Edmodo - Oh yeah!

Assignment collection,
grading,
calendar,
24/7 collaboration,
to the extreme!
I love edmodo.

The flexibility and different uses are never ending. Support is fast, collaboration with other teachers sharing ideas alone is a huge benefit! And the ringer: It's free - all of it. You get all the awesome bells and whistles as everyone else.

How do I use it?

I post polls, questions, teach social networking etiquette, start discussions with my students. Students post projects, prezis, tagxedos, videos, papers.....either to me or to the whole class. I also post assignments, whether it's something they have to do on Edmodo or a book assignment in Math. The best part is I make all my assignment posts public - which means - parents can view via the direct link any of the posts that I decide to make public. That way, there's always somewhere to check for what is due and when.

Try it, you'll love it!

Teacher Tool to Start Using NOW!

So many have already started back in the classroom, but most have not been back for long.  Here is one teacher tool to transition yourself into using NOW....it's not too late!

Planbookedu.com  Online Lesson Planning!  

Yes!  You can access it from any computer, no more hauling the book home. 

You can change layouts, bump lessons to other days, add links to sites, upload files (even big ones like flipcharts), and for those hold outs that love seeing it on paper - you can PRINT!  

Basic edition is free, premium edition is at a cost similar to buying your own lesson plan book.

My Teaching Philosophy

Or as a professor in my Master's Program liked to call it, my {CoNcEpTuAl FrAmEwOrK}. 

Pretty fancy words for me. I would describe it as.... 

my thoughts on why I feel that it's so important that teachers move forward with the technology. 

So here it goes.... 

      As a teacher, I strive to use the tools provided to me to help my students to become useful, productive, and creative citizens in our society. With technology moving fast and education struggling to stay caught up with policies and most importantly funding, I find myself in a balancing act. I don't want my classroom to be the same as they have been, straight rows of desks, all paper/pencil and memorization of facts. I want them to learn to be productive, and take an interest in their own learning. 

     Technology provides student with opportunities to create, develop, design, and communicate unlike any other time in educational history. Because of this belief, I have used every opportunity provided to me to improve myself as a teacher. Exploring new sites, reading blogs from educational technology websites, writing grants, going to technology conferences and ed tech cadres....I make myself a student of the technology so that I can better guide my students into the digital world.

      I have found that I am often not the expert in the room - students take what I give them and run with it, I am just the facilitator. By the end they are showing me things that I hadn't even looked at yet! Our students are digital learners, they have grown up surrounded everything electronics, they do not know life without ipods, cell phones, laptops, and internet access everywhere. They are a new generation of learners that our education is behind in understanding, and it's our jobs as educators to catch up as much as we can and be there to help guide them. 

And that is where I'm coming from!