Just some things I have to say about edmodo …

At the beginning of this year, I was asked by the peeps at edmodo if I would agree to be interviewed by the Huffington Post for an article about edmodo. Um, hello – the Huffington Post? I always see their stuff being retweeted by my Twitter mates (and yes, I even occasionally read the articles which is a big deal for someone like me who skims everything!) – let’s just say I was a little bit stoked at the chance to be quoted in one of their stories! I also was stoked because I really love edmodo and it’s always super cool that they think of little old me down here in Australia – they really are a shining light of loyalty in the ever-increasing corporatisation of education. I really mean that. As you know, I’ve been using edmodo since 2009 and they have always made me feel valued as an educator and a contributor to their growing network of teachers and students.

Anyway, you can read the edmodo blog post about the Huffington Post article here and you can read the actual Huffington Post article here.

As is the way with people like me who live in the Southern Hemisphere, being interviewed proved difficult time-wise. To overcome this (and avoid me being up at 3am), the journalist (the very cool C.M. Rubin – woot!) sent me a bunch of questions to answer via email. Of course, I just rambled on and wrote waaaaaay to much and necessarily about three of the things I said were included in the final article. I thought someone out there might be interested in my original responses to the questions … maybe, haha. They were actually really great questions! So, anyway, here they are:

How have you used Edmodo in or out of your classroom to enhance learning? 

I’ve been using Edmodo with my students since May, 2009. I discovered it during a video conference on web 2.0 tools for education. It was a chance discovery because at the time my school was looking for an alternative to email and USBs as a means for students to share their work with teachers. I quickly discovered that edmodo is so much more than that!

Can you share any examples of things you have done in your classroom recently or even plan to do in the near future which illustrate the important added value/unique benefits of Edmodo versus other learning platforms/tools?

I’ve had so many wonderful experiences with Edmodo that it is almost impossible to choose between them! I think the there are three experiences that my students and I fondly remember. In March, 2012, I used edmodo to facilitate an online role-playing game with my students which became fondly known as #HG2212. Essentially, I created a Hunger Games narrative where students played the roles of the tributes or citizens of The Capitol. I used Edmodo’s unique features to organise the game – students changed their usernames and avatars to reflect their characters, all students joined a group called ‘Northern Ridges’ (our version on Panem) whilst some students were put in an ‘Arena’ sub-group and others in ‘The Capitol’. Over the course of two weeks, students used blogs, videos and Web 2.0 tools such as Voki (all embedded into the Edmodo group by students) to tell the narrative of their characters as tributes in The Arena. The Capitol residents determined which tributes lived or died and how this occurred. It was truly an amazing experience with students so engaged that they were on Edmodo at all hours of the night – they even downloaded the Edmodo app to their phones so they wouldn’t miss any action. Essentially this was a creative thinking and creative writing activity, but Edmodo allowed it to be immersive, interactive, engaging and fun! You can read more about it here and see student work as well: http://biancahewes.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/hunger-games-2212-my-rejected-iste-presentation/

Another amazing learning experiences was using Edmodo to connect my Year 10 class with a Year 10 class in San Francisco. My class was studying The Catcher in the Rye and I put a post on a couple of the Edmodo communities asking if any teacher had a class he/she who might want to help my students better understand life in America for teens. Within half a day I had lots of people offering to connect and ultimately chose one class – I would have loved to connect with them all and I plan to do so eventually! Our students joined an Edmodo group to chat about their lives and what they find difficult or inspiring. They also made videos and posted them to Edmodo, answering questions the other students had posed. It was such an eye-opening experience for my students! They learnt so much about American culture – especially the danger of stereotypes presented on television and in movies. My 15 years olds really believed that all American teenagers looked like the teenagers in Gossip Girl and were very surprised to find that this is not the case! Edmodo was the best place for this type of connection to occur as it is a teacher-monitored space where young people can develop those much needed collaboration and communication skills with a guide right beside them.

Finally, I’ve used Edmodo to get writing mentors for my students. My class were working on individual research and composition projects and I knew it would be impossible for me to give quality, personal feedback on all of their work. I decided to reach out to my Edmodo professional learning network and asked if anyone would be interested in mentoring a 15 year old. I had so many offers it! Eventually my 30 students had mentors from all over the world, including many states of America, South America and England. All of the mentors were registered teachers with Edmodo, which means that they were safe to work with children – something all teachers need to be aware of when considering these types of activities. Edmodo supported the mentor process perfectly as I could invite the teachers to join our class Edmodo group and then create sub-groups for each mentor and student. All interactions in these groups and sub-groups are visible to me, the teacher. This allowed me to assess the progress of each student and learn a little as well!

The internet is our children’s medium and many believe it is an unparalleled learning tool.  How does Edmodo handle the challenge of educating kids to be good digital citizens – can you share examples of what instruction (unique to Edmodo?) you believe Edmodo provides kids to better equip them for the social medial world they now live in?

I always so that Edmodo is the social network with training wheels. It’s a safe platform where young people can learn how to communicate and interact with other young people – and adults – whilst at the same time being guided and supported by an adult they trust, their teacher. By introducing Edmodo to students at a younger age, teachers are helping to develop the habits of mind that are essential for students to be good digital citizens. Students learn the important of a quality avatar that is non-offensive and presents them as a thoughtful and sensible person. They also learn the necessity to use appropriate language, to speak kindly and with compassion, to be supportive rather than critical and to ask thoughtful questions. One of the best lessons that students learn in Edmodo is the impact that a lack of tone can have on written text – they quickly learn how important it is to be clear in what they write! They even just learn the basics of managing a username and password!

Of course, I believe that Edmodo has some unique features that allows students to develop all of these skills. Edmodo has a massive user-base (over 10 million users, I believe) and this means that teacher like me can easily connect their classes with classes from all over the world, simply be requesting a connection in an Edmodo community. Providing students with a safe and facilitated opportunity to connect with students they do not know means that they can put their digital citizenship skills into action whilst being supported by their teacher.  Last year I ran a project where my Year 9 students used Edmodo to connect with Year 2 students from a local primary school. The students collaborated on a story-writing project and in doing so developed their ability to ask questions effectively, communicate their ideas clearly and give quality, non-judgmental feedback to young people they previously did not know. Teachers can see all activity in an Edmodo group and this gives them the ability to quickly post a comment and praise great digital citizenship, or to quickly address any potentially inappropriate behaviours.

Why is it about Edmodo that engages students most?

This is a question that I’m always asking my students and myself. I think that initially students are attracted to it because it looked like Facebook! Younger students are really excited about the idea that they can quickly connect with their peers online – something they may not have as much opportunity to do if they are younger than 13. Ultimately, though, my students have told me that what they like the most is the range of learning experiences that it provides them with. They love connecting with other students and teachers, they love using it to role-play and of course it gives them security knowing that their teacher as well as class resources, are accessible online 24/7. My students made a video about their thoughts on Edmodo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgl6kxq2tMQ

If there was one thing you could change about the Edmodo platform what would that be?

