Over the past few years, we (eLCs) have been collaborating and sharing ideas, designing our ‘My Home’ landing pages to be that ‘one-stop-shop’, where students and staff can access and/or link to many external resources form within one area.
As I think back and take a look where ours is and what it could be, there is some serious potential here.
A lot of what you see is a result of a successful, collaborating network of people working across Ontario from Moosonee to Windsor. The fact that we all share ideas and resources with one another constantly via Skype, Hangouts, eCommunity and especially Google Drive is evidence alone that being connected is more powerful now than it ever has been.
With all of the materials that we have collected and made accessible through this network, the options are endless. Every board could have their own personalized look and feel to their own landing pages by accessing shared design ideas (there’s a shared folder for that!) and a variety of tools and integrations to add to their pages.
Am I completely satisfied with my landing page? No; then again, I’m always looking to improve my work constantly. The page that you see here was probably my vision more than a year ago. Sure, I may set goals that get shuffled around and prioritized as needed, but one thing I’ve learned is to at least set those goals. Eventually, when you get to them, it’s one more checkmark off of the endless to-do list!
As a teacher, I wouldn’t want a list of websites to have to send my students to. Simply bookmarking all of the sites needed would become overwhelming for students – let alone the teacher and students having to manage so many login credentials.
Thankfully, integrations through Brightspace such as Learn360 and Explore Learning (Gizmos) to name a couple, these integrations are huge features to praise when staff the potential of blending their teaching, and getting technology integrated into their lessons. This simplifies a lot of things, especially since all that they would essentially need is their Brightspace login information and they’re off to the races.
The nice thing about all of this? I think a lot of people have shared this same thought the powers that be, as more and more integrations are ‘in the works’ led by e-Learning Ontario. I’m looking forward to future integrations (piloting one right now!) and what lies ahead for the one-stop-shop model for our landing page (great, I’ll need to change it all over again! 🙂 )