Edmodo

Many schools in my area are using Edmodo for various classroom projects so I decided to explore the tool further.  I found a short video clip here that highlights some of the possibilities of Edmodo.

I chose to create a group for my after school science club as a way to share additional information with both the students and parents.  Social skills are also an important aspect of my club and I hope this will be a way to encourage dialogue between the students.  As I just put the pages together in the last week, I have not had a chance to see how effective the resource is for my purposes, but I can see it being immensely beneficial in the classroom.

. 
The ability to quickly and securely post information, create discussions, share videos, and even grade assignments is wonderful.  I also like the ability to provide parents with a special code that provides them access to the website.  Parents can easily see the content being discussed in the classroom, due dates for assignments, grades, and other important messages. 
Students who are reluctant to answer questions in class may be more willing to communicate in an online environment or answer a poll question.  Videos can be posted for visual learners.  A wide variety of diverse learners can be supported using this resource. 
In exploring ways other educators are using Edmodo, I realized I have only skimmed the surface of what is possible with this amazing tool.  Here are 20 Ways to Use Edmodo including professional development!  

If you are new to Edmodo and want more information, I found a Symbaloo page dedicated to this resource.

Do you use Edmodo in the classroom?  Do you have any tips or any success stories?  I would love to hear them!

First twitter chat

Whew!  After several failed attempts I finally managed to participate in my first Twitter chat.  I joined #pblchat which meets every Tuesday at 8pm CST.  PBL stands for problem based learning.  The topic for this chat was assessing 21st Century skills.  The chat was very lively and there were many great ideas being bounced around.  I had observed, but not participated in, an #edchat last week and I found it incredibly difficult to follow.  Things were flying by so quickly that before I had a thought fully formulated, the flow of the conversation had moved on to another area.  In this chat, there were fewer contributors than the edchat and I felt able to contribute more to the discussion.  Fortunately, I learned from my fellow classmates and logged into the chat via twitterchat.com.  While I prefer Tweetdeck for organizing different columns, twitterchat is definitely a vast improvement for participating in an actual chat.  One of greatest benefits is the hashtag for the chat is automatically inserted in the tweets eliminating the need to type it every time.    The one problem I did run into while using twitterchat was the reply function stopped working properly about halfway through the chat.  Initially I could hit the reply button and it would include the person’s name I was replying to in the tweet.  I am sure I could have fixed the problem by logging out and back in, but I did not want to miss any of the dialogue.  Another issue I noticed was many of the participants did not teach at a public school setting which made some of the conversation lack relevance.  The ideas and principles behind the chat were valid and interesting, but some of the methods discussed would not work in the public schools I am familiar with.  There were also many acronyms used that I was unfamiliar with.  I had several windows open in my background to look up terminology and acronyms.  Overall the chat was a positive experience.  I did end up following several new people from the chat which I hope will broaden my personal learning network.  I added some new words to my vocabulary (curation!) and discovered a few websites to further explore.  One of the shared links I found interesting showed Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.  There was also a call from @susieboss to help create a document showing how teachers teach and assess 21st Century skills using problem based learning.  If you have an example, you can find the document here.To improve the chat experience, I highly recommend using either twitterchat or something similar.  Tweetdeck just does not update quickly enough and the need to type the hashtag every tweet can be bothersome.  I also discovered after the chat that an archive is kept.  I think it would have been helpful for me to look over the archives of past chats so I knew what to expect.  
I look forward to participating in additional Twitter chats!

Pinterest

I have often heard the saying “If your brain isn’t hurting, then you are not learning.”  My brain is definitely in overload status, but I am learning many new things.  This week’s assignment was to add another social networking application to our PLN.   There were several suggestions, but I decided to give Pinterest a try.  Many of my family and friends have raved about the site, but until this week I resisted the urge to join.  The site is easy to set up and use but I know I have only scratched the surface of what it has to offer.  For anyone new to the site, a great walk through of how to get started can be found here. 

With Pinterest’s wide variety of topics, it is easy to become lost in the large amounts of data.  Fortunately the scope of this week’s assignment suggested locating resources to assist with working with diverse students.  I chose to narrow my focus even further and locate resources to assist both gifted students and those with autism.  Both of these subjects are close to my heart.  One of my boys was diagnosed with a form of autism when he was three.  The other has been identified as gifted and attends a gifted class once a week.  Our household is a very diverse place!

If you are looking for something to get started with, Tina Wahlert has a board for just about anyone.  In particular I enjoyed her special education and gifted education boards.  While tailored more toward the elementary years, I also enjoyed this set of boards from ReallyGoodStuff which includes a board specifically for ELL/ESL learners.  We actually made one of the crafts on the board this evening to help my son when he is stressed or frustrated.

I also found a great board on differentiation and another one for autism and special needs.

Do you have a favorite board for education?  I would love to hear about your favorite boards.  If you haven’t signed up for Pinterest yet and need an invite, please let me know.  I am enjoying finding great resources and having a handy way to keep them all organized.  The ability to ask questions and discuss the resources with other educators is an added bonus to an already great resource.  My head is hurting, but it is a good hurt!