Edmodo re-visited

I started off the school year really  using Edmodo for all my assignments, especially for those who are absent.   I had a student teacher during the fall quarter and fell out of practice during that time and I noticed that when I don't post to got to Edmodo and I have gotten less accomplished from my students.   I will be starting again, now that my student teacher is gone, to use this as a good access point for my students.  I know it is simple in the realm of technology, but I can easily wrap my head around it.   I do wish there was a way to duplicate a post for all my classes instead of having to re-write for each class period.  Just extra steps.

AcvtivBoard and ActivInspire

Throughout my teaching career, I have used ActivInspire and the ActiveBoard to create, track, and implement lesson plans. It is a simple tool to use and the kids enjoy the colorful images that give them direction the minute the walk in the door.

ActivInspire provides a fun way for kids to get involved in group and guided lessons, as it allows them to do examples in front of the class using technology. I have found that student become very engaged in these kinds of lessons and it can even make grammar fun. It also provides an avenue for group or individual presentations that are created with technologies such as PowerPoint or Google Docs.

From an educators point of view, it makes lessons created in a previous year easily accessible. I have all of my Flipcharts saved in folders that are ready to use, so it takes away a portion of planning stress. Having said this, it also allows an easy way to share lessons with collegues.

If you haven't tried using this in your classroom, I highly recommend it.

Google Docs vs MS Office

We have a curriculum project that is in Publisher and after several attempts to transfer the document into Google Docs for students to work on, we were unsuccessful.  This led to large scale (37 students) confusion on how to upload a document from the internet, save it to their SVSD user share and work on it from there.  Students have come to rely on Google Docs and have very little familiarity with other programs.  At the end of the project, I have conflicting thoughts as to whether I would do the project next year at all.  If there was a way to transfer the Publisher document to Google Docs for students to work on it...I'd be willing to give it another try.  I guess another way to address this would be to recreate the document in another form that is Google Drive friendly....anyone know of one?

Google Forms as Quizzes

At the beginning of this school year Janice Wintermeyer (8th Grade CKMS L.A.) taught me how to use Google forms to create quizzes. At first, the quizzes worked beautifully, however, after a couple of weeks my students learned to use the right click define feature. If you right click a word while using a Google program while using Chrome as your search engine application it will define the word for you. As these quizzes were supposed to be "vocabulary quizzes" there was an obvious conflict.

All was not lost. I learned the program well enough and my students were familiar with the application that I have been able to use it to create other quizzes.

One of the best features to Google Forms is the add-on function, where there are several features that you can add to the survey, such as an auto-grade function...awesome.