social network – iLearn Technology

Class Connect

September 1, 2011Kelly Tenkely6 Comments2886 views

What it is: Class Connect offers teachers a students everything they need to work in one place. Class Connect brings social networking to the classroom, it can do everything from giving you a place to manage your files in the cloud to building a full online learning community. Files can be easily shared with a drag/drop interface. All of your files can be shared with multiple classes without having to reload them. Teachers can create and deliver interactive lectures, starting from scratch or importing existing PowerPoint files. All content can be dragged and dropped. Mini quizzes can be added for presentations that require something of students. Class Connect also enables you to build up community within your classroom by posting messages for the class, receiving student feedback and encouraging student-to-student collaboration securely. The interface for Class Connect is intuitive and easy to master with built-in video tutorials that guide you through. The learning curve here is small!

How to integrate Class Connect into the classroom: Class Connect gives your students a virtual environment for sharing and collaborating. Extend the walls of your classroom by making documents readily and easily available to students. Post assignments, reminders, “wonders” (statements/questions to make your students wonder) and class announcements. Allow your students to work together and collaborate on projects in a secure environment where they can safely learn to use and manage their online communication. Create “live lectures” where your students can continue their learning, or catch up on learning. This is great for kids who have missed days-or months- due to illness or travel.

Older students will appreciate the calendar that allows them to set up reminders as texts to their mobile phone.

Tips: Those of you who use Google Docs at school will love this feature: full integration of Google Docs! Woo hoo! Attendance and gradebook integration are on the way…stay tuned!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Class Connect in your classroom!

Diipo and Edmodo: A Social Network for Classrooms

March 24, 2011Kelly Tenkely13 Comments3495 views

What it is: If you’re like me, you can think of hundreds of ways that social networks could be used positively in the classroom. The problem: most of us can’t access said networks in our classrooms-blocked by over zealous filtering! Not to worry, there are some great classroom alternatives including Diipo and Edmodo.

Diipo is a social network created specially for education. I learned about this particular tool from @nottil, a high school student in Virginia (thanks @nottil!). Diipo makes it easy to communicate with your students, connect with other educators, and other classes. The interface is similar in feel to a Facebook or Twitter making it easy for students and teachers to pick up and start using right away. We are talking LOW learning curve here. Diipo has dashboards and apps that keep students up-to-date, help them get questions answered, and let them collaborate on blogs and group projects. Workpages keep students organized from project to project. Direct messaging features let students start a private conversation with classmates and teachers. Online project notebooks let students work together and share the information they collect in one, centralized location. An educator community lets teachers share best practices, educational content, brainstorm for collaborative projects, and pen pal programs between classes. A class roster makes it easy for teachers and students to communicate with each other. A built in microblogging platform lets students start a conversation, ask questions, and actively participate in class discussions. Students can build blogs directly in Diipo to share thoughts, reflect on learning, and write collaboratively. Teachers and students can upload and share documents, links, and resources with classmates or the entire class. Every conversation and post is archived and searchable making it easy to catch up or find something later. Students can also tag messages, content, and workpages to make it easier to organize and find content. The Diipo platform is wonderfully all-inclusive! Diipo is intended for students 13 years and older.

Edmodo is a social networking platform for classrooms that has been around longer. Edmodo is a free, secure social network for teachers, students, and schools. It provides classrooms with a safe way to connect and collaborate by offering them place to exchange ideas, share content, and access homework, grades and school notices. Edmodo is accessible in any browser and from any mobile device. Like Diipo, Edmodo allows teachers to post messages, discuss classroom topics, assign and grade classwork, share resources and materials, and network and exchange ideas with peers. Edmodo does not have an age limit, students under the age of 18 must have a parent or guardian read the terms of service prior to use. To learn more about how Edmodo came to be, take a min to watch the video below:

While Diipo is in beta, Edmodo has stood the test of time and is used in classrooms around the world.

How to integrate Diipo and Edmodo into the classroom: Social networking is a wonderful way to support your students in their learning. It is also a way for students to take charge and support their own learning by collaborating with classmates. Use Diipo or Edmodo to organize your class, support students, connect students in a collaborative study group, and to share materials with your students. This is a great one-stop-shop for classroom communication and resources. Upload lessons and handouts, websites and links used in class, videos, and any other materials students may find useful to Diipo or Edmodo. Use the Diipo blogging platform to encourage your students to write for an audience, reflect on learning, continue class discussion, and write collaboratively.

Both Diipo and Edmodo promote anytime, anyplace learning-reinforcing once again that learning happens outside of the four walls of the classroom.

Using social networks in the classroom provides you with the opportunity to model proper use of social networking, digital citizenship, and teach Internet safety in an authentic environment.

Tips: Edmodo has excellent support and training, be sure to sign up for their free webinars!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Diipo and Edmodo in your classroom!

