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Listen Up!

One great benefit of using Edmodo is being able to post audio files for students to listen to. Here's my specific example. In my 10th grade English class, we study Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." The students who actually enjoy reading Bill's work are few and far between; the main reason being that they have such a hard time with his style. On Edmodo, I uploaded the audio files from the CD that goes with our text. The students would have the play in front of them, their headphones on listening to the text, and then would look through the graphic novel we had. I discovered that students were more apt to stop the audio and read side notes, then go back and listen when they were able to do the listening independently rather than as a whole class. This is something that should be encouraged. This doesn't have to be done for every text, but it's a great help when the texts are more difficult, or students need more support.

First Edmodo In-service!

I gave my first in-service today in Lakota, my hometown, on how to use Edmodo in the classroom. This was an interesting day because I was teaching some of my old high school teachers how to incorporate this in the classroom. I had them set up their free accounts on www.edmodo.com and showed them the various features from the profile to the calendar to how to create an assignment.
My past science teacher (the toughest and best teacher I had in high school) created a poll, an assignment, and a quiz! I was so impressed. We all took her quiz, which was multiple choice. After the quiz was over the students could view their results right away. It graded the quiz for her and also provided a pie chart for each question showing what percentage got the question wrong and what percentage got the question right. That would be perfect for teachers to see what areas they need to go back and reteach. It's great, instant feedback.
As a side note, I aced the quiz. I said she was the toughest teacher, but when I'm remembering stuff she taught me in Life Science.