When was the last time you heard students cheering for homework? 
Well, this past week that is exactely what happended at the launch of The Rashi School Moodle site. I have been working with Rashi teachers and administrators since June to develop and implement a Moodle environment as part of the Rashi Connected Learning Initiative. The iniative is focused on implementing elements of the Connected Learning Model being promoted by a group of educators supported by the MacArthur Foundation. One element of the model is availability of resources and tools that are "openly networked" to allow access from school, home or anywhere in the community. That's where Moodle comes in, we developed an integrated version of Moodle that includes Google Apps for Education and a Khan Academy Clone. Students are given a Google Apps account from Rashi that they use to login to the Moodle site so that they have the full suite of Google Apps tools to use and the resources delivered in Moodle. I like to think of the Google Apps as the student's digital toolbox and Moodle as the learning repository. Anyway, at the end of the introduction to Moodle in a fourth grade class the teacher announced that the homework for that night would be posted in Moodle...the whole class erupted in CHEERS and APPLAUSE! I was stunned for a second and then I asked, "What a minute, did I just hear cheers for homework?" A number of students responed, "Yes, we're cheering for homeowork in Moodle!". This reminded of what I have been saying for a long time and what some are now finding. Students want to be engaged with learning online from their own classroom and teacher. They are already engaged online socially, (more than half of this fourth grade class had their own gmail account already), but they are rarely engaged online in a formal manner from school. I think that the Rashi inititiative is part of a trend in blended/online learing that we are just in the early stages of. I don't think it is a stretch to say that in the near future all institutions that have anything to do with teaching and learning will have an online environment to augment, enhance and extend their face-to-face enviornment. Rashi is on the leading edge of the learning what is going to become a tidal wave...