November loomings

Of course I am reminded of the "dark drizzly November of my soul"(Melville)-always a let down when I finish teaching that novel. However, the good news is that I have been working with Subtext and Edmodo and my students are really enjoying the trial. I also love that I can load in several critical essays for students to read and comment which frees up class time(think flip). A major fun revelation that I discovered was that I could customize the badges and that you can share them with other teachers. I am waiting to see when they discover them! I will try to do a Socrative quiz Thursday.

New Stuff 10/23

Edmodo continues to amaze me, so much potential-now they have a subtext app, this allows teacher to have an ipad but students can just access through any device-if you aren't familiar with subtext check it out -you can put books in your library and share with students, but you can also put documents in there. Basically what I like is the ability to annotate the text and then share notes and discuss. They both have great support people which will really stay with you until issue is solved. I even connected with turnitin to see if Edmodo could coordinate with them. I then sent their e-mail to Edmodo and they are passing it on to their app team. Hoping to present at our inservice on both these with Sonja. Also three new apps to try for creative use: idea sketch(free), pic collage(free) and Brainstormer(1.99)

School Starts

This year my goal is too use Edmodo to take over my classroom management. I will eventually put everything there. I love the format but had an issue this year with some students not being able to use it. After back and forth with their great help line, the answer was never really found, but I added my dog as a student and now I test everything with her. I put her picture in as well -the kids like it. I have loved using youtube and podcasts and letting students comment on this. It's a version of a flipped classroom, but with English they already have lots of reading and then they come in ready to discuss, so it's a natural flip. Even with the issues, I'm determined to make it work. Currently subtext is able to open in Edmodo and I have two students I am going to practice with. It is a great way if teacher has ipad but students have multiple devices. Parents and students have reported positive impact. Also this year I tried Inspiration Maps, I love it but to save and send you have to buy it. That doesn't work for students although they did screen shots and sent them to themselves, a great work around. I encourage any teacher that likes to use brainstorming as an activity to look into it. My students reported that it really helped them with a difficult essay they had to write. I was using it to identify quotes/ideas and then move those bubbles around to where they related. It's like your brain on mapping. There are other applications of this same idea on -line and some students tried it with their phones, not as great but still worked. Student engagement was measured by student comments and ontask behaviors. This assignment was "very engaged".