Sophia: learning made social

March 18, 2011March 18, 2011Kelly Tenkely3 Comments2882 views

What it is: Sophia is a site that I have been playing around with for the past few months in their invitation only, beta space. Now that the beta has been released to everyone, I’m excited to share it! Sophia is a platform that connects teachers, learners, experts, and parents. This is an academic community that supports and enriches the traditional classroom. Sophia is a social network of sorts that connects everyone in meaningful ways so that knowledge, help, instruction, standards-aligned content, and experts are available for learners everywhere. As an educator, Sophia will help you to share your knowledge and make it available to anyone, anywhere. Sophia can help students by offering them support in areas of weakness, opportunities for deeper learning, and the ability to follow areas of interest that aren’t being met in the classroom. Currently the Sophia subjects include the arts, business, English/language arts, learning strategies, mathematics, science, and social studies. Each of those subject contain several sub categories as well. Packets of learning can contain text documents, slide shows, videos, and useful links. In addition the packets are rated by users as to how academically sound the resource is. Individual users of Sophia get scores based on how well they contribute to the community.

How to integrate Sophia into the classroom: As a teacher, Sophia can be used to supplement instruction, for blended learning opportunities, for “flip” learning (remember that Fisch flip I mentioned earlier in the week?), and for private personal learning networks (PLN). Students can use Sophia for additional classroom support, homework help, to participate in study groups, and to help others in their learning. Use Sophia to facilitate study groups between students, to create an online learning community for your team to create and share resources, and to create groups that include other classrooms for collaborative learning opportunities.

Tips: Sophia is best for middle, high school, and college right now. I hope that they will scale this down for elementary students as well!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Sophia in your classroom!

Phile: Create a crowdsource guide around any passion

January 21, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2026 views

What it is: Phile is a fantastic new way for communities to “create a useful, lasting body of knowledge just by talking about the stuff you love.” Phile makes it easy for groups of people work together on building collections and discussions based on shared passions. Phile turns knowledge, opinions, and discussion into useful websites. Turn any passion into a community of collaborators by creating one place for them to gather. Phile lets you structure your site to gather the information that matters to your community of learners. Phile does an outstanding job of keeping your site organized as people add to it. Phile is truly as site all about conversation and sharing information. Phile automatically keeps all information organized and easy to find. A group creator creates and customizes the “stack” (site) design. Group members add and edit pages in the stack. Members can share resources, discuss in forums, on stack pages, etc. Recent activity is populated on the home page including new pages, reviews, comments, etc. Phile is currently a free service, the plan is to keep a portion of the service free with ad support and a paid service that has additional functionality. For now, Phile is in beta and completely free. Phile is fairly easy to navigate and has an intuitive interface. There are helpful hints and tips on ever page directing you in the use of Phile (great for those of us who are too busy to endlessly play!). I created a Phile for edreform, feel free to join me in collecting resources, article, videos, etc. relevant to the education reform discussion!

How to integrate Phile into the classroom: Phile is a great way for teachers to collaborate and share information. Phile could be used for starting a variety of groups that would help organize information in one, easy to access, place. Phile could be used to start a Children’s Literature group where members submit children’s books along with reviews, ratings and comments (any book-a-day people want to jump in and create that?).

Older students could join the group and add their own reviews, ratings, and comments on the books they are reading. This could become a place where teachers could quickly find literature that has been reviewed by other teachers, students, and parents.

Phile would make an excellent directory for ed conferences (and virtual conferences) held around the world. Because many of these conferences happen year after year, it would be a great place for new teachers to learn what is available to them and for veteran teachers to continue conversations and learn which conferences are rated as the most worthwhile and why.

Phile would be a great place for teachers world-wide to share, collaborate, and rate lesson plans, websites, videos, etc. in their area of specialty.

Phile is ideal for sharing iDevice apps for education, with the built in rating system and excellent organization it would make sharing and finding educational apps a breeze!

How about creating Phile’s for the discussions that happen in our education chats on Twitter every week? The Phile could contain information and links about the chat, important ideas and information that was shared during the chat, and give us a place to expand the conversation beyond the 140 characters when it was over. I’m imagining this for #edchat, it would be wonderful to have a place to send those who are new to #edchat to get a feel for the topics that we cover.

The possibilities with Phile are really endless, it is a fantastic platform that is like a mashup of a Ning and a wiki. The interface is really well designed, it makes information so easy to find and sort through.

As I said above, I created a Phile for edreform to be a collection of resources, articles, links, and discussion. Feel free to join and help me add to it. A Phile is only as good as its community!

Tips: Phile does require an email address for sign-up, it may not be appropriate for use with elementary students unless you are accessing it as a class.

