Beyond being Friday the 13th – and continuing my
23 year streak of not stepping on a crack in the sidewalk – yesterday was also Digital Learning Day! I actually was just clued in a few days ago but I wanted
to share how my class celebrated in a small way.
For me #DLDay is more about my own professional development
with technology in the classroom but I also found it a perfect time to
introduce a new app to the class: Edmodo.
While Edmodo is nothing new, I recently took a little bit of
time to explore what the site has to offer. If I was ever to explore space it
would probably feel a little something like exploring Edmodo because there is
just SO much. It can be overwhelming. For example, they have three options for
learning about Edmodo: a seven week course, a 1 day on-site crash course, and
on your own videos. Clearly, I chose the videos (the others were thousands of
dollars) but even those are endless.
Anyways, we stuck
with the basic (but effective) “note” and “quiz” features. In my class we used
note as a way to have organized discussions with the whole class. For example,
I posted a question and groups responded to the question and it posts to the
class in real time. They can reply as many times as they would like to respond
to others answers. They were so excited! Sometimes the littlest things make a big impact. They loved the "chat room" feel.
I have our Edmodo profiles set up in table group colors and
they work in table groups to answer questions. In the future I see myself using
this for book discussions and math think alouds. Today, we used it to discuss
technology questions and shed a light on Digital Learning Day.
Some might think, can’t you discuss out loud more efficiently?
Possibly, but this way students are speaking to their groups, formulating a written
response, and practicing their typing skills. You can see in the pictures
typing is still a skill we’re working on.
To give students a taste of our future learning, they read a
Time for Kids article and took a quiz I quickly created on Edmodo after. It was
a good feature to test out, but I really like the notes section best. When they
are working in groups I think the best feature is to be able to see each others
posts and respond to what others say.
More to come in the future with technology and Edmodo but
for Digital Learning Day and our first day of Edmodo we had a fun, technology
filled day!
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