Resource Name: Edmodo

URL: http://www.edmodo.com

Uses: Archive Content, Quiz and Assess, Collect Feedback, Write Together, Interact Socially, Publish Online, Respond and Reflect

Description: Edmodo is a closed, private community which looks and acts like a Facebook/Twitter hybrid. It allows for threaded discussions, polls, quizzing, video uploading, and discussion groups. You can post, collect, and even annotate assignments! Most recently, Edmodo announced that Google Docs can be accessed and edited through its pages. It totally fits the bill if you're seeking a social media environment, especially for middle schoolers.

Read more about why I chose Edmodo (over at my Teaching that Sticks blog) and find out how I felt about the choice after five days. Then decide for yourself is this tool is right for your class.

Teaching Idea: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

If you teach The Outsiders as a class novel, here's an activity guaranteed to spark discussion, while focusing students on a deeper understanding of character traits.

The Whom Would You Choose? chart requires students to select which of the Greasers they would choose to take on a double date, back them up in a fight, teach them to drive, and so on. While at first glance it seem to be opinion based, students soon discover that they need text support to back their choices.

The chart relies heavily upon Chapters One and the beginning of Chapter Two of the novel, and accomplishes three goals at once. The chart

• forces students to truly understand and differentiate between the traits of the seven boys,
• requires students to reread the chapter in order to supply supporting evidence for their choices, and 
• illustrates to students that the boys, while experiencing a collective identity through their affiliation with each other as Greasers, are in truth individuals with unique strengths and weaknesses.

Before handing students the chart, I had them create a simple quadrant charts in their notebooks for each of the seven boys. Under the headings Looks Like, Sounds Like, Acts Like, and People Say, students created bulleted lists from the information provided in Chapter 1.

As students began to fill out the Whom Would You Choose Chart, they used both the book and their notes to make selections. (The blank line on the chart, by the way, was for students to ad a category of their own).

Enter Edmodo. Before students discussed their choices with classmates, they logged into Edmodo where each statement had been separately entered as a poll question. By responding there, students had an immediate sense of the classmates' choices.

When sharing time came, I read each category, named the boys in turn, and had students vote by a show of hands. The real learning experience (and the fun!) came as students tried to explain their choices.

A similar chart could be created for any novel containing a large number of characters which could be easily confused.

Applications for the Reading/Language Arts Classroom:

• Post snippets of dialogue from your text. Ask students to interpret or respond to what the characters are saying.
  
• Post an eight question quiz on a reading assignment to be completed at home. Even if students "cheat" and skim the reading selection for answers, they will still have a good understanding of key events and elements of story before the next day's discussion.
  
• Assign short poetry assignments to be completed on Edmodo. For example, students can create a diamante poem based on a self-selected biography.
• Post a poll, and then allow students to argue for their choices using the comments option below the poll.
  
• Use Edmodo as your main hub for student submissions. The site allows you to not only collect student work, but to also annotate it and return it. Less paperwork for you and easier edits for students!

Notes and Caveats:

• Be sure to include enough discussion categories (called Groups) in your Edmodo community to keep topic threads well sorted. Otherwise, you will have students posting singing cats videos into classroom novel discussion threads.
  
• Be certain that all students have signed an Internet Agreement Form that binds them to responsible behavior online. Encourage students to act as moderators and "call each other out" if inappropriate words or images are posted.
  

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