That’s a really tough question! It has so many great features that we teacher have already helped them introduce – they really are quite responsive to teacher suggestions and feedback. I think the thing that I’ve asked for the most is an embedded points system so I can gamify my classroom when I choose to. Basically, it means that during role-playing projects my students can be awarded a certain number of points for posts and comments. I think that feature would be awesome. But really, to be honest, Edmodo is such a flexible platform that I can make that happen myself just by being a little creative with the badge system and the reactions feature. I’m really excited to see what they introduce next because it is always based on the idea of a teacher somewhere around the world!

 

 

Using Skype in the English classroom

I’ve often read on twitter and blogs about how teachers have used Skype in their classrooms to connect their students with that strange and terrifying thing, ‘the outside world’. Whilst I’m always interested in their experiences, my response is usually ‘le sigh’. Why? Because I knew I couldn’t use Skype with my students. At my school we don’t have the permissions to add programs to our DER laptops and since my mac has been unable to connect to our school’s wifi, I thought I was doomed to be caught in the Skype-envy limbo forever. But not anymore!

About a month ago I tweeted that my Year 8 students were working on a project studying the films and style of auteur Tim Burton. I was excited to receive a reply tweet from Christine Wells whose class in Auckland, NZ was also studying Burton – she asked if our classes could Skype … and that was just the catalyst I needed to prompt me to probe further into my Skype dreams. I went down to our TSO (technical support officer, who unfortunately is only with us until the end of the year due to the Liberal government’s cuts to education) and asked him to connect my mac to the wifi. And guess what? He did it! I then raced upstairs to my staffroom, jumped onto my mac and tried out Skype. The only one of my contacts online was Darcy Moore, so I clicked that little green phone icon and within a few rings I heard the dulcet tones of Darcy’s voice. I swiftly shared my exhilaration with Darcy by saying (and I quote), ‘Oh my god Darcy! Skype works! I’m so excited I could shit my pants!’ Haha – yeah, I know … shocker! It was pretty cool that Darcy was the first person I skyped with from school because his experience with Year 10 skyping with a games designer was something that had got me interested in Skype at the beginning of the year.

So the time came for my class to connect with Christine’s class. The night before I skyped with Christine to check it all worked and then on the day I spent a bit of time organising my classroom to suit the activity. I moved all of the tables to the edge of the room and made a big space in the middle for my students to sit on the ground together. You can see my classroom layout below.

I invited my HT in to watch us Skype – we haven’t done it before in our faculty. He was keen to come and watch and I thought his presence might make my students less silly … well I was wrong about that, they were too excited to be sensible! I spoke briefly to my class about the expected behaviour and the proper etiquette of turn taking when asking and answering questions. Once the connection was made, the students were awesome. Christine’s students had chosen to come in during their lunchtime, which was adorable. In between questions about Burton, the students managed to ask each other questions about the food in the canteen (or ‘tuck shop’ for the Kiwis, lol), how close they are to the beach and whether they like Gangnam Style. The latter resulted in the clip being shared from the Kiwi side and the Aussies showing off their dancing skills, see pic below.

After we said our goodbyes, I got my students to write a brief reflection on the activity: what they loved, what they learned from their new Kiwi mates and what they would like to do better for the next Skype. They were all very confident that they had learned a bit from the chat, especially about the genre of Burton’s films – dark comedy with a touch of fairytale-esque romance. This we had not covered in class, but they felt was important to note for their own short films in Burton’s style. They also decided that the Kiwis would become the audience for their films – cool! Finally, we all learnt that a bit more order was needed for a Skype chat to be truly productive. They felt that they needed to plan their questions in advance and to decide on an order of question asking and answering. I think this is important too, but I also think that your first connection needs to be playful – they were all engaged and having a great time and I think that’s pretty cool.

Thanks so much to Christine and her students – we had an awesome time and can’t wait to do it again.

Really, with Skype in your classroom the potential learning experiences are almost limitless.

Another lesson failed by the filter …

Most schools have them, most teachers and students hate them. Internet filters.

This morning I spent two hours creating what I think is a pretty great mini-project for my Year 8 students. It’s based on the online game ‘Machinarium’ … using it as a stimulus for creative writing. Here is the outline of the project: steam-punk

I set the task as an edmodo assignment for my Year 8 class this morning. And guess what I saw when I logged-in to see how they went with it? A message telling me the game was BLOCKED by the filter. I can’t tell you how frustrating this is as an educator trying to use new media and digital/mulitmedia in her classroom. I’m not even in the classroom today and I’m still working hard to give the kids an engaging and effective project to complete … argghhh!! I know I should check these things before hand, I know there are processes to follow in order to have the site unblocked … but these things just add another layer of work for teachers. No wonder so many teachers just think ‘screw that, I’m sticking with my text book and worksheets‘.

OK, rant over. Of course the students can play the game at home and still complete the task on Monday, but that’s not the point. I know we’ve all got to live in a filtered world, I just had to share my frustration (and sympathies) with you all.

Using archetypes to match learning spaces with physical and digital spaces.

(NOTE: The following is an article that was written for a teaching journal, after a bit of an anxious wait it was rejected – didn’t quite fit in with the focus of the edition. It’s somewhat dated now, but thought some of you might find good in it. Some of it is from older blog posts, sorry for those who’ve been reading my drivel for a while now.)

We all know that education is changing rapidly. We’ve all been to conferences where the keynote speaker shows slides depicting how vastly different the world is now to 25 years ago and how vastly different it will be in another 25 years. We know that the internet has lots of information and that the educator’s job is to support students as they wade through the mire that is the world-wide-web. So just how is this changing the physical education landscape? For many, it’s not. The traditional classroom stands tall, defying the agitating of edupunks around the world.

The traditional classroom originated in the throbbing heart of the Industrial Revolution – that was over 200 years ago. As pointed out by Nair and Fielding the ‘early 20th century school design standard (was) modelled after Henry Ford’s factory production methods’ (http://www.designshare.com/index.php/design-patterns/traditional-classroom) . [BH1] Model T anyone? I doubt any parent would like to think that in 2011 their child was being viewed exactly the same as the child beside her/him. So why set up an environment (a visible embodiment of a teacher’s education philosophy) that fails to differentiate between human beings?

