Primarily advertised for use with higher education, Piazzza is a viable option for replacing other forums and newsgroups to communicate with students. Its sole purpose is to create a blackboard type area where students and teachers can interact online by asking and answering questions as well as participate in a discussion. Teachers can easily create classes and add students one by one or in a large group. The user interface is simplistic and provides an easy method of interaction for students and teachers.
As education moves more and more towards online interactions, a website like Piazzza provides a safe and valuable educational focused method for students and teachers to interact online. On the software students and teachers can use hashtags to tag popular words or terms of interest. Students can easily respond to questions and when new questions are asked they will appear in red. Students can also receive feedback for asking a good question or providing a good answer.
Below you will find an introduction to the software. When visiting Piazzza you will see several tutorial videos in the lower right side of the website. I encourage you to watch them so that you can learn more. I could really see this as a valuable tool for teachers of AP students.
www.piazzza.com (3 z's) changed its name to www.piazza.com (2 z's). You can read more about them in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/technology/04piazza.html
ReplyDelete