Saturday, September 17, 2011

Week 1 of CED 535

This was our first week of CED 535 - Facilitating Collaboration through Web 2.0 tools. This week we have to read the first 3 chapters of Blogs, wikis and podcasts. We also need to research bloging websites such as: edmodo, ThinkQuest, 21Classes , Blogger, Wordpress, EduBlogs, CoveritLive, ePals, Blogcheese, Global Teacher / Student, MySpace, Xanga, Friendster , and Posterous.

I have had some experiences with these bloging websites. I have used edmodo, blogger, and posterous. Last year I used edmodo for my classes. It was a really great way to share resources with my students and provide a place for the students to collaborate. I have used, and obviously am using, blogger. I used posterous in a different class and I really liked its ease of use. You simply send an email to posterous and it changes it into a post on your blog. Like all the other blogging resources, it is a great way to share and collaborate. This year I really hope to have my students start blogging about their classroom experiences, specifically labs, and what they learned. It is a great way to reflect about their experiences and allows students to make connections to the material.

This year, I am utilizing moodle. It is far more advanced, and subsequently more complicated to set up and use. Moodle is a Learning Management System (LMS) that allows teachers and students to share resource and take assessments. I am really excited to develop my courses and utilize this to it full potential. It is a great way for students to receive extra help, assess their knowledge/abilities, and share and collaborate.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing. I have many questions for you. First, what do you teach? Grade and ages. We have something like edmodo that we are getting this year. I want to use it fully and to mine and my students advantage. I hope you are able to give me ideas that will help me to successfully use our program like you did. Sounds like you had a lot of success with it.

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  2. I guess I have not been as thoroughly impressed with Moodle as you are. I have been using it for quite a few years and due to limitations of computers in the classroom, have not been able to use it to its greatest capability. However, using a site like Moodle has really helped my students know what happened in class if they are absent, as well as a location to find more in depth information via the links provided on the site. My problems with Moodle is that I have been allowed one site on the SLC (MPS's version of Moodle). I would love to be able to use it more, but I have not been able to group students so that they are only able to see content on my site that is relevant to them. If you have ideas, please let me know. It might be my ignorance, but it also might be part of the program that MPS purchased.

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  3. Would you pick one blogging system over another, and what factors would you find the most useful?

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  4. Thanks to everyone that replied.

    Crystal, I teach physical science and chemistry. While I utilized the edmodo service, I don't think that I even utilized it to its full potential. My site was mainly a place to locate and find resources. I did not do blogging but I may consider it this year (probably semester 2).

    Mike, I am not really a fan of moodle myself. I find it very tedious to setup and utilize. I had read that edmodo is actually going to create a quiz option. If this is true, and the quiz mode is of good quality, I will not hesitate to switch.

    Let me know if you have any questions about edmodo, I am most certainly not an expert but I am willing to help if possible.

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