Over the last twelve months the way I view my (physical) classroom has changed significantly. These days I encourage my students to align their physical learning space with their mental learning space. I’ve been interested in the role that physical spaces play in learning since the introduction of DER and the immediate discovery that a 1-1 classroom will not function effectively with students sitting in rows facing the front of the room. However a chance encounter with the article ‘Classroom for the 21st Century’ (‘Australian Teacher Magazine’ - the ‘ICT in Education Guide 2010′)[BH2]  by Steve Collis, Director of Innovation at SCIL, gave me the impetus to think more seriously about the interplay between spaces and learning. Collis’ discussion of the ‘mythic notions of the campfire … the watering hole … and the cave’ (Collis, 2010, p.10) really grabbed my attention. I blame this on the fact that I’m an English teacher and salivate upon seeing metaphors. Inspired by what I had read, I was keen to see how I could (re)organise my classroom space to better match my students’ learning.

Collis’ ‘mythic notions’ of learning spaces were discussed back in the ’90s in an article by Prof. David D Thornburg titled ‘Campfires in Cyberspace: primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century’. In his article Thornburg identifies four ‘archetypal learning spaces’:

1.    Campfire: A place ‘where the storyteller … shared wisdom with students who, in their turn, become storytellers to the next generation.’

2.    Watering hole: A place ‘where we learn from our peers … each participant at the watering hole is both learner and teacher at the same time.’

3.    Cave: A place where learners ‘isolate themselves from others in order to gain special insights.‘

4.    Life: ‘The application of knowledge … is an essential component of the learning process (because) when we learn something in anticipation of its immediate use, we not only reinforce our understanding, we increase the likelihood that what we have learning will not be readily forgotten.’

These have been adapted by architects responsible for designing new educational spaces, and images of these designs can be seen on the DesignShare website: http://www.designshare.com/

I have had great success introducing my students to these archetypal learning spaces and helping them to learn how to match their learning space with the physical space. Like I mentioned earlier, I am a public school teacher with very limited resources, so I have to be creative and really embrace the ‘failure is the road to success’ mantra. Ultimately my students have learnt that their physical learning environment is flexible as they rearrange furniture each lesson (and often during the lesson) to ensure it meets their specific learning needs.

There has been a lot of talk in the media and in the academic world about ‘learning spaces’ in the 21^st century. Often the term ‘21^st century learning space’ is accompanied by images of students lounging in brightly coloured beanbags looking into the screen of a Macbook or iPad or working in groups at jellybean shaped tables. The rooms are large, flexible spaces that allow for many more than 30 students and one teacher. But the reality is that for many of us teachers – especially those of us working in a public school – these types of spaces won’t be available to us for a long time. Furthermore both teachers and students must undergo a process of un-learning and learning if they are to effectively utilise this more flexible spaces being made available. The aforementioned archetypal learning spaces metaphor can support the successful transition from traditional to 21^st century learning spaces. I am a public school teacher and I have managed to transform a very traditional learning space (4 walls, a door, two windows, a whiteboard, 30 plastic chairs and 30 small desks) into a flexible 21st century learning space.

The reshaping of my room has pushed me into reshaping my pedagogy – a most desirable outcome. I am more conscious of the types of learning that are implicit in the activities I create and the outcomes I expect students to meet. Essentially I have created a space where the class can come together and discuss, present and listen (our campfire) as well as spaces for group work (watering hole) and individual work (caves).

It’s true, my students did think it was a bit odd when I started saying, ‘OK, everyone into their cave for some quiet reading!’ but after a while they just ‘got it’ and they now happily move their chairs into the campfire position for ‘story-time’, into bunches for ‘watering hole’ chats or find their own personal ‘cave’ for reflection and internalisation of knowledge. When students need to move into the ‘cave’ I allow them to listen to quiet music on their iPods, sit on the floor, sit outside in the hallway or move their tables and chairs somewhere solitary in the room.

Here’s how it’s working for my classes right now:

Year 9: We sat in the ‘campfire’ circle to chat about their test results and the features of ‘persuasive texts’ that they were struggling with. Then they moved to the desks (watering hole) to work on their projects … some more successful at this than others.

Year 10: We sat in the ‘campfire’ circle to read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and discuss what the novel is teaching us about ‘resilience’.

Year 11: We sat in the ‘campfire’ circle to read ‘A Property of the Clan’ and discussed the focus question ‘Should Art Imitate Life?’. Students then moved to the desks (watering hole) to work on a mini-group task based on one of the Five Elements of Writing – these were then shared in our cyber-space campfire – edmodo.

Year 12: We sat in the ‘campfire’ circle to read ‘Notes on Nationalism’ by George Orwell and discussed the similarities between Orwell’s world and our own. Our discussion led us to the killing of Osama bin Laden and how the celebrations of the Americans reflected their nationalism.

When thinking about how you could transform your own space, it is important to acknowledge two things:

1. Many teachers do not have their own ‘home room’ as they spent much of the day ‘travelling’ around the school from room to room. This makes it very difficult to have a permanent furniture arrangement. I think that this restriction should be viewed as a challenge rather than a barrier. Sacrificing time during the lesson to arranging and rearranging the furniture to suit the learning occurring is really worth it.

2. It is important that you do not try to create a space that is inflexible – try not to allocate a specific area for ‘caves’, ‘campfire’ etc. What a classroom needs is flexibility of space and furniture this allows for an ever-changing, dynamic learning environment. This approach to classroom layout can be quite intimidating for teacher and students initially as it is unfamiliar. It takes time to create a thinking culture and requires a much more relaxed attitude towards classroom furniture being moved – in fact, I’ve changed entirely as I now actively encourage my students (nay, require) them to move the furniture to suit the learning experience they will be involved in during our lesson.

What is important to acknowledge is that my classroom is different not simply because I am flexible with its daily design. My classroom is different because I use metaphor as a means to help my students develop metacognition. Using the metaphor of ‘archetypal learning spaces’ my students are actively engaging with their own learning. They must consider what type of learning will occur in each lesson and how the design of the physical space needs to alter to meet the learning taking place. I do feel that my students are developing learning autonomy.

My room is a little different to most I see daily because I have considered the impact that physical space has upon intellectual and emotional space. This is not to say I (and others) haven’t ever (re)designed a classroom to maximise learning – I have been known to do this frequently and have been an advocate for groups/bunches that allow students to work together, especially with the introduction of the Digital Education Revolution’s 1-1 laptop program in NSW. The introduction of mobile digital technologies into the classroom necessitates a transformation of the learning environment. A failure to consider the impact of the relationship between these technologies and the physical learning environment can seriously undermine the value of these technologies in a 21^st century classroom.

For me the current design is different because it drew on the mythical archetypes of the campfire, watering hole and cave. This philosophical underpinning gave me a metalanguage with which to speak to my students about ‘why’ the room is configured in this new way. This ‘language of myth’ actually works as a cue for my students. Yes, they think that it’s pretty uncool to start with – but once you get them thinking about WHY these three types of learning are relevant to their world, they just get it. Plus, kids like it when you show enthusiasm for their learning – they love it when teachers throw caution (or is that fear?) to the wind and take a very visible risk. I can now be heard saying to my students, ‘Alright – lets have a chat around the campfire and then you’ll spend some time in your caves.’

