TCC 5-2 Social Learning Networks/Learning Management Systems

With blended learning came the necessity of different tools for collaboration, storage, assigning, and  presenting. A post in District Administration  lists several of the current Social Learning Networks available to schools/teachers for free or minimal cost ($20/yr.). Those are Edmodo, Gaggle, Ning, Blackboard, ePals, and Schoolology. I am only featuring Edmodo,  My Big Campus (free with LightSpeed), Google Classroom, and Promethean's new Classflow in this article. Our Chromebooks group also uses Echo as its platform, but this is a subscription site. 

First, Edmodo since I have used this one for some time. This site is very Facebook-like. It offers at newer tool, Snapshot which allows you to use provided content aligned to Common Core standards. Other resources include apps that run within Edmodo. Teachers can past notes,  assignments, quizzes, and polls with attached files or links. There is a gradebook  available and quizzes are graded except for short answer questions. Students have storage (backpack) and can belong to multiple classes. They can post notes to the class, take quizzes/polls, and turn in assignments from any location with internet. 

Our security filter LightSpeed provides a site which is very similar, My Big Campus. I have used this experimentally, but have not led a class in the system. One difference to Edmodo is that it cannot be used as a stand-alone for one teacher without  information from IT within their district.

Google Classroom uses Apps for Education  This is a relatively new feature in Google’s ever-growing empire. Chrome Apps for Education is a part of this LMS and an administrator must provide domain information in order to use it. We have provided training on both Chrome apps and extensions, but due to a lack of domain I can only give you what they present without personal insights. Connected resources are YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps, and Drive’s suite of cloud software, In Drive teachers have the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google Document for each student. It also creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student to help keep everyone organized.An im provement over Edmodo is that students can keep track of what's due on an Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Most other features are offered by the other products. According to their Mobile information says that caching allows students to access assignments without an internet connection.

Promethean Classflow is not just an online replacement for Activ software. It has many features which were available in that platform, but is now device agnostic in student response devices. It offers the data feedback for the teacher it always has. And says that collaboration inside and outside of class is possible. One thing mentioned here and not other places is leveling and differentiation of what individual students view during a lesson. Students join using a code provided by the teacher. Their site  says it can be integrated with your district’s SIS, LMS, or CMS system so they are not technically a LMS

TCC 5-2 Cindy's LInks

Don’t forget Symbaloo! We looked at webmixes a while back. Remember, they are a visual bookmarker. Here are some I have recently stumble upon: Vocabulary Spelling City, Word Games, Science Songs, Bancos de Imagenes, Creating Online Content, Tuesday Tutorial, Thursday Did You Know, and Research Resources.
Instagrok an educational search engine tested in a real classroom by a real teacher, Ann Elliott, for Edudemic. Her post mentions that students are greatly helped by the concept map of finds. It is also available as an app in Edmodo.
A couple of math sites that might be helpful: Hungry Teacher and Manga High. Manga High is a game site with higher level math skills than most which Christy Evans shared earlier this year. Hungry Teacher is a project site that is complete with standards. And one for the ELA teachers so I am not showing bias: Dreamreader.net which posts free online leveled reading practice in English.
More Alice Keeler:
Google Sheets Rubric Template offers a rubric that can be  copied and modified. And since our monthly Tech Cluster for January is on this site...ClassDojo Builds Realtionships. And in the hopes that Twitter will become our tool, Twitter Tip: Start Your Tweet with a Period.
Enjoy!

TCC 5-2 Making Videos Interactive

Having students view a video enhances learning..but wouldn't it be great if you could add notes, questions, or quizzes to the videos? Having students view independently would be good, too. Now you can!
The information for this article is gleaned from a blog post at Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.
Five tools are listed there: Blubbr, teachem, Educanon, VideoNotes, EDpuzzle, and TedEd. Oops, there are two 5’s so 6 tools:

• Blubbr focuses on the quiz aspect of this then provides feedback to their answers. 
• In Teachem teachers can add commented, questions, and flashcard notes which are attached at appropriate points in the video. 
• Educanon also allows you to add questions during the clip so that their value is enhanced. This site adds Vimeo videos as sources. 
• More video sources are added by VideoNotes to include the two already mentioned plus coursera, udcity, EdX, and Khan Academy. 
• Google Drive is connected to this one as a source for notes. 
• EDpuzzle lets students or teachers clip the video in addition to already listed features of the other tools. (This was the late add.) 
• TedEd supplies videos and allows you to add the lesson on the same site.

Enjoy!

TCC 5-2 Classroom Tech Infusion: Digital Project Tools, Part 2

Here are some more ideas for student project alternatives.
Surveys in Google Forms or Survey Monkey: Gathering opinions has never been easier. Both Google Forms and Survey Monkey are platforms for creating a survey with multiple question types which have unique URLs which can be provided to your target audience .Single question polls can be done for group members in Edmodo. All of these allow you to gather data for independent research.

One reason many teachers don’t do video presentations is fear of embedding. Teachers can set up a class channel on YouTube for student produced videos for free and set as private. This relieves you of having to learn how to embed videos on a class page. Your students can make a commercial, book review, read poetry, or...you can think of more examples than I can.

The following are summaries from sites I follow with links to the posts.

Student Video Production is another platform for presentation. ED Tech Teacher has this page with directions, tools and lots of ideas for projects (at bottom).

“When used carefully, social media can be a useful tool rather than a distraction...it also helps bridge the digital divide among lower income students."  Using Social Media isn't always welcomed by schools, but can be. This post on Edudemic looks at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogging, and Instagram, All are discussed and links are provided for a closer look at them. There is some privacy advice at the end of the post suggesting parent permission slips and setting all to private so that you control your student‘s audience. Then their work is only seen by those invited. Another use for the post would be ideas on how you can use the projects on more familiar social media alternatives like Edmodo or other LMSs mention in the main article on page one.

As always, enjoy!

TCC 5-3 New Tech Tips in Google Drive

A wonderful source for Google Classroom tips is Alice Keeler. (See her Teacher Tech in my blog roll at right.)  I have shared lots of her links in the Cindy’s Links articles. She is a Google Educator and is very skilled at producing the formulas and succinct tutorials for using Google well. Her site doesn’t seem to have a categories list, but her post titles do categorize them as:  Google Classroom, Google Drive, Google Sheets, etc.

Google Classroom: Sharing the Classroom Folder, her post for  January 28 is about connecting your Google Classroom folder with your personal Drive account. One of the ideas is that this allows a parent to be included in their child’s “portfolio” folder since that isn’t a feature of Classroom.
My emphasis here will be on the tips she offers for Google Drive. Check Cindy’s Links in previous issues for some other  recommendations.
Try these:
Google Forms: Creating a Rubric, Google Sheets: Create Tabs Quickly, Getting Started with Google Draw, Google Docs: Mark as Graded,  Google Sheets: Dopy a Template for Each Student,
And I haven’t left January, 2015, yet...

Enjoy!

TCC 5-2 Classroom Tech Infusion: Digital Project Tools

Students usually begin their projects with Power Point presentations. In our case we are looking at Google Sheets, but same idea. What if instead of the themes we usually use we look for a template instead? Google Drive has changed, but old friends are still around...the template above came up when I Googled "template gallery." It was the first one on the link for Docs even though it uses Sheets.

All you have to do is add your text and photos and you are done. There is an additional page which I didn't use. Mine is a little lite on information, but the booklet feel gives and entirely different impression from themes in the software. As you can see Drive gives you the ability to embed your product on a webpage.
I used clip-art from Phillip Martin who allows educational use of his work for free. They have transparent backgrounds so they look different from the original photos in the template.