This post is both to share some links and to ask for suggestions.
Students and families in our home computer family literacy project spend one hour each day using links on our website to help develop their English skills. Three of these seven hours are spent on sites where we can monitor their progress. Household members log-in with their own password and we can check each week to see the number of hours that are spent on these sites. Families complete a paper log for the other four hours. Most students and their families far exceed this minimum commitment each week.
We have four sites where we’ve set-up an online classroom where students sign-in and where we can see their progress. These sites are Raz-Kids, English For All, I Know That, and Hello World. You can set-up classrooms for free at English For All and Hello World. It costs $60 at Raz-Kids, and $200 for I Know That.
Since some of our families have had these computers and DSL service for as long as two years, they’ve almost completed going through the content at these four sites. So we’re looking for additional sites that have content accessible to English Language Learners and would allow us to set-up an online classroom for them. English Space had been a possibility, but it doesn’t appear that they are functioning any longer.
Any other suggestions?
Hey Larry congrats on your blog renovation and your #1 standing for blog traffic. What’s your secret?
Bonnie
Bonnie,
It’s my photo that Sue embedded that’s bringing them all in :)….
Seriously, though, I think this blog attracts both teachers who are tech-savvy and those who are not for a few reasons:
— I highlight web resources “off the beaten track”
— I focus on sites, and ways to use them, that generally assume both teachers and students have no or little tech experience
— I think people appreciate that I generally view educational technology use with a bit of skepticism.
— My posts are short, and I share them regularly.
Larry
Thanks for the great work, Larry! I’ve been going through your sites and selecting the one’s that are most appropriate to my class. 8000 sites is just too overwhelming. I don’t know how you do it. I think you must have a big “S” on your chest, underneath your streetclothes! My thought is that you could set up/use a Moodle class that would enable you to track online hours. I currently have a Moodle at eslcapital.us, but I am redoing the site this month and moving to capitalesl.org (not up yet) and iwanttobeacitizen.org (also not up) . In revamping the site, I plan to put up classes by subject that support our curriculum. Those would be life skills, CBET subects like seeing the doctor, talking to the police, money, etc. It is possible we have a bit of crossover with families. I teach down the road from you at Florin Tech, at 24th and Florin. This week I start working a couple of additional obs, helping adult ESL teachers at Florin Tech, Old Marshall School and the many outreach centers we have in apartments, churches, and community centers.
Since the Modle classes need to be logged into, one of the intriguing possibilities of lessons on those classes is that we can use discoveryeducation/United Streaming. Since your students are inthe same district, they’d be alsocovered by the license. Oh, are your students’ parents using our distance learning materials on DVD? It’s not on thee web, but the District adult Ed has about 12 courses that they can enroll at and watch on their TV/DVD/VCR . Maybe there are more possibiities for collaboration.
Bruce,
I’m glad you’re finding the site and blog useful.
We’re actually going to be taking a bunch of our students down to your place for a field trip in the spring, by the way. I’ve talked/met with a few of your colleagues over the past month or two.
I’m looking for online classrooms that the only work would be required by us would be to input our student names and then would allow us to see what they’ve done. Is that the kind of set-up you’re creating? And would it be possible for our families to register, too, to use them?
We just want to give them another option in addition to the other four online classrooms we’ve got now.
Please let me know when your new sites are up, too.
Larry