Visual cues really help orient students with the lesson’s expectations and prepare them for the transitions between cave/camp-fire/watering hole. A chronological list of the lesson ‘goals’ matched to the appropriate learning and physical spaces can be written on the whiteboard or projected onto an interactive white board. This visual cue gives students the opportunity to self-direct their learning. The metalanguage of the archetypal learning spaces similarly engages students in metacognition as it forces them to think about the types of learning behaviours associated with each learning space. Ultimately students, familiarised with the notion of ‘mythic spaces’ to enhance learning outcomes, will self-select the appropriate ‘space’ to meet a task. It is this which is my ultimate goal – to encourage self-direction and an appreciation of the influence that physical space can have on intellectual/emotional space. Speaking of visual cues, the pre-service teacher I have been supervising this year, Lauren Forner, even created beautiful posters as visual reminders to my students of the expected behaviours within each ‘space’.

Of course there are risks to be taken in this approach to classroom design. There can be a great deal of noise as the students move furniture (where necessary) and as they move themselves into the appropriate ‘space’. But the fear of noise in a classroom is simply a veiled fear of that which is natural and normal.

David Thornburg was interested in how these mythic notions of learning can be replicated in ‘cyberspace’. Since the theorising of Thornburg, a plethora of digital tools have become available to teachers who wish to replicate the physical archetypal learning spaces in cyberspace. From my experience it is possible to use just one flexible online tool to facilitate this shifting from physical to online space (such as the social networking for education site edmodo) or multiple online tools. For example, my Year 10 English class have successfully used edmodo for their cyberspace campfires, watering holes and caves.

My students often use the small-group function on edmodo as their virtual ‘watering hole’ – a place where they discuss and collaborate on projects. Posting to the class group facilitates whole group discussion for an even larger ‘watering hole’. Students wishing to work independently in the ‘cave’ can read and view posts made to the edmodo group or write and create posts of their own that can be shared privately with their teacher, with a small group or with the larger class group. Edmodo is also a wonderful presentation tool for those ‘campfire’ sessions where the teacher or student adopts the role of ‘storyteller’ or ‘expert’. Files, videos and other learning objects are easily accessed and larger group discussions can occur in ‘real time’ by students interacting with polls or responding to group posts.

Here are just a few examples of other digital tools that facilitate online archetypal learning spaces:

• Campfire – videos (youtube, teachertube), virtual worlds, video-conferencing, Skype, transmedia texts (including interactive narratives like Inanimate Alice)

• Watering hole – social networking (twitter, facebook, google +), wikis, google docs for collaboration, multi-player games, virtual worlds

• Cave – blogs for reflection, interactive learning aids, single-player games, the web itself for independent research.

• Life – the web itself is pure Life space. The most important digital tools that allow students the opportunity to apply their learning in the Life space are social media, blogging and youtube. These tools provide a powerful, immediate and global audience for student projects, discoveries, ideas and experiences.

Given that most teachers will (at some point) incorporate the first three spaces – campfire, watering hole, cave – into their lessons, it is pertinent to note that the final space – Life – is ironically missing from most classroom ‘learning’. Student-centred pedagogies – like Project Based Learning – force students to grapple with real-world problems and share their products and presentations with an authentic audience. These pedagogies provide students with the opportunity to apply the knowledge, skills and habits of mind developed in the campfire, watering hole and cave learning spaces to the final and most important space – Life. It is because of these reasons that Thornburg states ‘The pedagogical model most closely aligned with the learning space of Life is inquiry-driven project-based learning.’

I’m really happy with my new approach to learning spaces. Through my continued experimentation with learning spaces, it has become evident that a 21^st century classroom is not, nor has it ever been, about the screens, gadgets or funky furniture. Rather it is about developing a heightened awareness of how the digital and physical learning environment being created helps to construct each learning experience. I firmly believe that the true 21^st century teacher embraces a changing learning landscape and is as much at ease facilitating a group discussion on Macbeth outside under a tree as she is moderating a Skype call between students and a published author.  I do hope that in the future more schools will be approaching learning spaces in a far more flexible and student-centred/learning-focused way. So whilst it might initially feel a little contrived, I encourage you to use the metaphor of the archetypal learning spaces to help your students develop an appreciation for the need to alter their physical and digital spaces to match their learning space.

Reference:

Collis, S. (2010). ‘Classroom for the 21^st Century’ in Australian Teacher Magazine: ICT in Education Guide 2010. Retrieved September 12, 2010 from http://www.tempomedia.com.au/html/index.php?option=com_flippingbook&view=book&id=38&Itemid=160

DesignShare. (n.d.). DesignShare Traditional Classroom. Retrieved January 11, 2011 from <http://www.designshare.com/index.php/design-patterns/traditional-classroom>.

Nair, Prakash, Randall Fielding, and Jeffery A. Lackney. (2009) The language of school design: design patterns for 21st century schools. Rev. ed. Minneapolis, Minn.: DesignShare, 2009. Print.

Thornburg, D. (2007). “Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century.” Thornburg Centre. Retrieved October 22, 2007 from <www.tcpd.org/thornburg/handouts/campfires.pdf>.

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Inspire Innovate – a belated review of an ICT edu conference

Inspire Innovate is a massive technology in education conference run by Western Sydney Region of Department of Education and Communities. It’s an impressive-looking conference – big venue, lots of attendees and some big-name keynotes. It reminded me of ISTE, only a whole lot smaller. I think there was the same crowd too – the interested but wary teachers, the over-enthusiastic regional and state consultants, the edutech geeks who have seen it all before and the teachers who just wanted a couple of days off school at the end of term (and of course, a swag bag or two).

This year the keynotes were Ian Jukes, Gary Stager and Ewan McIntosh. I was disappointed by Jukes’ keynote – he spent 4/6 of his time explaining how the world was changing because of technology, then moved on to how this was impacting the business world (1/6) and finally made it to education in the last 1/6 of his talk. There really were too many buzz words in this keynote and ultimately I feel that teachers have ‘seen it’ and ‘heard it’ all before. I mean, how many times can we see pictures of old computers juxtaposed with children playing on iPads? I was bored and I know other were too. Guess I was the only stupid one to tweet about it. On a positive note, I heard his workshop was great and his website is worth a visit. Google it.

