Russell Street School

Russell Street School in New Zealand uses a different methodology than we are used to see.
Ii amazed me the way of sharing what is going on in the classroom thanks to teachers and students blogs. I see it as school-wide and not just an initiative of one or two teachers.

It is impressive to see how the mentality of the "Board of Trustees" (what we call SBDM) approves and support the elearning in the classroom. Most of the time,we teachers don´t spend time on activities like blogging in the classroom because of the lack of time. We don´t spend time on blogging because we think that the final product (essay, presentation...) can be done in a piece of paper or cardboard and it takes less time. In Russell Street Elementary they understand that blogging is not a tool to publish the essay. The final goal is to be able to publish electronically a reflection, summary...These are needs that students will have in the near future. Students will become workers very soon and should learn the skills to be successful in their jobs as posting properly in blogs or forums. These skills are very different to writing a letter in paper, what was essential years ago but there are other needs these days that we can not avoid. The students from Russell Street School are not just learning how to post in a blog, they are learning to create a community with other classmates, their teachers and parents, who are able to follow their learning in a very interactive way. After seeing how the students from this school create their online portfolios, it came to my mind an app that I shared in my blog a few weeks ago called "Three Ring". It creates online portfolios where students or teachers are able to share the work done in the classroom with their families. This app does not share just written assignments but also videos or audios done by students. I can´t wait to start the school year to start using it.It also surprised me to see the way of incorporating culture in the learning environment, for example with the video about soccer. I feel like sometimes teachers, parents and administrators are too focused on making sure students learn the content, so students are able to get a good score in the standarized test. We forget that education is not only content but also collaborations between students, something that students from Russell Street School show when they make videos, Power Point presentations and publish them in their blogs.

I like how the principal publishes weekly a post with information of the school and keeps the parents updated. I understand that most of the families from Russell Street School have access to the internet and are able to follow online the progress of their kiddos.Unfortunately, most of the schools in the United States are not able to use the model of the school in New Zealand yet because not all the families can afford it. I
feel that we could start using the traditional way (sending home all the school news and written assignments in paper), but also electronically, to start a transition. Encourage the use of the public libraries or let the parents to use the computer labs at school after the instructional time, would help them get used to seeing the communication between teachers and parents about the work done at school, in a different way.