E-Learning Guidelines

Partly to encourage you to express yourself and develop your writing skills, I would like to encourage you to keep a blog or contribute to our class web sites. If you would like to do this, you may wish to show your parents the guidelines below:

As a part of our efforts, we try to make the best use of all available e-learning resources.

How it Works
Students will be encouraged write entries on Diigo, on class sites like this or on their own blogs, which are curriculum based.  They may choose a curriculum related topic and make use of the skills taught in the lesson to help craft their writing.  The emphasis is on the quality, not the quantity of what they write.  When students are done polishing their writing, they can be reviewed by a teacher before it is published to the web.

One of the advantages of this approach is that students may work from home, and/or they may work ahead of the rest of the class.  All that is required is an internet connection.

Having a real audience is one of the key components to this effort.  In addition to receiving comments from their classmates, students will sometimes be able to read comments from students of other classes who view their posts.  We may also arrange for students in other parts of the world to visit our sites and comment on students’ work.

Security

Our approach to blogging is designed to minimize risk to your child.  The only personally identifying information included in the blog will be their first name.  There will be no mention of our school name or our location.  Students are allowed to post their interests and opinions, but not their ages, e-mail addresses, photographs of themselves, or other sensitive information.

Assessment

Online assignments will constitute part of your child’s class participation, classwork and grades.  As with other projects they have completed this year, students will receive a scoring rubric that explains the expectation for these assignments.  The rubric will include a section for the comments they leave in other students’ blogs.

Online Work Terms and Conditions

• Students posting online are expected to act safely by keeping personal information out of their posts.  You agree to not post or give out your family name, password, user name, e-mail address, home address, school name, city, country or other information that could help someone locate or contact you in person.  You may share your interest, ideas, and preferences.

• Students using web-based tools agree to not share their user name or password with anyone besides their teachers and parents.  You agree to never log in as another student.

• Students using blogs and forums are expected to treat these as classroom spaces.  Speech that is inappropriate for class is not appropriate for online.  While we encourage you to engage in debate and conversation with others online, we also expect that you will conduct yourself in a respectful manner reflective of a representative of this school.

• Student posts are to be a forum for student expression.  However, they are first and foremost a tool for learning, and as such will sometimes be constrained by the various requirements and rules of classrooms teachers.  Students are welcome to post on any school appropriate subject.

• Students who do not abide by these terms and conditions may lose their opportunity to take part in these projects.

Posting online is in no way mandatory or necessary for your child to achieve a top grade in the course. It is 100% optional. However, our past experiences show that this kind of effort can enhance students’ understanding of content considerably.

For more information, or for any reason at all, please feel free to contact me directly.