BP_8 Edmodo.com RILS

       Edmodo.com has become the central classroom management system for room7 at my school. Room 7 is my classroom where I teach a group of 4th graders, and use this powerful website to run my class. The features at Edmodo.com not only keep my class organized, but ithey provide a Facebook type of safe social media access just for my students. The reason I like it is because the possibilities for developing and delivering exciting content and projects for my students and parents to interact with seem endless. I can supervise and control everything that my kids have access to. Edmodo.com provides access to parents so that they can both see their students grades in the grade book, check in with the class assignment calendar, and leave me any correspondence they wish. Below is a short video that I created to show dramatic highlights of just a few of the great features this free website has.



       For my final project for the Emerging Technologies in a Collaborative Culture class I am taking at Full Sail University, I was charged with creating a Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario (RILS). My job was to find a web 2.0 site, find out everything I could about it, and create a lesson plan were I could have students interact with the site in a creative and collaborative way. The participants I worked with did an awesome job. Please find below my RILS lesson plan, as well as pictured links of my participants project videos.


Relevant and Innovative Learning Scenario

Greg Havens

Overview:
         As a teacher of fourth grade students, teaching academic language requires students to understand new words, or words that are hard for students to master. For this activity we will focus on one type of academic vocabulary, which can be categorized as a word that is used exclusively within an academic domain. For example, a statistician may use the words, mean, median, mode, standard deviation, or outliers. Or, a chemist may use the words proton, neutron, nucleus or electron.

http://www.viddler.com/jkellogg1/videos/9/

This activity will draw upon the specific words used by professionals in specific fields. My target audience for this specific activity will be students in the Full Sail EMDT course. Their task is to think of one word that they use in their professional environment that is specific to their domain or field. Their job will be to create a video using iMovie that is between 30 seconds and one minute. Students are asked to think of the word, give its definition and talk about how they use the word, or how the word is important to their professional life. In other words students will make a videos that teach the other students how to use their specific word in the correct context. Then, the participating students will respond to what they learned in a safe class based social network site.

Materials–
1. Mac Book Pro
2. iMovie
3. A personal Viddler Account
4. A personal flicker Account
5. Access to the Internet.
6. Access to my group Edmodo account at edmodo.com Access Code: 3n4euw

 Objectives : Students will create a 30 to 60 second iMovie that defines, describes uses for and gives insight on an academic word that is important to their profession. Students will then post their video onto their Viddler account. Then they will embed their iMovie inside of my class social network account, and comment on each others videos. Finally, students will learn academic vocabulary from each other and comment on how they would use the words they are learning about.


Procedure –
a) Opening Activity: Students will be sent a link to a Viddler.com video explaining the overall concept of the project and how to get started with edmodo.com.

b) Body of the Class:
1. Students go to edmodo.com and open up a student account using Access Code: 3n4euw
2. Students watch the Academic Language Assignment Video to get directions on what to do.
3. Students create a 30-60 second video describing a content specific word they use in their professional lives.
4. Students can refer to the Rubric created for the project in the Library section of our Edmodo.com site. page.
5. Students will post their video on the appropriate assignment page in edmodo.com

http://www.viddler.com/DrewFulton/videos/18/

c) Closure

1. On Tuesday of Next Week students will check back in edmodo.com to see how they did based on a five point rubric I created on rubistar.4teachers.org
2. Students will also watch two videos from other students and post a response to those video’s on how they have used the word taught in the video.

4. Web 2.0

•      imovie
•      viddler.com
•      edmodo.com
•      flickr.com

5. Social Participation/Social Learning– Students will teach each other new technical or academic vocabulary. They will first create a short presentation video on an academic word they use professionally, and then will comment on each others video on how they would use each others word.

http://www.viddler.com/clenhart72/videos/11/

6. Making Connections– Making Connections–With each submission students demonstrate their knowledge. When multiple students demonstrate different idea’s and concepts they add to a global conversation. Students can watch each others videos comment, critique or disagree. Using edmodo.com naturally pulls students into a global conversation. Since edmodo.com is designed to allow teachers and students to connect globally with others, I am sure it will find a significant place in the broader global educational environment.

8. Create/Produce – Students will create a 30-60 second video as an academic word expert.

9. Assessment: Rubicon.com; Students will be evaluated on their videos based on video presentation with regard to how professional the video looks and its effectiveness. Student feedback will not be evaluated for this round.


10. Reflection:
a. Student Reflection- Students found this assignment very easy to do. All of the participants were able to start and edmodo.com account, join the EMDT group, watch the video assignment, and create their videos successfully. All four participants received a 5 out of 5 points for creating a successful academic vocabulary video and submitting it back to the edmodo.com site grade book.

b. Educator Reflection: This was a very fun and engaging assignment. Students were able to create a video that shares a vocabulary word that they use in there everyday professional lives. Three exceptional students told us what their word was, gave us the definition and also gave us an example of how they use these words everyday. It was excellent. One way that this project could be taken further would be to have other students comment in blog form how they also use these words, or what type of context they have heard these words before. Please see the three examples of videos that participants made and embedded into edmodo.com.