Stager’s keynote on the following day wasn’t terrible, he just spent too much time on the ‘what’ of educational change … what doesn’t work, what we’re doing wrong, what he has done with schools and students to try and make things better. I just feel like so many teachers are looking up to people like Stager for the ‘how’ of educational reform. I was pleased that he focused on project-learning as being central to this reform, but ultimately showing vids of a couple of exceptional kids playing with robotics (one assisted by her very clever father and the other assisted by Stager himself), I just felt wouldn’t have translated to ‘ah ha’ moments for tired teachers. I could be wrong … I am just a surly, frustrated educator clearly looking for a target. Or maybe I am just irreverent to edu gods? I must confess, I like Stager’s sometimes grumpy and aggressive demeanor … his loud voice gets grating after 30 minutes (and we sat through an hour and a half) but he does have passion and I admire that. I just wish he had focused more on what educators can realistically do TODAY to reshape their craft.

Oh, and Ewan? I didn’t get to see his keynote, I left earlier because I felt sick, sick, sick. It was nice to briefly catch up with him before I left and watching the tweet-stream it seems his talk was liked by many.

On the Wednesday I had booked to attend three sessions. After voting with my feet and leaving the first session on Evernote and Instapaper (the presenter was ‘helping’ us register for these tools one step at a time – great for some teachers, but not me. Is it too hard to put a ‘beginner, intermediate, advanced’ icon on session outlines?) I found myself in Pip Cleaves’ presentation on Web 2.0 tools. As I confessed to Pip yesterday, I don’t use too many ‘tools’ that are web-based – maybe 5 at the most – but I loved this session because she made it fun. It was a sharing session within an edmodo group and I rediscovered a couple of gems (polivore, xtranormal, voki) to share with my Year 10 who are currently immersed in our massively multiplayer classroom. Thanks Pip!

The next day was all about me and Jess – lolz. We’d carpooled in both days (OK – so Jess drove me in) and had been sharing our nerves about presenting at the conf. Jess presented on collaboration in a cute session titles ‘Stop! Collaborate and Listen!’ – I love a good pun! I was presenting on … drum roll … PBL and edmodo! Why? Cos that’s all I’ve got – haha. On Wednesday night I was feeling very ordinary, much to my frustration as I had to organise my workshop … leaving it to the last minute as always. So by Thursday morning I was a grumpy, tired, nauseous mess. Jess the lovely thing really looked after me.

Collaboration is such a buzz word, so many edu-peeps use it as their platform for ‘edu reform’. But Jess made collaboration real by getting her attendees to work together – she also made her presentation relevant to the people listening. I loved that she shared the stories of her students with us, helping us to see that one or two cleverly selected tools (like linoit, google docs, diigo and edmodo) can not only enhance engagement in class, but ultimately help students ‘own’ their knowledge and be better prepared for the test – at the end of the day, this is a biggy for all Year 11/12 students and their teachers in NSW.

My session was a little unpolished … I was feeling so unwell by the time 11.30am rocked around, I couldn’t tell if the shaking hands was from the fever or the nerves. I wager it was both. I am so pleased that my presenting style has changed dramatically in the last 18 months. There was no way I was in the state to ‘talk at’ the 58 attendees for an hour an a half. So what did I do? I gave a 12 minute overview of Project Based Learning (the three minute BIE PBL vid from YouTube and my 7 minute pecha kucha on PBL) then asked them to jump into an edmodo group (I didn’t bother showing them how to register – work it our yourselves kiddies, as easy as creating a facebook account) and gave them a ‘project’ to complete in 45 minutes. I gave them access to all of the PBL resources they could ever desire in a ‘read-only’ edmodo group, you can request to join the group here if you wanna snitch some resources – but if you use my stuff you gotta attribute, it’s the 21st century after all. Before my session each attendees was given a scrap of paper with a text-pen written number on it (high-tech, huh?) and this allocated them into a project team. I gave them this as their driving question: How can we use PBL to empower our students to ‘own’ their learning? The rest of the project outline is on the slides below.

It was hilarious watching the teachers be thrown completely out of their comfort zone – OK, except for Team 11 which was full of edu-ubers (Jess, Megan, Alice, Darren, Malyn and Moley) who completed the project early and had time to play. Most of the other teachers were put off by the pressure of doing something in a workshop – something that required collaboration with strangers and a final presentation of learning. BUT to be honest, the teachers created some amazing projects within the 45 minutes and I know they did learn a lot because I got them to give impromptu 30 second reflection at the half-way mark, lol. Oh, and the fact that all 58 of them stayed behind an extra 10 minutes to watch the 2 minute presentations of their peers encouraged me greatly – these teachers are wonderful people with big hearts who I know will bring back new ideas for their students and their schools.Thanks so much to everyone who attended – you made the workshop happen and allowed me to crawl under the table for a kip.

After two days at Inspire Innovate, I’ve come to the realisation that it’s not the place for me next year. I will, however, be encouraging a few of my colleagues to attend next year. I reckon they’ll love it.

PBL: pushing students to their limits

This last week has been so much fun for me. I’ve had the pleasure of watching as my Year 10 students problem-solve as part of our ‘Can Cyborgs Write Poetry?’ project. I’ve blogged about this project before, so I won’t repeat what it’s about. If you’re interested just search ‘cyborg’ in the search box up top. Anyway, last week I was treated to a class poetry reading where every student sat in the ‘Poet Chair’ and read their poems to us all. One students waited until the very end … he didn’t offer to read his. All his peers where like ‘Hey, Adam hasn’t read his!’ Adam just gave me a sheepish look and we put on the projector to show the class his poem. He’d already completed part two of the project – a visual representation of his cyborg poem to be uploaded to YouTube. It was so cool to show his peers that he had finished it first, oh – and the film was DAMN good!

I was excited about Adam’s video because he had taken the initiative to complete his film without any teacher input or guidance. He chose his genre – machinima – as an individual. I don’t know how to play Call of Duty and certainly wouldn’t know how to make a film from it. Adam worked it all out himself – completely self-directed learning! He selected a form he was passionate about – video games – and used it to ensure his success. I shared his video via twitter and as a result he got over 100 views and 10 comments in one night! One of the comments was asking if his video could be used by a Scottish educator in his presentations on pop culture being used in the classroom. Pretty neat for a Year 10 ‘assignment’, huh?

So now a week has passed and the rest of the class are submitting their cyborg videos. There has been such a funny response to this task. It has pushed them to their limits. Many of them have been frustrated using the technology, having never made films independently before. I know it seems un-teacher-like to throw kids a task and refuse to teach the skills needed for success in that task. But the point of task like this is to encourage students to be resilient, to persist, to think creatively and critically, to be resourceful and to experience success in learning something new – even if the film isn’t the success they hoped. These students are Extension English students – the thing they need to experience most is failure. One student commented that this was ‘the hardest assignment ever’ and another told me ‘don’t set another film because this was soooo hard’. But they need to feel challenged and to discover that learning is in the process, not the product and certainly not in a grade – I’m not giving grades.

Here are the films that have been submitted so far. I am delighted by each one of them. Poems are all original works also. I am giddy that these films will be shown to pre-service teachers in Perth thanks to Greg Thompson at Murdoch University. I hope you love them too!

