eChalk Integrates Student-Safe Blogs into Online Learning Communities
Blog Designed To Enhance Instruction, Improve Writing, Align K-12 to Higher Education
For a live demonstration, visit www.eChalk.com/blogs.
New York, NY (June 17, 2008)—eChalk, a national education technology company, today integrated a new student-safe academic blogging tool into its popular online system that transforms K-12 schools into thriving learning communities where everyone feels involved in the classroom and participates in the conversation about education. The announcement comes amid mounting evidence that technology must be more meaningfully connected to the academic lives of students before it can reverse the well-documented trend linking early patterns of disengagement with the loss of motivation to stay in school.
“Many schools we serve are increasingly convinced that blogging, if properly incorporated into daily instruction and classroom discussion, will help students find their academic voices and contribute in ways that will make their time in school more meaningful while underscoring the importance of writing,” said Torrance Robinson, President and Co-Founder of eChalk.“Integrated blogging builds upon the successes of our online classroom in which teachers have used threaded discussion and other tools to keep students engaged at home and at school. More teachers will now be able to enhance instruction even further by incorporating interactive writing across the curriculum in ways that will appeal to students but reaffirm thoughtful communication in an age of IMing.”
The integrated blog is designed to improve how students practice writing and thinking by aligning K-12 education to higher education, where all assignments require cognitive skills like logic, reasoning, and judgment to be used regularly. The blogging tool can be maintained publicly or privately, with all participants equally protected in a system controlled by each school or district. All users can create posts, moderate comments, enable RSS syndication, add images, upload videos and podcasts, and subscribe to other appropriate blogs. Posts and comments are archived in a portfolio that follows students year to year.
The eChalk system also includes a survey tool that makes it easy to evaluate blogs according to different criteria students and teachers establish and to poll the effectiveness of blogs within each community.
Through eChalk, students can develop better relationships with their peers and motivate each other to achieve. Cooperative learning projects in supportive settings can make challenging subjects easier to digest. Students gain access to a network of resources, guidance, and encouragement that deepens their connections to everyone vital in their academic life. They are members of an online community that provides an alternative to MySpace and Facebook in which enrichment prevails over mindless distraction.
“eChalk combines cutting-edge communication and learning applications in an easy-to-use system powerful enough to turn schools into close-knit, well-informed, high-achieving communities,” said Charlene Noll, Vice President of Product Development at eChalk. “Blogging within our system will expand educational opportunities for students in a secure and nurturing environment while ensuring that parents, teachers, principals, and administrators have a role in keeping posts and comments on track.”
About eChalk
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in New York City, eChalk offers K-12 schools web-based systems that transform teaching, learning, and leadership by creating communities in which all academic stakeholders can communicate, collaborate, and connect. Students are given a new way to learn, teachers a new way to teach, and administrators a new way to lead. Each online community is supported by extensive on-site project management, training, planning, and professional development so that users of varying skill levels can be equally successful.
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