K-12 Online Learning Environment Adds 'Student-Safe' Academic Blogging
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Online education technology developer eChalk this week rolled out a new service for its Web-based learning system, adding "student-safe" academic blogging to its repertoire of tools.
eChalk's Online Learning Environment, targeted toward K-12 schools, provides a Web-based suite of communications, learning, management, administrative, and collaboration tools, along with standards-aligned digital content. It now also includes blogging, which eChalk characterized as an alternative to the "mindless distraction" of sites like MySpace and in which teachers and administrators can keep the focus on learning in a secure environment.
The company reported, "The integrated blog is designed to improve how students practice writing and thinking by aligning K-12 education to higher education, where all assignments require cognitive skills like logic, reasoning, and judgment to be used regularly. The blogging tool can be maintained publicly or privately, with all participants equally protected in a system controlled by each school or district. All users can create posts, moderate comments, enable RSS syndication, add images, upload videos and podcasts, and subscribe to other appropriate blogs. Posts and comments are archived in a portfolio that follows students year to year."
The system also includes polling and survey tools for evaluating blogs based on student- and teacher-defined criteria.
Further information can be found here.
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About the author: David Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's online education technology publications, including THE Journal and Campus Technology. He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com.
Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.