How will I build community and inspire discourse? What are the Non-LMS tools that will help me and how?
Community – Edmodo – This tool allows teachers to create assignments, place them on a calendar, and have their students submit their assignments electronically all in one place. Alerts can also be sent to students to remind them of assignments that are coming due or past due. Teachers can also create quizzes and poll their students.
What I like about this tool is that it offers easy-to-use apps that personalize learning for every student, as well as the option to create badges to award students.
Discussion – VoiceThread – This tool is a cloud application that is used to upload, share and discuss documents, presentations, images and audio/video files. There are five options for making comments made on VT slides: microphone, webcam, text, phone, and audio file upload. VT can be private, shared with specific individuals or with the world.
What I like about this tool is that it offers a way of sharing ideas that isn’t often used. Usually online learning involves a lot of text and this opens the door to share using our voices, but can also be replayed at a convenient time to listen.
Communication – Skype – This tool allows users to communicate with peers by voice using microphone, webcam and instant messaging over the internet. Phone calls can be placed to the recipient on the traditional telephone networks. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge. Skype is a powerful educational tool that connects students to each other, to their teachers and to communities throughout the world.
What I like about this tool is that it is widely known about and familiar for most students to use. There is little to no learning curve and students can focus on their task at hand rather than having to figure out a new communication tool before even starting to communicate with their peers, teachers or community members.
Collaboration – KidBlog - Kidblog was designed for teachers to use with students. It is aimed at every student from K-12. Each student is able to create their own personal blog space and publish posts in a secure academic classroom environment. Teachers have control over student blogs and user accounts.
What I like about this tool is that it is a safe environment for my students to post their thoughts as I have control over comments and the users admitted to the learning space. I know my students would love to create a space that is their own to house their work and then give peer feedback and collaborate on projects through comments. I also like that this tool would be a fantastic host for an e-portfolio!
How will you provide content, interactivity with content, and organization? What are the Non-LMS tools that will help you and how?
Dashboard – Google Sites – This tool has a great deal of flexibility and is familiar to a wide range of users. It’s easy to edit, invite users to the side and alter permissions, and privacy settings are simple to set.
What I like about this tool is that it has a number of tools within it and it is easy to edit and make unique to the course being created.
Content/Lessons/Presentations – Weebly - This tool offers a free online website creator. It uses a simplistic widget-based site builder that operates in the web browser. All of Weebly’s site elements are drag and drop.
What I like about this tool is that it is familiar and very user friendly. I know colleagues that have used this site with their students and it was very easy for them to navigate on their own.
File Sharing – Google Drive – This tool is a service to share text, video, images and audio files. It offers 5 GB of free storage. Google Drive is useful for collaborating on documents as all group members have access to the document at any given time and can work together in real time making changes that appear in assigned colours.
What I like about this tool is that it is well known, and it is most likely students have some sort of experience with it already.
Calendar – Google Calendar – This tool is simple and straightforward. It is cloud based and can be shared/synched with others. It allows for easy entry and deletion and fulfills the duty of a calendar.
What I like about this tool is that is so simple to use. I don’t feel a calendar needs to be flashy; it is serving the purpose of time management and reminders.
How will I handle assessment as, for and of learning?
e-Portfolio – Weebly - This tool offers a free online website creator. It uses a simplistic widget-based site builder that operates in the web browser. All of Weebly’s site elements are drag and drop. This tool is that it is familiar and very user friendly. I know colleagues that have used this site with their students and it was very easy for them to navigate on their own.
What I like about this tool is that it is a great host for an e-Portfolio and since it is easy for students to navigate on their own they can get started on the content of their e-Portfolio straight away without a very steep learning curve regarding the tool their using to create it. Here is a link to my e-Portfolio in Weebly: Tracy’s e-Portfolio.
Reflection/Journals – Weebly - This tool offers a free online website creator. It uses a simplistic widget-based site builder that operates in the web browser. All of Weebly’s site elements are drag and drop. This tool is that it is familiar and very user friendly. I know colleagues that have used this site with their students and it was very easy for them to navigate on their own.
Again I have chosen Weebly for another aspect of my course tool-kit because it is so user friendly and familiar. There isn’t a lot of fuss with building a webspace/blog through Weebly and therefore the majority of a student’s time can be spent on the task at hand, in this case their learning reflections/journals.
Grade Book – LearnBoost – This tool is a free grade book that allows users to create and share lessons, track attendance and input grades, which are updated instantly. Parent and student access means no surprises come report card time and stats can be put into various graphs to chart progress, identify strengths and weaknesses. LearnBoost allows teachers to customize grade scales, allow for weighting of assignments, set up classes and assignments quickly and easily and create seating charts based on student strengths and weaknesses.
What I like about this tool is that it is free and offers several “extras” besides simply hosting and organizing student’s grades.
Presenting – Soometa – This tool is very simple, easy and a quick way to develop a presentation. Information can be downloaded from Youtube, Google, or your computer straight onto each slide. Sound tracks can be included and the backgrounds are interchangeable. The ease of navigation with this tool is apparent and will serve students well.
What I like about this tool is that it is user friendly and something new besides the standard PowerPoint presentation.
Assignments – Edmodo – This tool allows teachers to create assignments, place them on a calendar, and have their students submit their assignments electronically all in one place. Alerts can also be sent to students to remind them of assignments that are coming due or past due. Teachers can then also return assignments to students with feedback attached.
What I like about this tool is that it offers both a place for students to submit work and also for the teachers to return marked assignments with feedback attached.
Feedback – Edmodo – This tool allows teachers to create assignments, place them on a calendar, and have their students submit their assignments electronically all in one place. Alerts can also be sent to students to remind them of assignments that are coming due or past due. Teachers can then also return assignments to students with feedback attached.
What I like about this tool is that it offers both a place for students to submit work and also for the teachers to return marked assignments with feedback attached.
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Feeback – Google Drive – This tool is a service to share text, video, images and audio files. It offers 5 GB of free storage. Google Drive is useful for collaborating on documents as all group members have access to the document at any given time and can work together in real time making changes that appear in assigned colours. This tool can also be used to provide feedback to students when they share their work with their teacher. This may be a useful tool for works in progress so that teacher feedback can be given before a final project is submitted through Edmodo.
What I like about this tool is that it is well known, and it is most likely students have some sort of experience with it already.
Self-evaluation/Peer-evaluations – Hot Potatoes – This tool includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the Web. Hot potatoes is not freeware, but it is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded, non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available on the web.
What I like about this tool is that it allows students to work independently at their own speed with the opportunity to revisit.
Quizzing – Google Forms – This tool allows students to answer multiple choice or multiple select, true/false, scale and other forms of questions. The instructor can then go to the spreadsheet created by the form to evaluate the student quizzes all in one place.
What I like about this tool is that it fits nicely with the other Google tools I have chosen and will be familiar territory those using Google for it’s many tools.