E learning and communication with parents is essential. Parents are an integral part of the learning plan. We have the ability to share with parents, all phases of the learning process. When parents are involved, students become more interested and responsible. Immediate communication between home and school maximizes effectiveness. When starting with simple photo or email sharing, and moving up to Voicethreads, video lesson segments, parents can become familiar with and addicted to e- learning!

The whole world is inclined toward ICT – from you kitchen to your car to the bank to the shop to the school to the ….grave !!!

Serious: we are becoming more online surfers. Go to the following www to see what I meant by online !!

http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/TeachingOnline.htm

Albie is no offline

Teachers in 21st Century classrooms will have to serve as the go-between for students and experts/collaborators. Technology makes communication possible, easy, and often free. If they don’t know how to engage students while keeping them safe, model online citizenship, and access/use these technologies, they can’t lead. Students must have these skills, and so it follows that their teachers must have them.

Dawne, thank you! Yes, please get parents involved and communicate. There is email, a well established communication tool. Remember that all this online e-learning “stuff” is new to many parents and it will be quite empowering for them to be included.

I think it also important to remember that children have “spaces” that they operate in. School and learning is one, and home and friends are another. Whether they realise it or not, learning happens in both. The computer and cellphone are devices that cross over both. The cellphone is predominantly a social tool and the computer as a work or school tool.

I think if an educator is serious about any subject matter that he/she wants learners to understand, the educator will determine which medium is best for my learners. In trying to answer that he/she will realise that learners today are so taken up by technology, so technology would be the best vehicle to deliver my subject matter. Inevitably,he or she should concern himself/herself with ICTs and e-learning.

With all the other professions using ICT liberally, why not the education field?
The one thing all educators battle with is getting learners involved in their learning. Giving learners written homework is an attempt to engage them with the different things they have to learn. ICT is a medium in which can do it in a variety of ways.
The other issue concerns the scalability of best practices in education. If there are successes then how does one multiply its effect in areas where there are mainly failures (not that we don’t learn from them)?