Please leave a comment and share ideas for how you might use Phile in education. Anyone want to start a Children’s Literature Phile? I think it could be great! Let me know if you are interested and I will be happy to pass your name onto the developer of Phile.

On Blogging

August 25, 2010October 13, 2015Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4711 views

This is a cross-post of a blog I wrote on the Edubloggers Alliance social network site. If you are a blogging educator we would love to have you join and contribute to the community. Cross post from your blog, write original content, ask blogging questions, and meet other educators who are blogging for themselves or with students. Hope to see you all there! If you aren’t blogging yet but have been thinking about it, join us and get the support of other edubloggers.

Blog posting is hard. No, not the actual act of posting, but the revealing of yourself to the world. It isn’t like writing for a magazine or writing a novel (those have their own challenges), because that kind of writing goes past multiple eyes, editors, and a process that perfects it. Blogging is different. My eyes are the only ones that have read it until I hit “publish.” The perfectionist in me reads, and re-reads, and runs it through a grammar and spell check and then reads it again. There is always a moment of hesitation before you commit to clicking the publish button because in the back of your mind, you know you probably missed something.
You try to convince yourself that it is no big deal…that people don’t really read your posts anyway. At best, they probably just skim. And so, you take the leap and hit publish, knowing that you can always come back and edit any problems. Of course, that is only after thousands of eyes have scrutinized it and judged you. You are, after all, a teacher. You aren’t supposed to make mistakes.
The process is repeated day after day and pretty soon you aren’t worried about that post because there is another. The posts get pushed farther and farther down the page until pretty soon they are a distant, archived memory. That is, until someone brings an error to your attention. Maybe it is a typo, maybe a homograph used in the wrong context, maybe the error is grammatical. It doesn’t really matter, the reaction is the same…utter embarrassment. What kind of teacher are you anyway? Shouldn’t you have caught that? People are going to question your teaching capabilities, they are going to think you are an idiot for making such an obvious mistake (at least that is how my inner dialogue goes). Now, if you are like me, your immediate reaction goes something like this:
Oh sure, they can find my one, itty bitty, minuscule mistake in this post. Who are they? Did they write 3 blog posts today? Did they read AND comment on 57 blog posts of fellow educators? Did they categorize thousands of websites so that they could intelligently write supplement guides for four weeks of reading curriculum? Did they answer 63 emails today? Did they make phone calls all day looking for funding for a new iPad program (that oh-by-the-way, I wrote!)? Did they finish reading one book and start another? Did they do 3 loads of laundry and pick up shoes that their spouse has left sprinkled all over the house? Did they interact all day on Twitter, Facebook, and instant message? Did they walk the dog? Did they cook dinner and clean up afterward? Then who are they to point out my one LITTLE mistake?! All things considered they should be impressed it was only one mistake. Harrumph!
That, of course, is my initial reaction. I hate being reminded that I am not perfect. I hate being reminded that I make mistakes, that I am human. My second reaction (after a few deep get-a-grip breaths) is one of thankfulness. Thank goodness someone told me about my obvious mistake so that I can fix it and don’t continue to embarrass myself in front of colleagues!

Blog posting is good for teachers. It keeps us humble, reminds us of how scary it can be to “speak” in front of the class. It reminds us of what it feels like not to have all the right answers. How it feels to get your work back with red marks all over it, exposing your faults.

Blog. Blog because it is reflective. Blog because we need you to share what you know with us. Blog because it is good to remember how it feels to be judged by others. Blog because you have an unique view on the world and by sharing it, we all have another piece of this puzzle that is life.

Just do me one favor, when you notice a mistake on my blog don’t tell me. Ignorance is bliss and I am perfectly happy to go on believing that I am perfect. Okay, so that isn’t true. Tell me so that I can fix it, learn from it, and still claim to be practically perfect in every way (like Mary Poppins).

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Friday Recap

August 13, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment1857 views

Happy Friday everyone! In case you missed it, here is what I was up to this week outside of iLearn Technology. Have a perfectly wonderful weekend 🙂

Redefining Cheating– this post created a lot of discussion and controversy this week on my Dreams of Education Blog.
Why I Love Worksheets– this was a follow-up post I wrote to the Redefining Cheating post on Dreams of Education.
Flipboard– a review of how to use the Flipboard app in the classroom on my iPad Curriculum blog.
ARIS– a review of an Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling application…probably the best application I have seen for education to date! Check out the review on my iPad Curriculum blog.
This week I created an Edublogger Alliance social network. Join us if you are a blogging educator!
On Blogging– a blog post I wrote on the Edublogger Alliance social network about blogging.
Still no word on funding for my iPad project. I would still appreciate your votes in the Kohls Cares $500,000 give away. Click this link and vote for Cherry Hills Christian.

Thank you all for your comments, tweets, retweets, and support this week!