Future of Portals in our Schools

In our schools we often have administrative systems for faculty and staff and other systems such as Moodle for student, teacher, parent, and class interaction. These portals provide effective ways for networking and are being put to work to provide information about courses, grades, schedules, attendance, resources, and much more. Some include social networking, calendars, clubs, bulletins, team rosters, news, online simulations—you name it. Pam Derringer’s article The Power of Portals in Tech & Learning gives a nice description of where schools are heading with their portal tools. At the end of her piece, she lists student ideas that came from the National Speak Up Day. Student suggestions include: more “social-based learning” such as interaction with experts, “untethered learning” that goes beyond school and community restraints, and “digitally-rich learning” that is relevant to productivity.