Over the summer, our school is installing a district-wide program: Moodle in the Classroom.  This site, www.moodle.org, will allow different kinds of communication.I will not have a website until our training in August, but I would like to focus on writing skills by having the students comment to blogs that I post about activities or comment on podcasts of students reading their own writing. I am looking forward to this type of communication that will take my students inside and outside of the classroom.

 Do other schools use similar classroom websites?  Have you done an activity that you love and works well?  One that did not?  I would love to get some ideas about what to start with on my website when I create it.  Let me know how you integrated this technology tool into your instruction.

Research shows that Students that write for an audience that interests them are far more interested in writing. In several studies students had significant improvements in their state writing scores when they had online pen pals. They found the students were motivated to write to a peer somewhere else in the world (Warlick 2005).

Has anyone used an online pen pal web site?  I have signed up for www.ePals.com and would like to implement this activity in my classroom next year.  Are there any tips to making the project successful?  Anyone use a different site that they like?