leesch]

I guess my question on collaboration would be to ask how a ning is better/worse/different than using a wiki?

[Anne Baird]

Hi Jim
At our school we have used wikis extensively as portals for classroom work, for collaborative research and presentation projects and for student and teacher digital portfolios. The beauty of them is the ease of use and the fact that anyone can contribute to them. Most class wikis are protected which means that only members can edit them. The student's wikis that they use for digital portfolios are set to private which means that only members can edit and see them.
I haven't used nings with my students but do plan to this year. I can see that nings would offer alternative ways to have students share and collaborate. Students would also have opportunities to create their own groups within the ning and to write a blog, create their own profile etc. So I maybe you would think about the purpose and let the product, wiki or ning provide the vehicle. Thanks for asking this question, it's given me an impetus to set up my ning quicker than I had planned.

[Anne Baird]

Hi all, I work in a P-12 school (K-12). I teach ICT for a 9 periods a week and the rest of my full time role is working with teachers to help them implement eLearning into their teaching and learning. Consequently I am always on the look out for opportunities for our teachers and students. My role is to support that by helping with the planning, the setting up of the projects as well as the implementation. I agree with Amy about the opportunities that students have to collaborate, communicate, create and connect. The purpose and success of the network will depend very much on the outcomes or the learning and behaviours you want the students to achieve and the openended questions that will lead the learning. Designing a task or project that will achieve these things is probably the biggest challenge but what is so wonderful about the online educational community is that so many are willing to share and invite others to join their projects.

[Karen McMillan]

Hello! I teach seventh and eighth grades in Northern California, here in the U.S. I would love to see my middle school students connect to a global network of students their own age, along the lines of how I connect to my PLN. I think it would be a wonderful experience not only in learning how to collaborate with students from other cities, states, or nations, making connections with and learning from people of different cultures, but also allowing them to learn how to build a network of their own in the future.

I'm looking forward to getting them started this fall!
Karen