This education blog has been created by ClassChatterLive.com http://www.classchatterlive.com/site/44 I would like to thank all the teachers who have made ClassChatter.com and ClassChatterLive a part of their new school year. As we begin the new school year ClassChatter is more popular then ever, and this new popularity has over the last few days been placing increasing strain on our servers. We have worked to keep the site up and have made several adjustments to hopefully alleviate any future issues. I would like to apologize to those who have experienced issues over the last two days. We understand how important it is that ClassChatter is ready when your students are. I recommend that all users follow our Twitter feed for the latest updates and as a line of communication if our server happens to drop out again. twitter.com/dandeluca I look forward to another successful year! http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/a5411d2ef1455c082845c4b27b8e4237 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/a5411d2ef1455c082845c4b27b8e4237 Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:11:51 PDT For more than four decades the AEP Awards have honored outstanding resources for teaching and learning. ClassChatterLive is proud to have learned that we were named a winner Tuesday June 8th in Washington DC. ClassChatterLive won a Distinguished Achievement Awards for Technological Innovation. ( Learn More ) ClassChatterLive was judged by a panel of experts and teachers and came out tops in its category. Why not find out for yourself with a free trial! http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/d7292175bc05c62134e0eebff5e10287 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/d7292175bc05c62134e0eebff5e10287 Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:11:50 PDT We have made several security enhancements to ClassChatterLive today. You should no longer get error messages saying that the page has both encrypted and non-encrypted information. This should also improve load time on the teachers side of the site. We are working on a solution for the Ginger Widget on ClassChatterLive -- I apologize to those of you who have had strange behavior of your dashboard pages over the last few days. We are working hard to make sure that does not continue to happen. http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/64a784ca7dce2b4e659006148cae6ad6 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/64a784ca7dce2b4e659006148cae6ad6 Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:43:51 PDT There are some concerns regarding the use of blogs in a secondary education classroom. It is always vitally important to protect student privacy for both legal andethical reasons. This is doubly important when materials are posted on the Internet, themost public of forums. The federal law regarding student privacy is known as The FamilyEducation Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). It is important to note that FERPA wasratified before the invention of the Internet. Many of its provisions therefore are awkwardto use with modern educational technology. FERPA outlines that personally identifiablestudent information may only be released in two situations. First schools may release"directory information" if certain conditions are met. Directory information includes a student's name, address, email address, and similar information. (Baskin & Surratt 2001)Schools may also release student information with parental consent. A student's work isprotected under this provision. Any work that is personally identifiable should not beposted to the public. This includes work that is posted online such as in a blog. Work that cannot be identifiable to a student can be posted for public consumption. (Baskin &Surratt 2001) There is little case law involving FERPA and student blogs. However, the legaldepartments of several universities have produced guidelines for their faculty. TheUniversity of North Carolina's published guidelines state that students may create and maintain blogs in a classroom setting if the blogs are only viewable to fellow classmembers and the instructor makes no evaluative statements in the blog. (Drooze, 2007)Despite this "loophole" it would appear that prudence would dictate that parental consentbe collected before an elementary or primary school educator starts blogging in his or herclassroom. ClassChatter and ClassChatterLive also provide several tools to help you meet FERPA compliance. In fact you do not need to sacrifice collaboration to meet FERPA. Our unique "identity masking" feature allows students to hold online discussions while keeping their identities a secret, yet still allowing teachers easy access to their 'unmasked' identity. ClassChatter and ClassChatterLive also let you precisely control how much access students have to each others work throughout the site. Furthermore, with Assignment Blogs, teachers and students have an area to privately and securely post, answer and grade assignments. http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/307a9b3078b10cd36c92ef479fff2d56 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/307a9b3078b10cd36c92ef479fff2d56 Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:48:17 PDT Teacher's First ( http://www.teachersfirst.com ) has posted a great review of ClassChatter.com . If you are new to ClassChatter and want to find out what we are all about I suggest you check it out. This is also a great resource if you are trying to explain ClassChatter to a skeptical administrator. TeachersFirst is a free, ad-free teacher resource web site offered as a service to teachers by a non-profit learning and technologies corporation, The Source for Learning. Our value-added reviews and teacher-friendly site have been helping teachers since 1998, sharing the best of the web and our own original content along with practical implementation ideas and best practices for effective integration of technology as a tool for teaching and learning. We have an international audience and a strong reputation for providing and recommending high quality resources. http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/7ed4c7b4fa060095b1d781b50f864dfa http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/7ed4c7b4fa060095b1d781b50f864dfa Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:03:15 