Digital Learning Platforms

At my last observation-reflection session for VALOR, I was asked about several digital learning programs that I use.

Schoology is the basic digital learning platform that most of the science teachers seem to use. It works really well for organizing information and assignments by unit. I can collaborate with other teachers in the Groups pages, and create a library that can be shared. Schoology offers flexible assessment creation, including easy graphics, which are crucial for science as many of our answer choices are pictures instead of words. Schoology lets me attach a rubric to an assignment so the student can see exactly how they scored. I know that Google will do this with various add-ons, but with Schoology, those things are already part of the platform.

I am part of Cadre 2 for the digital classrooms, and back in those days, we were a lot less organized. Digital classrooms were not common, and many of the available programs did not suit our needs or were too difficult to use. Project Share was awful (horrible, ridiculous, and seriously wtf), and Edmodo did not offer a good way to organize content, so students would have sort through long threads to find what they needed.  I am aware that Edmodo has changed a few things since then. However, I switched to Schoology because it met more of my needs at the time and it continues to do so.

The second huge platform I use for my digital classroom is blogging. I am a firm believer that writing about a concept, reviewing peer writing, and getting feedback is one of the best ways to learn about that concept. I have been pushing my students to blog their thoughts for years, but not until recently did I clarify exactly what I expected from them. I use this rubric to evaluate their blogs. (Originally from here: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/05/a-wonderful-blogging-rubric-for.html but modified for my purposes). Once we implemented the rubric, the quality of the writing we received improved immensely. 

The other great thing about students blogging the concepts is that I can easily check to see whether the words on the blogs are their own or not. This enables me to closely monitor who is learning the concepts and who is not.

Students are able to choose for two different blogging platforms – Edublogs and Blogger. Edublogs has been involved in student blogging for many years and is supported by WordPress. The platform has many quirks, however, and some students find it frustrating. Blogger is Google’s blogging platform so with every student in the district having a Google account, Blogger is a logical choice. We have just started using Blogger this year, and my only complaint is that it seems to have a confusing navigation system for students.

In my blog, I link all the students’ blogs so that students can give each other feedback. I also have student email me when they make a post so I know which ones are updated. For a look at the student blogs, look at the sidebar of my blog, I Wonder If . . .

The last piece of the digital platform in my class is ActiveGrade. The physics department at Colleyville-Heritage uses this grading software because it supports standards based grading where Skyward does not. We grade on a three-point scale and load our standards, either the TEKS or the AP standards, into ActiveGrade. The site color-codes the mastery level so students can easily see where they need to improve. Here is a screenshot of the student page for an example student:

ActiveGrade is not the optimal program. For instance, we would like to see it calculate standards using mode, as this would be the best reflection of student progress. ActiveGrade does not offer the option, despite our complaints to customer service. We have settled on using Most Recent for the grading criteria, as it will reflect a student who is trending up, although it won’t help a student who has a bad week late in the grading period. ActiveGrade also requires about five steps to do something that should take one or two.  However, the program does allow use to export the standards and scores to Excel, where we can then convert them into something that Skyward will recognize. This adds extra time for us to generate grades every week, but I feel that the extra information the students have about their progress is worth it.

Obviously, as a digital teacher, I use many more programs, websites, and apps. However, these programs are the three corners of support for my digital classroom – content delivery, student innerput, and feedback from me to my students.