BP14_2009113_Peer Review of Jessica Cruz’s Web 2.0 Tool

“Echalk is a site that I currently use in my school as a portal for communication with parents, colleagues, students, and the community. It is a collaborative web 2.0 site with multiple functions from posting assignments to setting up blogs, gradebooks, a communication tool (email), and setting up professional groups to share information in. It serves as the school's website providing access to loads of information and work existing in the school building. It shares a very similar structure to iGoogle but is more restrictive in its functions. The benefit is that all members receive email accounts from the same database. For instance at my school; The Renaissance Leadership Academy, we are all first initial.last name@rlascholars (jcruz@rlascholars.com).

Each teacher has his or her own page where he or she will post messages, discussion boards, assignments, class calendar, links to relevant sites, highlights of student work, etc. Each member sets up his or her page with the widgets and functions he or she deems necessary for his/her class. Administrators also communicate with the staff and parents via this portal by setting up groups where information is disseminated. Pages, messages, and groups can be set private just to be viewed by the select members or public for the world at large to benefit from.

This site has been developed specifically for educators, students, and parents to ensure that communication and collaboration is continuous. Parents, educators, and students can post information pertaining to the school community and projects occurring within the school. The community at large can be informed on what is occurring within the school.

Links can also be included. Echalk is ever-changing and therefore, while currently it does not provide the function to subscribe to RSS feeds, I am confident that it will in the very near future.”

Jessica,
I looked through your web 2.0 tool and enjoyed seeing that there are so many different alternatives for online collaboration. The features of this tool are not really different from those of many others, but at least we as instructors can have some variety in terms of what we can use to help our students succeed. Even parents can get in on the collaborating. I love all of these collaboration tools!