cc licensed flickr photo shared by quinn.anya
I have a confession. I have no idea what Edmodo is. I know that it has “Ed” in it so I am assuming that it is for education, but other than that, I have no idea what it is or how it works.
With that being said, I have had a few teachers in my school starting to use themselves and with students and have had nothing but awesome things to say about it.
I also remember clearly drawing an guideline of the tools we would use in our school and this was not in the list! (Drop.io was and now it is gone. Lucky we can use GE.TT for essentially the same thing.) We were going to use Google Apps, WordPress, and Twitter. That’s it! What happened? (I bet Twitter had something to do with this.)
So it seems that our teachers are going out and learning from other educators around the world about some of the cool tools that we can use to connect and learn and (gasp) they are using them at school! This sounds like some crazy Stephen Johnson stuff:
We can think more creatively if we open our minds to the many connected environments that make creativity possible. (Stephen Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From)
Admittedly, I am kind of ecstatic. Teachers are trying new things on their own and showing me that they are also learners. Even more importantly, they are open to learning from others outside of the building. I am blessed on my staff that our teachers work together collaboratively and do some amazing things as a team, but it is kind of cool that they are not limited to our school, our division, or even our country. I have never really understood why administrators have limited their teachers to only certain tools, especially when they are free. When you are running the school budget, free=awesome.
Our teachers are drawing outside of the lines and I love it.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by gcouros and Tony Baldasaro, Patrick Larkin. Patrick Larkin said: RT @L_Hilt: Teachers extend learning networks! RT @gcouros: Drawing Outside the Lines | The Principal of Change http://bit.ly/fXdCAT #cpchat [...]
Your attitude towards your teachers' tech adoption is so important. I think (and I hope) that what you describe here is something that more ed-tech companies pay attention to. Once upon a time, the only way to get into a school was to woo the school board/district tech coordinator/principal. As you note, Web 2.0 tools (I agree, let's blame Twitter) have opened teachers eyes to a lot of other opportunities, but have also I'd argue, made all of us realize that we can be more vocal about the choices we make as consumers of technology. It's good that companies can now aim their strategies for adoption (and — ha — hopefully the function of the tool itself) at the users — teachers and students — rather than worrying about courting admins and purchasers.
George,
In my school we don't have anyone blazing a trail the way you do, so most of the tools and ideas come from staff members sharing in our school. Now, with a number of our teachers getting on board with social media, I expect to see a lot of great ideas coming from them. Your words provide guidance for those of us new to the administration game but trying hard to make sure our building keeps up with the technology.
Great post, and way to go Forest Green teachers!
Jesse McLean
George,
It sounds like your staff is becoming its own learning community with teachers supporting other teachers. As a teacher, I find it motivating when a colleague comes to me excited about a new resource. It builds collaboration and can sometimes eliminate the intimidation factor of learning a new technology and using it in the classroom. It is almost like injecting some new life into the staff and students. Students become engaged in the material when they are learning it in a unique way and they will often show me some things that I had not figured out myself when we are trying out something new. Keep up the hard work.
Landon O'Hara
Thanks Landon…I am inspired every day by things that my staff do. It has been fantastic
Do they explicitly model their learning in front of students? Do they engage the students in their learning process and thank the students for teaching them? Do students receive any credit for help teach the teacher? It seems to me that we don't model learning enough in front of students, not do we reward them when they teach us something. I would love to hear how your educators explicitly (if they do) model learning and acknowledge that learning in front of students.
They actually do. If you check this out:
ForestGreenSchool.Ca Sites http://bit.ly/f5aEdm
You can see how our staff communicates and learns with students. We also publish all of the staff PD attended every month in our newsletter to show how and what our teachers are learning. We can't be a community of learners if we do not share what we are doing to further ourselves!
Thanks for your comment.
I love that too, and I love how receptive you are to this as well! I hope that one of your awesome teachers shows you what Edmodo is, and lets you try it out too. I used it with my students last year, and I love it! Twiducate is very similar too, and I find it a bit easier for my younger students to use. There's just so many amazing tools to use, it's hard to know where to draw the line: I'm glad that you don't!:)
Aviva
What line?
My mercy I found edmodo on twitter several months ago and we used something similar when I was a principal at Southeast called StudyWiz. We have several teachers that have been using it for months, I no longer use email inside our school I use edmodo. Also Studywiz costs and as you said I like free. I told the principal at Southeast about edmodo and they now have six teachers using it and no longer using StudyWiz. It is great, I just can't believe we were using something before you, pick me up off the floor.
I just wrote an article that I hope will begin to shift the terms that we using around learning. If you are interested, please check out New Terms For a New Learning Era and let me know what you think.
Best regards,
RJ Johnson
Nice. Even better is when the students are encouraged to draw outside the lines…