In working with my interactive notebooks this year I
encouraged kids to set up study buddies and asked that they exchange phone
numbers & emails so that they could support on another in completing
missing assignments & making up work when absent. Sounds like a great idea
on the surface but I made a couple of errors in judgment that caught me off
guard.
First, I assumed that most kids had email and were regular
users, Not so much. Few of my students knew how to use email or even had an
email address. My hubby, who is
everything tech, mentioned not long ago that email is dying media and will
likely go the way of the fax in the next decade or so. He argues that the only
people who actively use email are the Gen Xers. It’s certainly something to
consider going forward in education.
Secondly, I had a couple of parents express concerns that
they were uncomfortable with email use for their children because no one was
controlling the content of what was being exchanged. While I have a teenage son
of my own, it was a concern that I hadn’t personally considered. It certainly
gave me a moment to pause. How do I encourage my students to responsibly
collaborate and work on assignments but still maintain control of the content?
Is it my responsibility to support the students outside of school as well as in
it?
Hmmmm… Okay then. So I by wanting to support my kids to
success, I inadvertently opened up a can of worms that I hadn’t expected. How
to address this as an educator and support kids in work completion outside of
school by embracing technology and encouraging collaboration? What tools are
out there?
As it happened, one of my parents who expressed concerns
about email pointed me to edmodo.com. Like many other ed-tech tools, I had
heard of this but never really investigated it beyond the superficial overview.
I dug a bit deeper this week and decided that I would give it a try. After all,
it’s free! And as a teacher, it’s really hard to argue against that.
So, I just signed up for EdModo this week. And if you
haven’t heard of it, it’s a social network style site for educators to set up
groups for their students. It’s a little bit blog, a little bit Facebook. The site complies with child safety
regulations for safe use of the internet. And otherwise give teachers free
web-tools to use in facilitating social collaboration with their students.
I have yet to explore all the features and admittedly I am
still working my way through all the site has to offer. What I can say is that
it seems to offer the solution I was seeking for how to support my students
outside of class. It has a mobile app that allows users to connect in a manner
similar to Facebook. Students can post questions and respond to each other as
well as to the teacher. As far as I can tell the teachers can act as moderators
or facilitators for their groups, which means if a kiddo is in anyway
inappropriate he/she can be blocked by you instantly. I like that feature a lot
as it addressed my parent concerns about appropriate content. For me that is a
big plus.
On the downside, essentially because it is an education
based social-network that complies with child safety regulations, you (the
teacher) need to go through a verification process in order to invite students
to be part of your groups. It makes sense to me why this is done, but it does
delay establishing your pages. There are several ways to verify your status. 1)
You can connect to someone at your site who knows you. When they acknowledge
your status then that counts as verification. 2) There is a system where you
can submit a photo ID (literally) from your school, such as a badge, and send
it to edmodo. I haven’t done this as it makes me a bit uncomfortable. But this
is an option. 3) Complete an on-line form that asks questions about your
background and credentialing. I am guessing that this has to be manually
verified by someone and it’s unclear to me how long this might take.
I chose option 3 because I don’t know anyone on my
site who uses Edmodo. At the moment I am caught in the verification process
and unable to move forward until this is done. I am willing to do this because
I can see value in how the site will help with my own classes.
Once verified, students will need to register with edmodo. I
plan to take my students into our computer lab and have everyone register at
the same time. Students will not be required to use the site, but we will add
this information into our “Important Information & Contacts” page in our
interactive notebooks as a resource for students in addition to our study
buddies. Hopefully that will help everyone more than the individual study
buddies previously set up.
I think it’s also important to share that there is a parent
portal to this site. However, at this time I don’t have any experience for that
works. As I figure it out and learn more, I will post on that topic.
As I said, this is all rather new to me and I’m working my
way through it. But it is my hope that the site will offer some solutions to my
needs of supporting my kiddos both inside and outside my classroom. I don’t
plan to spend more than about 10 minutes a day on the site outside of work. And
the time I do spend will probably be done using the mobile app. So, if it cuts
down on floods of questions inside of class and helps with getting more
students engaged and completing both class and homework assignments, then in my
opinion it’s time well spent.
Here's to hoping it works!
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