“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”
– Buddha
This is another in a series of how we are supporting teachers this year in the anticipation of transformative public education in DPS109! I have posted in the past about 1:1 Transformative Learning Environments. I also recently posted an article from the local newspaper highlighting our plans and engaged parent 1:1 celebration nights.
The tools described here, Hapara and Edmodo, are management tools. Hapara is for teachers in the classroom; and Edmodo is a home/school connector. It’s a secure, “Facebook”-like environment where teachers and students and parents can communicate directly and securely. This year in DPS109, Edmodo will be used by all teachers for homework and home/school communications. The name(s) of the people leading these services is/are provided – feel free to contact them with any questions or comments about the tools.
The content/subscription descriptions come directly from the company websites; and/or are heavily influencing the descriptions listed – website links to the source are listed in each section and sub-section.
Many of these web based subscriptions will allow for 24/7 – school/home access! The possibilities are endless for our learning as we truly become a COMMUNITY of learners.
(Marcie Faust) Hapara:
Hapara is an innovative solution to managing Google Apps for Education using a teacher-friendly educational platform. Hapara will be used by 6th-8th grade classroom teachers to help manage the workflow from multiple classes of students. Hapara will provide middle school classroom teachers with two important features: a teacher dashboard and an add-on called remote control. In the teacher dashboard view, Hapara includes all of the Google Apps (docs, sheets, slides, blogger, Gmail, picasa, and class calendars) and presents the information organized by class. The remote control access allows teachers to monitor student activity to keep students on task while they are on their devices. Hapara also has the ability for teachers to push out assignments and URLs to their students. Through the use of Hapara, all of the students’ activity with Google Apps will be completely transparent to ensure productivity and safety for our students.
http://hapara.com/
(Maria Galanis) Edmodo:
Edmodo is a Learning Management System (LMS) that takes the ideas of a social network, and refines them to make it a perfect communication and learning tool for your classroom. Students and teachers can reach out to one another and connect by using this platform. A teacher can assign work, share content, and even grade work on Edmodo. Students can get help from the teacher, and from other students in the class as well. Parents can have their own access to the Edmodo class to maintain a communication channel that helps keep everyone updated on classroom activities. Teachers can use Edmodo to connect with other teachers for sharing ideas and content. Edmodo also has apps to use with your class including ones for snapshots of CCSS aligned formative assessments, managing behavior using a badging system, and more.
There’s an online PD learning opportunity hosted by Edmodo called EdmodoCon on August 6th where teachers from all over share and showcase the ways they’re using Edmodo in the classroom: https://edmodocon.com/2014/
https://www.edmodo.com/
