A colleague of mine is currently introducing a number of teachers to the ways in which computer technology can support more effective teaching. Initially this is for Numeracy and Mathematics teaching but it is planned to extend this to Literacy and other subject in the future. A community web site needs to be developed where teachers can share experiences, lesson plans and other resources and generally get Peer (and Mentor) support.
This would provide (amongst other things) for registered users to talk via email, instant messaging and secure chat rooms as well as post and download resoures such as lesson plans, software developed or experiences of applying free (or shareware) to their lessons. It would be useful to allow conferencing (possibly including sound and video) for small group tutorials.
There are many other aspects which you (as a team) would need to work out including extra facilities that would be useful to practicing teachers.
A VITAL ASPECT to make it very easy to regularly upgrade the contents of the site as this would probably have to be done by the teachers themselves. Security aspects are also important.
It is intended that the product, if good enough, would actually be used by the teachers on our courses.
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