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Virtual and Paperless Classrooms?

Hi everyone! I have been so absorbed with my classes the year that I have no time at all to blog, but it has been a great year!

Recently, I have been devoting the majority of my time to Edmodo, and getting my students comfortable and situated with it. I'm sure you are all familiar with Edmodo, but if not, it is basically a virtual classroom environment, and it looks like Facebook. I hear, "Should we log out of Facebook?" many times a day when we use Edmodo in the classroom. Students can earn badges (which they love!), and I post polls, discussion questions, and sometimes useless trivia.


Once students were comfortable with the idea of posting, we moved on to having them "Turn-In" assignments through Edmodo. This ended up going so well that I had 125+ Argumentative Papers assigned, done on computers, and uploaded to Edmodo. What does that mean? No paper used, no big bags for me to drag home and grade, and no more "My Printer Broke!" excuses :) Also- I have a lot of students who frequent Edmodo when they are home sick, and can find out what they missed, or participate "virtually" during class!

Now, I also had to check out the laptops and completely hog them for a few weeks, but I let our LMC director know that if anyone complained, I would gladly relinquish them from my clutches... lol!

Since this experiment has been going so well I decided to take the leap, doing Lit. Circles completely ONLINE! This means the students have a Google Doc where they determine their Reading Schedule, Role Schedule, and they post their Role Responses via Edmodo. I created a tutorial if you are interested in trying this out!


To start with, I created small groups on Edmodo and added each student to the group, that way they didn't have to see everyone else's responses.


Our first Lit. Circle is Monday, so I will update you on how it goes! I'll also post the pic of my newly cleaned off desk, it feels so good to be CLUTTER FREE!

Other things I use Edmodo for:

  • Shared Inquiry (Socratic) Discussion Responses
  • Cooperative Grouping Assignments
  • Exit Slips
  • Homework Help
  • Bellringers "Do Now" Prompts
  • Writing and Journal Prompts
  • Linking to our Class Calendar
  • Uploading files for handouts (in case students lose theirs!)
  • Positive Reinforcement (Badges)
  • Incentives for Homework Passes
  • Extracurriculars (I created an Edmodo group for our musical group to do announcements)
  • Connecting with other teachers!

Do you use Edmodo?? 

I'll be linking up with Eberopolis for The Paperless Challenge Linky! :)




Comments

  1. This is awesome. I posted a link to a blog that talks about using blogs to get kids writing more, also......does edmodo have a blog? I would check, but I can't remember my user name and password. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for linking up! I've just started using Edmodo in the last couple of months, and I love it! It's definitely helping me to tame the paper clutter, and I feel like I'm giving my students such better feedback because I'm able to type comments to them rather than hand-write things. I'm enthralled by the idea of doing literature circles on Edmodo, and I can't wait to hear more about how that goes!

    Your newest follower,
    Alison
    Eberopolis: Teaching Reading & Writing with Technology

    ReplyDelete

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Thanks for stopping by! JW

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