Six weeks into my new role and I haven’t had a chance till now to blog about some of the exciting things we are doing. In fact this week was such an interesting insight into the world of my students I wanted to just share this one experience from the week.

At present our school is going through the process of working through different Learning Management Systems, attempting to find the best solution for our school. At present our staff are being trained and doing PD in 2 different platforms, learning the basic skills of an online management system. Our students are not included in this just yet but will be pushed toward an LMS shortly.

My interesting observation this week came from 2 of my media students who decided to create a facebook group for our class. The group is closed to just the 16 class members and myself. These students started inviting class mates to join and participate in the group. Inside the group facebook page they have placed handouts from class and started to post some videos explaining different aspects of the class. All this created by students in their world. Personally I can’t stand how disorganised things get within facebook groups, however, the students are using it and starting to use this social medium also as a learning medium.

So after this week my question is – Why do we as a school need to spend 1000’s of dollars on an LMS that is not a part of our student’s world already? I know there are still reasons to have an LMS and I am keen to see something that is student and teacher friendly, however, for the cost is it really worth it? Especially when you have students taking innovative like this.

I would really appreciate some thoughts and feedback.