By far, my favorite new tool for education is schoology.com. It represents a wonderful new way to stay organized and allow students to become more aware of useful online technology integral to classroom activities. The grading and assignment software is intuitive and convenient for everyone, including proactive parents who wish to keep track of the progress of their children.
For me, schoology is like facebook for education. I would love my students to appreciate the idea that the internet can be used for more useful activities than chatting or gaming, and this website seems to convey the idea that the teacher can be part of students' online activities.
Perhaps the only problem I have faced with schoology is my own tendency to keep pronouncing it as school-ology in my head. Too many years studying biology and psychology, I suppose.
I should also note that prezi.com, of which I was totally ignorant, has also opened up a new world of possibilities to me. In the future, I plan to introduce it to my students for the purposes of creating a simple and clean presentation that really pops off the screen more than a PPT ever did.
Schoology is an amazing new discovery for me as well.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, with the level of students I currently teach I don't think I'll be able to use it straight away. I definitely will be keeping it in mind to use for future classes though. I'm blown away by it.
It's been awesome to learn all these new tools available to us throughout this course. Like you say, a new world of possibilities awaits us!
Good points about schoology bud. I'm seriously thinking about implementing with my classes next semester but if I were the only teacher at my uni doing it, would it be worthwhile? I'm not sure. It would be much better if I could persuade my department to take it on. That might be tough.
ReplyDeleteI chose using video editing software as my favorite tool, but this course has not failed in introducing a whack of great tools for us. I'd have to agree, Schoology is at the top of the list. I was a little apprehensive at the idea of trying to create a place online for my classes. But after seeing and experiencing how useful and really simple it is, I will likely have to give either it or another LMS a try. I have since signed up for http://languagecloud.co/ which is an LMS directed at the ESL class. I like your description, "facebook for education". It is certainly a sweet tool for keeping track of your students and keeping the interaction going after they've left the classroom. I think students will appreciate any effort the teacher makes in expanding their availability for help as well as the convenience of not having to physically hand-in homework.
ReplyDeleteSchoology has proved itself useful in this course, I don't think anyone can argue with that and I too would like to use it in the future. I have always thought about setting up a facebook account for my students to follow, but introducing schoology seems much more practical. I couldn't help but giggle and feel partly responsible for your pronunciation problem, because I pronounce schoology as school-ology, perhaps you caught this from me, my apologies.
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