This year is only 5 days old and already I am amazed if not a bit tired. I have been meeting with each of the grade levels for 2 classes in order to get the students organized and shown how to use some of the new tools. FirstClass is now available for all students grades 4 – 12. After many years of not providing students with email accounts, we have now included them into our FirstClass system. The system will allow for easier communication between students and teachers along with Instant Messaging, File Transfer, Web Publishing/Blogs and Workspaces which allow groups of students or faculty to create collaborative workspace to create documents, calendars and other resources.

While all of this is great (and expensive compared to the many free Web 2.0 solutions), it became apparent quickly how much it has changed the community. A family is in Italy for a semester and the twins are blogging for their classmates in order to stay connected. We met before they left to get started and then worked together within FirstClass to make it work separated by 6 hours.

In addition, we have a student studying in China for a year. She wanted to be able to take Latin in 8th grade so she is auditing the Latin 7 Moodle course of Janet Long in hopes of being ready for Latin 8. We have communicated via email and she is now in the course.

I like having the tools and ability to connect our students with their friends around the world. I look forward to a broader connection and more surprises.

To read more from Jamie and Ben visit: http://www2.da.org/~13salzmanj/

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