What do you get when you mix a full
teaching schedule, a new digital learning platform, a course you’ve only taught
once before and a Quality in Blended learning (which you really know quite
little about) course? An experiment that taught me a lot!
I’ve been blessed with a great collection
of colleagues; you know the type who constantly try new things and share their
experiences with others. That kind of atmosphere pushes us all to do something
different, all in the name of finding better ways to get our message across to
the students. But we also want to find new tools that might make teaching more
efficient for us as well. We had heard rumors about Edmodo but none of us had
really tried it, so when I found the post for the Quality in Blended Learning
course, I jumped at the chance.
I chose my Business English course for the
simple reason that the national curriculum gives no restraints to the course.
In fact, as far as I know, such a course is not offered in other Upper
Secondary School in Finland. So it was easy to mold the existing plans into a
teaching experiment for the QiBL course. Also, the students who choose this
particular course are 2nd graders and have a better skillset to
dealing with a new digital learning platform. We used Edmodo for the whole
duration of the course (six weeks).
Most of the course took place in the
classroom but some assignments the students were supposed to prepare at home. I
used Edmodo in different ways. For example, the students had a pre-course
assignment about their experiences in SLUSH, which I did as a quiz. I also gave
the students a couple of assignments which they then returned in Edmodo.
One function, which I definitely want to
use more efficiently in the future, is dividing students into small groups.
During my experiment, the students wrote a small learning diary about what they
learned during the course. But I see it as a valuable tool for peer learning
and peer evaluation and that is what I want to use it for with future groups.
At times it was difficult to motivate
students to use Edmodo. This may have something to do with me using Wilma as a
communicative tool about contents of individual lessons. This year we have also
tried out several different digital tools with our students and some of them
were simply too tired to figure out yet another platform. However, when I did
get my whole group to join in on the activities, they did admit that Edmodo was
quite easy to use.
All in all, I find that Edmodo is
definitely a tool worth looking into some more. It served as an easy way to
share material and links to the students. Furthermore, being able to gather
different types of assignments and their grading into one single platform
offers both variety and constant feedback to the students and a valuable tool
for the teacher. Edmodo may well be part of the solution to the changing ways
of education.
Manna ParvinenEnglish teacherLauttasaaren yhteiskoulu /Lauttasaari
Secondary and Upper Secondary school
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