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.
