There were many great tools introduced today! As always, there's never enough time to really delve into the deep end, but I am planning to implement Edmodo. Of course, at some point I have come across Edmodo before and actually had an account created but failed to use it in any kind of meaningful way beyond creating a login! I like that it has a FaceBook like appeal. I think this will appeal to students and, hopefully, staff! I have several ideas about how it could be used in our school. I plan to create an Edmodo group for a group of students I have participating in a novel advisory panel. This seems like a good place for them to post comments about the books on our list as well as add additional content like author websites, book trailers, and related media. I have used a blog in the past, but middle schoolers aren't as keen to use blogs as they are to use something like Facebook. I will start out using with the group of students in my school and if it goes well perhaps we'll expand it to the other middle school libraries in our district participating in this student advisory group. I also think it could be a good venue for my work as our Professional Development Chair. This would be a handy place to address questions and post related links and documents. I will be looking for additional resources to empower classroom teachers to use this tool.
Storify is the other tool I was intrigued by today. It is in beta and I had some trouble adding content in both PC and iPad platforms. I don't think it is ready for widespread use. It also has some limitations in the kinds of content you can add. I think it may be less intellectual than we are imagining! It may be the "People" rather than the "Newsweek" type of news that is best suited to its capabilities at this time. :) It may evolve over time. You can add a "storify this" button to your browsers toolbar. That makes it easy to grab web content. That content is then added to your storypad. It can then be dragged and dropped in your story. Be sure to refresh your page if you are going back and forth between pages/tabs because your new content will not automatically show up.
See my storify with additional resources for both tools. Lisa
Lisa,
ReplyDeleteYour link isn't working. I would love to see your storify. Could you repost?
Sorry! It works for me but it must recognize me as being logged in. I have inserted the storify. Lisa
ReplyDeleteSo Edmundo is like a website/blog for students or teachers. Looks like it could be a really good resource for professional development or just to talk between coworkers,
ReplyDeleteEdmodo is really and LMS. It is just free and not very robust. I suggest looking at My Big Campus. It is exceptional, free, and easy to use. Plus there are bundles or already composed units like on storify that are available and teacher created. I would check it out.
ReplyDeleteLisa your Storify looks great. You did a really nice job of curating. I think the journalism piece is really excellent. Thanks for reposting!
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a chance to look at and explore Edmodo while we were having our exploration time, because I got involved in the blogging part for the day. I hadn't been on the site before, and I'm really liking it. I completely agree that students would be more in tune to with this site vs. a blog where you could do communication between you/students/parents because it has more of a 'facebook' appeal. Then, I saw Dr. Stokes' recommendation for mybigcampus.com and I definitely ilke that one better. I did the tour of the site, and it seems more like a LMS than edmodo. I felt like it was more organized, too.
ReplyDelete