Ideal Programs for Constructivism
The following programs are some of the many web-based tools that are available to educators for the creation of online learning sites.
Take some time and explore at least 3 of the programs provided by reading the descriptions and clicking on the image to link to the respective program, and in doing so make mental notes of how useful and appealing it is to you. Then after your exploration, take the opportunity to provide a ranking.
Weebly is perfect for creating classroom websites, and websites for assigned projects. Our drag & drop website editor is stunningly simple to use, and appropriate for use with students of all ages. Weebly enables your students to express themselves creatively using a variety of multimedia features, all within a protected environment that you control. Weebly was named one of TIME's 50 Best Websites of the year, and here's why:
- Our core advantage is our stunningly easy drag & drop website editor. Videos, pictures, maps, and text are added by simply dragging them to your website. We love it when new customers are totally surprised at how straightforward it is to build a website with Weebly – no HTML or technical skills required!
- We understand that privacy is extremely important to teachers, students, and parents. You have full control over which websites are public, which are private, and which can be edited by the student. It's simple to bulk create new student accounts and oversee your students' activity.
- Post class updates, homework assignments, and news for parents using our super slick blogging features. Blogs are also great for students to express their thoughts and receive comments from others. Weebly supports an unlimited number of blogs within your website, with full comment moderation features allowing an open, moderated, or closed conversation.
- Our service has always been, and always will be free. Some "free" website providers force advertising to be placed on your site, but you don't need to worry about that with Weebly.
CourseSites is a free, hosted online course creation and facilitation service that empowers individual K–12 teachers, college and university instructors and community educators to add a web–based component to their courses, or even host an entire course on the Internet. You even choose your own URL, so students can find your page easily.
Imagine having your own interactive elearning platform, that allows you to post and update course material, interact with students, promote collaboration, as well as assess and improve performance –– anytime, anywhere, 24/7. All the online teaching tools you need in one place!
- With CourseSites, you now have the ability to publish and share your courses as OER under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).
- Engage learners with multi-media! Mash-ups integrate Web 2.0 resources from youtube.com, slideshare.com and flickr.com. The YouTube player has built in accessible controls.
- Powered By Blackboard's Latest Technology CourseSites including Blackboard Learn™, Release 9.1, Blackboard Collaborate™, Blackboard Mobile™, and Blackboard Connect™.
Now it’s easier than ever to unleash the full potential of iPad in your classroom by creating your own courses for iPad. You get to share your ideas in a powerful new way, and your students get a rich, immersive learning experience using the iTunes U app for iPad. iTunes U is available no matter where you teach — at any college, university, or K-12 school.
iTunes U Course Manager — an easy-to-use, browser-based tool from Apple — lets you create a complete course using all of your digital materials. Your iTunes U courses can include all the items you would use in a traditional course: a syllabus, handouts, quizzes, and so on. And they can include your own video and audio lectures as well as interactive elements such as content and links from the Internet, iBookstore, App Store, and iTunes Store. You can also add materials from among the 500,000-plus free public resources in the iTunes U catalog, including audio and video content from museums, universities, cultural institutions, and more. The onscreen instructions in iTunes U Course Manager
guide you through the process of adding materials to your courses. Everything you upload is hosted by Apple and available to anyone taking the course. And you can easily duplicate your course, make modifications, and use it for a new class.
To get your course to your students, simply invite them to enroll in it with a code or URL that allows them to request enrollment. This private course distribution is available to all teachers who sign up for iTunes U — regardless of whether your school or institution is enrolled in the program.
Claroline is an Open Source platform, licensed under the GPL, which allows hundreds of institutions from more than 100 countries to create free online courses. As a highly intuitive environment, Claroline enables users to use the spaces provided with great ease. Operating Claroline does not require any kind of specific technical skills. Claroline is a stable platform that allows you to focus on your learning goals. For each course, the instructor has a set of tools and a set of actions:
- Writing a course description
- Publishing documents and files accessible (text, PDF, HTML, video…)
- Administrate public or private forums
- Building a learning path
- Organizing group working
- Creating exercises
- Informing through the agenda
- Publishing announcements (also with e-mail)
- Managing assignments
- Check the statistics of attendance and completion exercises
- Collaborating with the wiki
Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a free web application that educators can use to create effective Internet-based courses and web sites. It is a global development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education. Moodle's basic structure is organized around courses. These are basically pages or areas within Moodle where teachers can present their learning resources and activities to students. They can have different layouts but they usually include a number of central sections where materials are displayed and side blocks offering extra features or information. Courses can contain content for a year's studies, a single session or any other variants depending on the teacher or establishment. They can be used by one teacher or shared by a group of teachers.
The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler.
Canvas is a new, open-source LMS by Instructure Inc. We believe in the people and process of education—and the role that technology can and should play when it makes that experience more possible. It’s an approach that has continued from the initial 17-school validation tour that began Canvas through to currently there are 200+ colleges and universities, 50+ K-12 school districts. Canvas is designed to help you, as a teacher, transform learning. How?
- Canvas K-12 has it all. It bundles assessments, grading, messaging, learning analytics, and more—while keeping everything simple, easy, and in one place
- Whether it’s simple course creation and management, seamless calendaring, or routine grading, you’ll notice a remarkable difference in your
- productivity and workflow. In the end, Canvas K-12 is designed to help you get back to doing what you do best.
- It helps you stay in touch. The way we communicate is changing rapidly with the rise of texting, social networks, and real-time online chat. Canvas K-12 makes sure you can communicate with students, parents, other teachers, and administrators using familiar methods and tools. No need to become friends on a social network or learn complex new systems—just select the way you want to communicate and start a conversation.
- Canvas Cloud is Free for Teachers to use, just sign up to get started.
References
Weebly. (2012). Our Features. Retrieved from http://education.weebly.com/
Coursesites. (2012). Learn More. Retrieved from https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/pages/index.html
iTunesU. (2012). Apple in Education. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/?ref=https://eduapp.apple.com/
Claroline. (2012). Features. Retrieved from http://www.claroline.net/?lang=en
Moodle. (2012). About. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/About_Moodle
Canvas. (2012). Features. Retrieved from http://www.instructure.com/k-12
Weebly. (2012). Our Features. Retrieved from http://education.weebly.com/
Coursesites. (2012). Learn More. Retrieved from https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/pages/index.html
iTunesU. (2012). Apple in Education. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/?ref=https://eduapp.apple.com/
Claroline. (2012). Features. Retrieved from http://www.claroline.net/?lang=en
Moodle. (2012). About. Retrieved from http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/About_Moodle
Canvas. (2012). Features. Retrieved from http://www.instructure.com/k-12