Tech For Your Class

This year through Cool Tools I was able to explore and learn about tools that I have wanted to look into but hadn't made the time.  I plan to work more with blogging and getting classes started.  Weebly blogs is free moderated blogging site that doesn't have all the advantages of Google integration that Kidblog has, but it a nice option.  I didn't have much luck with the explainer videos that I looked into.  Explain everything was too complicated and I wouldn't suggest teachers use the web version.  I did really like educreations but I got errors on the web version.  This was disappointing.  I will follow up to see if there is something that we can do to get educreations working.  I also looked into ePorfolios.  I find the topic overwhelming but if taken one step at a time with a school or a grade level, I thing it would be exciting to start.  I will refer back to the Cool Tools resources as I continue to work on ePortfolio...

Student ePortfolios I spent time learning about ePortfolios.  In the Show with Media article, it breaks ePortfolios as having three uses: storage, a workspace and a showcase.  Our district is has adopted Google App for Education so I immediately think of using the Google Drive, Google apps for reflection and Google Sites for a showcase. Another article emphasized that student portfolios are most effective when they are used to evaluate student learning progress and achievement.  This reflection on work come through as so important.  This process is part of the learning and including the reflection in the portfolio is so important. This then brings up what the portfolio is used for either as a Student portfolio vs. Student showcase. Student show case would house the student's best work where the Student portfolio would include the examples that show growth and include reflection. I would like to focus on using G Suite for portfolios.  The Google Tribe ...

Blogging with students gives them a venue for their thoughts with an authentic audience.  I liked the video with the students saying that they liked comments from their teacher but then when asked if they liked comments from their peer, they all perked up and were excited.  Using the class to comment on each others posts is a good way to start.  They all agreed that they tried much harder if a peer is going to read their post.  This class also connected with a class in England so that was an additonal push to reread and publish. I found the edublog resources with topics very helpful.  It is a lot for teachers to begin so I like the idea of using Padlet to start blogging to see if it is something that they would like to keep up.  It is no set up comparatively and would be good then move into teaching appropriate commenting. This would work better for gr 3-5 to get started. My real push was to find the best blogging tool for a moderated class blogging....