In Schoology I create classes and add students. From there, I can post assignments, documents and handouts that I use in class, and create discussions. Students can upload work to me via a dropbox within the program, which is a great way to keep student work in a central location. I can also grade assignments and return them electronically to students.
A great feature on Schoology is the ability to see the analytics of your page or class. The image above is the data for my music technology class, which has 16 students. Having only had these students for the past 2 weeks, it's pretty amazing to see how many hits there have been to the class page. I also have the ability to view the data of a particular student to see how much he or she is participating on Schoology.
Another plus about using Schoolgoy at my 7-8 middle school is that my students are pretty excited about using it. They enjoy interacting with me through discussions and posts that I put up, and I feel like I'm making connections with students who wouldn't normally feel confident about speaking up in class.
Hey Alison, Great post!
ReplyDeleteI stumbled upon Schoology one day while surfing the net at work. As someone who works within platforms such as Moodle and Pearson eCollege, I have to say that Schoology is quite competitively comprehensive.
The best part is that is FREE...who doesn't like FREE? I also found it interesting that it allows you the options of signing up as a student, teacher, or parent, which is cool and allows everyone to take part in learning. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for sharing this, Alison!
ReplyDeleteSaphreem answered my first questions...is it free? And can anyone use it? I like that teachers, parents, and students have access. Searching for new Web 2.0 tools for this class has been a bit of a challenge because the sites are either blocked by my school or they charge fees. I love FREE! Another challenge that I have encountered is having the ability to create student accounts. Many of the sites that I looked into allow parents to create accounts but do not allow teachers to create student accounts.
Parents are always asking for "extras" like homework and practice at home. I do not have the time, resources, or the desire to pull extra worksheets or whatever for each student but this could be a great tool to add "extras" for parents and students. This may also be a good way to give links to those websites that allow students to set up accounts with parent email addresses and permission. I will research this further to see if it is something that I will utilize.