Again, thank you colleagues for your continuous support and
feedback in regards to my GAME plan. I feel as though I am making progress
towards one of my goals and that is with setting up and utilizing Edmodo in the
classroom. I spoke with one of the History teachers in my building who uses
technology in his classroom quite frequently and he gave me some great
feedback. He told me the more I utilize it within the classroom, the better it
will be for my students. They will also tend to use it more if they know how to
use it. He also gave me ways I can use it to encourage discussion among the
group which would be great for student interaction. I have decided it would be
best to focus on one area for my GAME plan even though I feel as though I have
two great goals. I think with everything already consuming my time, focusing in
on implementing Edmodo would be best and the students could really benefit from
this experience.
There are four questions I would like to address. Here are
the questions and my answers to each question.
1. Are you finding the information and
resources you need?
I feel as though I am finding the information and resources
that I need. I have been able to connect with a teacher at school who uses
Edmodo in his classroom and I have also been reading some blog posts about utilizing
Edmodo. The internet is a great way to locate and find some good resources! The
Edmodo site has been the most helpful because it breaks down different uses for
Edmodo.
2. Do you need to modify your action
plan?
I do not feel as though I need to modify my action plan for
using Edmodo. I did however modify my action plan with collaborating with another
middle school teacher outside of my school to set up a wiki page or blog. My
reasoning for this is because I want to focus in on one area right now so I can
really get the most out of my experience with using the Edmodo. I need to
brainstorm on ways I could utilize the wiki page or blog with another middle
school teacher first before I approach them with the idea. There is just so much
consuming my time and I felt getting the Edmodo site up and running would be
best for my students at this time.
3. What have you learned so far?
I have learned some really cool features with using Edmodo. There
is a calendar feature I can set up for my classes so they can see due dates of
assignments or upcoming quizzes and tests. This feature is great because it
keeps the students informed and they can refer to it if they left their
planners at school or didn’t write down the assignment! I would love to
continue hearing ways about how teachers you know or how you yourself utilize
Edmodo! In the next couple of weeks, I will be taking my students to our
computer lab to help get them signed up! Yay!
4. What new questions
have arisen?
I am curious how teachers
signed up their students. Did you have the students log on to computers as a
whole class and walk them through the process? I have thought about doing that
so that way it is explained easily to a larger group. What do you suggest
doing?
Emily,
ReplyDeleteI was pondering that same question with Edmodo. You said that other teachers in your school have used it as well? Do you share many of the same students? Maybe many of the students are already signed up and can add your class or something, or even already have a good idea of what they are doing to sign up. I have already found that many of the students are better with the program and seem to know more than I do already, from using it in other classes. It is so great when they are teaching us, just as much as we teach them. And it gets them excited to use it more because it is something they enjoy and know about.
Mark
I think you are doing a very wise thing by focusing on one area right now is KEY!!!!! YOu are right, there is too much going on with not enough time in every day, to adequately stretch ourselves beyond paper thin. If you focus on one element, you can truly learn the intricate details of anything you are pursuing as a goal versus this multi-tasking business which (for me and in my opinion) leads to a half-done job versus what it could be- close to excellence. I have never looked into Edmodo at all; is this a bit of a replica of Face Book or is that something else? What will Edmodo do for you that a blog site will not? I am only curious. One of my goals was actually setting my own website, however, I am wondering if I just should not set up a blog site for my students, their parents/guardians, fellow colleagues, and the school district to have access to in regards what are we currently covering in the math classes, what is next on our agenda, homework for the night, examples posted and notes posted from every day (in case students have missed due to illness, OSS or ISS), etc. To the best of my knowledge, no one in our school uses Edmodo; however, if I EVER finish the portfolio within the next two years, I might be able to investigate Edmodo.
ReplyDeleteI like you idea of having the entire class sign up together in the computer lab; therefore, you can get them all in one "shabang" and like Mark stated, you might find that many are already signed into an account and those students could actually help the other students that have never gone through the process before.
I think you are making terrific strides and I especially like your work ethic of learning one thing at a time versus this multi-task hocus pocus. Great job, Emily! I look forward to hearing how things turn out for you and your students.
Hi, Emily -- I just recently went through this process with Edmodo and my 10th grade English classes, so maybe I can help. I am doing a Media Literacy unit with them. I had the class all log into Edmodo with me in class, them on wireless laptops. I had Edmodo up on the whiteboard using my projector, just so they could see what I was seeing.
ReplyDeleteAs they logged in and registered (Edmodo gives you a class code they are supposed to use), they found a question I had posted having to do with media literacy. It asked them to name one upside and one downside of living in a digital world. They posted to my question with their replies, and then went about reading others' posts and replying to them.
Prior to this, we had gone over how to properly post, how to reply in a way which would further the discussion, etc. I also have the discussion post set so that I monitor each post, and then approve it to be posted.
Needless to say, it was SO great!! We have had a couple of meaningful online discussions about educational topics, the kids and I both love the format of Edmodo, (they say it is just like Facebook), and I love the fact that they are using technology in a meaningful way.
Now I am posting a discussion question on Monday, to which the students have to reply and post to at least two other classmates by Friday. I hope this helps!
Mary
Mary,
DeleteI have to say thank you as well. Emily asked a great question, that I too was wondering, and you gave a great example on how it can be done. I am planning to utilize Edmodo next year here in Japan, so I have been pondering so many things. Right now I am using a blog in a similar way that you are posting in Edmodo. I am wondering if Edmodo allows blog integration? Meaning if any one posts to the blog will a notification be posted in Edmodo. I have not actually explored Edmodo fully yet, but I am just wondering if you know off the top of your head. Any help will be appreciated.
Also, you made a great point with teaching students how to reply properly and to reply in a way to keep the conversation going. This is something we often think students know how to do, even myself when I first started the blog. However, assessing the blog let me see that students do not know how to reply sometimes and need to see examples. To do that, I often post too, in order to model proper posting and replying. Again thanks for the great info.
Jeremy
Emily,
ReplyDeleteI have been very interested, just like all the others, on how Edmodo works. Following your blog has really given me a chance to make the decision to start incorporating it into my own classroom. You did ask a great question about signing students up with an account. I can tell you that with having the iPads in my classroom signing students up for accounts can be one of the most time consuming and frustrating tasks with using technology. One thing that I have found very useful is to just create a class account for each one of my classes. This means that I only have to create 5 accounts and they all have the same username and password. And for things that require identification, I simply have my students identify who they are when they log in and post or create. I don't know how much this will help, but I know that it works great for me and the issue of students forgetting their username and passwords goes away real fast. Thanks again for putting the time in to share this new technology with all of us!