The Newsletter Quest

Creating a collaborative online community amongst stakeholders is an essential part of all virtual instruction programs and best practices. Reflect, for a moment, upon the examples provided throughout this quest and the preceding sections in Communicate. Identify three highly effective methods of communicating with stakeholders and create an artifact for each utilizing the resources outlined throughout the module and discuss the topic in your blog.

Communication in the online classroom can take a variety of forms, and weekly updates utilizing a Newsletter format for example, provide instructors a forum to relay student achievement, classroom updates, upcoming events, and important curriculum information in a creative, engaging format.

Thinglink is similar to Animoto.  Animoto seems easier to manipulate than Thinglink.  Flipsnack is really great for creating online books and resources students can use as reference.  Another resource similar to Flipsnack is Issuu.  Smore is excellent for Newsletters!  It could also be used as a great News Item!

• Thinglink- With this program, users add captions on top of an imported image or graphic. Then, when viewers scroll over the icons, the captions appear. Thinglink also provides users the option to embed videos as well, and the program is extremely user-friendly.

This video is created with Animoto.  It introduces a discussion topic:

• Flipsnack – With this tool, users can create a flipbook of student work using images or pdf files. This tool affords instructors opportunities to create virtual portfolios of student work and collaborate across various areas of study as well. However, instructors must always consider FERPA when publishing student information.

Class Syllabus via Flipsnack

• Smore – As an online “warehouse and wizard for creating a newsletter,” Smore provides templates that are all easily modified to align with the focus of the Newsletter. Users can embed links to videos,web sites, and audio. The file is maintained, and other instructors, administration team, or stakeholders may also add comments.