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Schoology
How is your digital life? Are you overwhelmed by emails, texts, notifications from apps and more? Do you wonder how these technological advances have begun to encroach on our personal time? As an experiment, observe how we interact in public places and notice how most adults now have their heads bowed down screening their devices for the latest email, text or other form of communication. I travel a lot and love to "people watch" and find that most people are glued to their devices and it's not always for enjoyment. I know personally, I get more email than I ever signed up for and use my device to clean out the garbage email so I can concentrate later on the ones that really matter. When you apply that to our school lives, it's even more complicated because when do teachers really have time to check email during the day? If we have a great lesson, we are totally involved with our students and email is the last thing on our minds. Yet how can we manage the myriad of information that we are responsible for. Every district has the dilemma to ensure a safe, affordable and engaging enterprise where learning and organization are held to the highest standards. This "tuesdays" is brought to you for the sole purpose of sharing a learning management system that integrates most every form of communication in one place.
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Schoology is FREE! It's a learning management system much like Edmodo (which I find exquisitely simple and efficient to use) yet with extra added bonuses worth the investigation. While training in Wisconsin, one of their smaller school systems have adopted Schoology as their primary learning management system and I was charged with driving the professional development through Schoology. Though skeptical at first, I found the platform intriguingly interesting, appealing, simple to use yet robust. They recently received the 2013 CODiE Award for best K-12 Enterprise solution. Schoology streamlines content creation, grade recording, attendance and all redundant tasks. It allows for differentiation and integrates with some great platforms like: Turnitin, Google Docs, Moodle, Blackboard and more. Don't forget the best part - it's FREE. You can have an individual account or your district can participate with its own domain. Although I am a great fan of Edmodo, a look at Schoology will seal the deal
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I would encourage you first to be a teacher leader and seek advice from those who make district decisions to take a look at Schoology. Be sure that your district allows for an outside learning management system before jumping on board. Once you have permissions, begin connecting with others in your school, district and with like minds. Just in the few minutes after I signed on tonight, I was able to go the resource center and glean many new websites and intergration ideas for future "tuesdays." Next, involve your students. Be very careful not to overload them. By all means, please do not make them do the "read and comment on three posts" because if the prompts are interesting enough, they will do this naturally. If they are forced to make that kind of interaction, it will be passionless and only for a grade. Having the ability to interact with your students, create assessments and allow the students to get immediate feedback is what will propel learning in your classroom to a higher level.
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How do you get started with Schoology? Assuming that you have completed all district permissions and blessings, create your own teacher account. The program will generate course codes that you can give to your students. You can upload all your assignments, removing the "I lost my assignment," syndrome. Students can interact with other students and the teacher under a safe environment. The interface is friendly, Facebook-like, engaging yet deep with hidden gems I am still deciphering. I highly recommend Schoology as a learning management system that is up-to-date for the 2013-2014 school year.
PS. Make sure you turn off all notifications or you will add to the communication deluge.
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| What is "tuesdays with Karen"?
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"tuesdays with Karen" is a weekly newsletter/blog designed to encourage, equip and empower teachers to be creative with educational technology. Please add your technology comments to my "tuesdays with Karen" blog. |
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