Classroom Managment Systems

Moodle is a free set of online tools for teachers and administrators. The tools for teachers range from lesson plans and grade books to chat tools and blogs. One benefit of moodle over other tools is that moodle does not cost anything the only obstacle for teachers is that the administrator has to set up an account for teachers before they can begin to use the site. Moodle is available in a number of different languages and is available for use in countries all over the world. It is also customizable to fit your needs and there are different development partners in countries all over the globe to help you develop and customize you site and tools to best fit your class and needs. There is training available to help you learn to use the software to be the most effective in your classroom.

Blackboard is a company that has been the dominant force in the computer management systems world, and is designed to take courses that traditionally have been face-to-face, and add in an element of the online world. On the flip side, Blackboard also is able to transform online courses into an arena where little to no face-to-face interaction is needed at all. The cost of the regular Blackboard is $4 per student, whereas the enhanced version of Blackboard is a flat fee, not one based off of the amount of students, with that fee being about $10,000, which includes the training of personnel and the feature of online hosting. This cost (both the regular and enhanced versions) is one of the biggest cons of the system, as for smaller schools, the rate per student would differ greatly than a bigger school, who is probably more likely to utilize it extensively. Blackboard will work with schools to tailor its product “from 100 percent virtual, which includes data collection and data analysis, to using technology to help lighten the load and help teachers get back to teaching,” by helping them create, manage, share, and organize course content, said Jessie Woolley-Wilson, the president of Blackboard K-12.

D2L:

Types of features:

· Online dropboxes for professors

· Post excel, word, ppt, adobe projects

· Shows statistics on how student performs on test, instant feedback

· Post discussions

· Post quizzes for students

· Email back and forth between students or professor

· Pager

· Classlists

Pros

Instant feedback for professor and student; Post assignments online; Discussions; Good information; Shows previous classes

Cons

Teachers have issues with posting quizzes and grading them at times; It seems hard for teachers to understand how to set some of the dropboxes up; Some issues with opening course materials

Podcasting

Podcasting is a great tool to use in the classroom, no matter what you are teaching. Whether it is listening to speeches by politicians, major figures in society, or something prerecorded by yourself, or listening to two pundits talk about something pertinent to the material in the class, it is a phenomenal way of presenting a different approach to the teaching. It gives an audio dynamic to learning, which is something that can be beneficial to students with different learning styles. Plus, it can be used by students in ways that they can capture thoughts in the moment through speech, rather than having to write them out. So really, it works both ways for stduents and teachers, and the more entities we have like that, the better off our schools will be.

Social Networking

It seems to me that social networking could be a big issue within the school system, because other than filtering the entire systems out of the network, there is little way of being able manage these systems appropriately in the schools. It can become a distraction, it can be used as a tool to slander people, and it can be used as a means of searching for inappropriate things. There are good uses for social networking, such as being able to keep it contact with people all over the country and world without regard to costs and is great for people once your out of that high school setting. As a teacher, I know that it could be a dangerous thing within the school system, and it's that fear that I think shows that this is something that schools need to take seriously.