Edmodo

My teacher showed me Edmodo and I found this site extremely useful for testing and just keeping the students up to date. You can post assignments and tests in Edmodo as well as mark them and leave comments. I used this site for my project so the students could hand in their projects and I could mark them at home. Edmodo is online so the student could take their project home and hand the project in at anytime before and after the deadline. The student can also go online over the weekend and check their marks. I marked their assignments the day after I left which was kind of bad for assigning a project on my last day but I thought a head so my CT would not have to do any marking. The best thing about this website is you create a website for the class and invite the students and even invite teachers in to mark your assignments or to see what the students are using it for. I am definitely going to use this site in the future and I am not sure if Mr. Not showed us this site in class.

In my student teaching practice I was really surprised that the grade 8 students did not have cell phones. Only 2 students had cell phones but a lot of students had a ipod. The ipods and cell phones were used a bit in class but not as much as you would think. Our class was right next door to the computer lab plus we had 3 computers in the classroom and 2 ipads. My CT applied for a grant a couple years ago to get ipads and equipment for pod cast and got it. A lot of younger students borrow the ipads and put games on the ipad which I find stupid because they are not educational. The ipads are suppose to be all synced so if one of the ipads downloads a game, the other ipad will as well. But when I was at the school my CT could not figure out why this was not working. I think the ipads were useful for research but when it came to actually writing an essay they were useless because they do not have a microsoft office for them. I was thinking that they could use a google doc to write in the essay but everyone else is doing the essay in word and does not have the specifications like word does.