PDT For a long time ClassChatterLive has been missing an important feature to many 21st Century educators -- video. Not anymore. ClassChatterLive has introduced our own video service to make it easier and safer then ever to share videos among you and your students. ClassChatterLive's new system can accept all common video formats up to 1 GB in size and will transcode that video into a personal video gallery for you to use as you see fit. You can posts videos anywhere you can write text on ClassChatterLive. This includes Assignment Blogs, home pages, and wikis! At your option you can allow students to have access to the entire video gallery or even have upload privileges. It is also possible to allow students to have upload privileges but not access to the gallery so you can screen videos before sharing them with the whole class. So get started today -- I can not wait to the creative uses our users come up for this new feature. http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/c9d715be2786c47b58e55ffc6cc305a1 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/c9d715be2786c47b58e55ffc6cc305a1 Mon, 31 May 2010 07:44:23 PDT We are sorry for the long delay in this blog post, but it has been a very busy year here at the ClassChatter camp. However we have some exciting news to share with all our users. ClassChatterLive has been named a finalist in the Association of Educational Publishers Distinguished Achievement Awards (DAAs). The DAAs recognize the year's top educational products in four categories: Curriculum, Periodicals, Professional Development, and Technology & New Media . DAA entries are judged only against other products in their entry category, subcategory, and grade level. (e.g., middle school Arts curricula are only judged against other middle school Arts curricula) Check out the complete list of finalist in Technology and New Media here. http://www.aepweb.org/awards/techwin.htm While we are proud to be included with outstanding products from organizations such as Inspiration Software, The Wall Street Journal, and Discovery Education but we are not resting on our laurels. Be on the look out for a major upgrade announcement coming soon! http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/afc4799661f8c867e4878595588c83b1 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/afc4799661f8c867e4878595588c83b1 Tue, 04 May 2010 17:10:02 PDT ClassChatterLive now features a brand new Wiki feature! All of your classes can have their own wiki with which to collaborate and share ideas with the world! The feature is still in beta and we are currently refining and perfecting our offering. ClassChatterLive would like your help making this feature valuable to all our users. If you have an exemplary wiki you would not mind sharing with the world. Please contact me through the 'contact us' link on the site. Also be sure to report any errors you may see and check out our Facebook and Twitter pages for the latest updates! http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/d9904c3096bc586659fa03aa13b827af http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/d9904c3096bc586659fa03aa13b827af Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:06:22 PST ClassChatterLive has released a new feature late last night. Teachers can now turn off "Visitor Posting" in personal blogs. With this feature turned off students will still be able to visit and comment in their fellow student's personal blogs however they will be unable to add new posts to them. This feature can be accessed through the "Class Options" page on ClasschatterLive. ClassChatterLive would also like to reintroduce a virtually unknown feature of ClassChatterLive. ClassChatterLive offers a free to use Student Portal . This student portal provides a constantly updating custom mashup of science information, current events, literary information and current events. The portal also offers a custom google search that is tailored to meet student needs. Help fund ClassChatter and ClassChatterLive by making our portal the homepage of your computers and directing your students to use it for their internet searches. ClassChatter gets a portion of the proceeds and you get a quality teacher designed portal for your students to use everyday. http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/1c4ba7b18f608bbd95822ddfd5a94f07 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/1c4ba7b18f608bbd95822ddfd5a94f07 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:40:58 PST Schools across the country are preparing for the possible event of an H1N1 outbreak. It is very possible that in order to protect the health of students and staffs some schools will have to close their doors for up to a week. Is your school ready? Can your technology plan efficiently deliver instruction remotely? ClassChatterLive offers your school the chance to rapidly move your classes online, without breaking the budget. Static web pages cannot effectively bring the education environment home in the event of an emergency. ClassChatterLive's Web 2.0 tools allows for efficient interaction between students and teachers. There is no need to invest in costly infrastructure changes or the need for your teachers and students to learn multiple platforms. With one log-in students and teachers can have access to multiple instructional and assessment tools from collaborative discussions, to individualized assignments and multimedia integration. Designed by teachers, ClassChatterLive's low learning curve allows our system to be deployed rapidly. ClassChatter LLC has been providing blogging and courseware solutions for educators since 2004 and we have learned volumes from our users. ClassChatterLive is robust enough to be implemented by college professors yet intuitive enough to used with Elementary School classes. If you would like to learn more start with our video gallery and then dive right in with a no obligation 30 Day Free Trial . We are confident that you will find ClassChatterLive's low overhead and ability to provide instruction both inside and outside the classroom a winning combination! http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/9ed6bdf9c011b128dd0293d29088a667 http://www.classchatterlive.com/page/9ed6bdf9c011b128dd0293d29088a667 Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:17:06 PST