I FOUND IT!!!!

I finally found what I have been looking for. Thank Scholastic! It was a bit of a task signing up for it, but it is exactly what i was looking for and I'm sure many if not all of you will benefit from setting up an account. It allows you to set up a free class homepage that can be accessed by your students and their parents from home.
You just need to Click Here then create an account. Creating the homepage is quite simple too. I encourage all teachers and teachers to be to create an account and have a go. What a wonderful way of keeping parents up to date with classroom happenings, as well as a way of posting homework, fun bits and pieces, and just connecting the classroom with home. I am so glad I found this!!

Still not what I need

Okay, So after having a look around this tool would be appropriate for a high school or tertiary level. It does not set up a virtual classroom that you load things to and your class members can access anytime. In WiZiQ you 'schedule' a class so that it is like having a real classroom session but online. I can see how that can be useful in other areas, but I don't think it's very practical for primary school. The other thing you can do on it is create tests, and you can also look for publically accessible tests.

So it really isn't bad, just not what I'm looking for.
The search comtinues...

Please if you have any ideas, let me know, I would really appreciate it!

I changed My Mind...

...About Glogster. Yes it is a fantastic tool and quite exciting and after playing around with it is very simple to use... to create Glogs only. It is not very friendly as the kind of Virtual Classroom I was imagining. The kind that it sets up just creates accounts for all your students and automatically connects them as friends and the teacher has the main authority over what happens. Learners can create, post and comment on each other's glogs. However, once you publish a Glog you cannot edit it... this is slightly annoying and does not work for me.

So, after googling 'Free Virtual Classrooms' I have come acrossWiZiQ. It looks pretty good and more of what I am looking for. What's more there are plenty of YouTube Clips etc. on how you can use it. I am yet to have a big 'play' with it, but I will let you know how it goes.

Glogster Practice - Virtual Classroom Prototype

Glogster

Image courtesy of MSU Moorhead's Glogster Tutorial

Just came across another cool student-centred elearning tool. Its called Glogster, and it allows you to create free interactive posters, also known as 'glogs'. The posters can include text, audio (MP3), images, videos and special effects. If using Glogster, students have complete freedom of expression. Glogs can then be viewed either directly from glogster or they can be inserted into wikis, web pages and blogs.
There is now also Glogster EDU which is for educational use and allows for some teacher control. With Glogster EDU teachers privately register their learners to create a safe 'virtual classroom'. In this way, teaching 'glogs' are private and can only be viewed by anyone who isn't registered in the class with permission from the teacher.

Just another cool tool that is worth having a play around with!

NING

Here is just something I came across when looking at Ning (which is a social networking tool where you can create your own network). This is a network that has already been set up called Classroom 2.0 . Its a networt for Learning managers interested in bringing web 2.0 technologies into their classrooms. It might be a handy one to join, don't you think?

FlickR for Formative Assessment??

Good night Exporer by mgsbird

I had never thought of the idea of getting learners to find images on FlickR that relate to the unit of work, other than to be used in a presentation or assignment. For Student Centred learning, however, it has been brought to my attention that FlickR can be used to check learner's understanding of a topic. Learners can create a flickR account, and search for an image that describes something in their current unit of work. For example, in the year 4 class I volunteer in, last term the Unit was called "Adventure on the High Seas", which looked at a number of different sea explorers from history, including John Newton. I might, for example choose the above photo as an example. I might say that to me, this unit is about people who go above and beyond, push the limits to find new beauty, just like the Eagle flying high in the sunset. (Okay, so its not the best example.... but I can expect more of students who have actually done the unit!)

In this way, you could check learners understanding of the core concepts of the unit by a) their choice of photo and b) their justification of choice. The photos and justifications could be loaded to a class blog or wiki, or simply pasted into word with an explanation and printed out.

Good idea of a different way to use FlickR. What do you think?