www.personalizinglearning.ca November 16, 2013

CLASSROOM MECHANICSBLENDED LEARNING @ MSS

Classroom Mechanics The blended learning initiative is about so much more than turning our classrooms paperless. We plan on supporting students develop skills required for success in the 21st century: including critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, digital citizenship and digital literacy. However, the mechanics of file management are an important starting point. Teachers need to decide three things before students show up with laptops and tablets.

1. How will you share content with students (learning material, lessons, handouts, assignments, etc.)?

2. How will you accept assignments from students (email might be a bit too messy for some)?

3. How will you provide descriptive feedback to students?

Different teachers will choose different tools to facilitate these mechanical processes. Which tools you choose depends on your specific needs.

!Possible Tools• D2L http://scdsb.elearningontario.ca• Weebly website creator www.weebly.com • Wikispaces www.wikispaces.com • Edmodo www.edmodo.com• Wordpress www.wordpress.com or www.edublogs.org

• Drop It To Me www.dropitto.me • Google Drive www.drive.google.com• Showbie www.showbie.com • Office 365 (to be rolled out soon by SCDSB)

�1Contact: jcalder@scdsb.on.ca

www.personalizinglearning.ca November 16, 2013

Sharing Content with Students !Overview Pros Cons

D2L A fully-functional online classroom. Designed to support eLearning courses as well as blended learning. This classroom environment is closed and only accessible to students with a password.

- Ministry supported and has some content - fully functional including dropboxes, quizes, grades, surveys, checklists, content pages, discussion forums, ePortfolio and real time chats - one place for most needs in a blended learning environment - iPad app for marking assignment submissions (makes providing descriptive feedback a dream) - PowerSchool syncs with D2L and as students add/drop your course they automatically added to D2L class - support is available from board and Ministry

- extremely complicated for teacher to set up, learn and navigate. Requires serious investment in time - students on iPads cannot upload a document easily (need to use workarounds) - students can find complicated if care not used when setting up course

Website A website where teachers can post assignments, materials, links, resources. It is open for parents to see as well. Only teachers can edit content.

- easy to learn, much of it is “drag and drop” - can set up simple, easy to understand organization for a course and materials - can use same pages for courses repeatedly by making edits for specific semesters

- no interaction at all, students cannot comment, post, share, etc. The site has one function - to post materials.

Wikispace A website where teachers can post assignments, materials, etc. Teachers can also create student logins so that they can create content and pages as well.

- easy to edit pages - can create areas for student collaboration and co-creation of content if desired

- formatting is limited and can be awkward - function is limited - posting content by teacher and creation of content by students

Edmodo

A Facebook-like classroom environment designed for education. This is a completely locked down environment where only those you provide the code can access.

- simple to set up - lets you post content, resources, quizzes, media and students can post discussion posts, interact and collaborate. - has a grade book function built in - very effective for social interaction and collaboration - works on any device

- materials post like a stream (like a Facebook feed), so you need to start fresh each semester - this tool works great when combined with a website to organize material)

Blog Teachers can post updates and media. Webpages can also be created within. Anyone can access the blog including parents.

- easy to edit once set up - teachers can provide parents and others a view into classroom activities - lots of wordpress experts at MSS

- single function of providing content to students (there is some limited collaboration available through comments to blog posts)

�2Contact: jcalder@scdsb.on.ca

www.personalizinglearning.ca November 16, 2013

Accepting Assignments From Students !

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Overview Pros Cons

D2L Description above. This tool is all encompassing. Description above Description above

Edmodo Description above. This tool is like a Facebook feed for classrooms. Allows for assignment submission in a very organized manner.

Description above Description above

dropitto.me You need a dropbox.com account. Once you set up dropitto.me , you provide a link to students to submit assignments. It goes into a folder for you.

Easy to use once set up. Students MUST name files as per your direction so that you can determine which file is which. They all go into one folder.

Office 365 The board is rolling out Office 365 before September. There may be an appropriate file submission feature within this tool.

If there is an appropriate feature, it will be right within our board email and file storage tool (streamlined).

At this point we don’t have access to set up and learn with. Unsure of exactly what this tool will look like.

Showbie This is a free online tool that lets you create student assignments and then have them submit their files there.

Showbie organizes student assignments. if using an iPad, you can annotate and mark up their work and send it back to them

Some learning involved in using.

Google Drive This is a free online tool that has a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator in it. You can share links to any file.

Students can email you a link, or send you an email with a link to a file. You can put them in folders within Google Drive.

�3Contact: jcalder@scdsb.on.ca

www.personalizinglearning.ca November 16, 2013

Providing Descriptive Feedback to Students !Options Include (but are certainly not limited to): • printing student work and writing on assignments before handing back • printing rubrics, writing feedback on pages and handing back to students • conferencing with students to provide feedback • creating a word (.doc) file rubric and typing feedback into that file before emailing or sending back to student (time consuming!)• using D2L integrated descriptive feedback features (if using D2L for class)• using Edmodo to send a message back to student with descriptive feedback • using Showbie app on iPad (if you have access to a teaching iPad)• using Google Drive on any computer or device. Add comments • if student submits a document to you, type feedback right into file and send back to student !

*it may be too soon to choose a method of providing feedback. When Office 365 rolls out, instructions for using it effectively for file management will be provided. !Possible Combinations of Tools to Use to Manage your Blended Learning Classroom !

Sharing Files to Students Accepting Files from Students Providing Feedback to Students

Option A D2L D2L D2L

Option B Teacher Website Edmodo Edmodo

Option C Wiki Edmodo Edmodo

Option D Blog Edmodo Edmodo

Option E Edmodo Edmodo Edmodo

Option F Teacher Website Google Drive Google Drive

Option G Teacher Website dropitto.me Giving paper rubric and comments or emailing feedback to students

Option H Teacher Website Showbie Showbie

�4Contact: jcalder@scdsb.on.ca

www.personalizinglearning.ca November 16, 2013

!Resources !

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Tool Link Resources Example

D2L http://scdsb.elearningontario.ca https://sites.google.com/site/lmsguides/ Preview Ministry D2L courses: https://courses.elearningontario.ca/d2l/home Login: Preview_Public Password: preview

Weebly http://education.weebly.com/ http://help.weebly.com/beginners-guide.html http://burnsnps.weebly.com/

Wikispaces www.wikispaces.com http://help.wikispaces.com/ http://otfbyod.wikispaces.com/

Edmodo www.edmodo.com https://support.edmodo.com/home#teacher Use class code: i3e5mh to join a test classroom

Wordpress www.wordpress.com or www.edublogs.org

http://learn.wordpress.com/ http://mss.scdsb.on.ca/ http://constructiontechroom170.wordpress.com/ http://commtechroom222.wordpress.com/ http://msshistory.wordpress.com/

Drop It To Me www.dropitto.me http://youtu.be/o8XrAuOic2A http://dropitto.me/jaccalder - use “calderrocks” to see what it is like to submit a file

Google Drive www.drive.google.com https://support.google.com/drive/?hl=en# This is a google doc: http://bit.ly/1bzN7zi You can change permissions so file cannot be edited

Showbie www.showbie.com http://youtu.be/2MJRgHZwN8U Create a student account at showbie.com and use the class code: 5N6QZ . This will let you see from students point of view.

Office 365 www.o365.scdsb.on.ca http://www.microsoft.com/education/ww/products/Pages/office.aspx

Coming Soon

�5Contact: jcalder@scdsb.on.ca