When I read the title of Thing 12, I was a little overwhelmed by the thought of what it would involve. But, I started slow and watched the two videos from Schoology and Edmodo. I realized then that working at pretty much a Google School, I might want to do some exploration on my own of all that Google can do for me. We had some recent introduction to Google+ and I have been looking at building communities for the groups I am involved with. So far, I have set up two - for two professional groups ~ our school mentor program and our shared-decision making team. I belong to one of the student communities but I did not set it up.
Then, of course, I got really busy and put off working on Thing 12 for several days. That turned out to be a good thing because when I returned and started going through several other resources listed, I realized that I really can use Google for this assignment. I read all about Mightybell and began to set up a "student circle" in Google+.
An aside ~ At our school, we have, as a faculty, unofficially decided not to "friend" students on FaceBook. But, with Google+, we are trying to teach and work with our students to model good social media behavior. We have several circles and communities of staff and students.
Today, I joined the Mightybell Book Club. I don't really have anything to contribute to that right now. Hopefully, when things are a little less busy, I will. I have been a quiet member of Goodreads for a long time ~ just to see what people are reading and keep track of my own. I really like the looks of Mightbell, but think most of what it can do, I can do similarly with Google. We are going to be doing a school-wide staff read after break which we had intended to blog about. I could see Mightybell working well for that, but again, we will probably use Google+. My hope is to watch and learn what Mightybell does and then apply that to Google+ and eventually set up book groups that look about the same as groups in Mightybell.
I love Edutopia and have followed them for a long time on FaceBook and Twitter. I registered as an official user several days ago. I now joined several the their groups in order to get more specific information to share with my teachers and staff. I find that they have a lot of offer!
I have read about edWeb and decided to join that one, too. I am not sure how much I will use it, but I have read information from there that I like ~ so, I am giving it a try. :)
My focus for now is going to be on developing more connections to our students via Google+ circles and communities. I have started posting information for the students on the many books being made into movies, on being a good digital citizen, and giving back to your world and your community; all focuses for us at Colton-Pierrepont this year.
I also read the article entitled "Facebook, Edmodo, and Schoology. Oh my! Choosing a social network platform for learning". Reading down through all the different elements that were compared made me realize that Google can do almost all of that with its ability to share, create forms and docs for quizzes, polls, etc. and linking all together easily in Google+. (I linked it so I can get back to it quickly from here.) :) It might be worth adding to the list of resources that is on the Cool Tools Page ~ just my two cents. :) Thanks, this piece (which I originally thought I would not be able to deal with) has been really educational and helpful for me.
December 19 Update ~ Some positive information! I have already reached one of my goals for this course and that is to learn enough to help staff here with some of the projects they do.
After posting the information here on my blog, I went back to edWeb and registered. I joined several communities that sounded good, read through their "about" information, set up my profile, and did some searching. The next day one of our middle school teachers, who had just recently attended a Google Summit weekend in Montreal, came in to talk to me about one of her ideas. After she explained to me what she wanted, she said, "but I just don't know where to find another teacher from away who would want to do this with me."
Light bulb! I told her about my social learning assignment and EdWeb. I explained that you could search for different subjects and groups (communities) and told her I would do a quick check for middle school science; which I did. I emailed her and, later, she arrived at my door and said, "can you show me that site?" I showed her what she needed to do and off she went to do it. The following morning she ran in and told me she already had a contact who was interested in her collaborative idea. She was thrilled and so was I!! For me, this is a big piece of what Cool Tools for School does for me. I love learning to use these tools but when I can take one and say to a teacher that I think it would work for him/her, that makes it even more worthwhile.
