I was happy to see that Screencast-o-Matic is still around. I am going to re-embed this screen cast that I made a few years ago when I found this tool. My original post is at the bottom of my blog, but to save you the trouble of scrolling...
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2 comments:
Sarah, thanks for sharing your screen cast and the Screencast-o-Matic tool! If I were in your class (or a parent of a student in your class, I would find this screencast very helpful...you did a great job explaining how to navigate/use the edu2.0 classroom tool!)
I really like how you are using edu2.0 classroom...What kind of feedback do you get (from parents, administration, students)regarding the use of edu2.0? Is it optional for students or do they have to have an account for your class? How much time do you dedicate to keeping this updated/responding to student blogs or other questions? I would love to hear in your opinion what are the pro's? con's? (since you started using this in '08?)
Hi Lori,
I have used edu2.0 for two years, and then last year I switched to Google sites because my students had a really hard time remembering their user name and password (I required every student to have an account, but if they forgot their info they couldn't access from home), and I also moved to another classroom that doesn't really have access to a computer lab. I did get our technology teacher to try it out and she loves it and I just found out that in my absence during maternity leave, I was volunteered to help all our 6th grade teachers get established on the site! They are going to pay for a membership (which didn't come along until last year, though the free version is plenty for a single teacher) and try to go paperless. I am very excited for them and I hope that by helping them out, we can show how successful it can be and perhaps adopt it at the middle school.
When I did use it regularly the students loved it. I found that some digital citizenship lessons would be handy because I did have a few instances of bullying through the messaging system. As admin you can remove that feature so that solved it temporarily. If you pay for the extra features you can actually go in and monitor their messages (spy) and I found the threat of that was enough to stop misuse. The social networking style of the site is what really draws the kids in in the first place and their familiarity with that sort of format makes it easy for them to get started.
It takes a little bit of work to set up, as any of this technology stuff does. I prefer it to moodle, which I find to be about as exciting as a cardboard box (kind of how I feel about D2L as well). Once you upload files, you can easily create a classroom for each year using last years resources so the time is reduced with each year.
Another great feature is that it can be a "walled garden" that nobody from the outside can access. This came in handy when parents questioned the safety of their children using the internet in that manner at school. You might want to interact with other student in other schools, but I liked keeping it to just our students.
The developer is very hands on and as the program was getting up and running was readily available to answer questions and even change things upon suggestion. I don't know if that has changed as they have grown in size, but I really appreciated feeling a part of the development of the site.
It seemed like all of the web2.0 collaboration tools were easily available within the site and once students have an account, they can participate in different classes from different teachers. I found several students spent time there outside of the classroom and I even had parents and siblings wanting to join!
If I can get my school to provide me with some consistent computer access for my students, I would love to use it still! There was once a quote on their site that makes a lot of sense to me as a Mac fan: "Moodle is to a PC as edu2.0 is to a mac."
If you give it a try, let me know!
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