Edmodo

The Web 2.0 tool I decided to focus on is Edmodo. It is a free private social platform for education.
You can find it at http://www.edmodo.com/ and if you end up thinking this is something you may want to use, you should got to the site and view the tour.

Some of the feature of Edmodo are that you can create an account and manage it for all of your separate classes or periods of the day. Students sign up for a name and enter in the code that will get them to the page you want them to be a part of. One plus is that students do not need to have an email address to sign up. Once the students are in, they can post, respond to posts, post assignments and view information the teacher has posted for them. It is sort of a hybrid between Moodle and Facebook. The students can respond to one another and/or just the teacher. The teacher can even create an online grade book to keep track of posts and other points accumulated through the online assignments students post to the site. Last, one nice feature is that you can invite other teachers to join in on the conversation. I thought about including the librarian, counselor and principal so they can contribute to the students conversations and witness their learning.

I plan to use this in my classroom right from the first day on. I have created a page for each of my blocked classes and have already posted an introduction assignment where the kids will have to reply and tell the class some things about them. As the year progresses, I hope to use it for discussions, book talks, homework and as a place to post assignments instead of having kids print off papers they complete on the computer.

I hope that my kids enjoy the Edmodo page and find it to be a place where they can share their opinions and reply to other students thinking to build upon their own. I hope the page provides me a way to talk to all students, hear their individual thoughts and opinions and be able to respond to them with follow up questions and direction. Last, I think this will be a great way to get to know kids on a more personal level and have every voice in the room heard. And if all else fails, my eight grade students spend all of their time out of school on Facebook, so maybe they will be tricked into thinking this is just another place for them to share what they are doing and talk about things with friends.

Here is a copy of what my Block 1 page looks like right now!