What factors hamper the success of a 1-1 laptop program?

I don’t purport to have the answer to this question. I do have the predicament of a program that simply isn’t working.

Like all other DEC schools my school is in the final year of a four-year federal government initiative where all students in Years 9-12 are given a laptop. It is because of this so-called Digital Education Revolution that I started this blog. DER is why I started using Twitter. It is why I started looking to the Internet for learning tools for my classes. It is why I started my Masters. And it is why I am still a teacher. And whilst it certainly has started pushing teachers at my school in the direction of becoming the fabled ‘21^st century teacher’, it certainly isn’t the success story I imagined it would be by the final year of the 1-1 program.

Each year I see teachers becoming more and more confident with their use of technology in the classroom. The number of IWBs in classrooms has grown tremendously … I guess that’s a start. Each year I have more and more teachers ask me about registering for edmodo because they want to connect with their students online to share ideas, resources and set assignments for electronic submission. Some teachers have even purchased iPads and have started using them in the classroom. Other teachers have taken to using tools like ClassDojo to help them create a positive learning environment. Lots more teachers are finding ways for students to use video cameras to create films that demonstrate their learning. These are big wins.

What I’m not seeing is an increased use of laptops in the classroom. I am seeing students in Year 10 – who have had their laptops for less than a year – asking to keep them in my classroom because they ‘don’t need them for other subjects’. I am encountering more students requesting to not use their laptops in my class. Why? Because it takes so long to load that they feel the waiting is hampering their learning. They only use it in my class and they can share with a friend and still achieve their learning goals. And I get that. I really do.

So is the loading lag the only reason teachers aren’t using the laptops in the classroom? I can’t say that is the only reason. I think that the main issues are still related to pedagogy and the pressures of a crowded syllabus and a high stakes external examination – the HSC. These two reasons mesh to make the use of laptops really difficult for lots of teachers. Add to that a machine that is unreliable and you can understand why teachers aren’t rushing to use laptops in their classrooms.

It has always struck me as odd that the so-called ‘edutech gurus’ criticise teachers for failing to integrate technology into their students’ learning and yet a quick look at the booking sheets for computer labs invariably finds them booked out. And it’s not just the TAS teachers making the bookings. It’s all subjects – LOTE, creative arts, HSIE … the lot! I should know – recently I was kinda reprimanded (in a nice way – I wasn’t named and shamed although I’m pretty confident everyone knew I was the one being spoken about) because I’d booked every one of my lessons into a computer lab for the rest of the term. My colleagues were understandably annoyed by the fact that they couldn’t get into a lab when they needed to. So why are teachers more comfortable taking their students to the computer lab than they are having students use laptops in their classrooms? I’m keen to find out why from the teachers themselves. But I’m pretty confident they could all be categorised under the three reasons I already listed above.

I must confess that I feel responsible (almost entirely) for the semi-failure of the 1-1 program at my school. Last year I hid in my classroom. I was unwilling to spend another 12 months doing ‘show and tell’ at staff meetings and trying to run lunchtime and after-school workshops that were attended by one person or neglected entirely. I hadn’t worked out how to ‘fix’ the 1-1 problem. In my lack of persistence I have done my colleagues and our students a disservice. I need to make up for that this year and I’m still trying to work out how. Of course showcasing Project Based Learning to the staff is one thing I will be doing this year. I spent so much time last year experimenting with student-centred pedagogies that I reckon I should start sharing that at my school at some point this year. I can’t even explain why I’m so anxious about doing that.

Anyway, if your school has been successful in ensuring all students in 10-12 are using their laptops productively in their classes when they are needed, I would love to hear your story. Does your school run 1-1? What do you do to make it work? What professional learning strategies have you used to target this teacher and student resistance to laptops? I want this last roll-out of laptops to really sing – I want it to be the best year yet for 1-1 at my school!!

Re-reading this post has helped me to remember one thing about my dilemma. I haven’t actually asked the students or the teachers how often they use the laptops or why they don’t use them. I reckon that sort of information might come in handy. And maybe I’m just naively trusting the words of my students who claim that the laptops aren’t being used … perhaps they are?

And then, as a final twist to the story, I think maybe the teachers and students are just ‘voting with their feet’ so to speak. Maybe they are sending a message to all us edutech wannabes and saying ‘No, we don’t want to use laptops in the classroom. That’s not how we want to learn.’ There’s something exciting and organic about that idea. They’re not saying they don’t want to use technology, they’re just saying that the 1-1 idea is flawed. Maybe it’s that the 1-1 thing encourages a teacher-centred pedagogy and an individual-worker mentality. Maybe the love of the computer lab indicates that teachers and students thrive on a variety of learning experiences and learning spaces. Why would a kid bring a laptop to school every day if they’re not needed in every lesson every day? It’s inconvenient. Maybe this is why laptop trolleys have had more success. Perhaps variety is the key. Perhaps.

 

Year 9 Passion-driven project … using social media to have a real world impact!

At the end of the year, classes for students become a mish-mash of videos, find-a-words and visits to the skip bin. It’s inevitable because both teachers and students are tired and over-it. As an English teacher, I often keep film studies until this time of the year – it means I can justify movie-watching for three weeks

But this year I’ve been teaching the Extension Year 9 class and felt the pressure to ‘keep teaching’ right until the very end. It wasn’t so hard for me though, because my students have been working on projects all year. These guys are my other ‘experiment’ class and they were well-versed in Project-Based Learning. At the beginning of the term they connected with a school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania via edmodo as part of our ‘We <3 Blogging’ project. This was a passion-driven project that you can read about here. This was quite a successful project and I wanted to encourage my students to continue learning through their passions.

Inspired by friend Neil Fara and his ProjectREAL, I allowed my students greater choice and voice in their final project. The project was called ‘Cause We Care’ – a pun I thought particularly witty, since the Driving Question was ‘How can we raise awareness in our local community about a charity or cause we feel passionately about?’ Whilst I did develop the driving question the students were responsible for the following: deciding on team members and team name, selecting a charity/cause to focus on, their investigation sources and mode of sharing findings (focus questions can be on this document: Cause We Care), the products to demonstrate research, raise awareness and legitimate contribution to cause/charity, their presentation of learning, including sharing learning with experts, defending ideas and celebrating their chosen charity, the Habits of Mind to master for the duration of the project and the outcomes from the Stage 5 English Syllabus they will master during the project ( I gave them a list of the 11 outcomes and the related dot-points, was an eye-opening experience for them!).

It was a really fun last few weeks of term. Watching the students get excited about the charities/causes they felt passionate about and sharing these with the class was great. The causes/charities chosen were Beyond Blue, Youth Beyond Blue, Endangered Species, Breast Cancer Council, Autism and Human Trafficking. Even better was seeing the variety of methods they had chosen to share their passion with others. Groups decided to create awareness through a variety of media and activities such as creating YouTube clips, viral Facebook status updates, websites, picturebooks and posters as well as selling charity-associated merchandise, writing articles to the local newspaper and tweeting politicians.

