Fronter provides many different tools for teaching and learning
· You can find tools to make folders where you can put learning activities and weblinks.
· You can find tools to assess the pupils.
· You can create tests and hand-in assignments.
· There is a news tool where you can write the news from school.
· Fronter provides tools for collaboration and communication.
· Shared documents allow the pupils to work together and comment on each other’s work,
· while the chat and discussion forum can be used to share ideas.
You need access
The school or the school aria needs to pay for this service. In Gislaveds kommun, all schools can access Fronter. In Fronter you participate in different rooms and you have to be a user to enter the room. I have a room to my class where the pupils are users and their parents are guests. The teacher can decide who can be able to enter the room by inviting them.
You do not need anything else than Internet unless you have posted a document or want to open a document. Then you need a text processor like Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer that is a free software to download.
A resource to the teachers, pupils and the parents
There are different ways to use Fronter as a teacher and a pupil. I have folders where I submit pictures, homeworks and other tasks so all pupils and parents can access them. Then they do their tasks and hand-in them in the hand-in-folder. There are also portfolios with all the work they have done.
Fronter provides a link tool where I submit useful web links. The pupils use the links in school and at home to do their tasks or to play a game. There is also a sound-recorder. I use it when I want my students to tell something or read something in English. Then they can do it by their own in school or at home and I have a chance to listen to everyone when they are talking.
I also write all information to the pupils and to the parents on Fronter – in the news tool.
I think Fronter is an easy information tool to use between the school and the pupils and the parents. I think the parents now know more what we do in school. They always have the homeworks at home – not forgotten at school. If the pupils are ill, a lot of what we are working with is available in Fronter.
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I think this system has many advantages. In Växjö commune we don´t have a system like this, but it is requested. I liked a several things with Fronter.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I liked the collaboration and communication tool. It can be real useful when we are writing our IUP: s and Written Reports about our students. All teachers can write their own part and the form-master is saving a lot of time. It is a good thing to have a chat room because it isn´t always time to meet in real life. It is a lot to discuss with Lgr11, the coming curriculum, so it could be very useful.
The next thing I liked was the folders where you can submit tasks and other things. It is good to have a portfolio there for the material the students produce on the computer. This portfolio has to be completed with a portfolio for the other things that aren´t computerized.
I also liked the link tool for useful web links and the best of all; the sound recorder. There are many students in our classes who not dare to speak or read, here they can do it in a safe environment. That´s good!
It is good to have this information tool between the teacher, student and teacher too. Me and my students have worked with evaluation of the week for years now and I have discovered that the parents more often read the evaluation if it comes as an e-mail instead of in the students planning book!
When I started as a teacher for almost 20 years ago, a system like this wasn´t in my dreams. A computer and the Internet were not in every students home either. It has been an incredible development. Today almost all of the parents have computers and most of them are having Internet. It is a danger, though to believe that everyone has a computer and Internet. There are still students who not have access to the Internet. Malin; how do you in your school deal with that? It could be interesting to hear how you have solved it?
Camilla Sunesson
Well, in our small village- Hestra, every pupil have a computer in the ages I work with 10-12 years old. First we had a meeting with all the parents before we started and of course we asked them to tell us if this was a problem for them with computers and internet. In one of my classes last year I think there were 4 pupils that wanted the information and homeworks in paper. That was okej. But it wasn't because computer problems, they were just used to have everything in paper.
ReplyDeleteThis way you don't need to copy 40 papers every time you need to give them information or homeworks - it's better in environmental point of view.