But I figured it all out again, and I brought my 1:1 classroom back. Sort of. I have access to 30 netbooks on a cart on a daily basis, unless someone else checks out the cart. I'm hoping that doesn't happen, because I have redesigned my classes this semester to use them every single day. Here's how:
- I start every period with the daily question written as a blog post, and students reply to the blog post using their netbooks. I used to do this using Blogger, but it is blocked at my new district. Instead, I created web pages using Weebly and set up the daily questions (I call them Journals) on one of their blog pages, which students can easily access through the class website. I set up the blog page so that students responses (comments) need to be approved by me before being published, so that way students can't copy responses if they are published immediately. I also wrote all of my daily journals over the weekend, scheduling them to be published ahead of time. If I need to change one, I can easily do that by editing the post.
- Like I mentioned, I developed class webpages, like I did at my previous district. I used to use Google Sites, but our network does some weird blocking of them for some students, so I switched to Weebly since I was already paying for a Pro account. This is where I put all of the learning activities for students, including any videos, labs, or other documents that need to be "passed out" to students. My students access their class's website during every class period.
- I switched from Edmodo to using Google Classroom. I still love Edmodo, and use it for the graduate classes that I teach. However, since my new district is a GAFE school, I decided to jump right on in to using Classroom, and start teaching students the joys of Google Drive, especially how I can leave feedback on documents while they're working on an assignment. So far, I really like that students can create Google documents right from assignments, and love the "Turn In" feature that is available right from their documents. I do wish that I could privately message students or assign certain assignments to specific students in order to promote differentiation; all I can do right now is hope that those features will be forthcoming.
These are just a starting point; I do plan on flipping my AP and Environmental Science classes as soon as I have the free time (ha!) to start making some videos. But, strange as it may seem, I feel that switching back to more of a 1:1 classroom has actually improved the learning going on in my classroom, not make student zombies sitting in front of a computer screen. More on that in my next blog post.
If you'd care to peruse my new classroom websites, feel free to poke around. Just be aware that they are continuously under construction and that they were recently-born, containing only 2nd semester goodness on them.
Mrs. E's APES Extravaganza
Mrs. E's Biology Site
Mrs. E's Environmental Science Site