Throughout the project students ensured they kept to their project calendar to get their investigations and products completed before the final presentation date. To reinforce the importance of planning and reflecting, each lesson I randomly selected students from the groups to give a 30 second impromptu speech on their lesson goals and their learning. This really helped the students stay focused in class. To be honest, project learning is messy at the best of times, so there were periods where there was lots of laughing and discussion, and other times where students were all eyes glued to screen and working away quietly. That’s PBL, and I like it that way.

The final presentations of learning happened on the very last day of school for 2011. It was a testament to the commitment of these students that they gave 100% to their presentations despite knowing that their peers in other classes were playing hangman or celebrity heads, lol. Each group spoke with confidence and passion about their charity/cause and demonstrated a depth of knowledge about the issue relating to their focus charity/cause and why we should care about it and how we can all make a difference. It was a wonderful lesson and (even though I pretty much never cry) I had a little tear in my eye, pleased that the future is in the hands of these passionate, concerned, wise, caring young people.

Below are some of the products created by my students. One wonderful group of girls even managed to get an article about their cause – human trafficking – in the local newspaper. The girls took it upon themselves to email the editor of the newspaper, asking for an article they had written to be published. The pleasing and surprising result was a journalist and photographer coming to the school to speak with the girls. They were so wonderfully vibrant and intelligent in their responses to questions – it was a very proud teacher moment. The morning the article was published lead to a chorus of joyous cries as they celebrated the impact their learning has had on the ‘real world’. The girls have since been contacted by an organisation that rescues trafficked children in Vietnam, Blue Dragon’s Children Foundation, which wishes to work with the girls in the future. My favourite statement from one of the girls was, ‘Wow, miss. We did it. We really have made a difference and we can do even more, right?’. Pretty sweet for the last day of school for 2011!

I am thrilled that taking risks in my classroom has yielded such beautiful results for these students … and I’ve gotta give thanks to Year 9 for trusting my craziness.

A picturebook about autism, created using StoryBird:

Tommy

Article in newspaper about students’ project to generate awareness of human trafficking:

Girls tackle trafficking.

A depression awareness mash-up on YouTube.

Photos of student presentations of learning: Cause We Care, 20122.

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Bringing my school into the 21st century: iPads. Can you help?

So this year I have hidden in my classroom. Completely immersed myself in my own teaching and learning. Focusing on my classes and experimenting with my teaching style. It’s now time to move from my room and (re)commit to my leadership role within my school. There is much to do and I am eager to make meaningful and lasting changes within my school. I am ready to fight for what I think is right … what I know our students need. But I need the help of my teacher-geek friends. Yup. That’s you.

On Friday the Head Teacher of Mathematics asked me if I had an iPad. I don’t. He told me he had bought one for his faculty. He said that he was inspired to by a conversation we once had about the library and the need to refashion it to meet the needs of today’s learners. I must have mentioned iPads in the conversation. Anyway, he asked if I knew how he could use it. I don’t have one. I don’t know how you would use it. (OK, I do a little bit … I’ve read stuff, been to presentations about them … I have used iPhones and iPods in the classroom. I’m guessing they’re the same, just bigger. Right?) I told him I wasn’t an expert in them, but I could get him a bunch of resources on how others are using them in Maths. In Maths? I must be mad! I don’t know that many Maths teachers … do I? Please PLN, help me out … if you have come across great resources on using iPads in the classroom (not just the Maths classroom) please post a link to it below. I don’t want to do a random google search and find stuff, anyone can do this. What I want is a bunch of resources that have been curated by experts – you guys, the teachers who are making a difference for students all around the world! I will add all of these suggestions to an edmodo folder and make it public, then I’ll post it below.

Please, please, please … it’ll help us all out, right?

Edmodo: resource sharing, collaboration, lessons, communication, assessments and organisation

Over the last couple of days I have found myself introducing edmodo to a range of people – from both overseas and within Australia.

As I was running through the features of edmodo yesterday, I realised that it might seem a little overwhelming to the uninitiated – there is so much to see and I am always so keen to show it all. So, to counter my chaotic mind and my accidentally unhelpful zeal for edmodo, I have decided to write down the features of edmodo that I use every day and why I use them. After a two minute pen and paper brainstorm I decided that I use edmodo for six specific purposes: resource sharing, collaboration, lessons, communication, assessments and organisation. I will outline these in more detail below, indicating what specific features of edmodo I use for each purpose and why.

This is the obvious reason why schools invest time and money in an LMS. It is the main reason why I started looking for something like edmodo – Year 9 was going 1-1 and teachers wanted an easy way to share worksheets etc with students that wasn’t via email. This purpose is fulfilled with gusto by edmodo. In fact, one of the things I love most about edmodo is that it can be used in a really basic way – just straight up for resource sharing – or it can be used as a complete and complex 21st century learning space.

Note feature: In edmodo teachers (and students) can attach and share a variety of file types (word doc, PDF, MP3, MP4, .wmv, .mov, PPT, excel, .gif, .jpeg etc) and links to websites as well as embedding flash objects like prezi, games, google forms, YouTube videos etc. You can attach multiple files and links to each note or assignment.

Of course, managing all of these resources can become a little chaotic in a platform that mimics the ‘stream’ style of a social network. Not to worry though, edmodo has provided us with a variety of ways to help teachers (and students) manage the resources being shared. The first is the use of ‘tags’. You can read about how to use tags here. The second is the Library feature. All files, embeds and links that have been shared on edmodo by you or members of your groups are automatically added to your own personal Library. This too can be a bit chaotic – so you can create folders within your library to organise the important resources. Folders can be shared with your class – which is really cool if you want to have a neat selection of resources for your students to repeatedly access. Read about shared folders here. Finally, I have blogged for edmodo about how I would use this feature to create a ‘course’ in edmodo ala moodle, read it here.

Because edmodo is designed to be a social network for education, collaboration (and communication, see below) is facilitated – nay, encouraged – by this tool. Each day I use edmodo to collaborate with educators from my school, within Australia and around the world. How do I do this?

1. Edmodo groups: Within my school I have an edmodo group for my faculty and one for all teaching staff so we can share links, ideas, resources about technology in education. I am also a member of a number of what I call ‘underground edmodo groups’ that allow me to collaborate with teachers in Australia and internationally. You can read about them here.

2. Communities: edmodo has official communities based on KLA as well as published communities for commerical edu peeps and more special interest groups. You can read posts about them here. If you join one or more of these communities, I guarantee you will not regret it. Why would you? A network of wonderful educators sharing resources, experiences, ideas, success and failures. So cool.

