When I first began teaching, I used the class website as a way to communicate with students.  It was very teacher-oriented and I was proud of the work I had accomplished.  When I realized that I wanted student involvement, I decided that I would allow them to create articles.  It would be a social studies magazine.  Over time, I learned to let them create visuals, post podcasts, create videos and help organize the structure of the website.  Yet, even with those features, it feels like it misses the interaction that social studies is all about. 

This year I have decided to make it more interactive.  For one, I am hyperlinking videos, blogs, discussion board questions, wikis and articles together.  This way, there is more of a convergence of media that will allow someone to read an article and then check out a video on the same subject.  In addition, after every article, there will be a link to a wiki, where they can edit the article and a blog where they can post replies and an opinion poll that has its own discussion board question attached. 

I am curious if anyone has other ideas of how we can make the site more interactive.  Our target launch date for these features is the 21st of September.  Our class website is thesocialvoice.com   

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