I attended a session on Monday on Digital Assessments. The presenter went over Plickers, and then showed us how she uses Edmodo. I was really impressed with how much mileage she gets out of the Edmodo platform – posting class notes for absent students, turning in assignments, quizzes, and surveys (what an easy way to do voting for Manía Musical!). I also really liked Edmodo’s badge feature – Edmodo has a few built in ones like “Good citizen” and “Hard Worker,” but you can also customize your own – she does “Movie Critic” (watch a historical film and write a page analyzing the historical accuracy – could adapt for foreign languages), “Hot 100” (get a perfect 100 on a test), and “Quizlet Star” (earn a high score on Scatter or Space Race). She uses the badges for extra credit (1 test point per 2 badges earned), but I think it also would contribute to a positive classroom environment – sometimes it’s hard to give good students recognition, but the badges would be an easy (and free!) way to do it.
Anyway, here’s my dilemma: I’ve dabbled in Edmodo before, and I know how easy it is to use. However, my district has purchased Blackboard as our learning management platform. I would like to use Blackboard since many other teachers in our school use it and students quickly become familiar with it, but it is incredibly complicated on the teacher end to create, post, and organize materials. I feel like I have to go through 8 screens to do something that in Edmodo would be 1! I attended a session this morning on differentiation with Blackboard and was quite impressed with all of the different functionalities Blackboard offers to set up formative assessments and tailor future assignments to a students’ needs and abilities. However….despite an excellent presentation by a very skilled and passionate teacher (who works at my school and would be available to help me!), I know that to actually implement what she showed us will require a lot of trial and error and a lot of time on my part. I hate spending an hour or two struggling with technology for something that should have taken 15 minutes at most.
Here are the pros and cons, as I see them:
Edmodo
Pros – Easy to use for both me and my students. Free. Will be able to access my information regardless of whether I change school districts.
Cons – another login for students to remember. Not officially sanctioned by the powers that be.
Blackboard
Pros -universal use across the district. Will be familiar to students, particularly the sophomores who had laptops and used blackboard last year. Lots of robust features. Classes already loaded in. Will make my administrators happy.
Cons – high learning curve for me, big time investment just to post materials.
At this point I’m leaning towards Edmodo, but I have another session on Blackboard to attend – perhaps it will change my mind. And then again, it all depends on how far we are with the 1:1 rollout…if most of my students don’t have school-issued laptops, I may not use much of anything.
Ms. Brown Spanish 