My students use edmodo to collaborate with the peers in their class as well as with students in other schools – both in Australia and internationally. Here is how:

1. Edmodo groups – the class group allows students to work together as a team to master the skills and content specific to their subject. They can also be members of groups for a whole year group (e.g. Year 10) for planning larger projects, or for special interest activities like SRC, Baseball etc. Finally, they can be in groups that include students from their own school, and students from one or two other schools with whom they are collaborating on a project or topic.

2. Small group feature: within one class you can create smaller groups. The discussions in these groups can only be viewed by the teacher and the members. This is great for literature circles, differentiation and group-work like PBL. You can read about them here.

As I mentioned earlier, some teachers may just want to use edmodo to share resources and learning objects with the class. These can be accessed during the class to save paper, prevent students searching for inappropriate resources etc. As also mentioned, teachers may want to use edmodo to create a ‘course’ that limits student discussion – even putting all students on ‘read only’.

One of my favourite activities in class with edmodo is the backchannel. I use this when reading novels aloud, during teacher ‘lectures’, during Socratic Circles and whilst watching a film.

Other features that could be incorporated into a class lesson are: polls, quizzes, videos and embedded learning objects like games. I now use edmodo as my presentation tool, embedding all slideshows (Prezis, PPT or Slideshare) and all videos and links that I want to show during my lesson/presentation.

Teachers might enjoy the ‘quiet discussion’ activity that Darcy Moore told me about. You put up a discussion question (or a few) and your students discuss this topic via edmodo – there is NO verbal discussion, it is all written. This is obviously a nice way to keep your kids quiet but really it gives a voice to all students and provides a great hook for discussing register and tone through typed text and even the importance of spelling and punctuation!

I think I have probably covered most of the features that enable communication on edmodo. You should probably just re-read the ‘collaboration’ paragraphs above, lol – I won’t bore you with a repeat! However, there are a few other features that enable communication for more specific purposes that are worth knowing about.

School domain: Edmodo gives you the option to have a personalised edmodo domain for your school (and district too if you like) which is completely free. You can register for one and read about them here. The benefits of a school domain in terms of communication is that an administrator has the ability to send notes/links/polls/alerts etc to the whole school, to all teachers at the school or to all parents of the school. It also allows the administrator to add events/reminders into the whole-school calendar that can be viewed by teachers and students. Oh, and you get some sweet user statistics and the ability to view student data to assist with forgotten passwords etc.

Parent accounts and codes: Edmodo is all about education being about community and because of this, they have ensured that parents can be a part of the education community as well. How? By creating parent accounts that allow parents access to their child’s grades and assignments and teacher-directed communication. This is a great post to read to help you get started using parent accounts, including sample emails to send to parent.

I am an advocate for a combination of formative and summative assessment, with the scales tipping in favour of the former. Edmodo facilitates both of these forms of assessment to satisfy the tastes of both the hipster and traditional teacher.

Assignments: Teachers can set assignments in edmodo and easily attach a file, link, video, image etc to the task description. The due date for assignment is automatically added to the students’ calendars which is super handy for those less organised kids – plus if they have an edmodo group for each subject they will easily be able to see if more than one task is due on one day. The teacher sees the number of assignments submitted in their notifications panel and once the assignment is graded, the grades are automatically added to the class gradebook. These grades can then be exported to an Excel spreadsheet if desired. I have successfully used the assignment feature for class tasks, homework tasks and for major assessment tasks. Currently my Extension English class is entirely paperless thanks to edmodo!

Quizzes: This is a feature that has been in high demand by the edmodo-geek community and luckily for us, edmodo always caters to the needs/requests of us teachers. Edmodo only introduced quizzes a couple of months ago, and from the beginning they were a big hit. There are a variety of quiz types (multiple choice, true/false, short answer and fill in the blank) and these can be as long or short as you like. All quizzes, except for the short answer kind, mark themselves – yay! The students’ scores can be added to the gradebook or not, it’s up to the teacher. I love quizzes for pre and post test of student knowledge – they can also be used for getting some quick formative data at the end of a lesson which will then inform the teacher of content/skills mastered that lesson and what may need to be revised in the following lesson.

Annotation feature: Just this week edmodo has released the annotate feature for assignments turned in on a word doc or PDF. This feature allows the teacher to annotate the students’ work online and then save it as a PDF to be returned to the students. It’s a nice feature that might seem redundant to teachers already confidently using track changes and comments in Word, but could be helpful for teachers not using Microsoft at school or for those using mobile devices like iPads.

Notes to a group or direct to the teacher: I love getting my students to set goals and reflect on their learning, but it can be hard getting around to all students to see what they have written. I have my students do this simply by sending a note to the class group or directly to me that tells me their learning goals for the lesson and then at the end of the lesson they click ‘reply’ and write a brief reflection on what skills and/or content they mastered and what needs revision.

Badges: All of this talk about assessments is so boring! I hate grades and numbers and rankings … but what I don’t hate is an achievement badge! I know there is criticism of gamification and the use of external rewards with students, but that hasn’t stopped me enjoying the feeling of adding a badge to a student’s profile when he/she has determined (or I have determined) that he/she has mastered some content, skill or habit of mind. Edmodo introduced badges earlier this year and us edmodo-geeks have been all a fluster about them. You might want to award badges for a great piece of writing, for contributing to class discussion, for confident public speaking or for demonstrating great digital literacy. Because the badges are designed by the teacher (or you can share the badges of other teachers) there is really no limit to what you can give a badge for. Read more about badges here.

You probably feel as though you’d never get to the end of the features of edmodo, but you’ve done well soldier – you’re almost there! As I look down at the word count for this blog post I am shocked to see the number 1875 – oh dear, that’s a long post. I’m guessing that by now I’ve probably covered most of the features that I use, so I’ll rush through this section – after all, I’m an habitually disorganised individual so it makes sense that I won’t have much to say under this heading, lol.

Calendar: This is personalised to the teacher and student. You can add personal memos for days, like birthdays and anniversaries, meetings and deadlines. Teachers can also add to the calendar of students in their classes – this is done automatically whenever an alert or assignment is sent to a class group. Pretty neat, huh?

Archive/delete: Once a class has finished, teachers can elect to ‘archive’ or ‘delete’ a group. Archiving means that the group becomes invisible to the teacher’s ‘thread’ but can be revived later if necessary. Deleting a group means the group is gone for good.

Others: I have already covered other great features that will help keep teachers and students organised: tags, folders, library (for students this is called the ‘back-pack’) and notifications.

So that’s it, really … haha. That’s why I love edmodo and use it everyday in my classroom and at home. I highly recommend that you check our edmodo’s Help Centre as it’s got amazing tutorials for most features. I know I’ve probably left stuff out … so tell me, what have you found to be the BEST features of edmodo for you and your students?