For the Social topic, I chose Edmodo. I chose Edmodo because both Twitter and Facebook are very familiar to me and they are both also blocked at my school. I also don't believe they offer security features that would make me feel comfortable using it. I discovered Edmodo a few years ago when I was had a long term substitute position at another district. The teacher I was in for used it extensively with her class and I just joined right in to continue to use it. The students were 11th graders. I recently developed a project for my current 8th graders. They were assigned groups, and as a group, were to create a Revolutionary War newsletter. I was able to secure the laptop cart for 4 days to work on this project. I spent part of the first day of the day signing them up for edmodo. I figured I would give the site a try here. The kids absolutely loved the site. Each class described the site as being "facebook for school." Prior to me introducing it to the class, I did evaluate the security of the website. They use class or group codes in order to join each class. You can refresh the code and lock the code so it keeps the class secure. I also signed up for a fake student account so I could see the site from the student's perspective. Within the class period, I also created a sub group for each group within the class. Because of this site, the kids could upload pictures and resources and share them with their group. There was one person in charge of putting together all the articles and pictures in publisher. Edmodo made it easy for the students to collaborate and create the newspaper. Edmodo also has a backpack feature. This allowed the students to save the work to their profile in order to work on it at home. Another feature that I love is that the students could submit the project via edmodo as well. Once concern that I did have about this site was students posting inappropriate posts. Edmodo has a feature that allows you to moderate each post that is posted. That way if any off topic or inappropriate post came up, I could not approve its posting. This genre can enhance learning because it allows students to collaborate together on a digital front. They can edit the same document, and gather all of their resources digitally. It really worked well with my students. I continue to use edmodo. It allows electronic submission of projects and essays.
For the creative genre, I chose Glogster. I chose Glogster because it was mentioned in this week's discussion thread and I wanted to learn more about it. I went to the glogster education site, but I didn't realize that it is a paid site. I would have to sign up for a free trial, which was extremely disappointing. I would have to see if my district has an account. I am not sure that they do. I don't want to sign up for a free trial at the moment because I would like to use the trial as a project in my class, and I don't have an upcoming project I can use this with. I like what I see from the glogster education site. It promotes creative learning under a secure account. I think the students would absolutely love creating these digital posters. I like they have an education secure site, I am just disappointed it is a paid site at $30 a year. I am going to sign up for the regular glogster site to see how it runs. From what I see of the normal glogster site, it would be great to use to create projects for my history class. The students could map out historical events and important people. Instead of writing an essay, they could create a visual representation of the event. It would enhance student learning because it would benefit those visual learners. I think they would also enjoy using technology in this way. Students today are very visual and very motivated by the use of technology. I would definitely use this in my class if I could get the secure teacher site. I like the fact that they offer a secure, education based service, I just don't feel justified in paying for it right now. I don't know if I would use it often enough in a year to pay that much. Chris Roach states that glogster can be used for history to create visual timelines of events, profile famous people, times or era. They can illustrate arguments for and against a topic and illustrate specific information on an historical episode (2011). Glogster can also allow interactions from the creator of the glog to the viewer of the glog. "In summary, Glogster is a very easy to use tool which will allow students to your students a creative to way to express themselves and demonstrate their learning. As I have witnessed, they will enjoy using it" (Roach, 2011).
For the curation genre, I chose Scoop it. I chose this mainly because I have never heard of it! I looked at the site and it looks like it is a curation tool that allows you to gather resources for a single topic. It is very similar to pinterest. There is a free version and two levels of paid membership. I can see this being very beneficial in a classroom. I could ask the students to create a Scoop It for a single historical event, person or topic. I could also use it to collect teaching material and resources for my own lesson planning. All of the blogs and websites I use could be in one place. This would save me time! Leslie Nielsen states that "All this work just got a lot easier with Scoop.it. It allows a teacher, or groups of teachers, or teachers and students to be the curator of any topic by collecting gems for publication into your own site that can be shared with others" (2011). I am not sure I would use this a great deal in the classroom, but I think I would use it to gather resources for my graduate classes, and for lesson planning. It would make life a lot easier to gather all the best resources in one places.
Nielsen , L. (2011, July13). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/07/scoopit-
Roche, C. (2011, May 28). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://techmeetsed.com/2011/05/28/glogster-in-the-classroom/
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