3: the great debate - edmodo vs. moodle

Since we discussed it in class this week, I decided to critique www.edmodo.com in this blog post.  I enjoy the fact that you can access everything easily at your fingertips.  The site is very well organized, in the way that you can group your students into different communities based on classes you teach, if looking at it from a teacher's perspective.  I also think that the social media layout of the site encourages students to use it, since it looks so much like things that they use in their daily life.

There are a few more features that I wish Edmodo had, however.  There's another site, www.moodle.org, that allows you to do everything on one site.  In high school, I had one teacher that put everything on Moodle - announcements, documents for assignments and study guides, and discussion forums were all located on here.  We received our grades through these websites, and he even created and posted our tests and quizzes on Moodle, which could be locked until our exam period.  We would then take the exams on Moodle, and they would be automatically graded for us.  It was nice to have everything in one place, especially since it meant not having to memorize a bunch of different usernames and passwords for multiple forums.

I definitely intend to use internet technology with my students in the future.  I want them to be using things ranging from email to blogs to online discussion forums, as discussed in chapter 9 of the textbook, but I would also like them practicing digital citizenship rules.  Digital etiquette and safety are especially important to me with my students.  I don't want any cyberbullying happening, and I also don't want any of their personal information being leaked out.

Finally, the newsletter assignment - I really liked it.  I think this was the first time that we could truly throw in our own creative flair to one of our assignments, don't you?  Of course, there were still certain guidelines to adhere to, and components that had to be featured, but I think that overall, this was a very personal and creative assignment.  Here's a sneak peek at the header for mine.  What do you think?

2: of twitter and microsoft office

As a student, I have been incredibly dependent on Microsoft Word – once, when I got a new computer, I didn’t have Microsoft Office on it yet, and I was pretty much at a loss on how to do my assignments.  Every paper, story, and assignment I’ve written has been on Microsoft Word.  I’m even writing this post in a Word document before uploading it.  Similarly, many of my teachers use Word as ways for us to receive documents from them – like syllabi, assignments, and more.

I’m honestly not too familiar on copyright – I know that there are serious repercussions, but even I can admit to illegally using an image from Google before.  I took a class last year on information ethics, so I know a little bit about it, but overall I’m kind of at a loss.  I hope we learn more about it in this class!

Using Twitter in class definitely wasn’t new to me.  I’ve been on the social media site for years, and I’ve definitely been a pretty avid Tweeter since I first got my account.  However, it definitely has some useful skills – it’s a quick way to get news, and makes you get your thoughts across in short, concise messages, since there’s a character limit.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed what we have learned in this class so far, and I can’t wait to continue developing skills and becoming slightly less inept when it comes to technology.

-Keri