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Using Edmodo, I delivered online instruction to my students into an actual active and engaging learning environment. As my students engaged in learning the fundamentals of Edmodo, both in the classroom and at home, I was simultaneously able to test each student in Reading Workshop, so that I may assess their independent reading levels.

Lecturers in higher education often consider the incorporation of web technologies into their teaching practice. Partially structured and populated course site templates could aid them in getting started with creating and deploying webbased materials and activities to enrich the teaching and learning experience. Discussions among instructional technology support staff and lecturers reveal a paucity of robust specifications for possible course site features that could comprise a template. An attempted mapping from the teaching task as understood by the instructor to the envisaged course website properties proves elusive. We conclude that the idea of an initial state for a course site, embodied in a template, remains useful and should be developed not according to a formula but with careful attention to the context and existing pedagogical practice. Any course template provided for the use of lecturers should be enhanced with supporting instructions and examples of how it may be adapted for their particular purposes.

"#lrnchat is an online chat over the social messaging service Twitter. #lrnchat is on Thursdays at 8:30-10pm ET/5:30-7pm PT. Participants are people interested in the topic of learning from one another and who want to discuss how to help other people learn in formal, informal, social and mobile ways. This summer we aim to renew our commitment to steer clear of topics that are more "training department" oriented (including topics around LMS and instructional design) and focus this time on rather on how people learn, what they learn, and what we're learning."

"Connecting students, teachers and institutions, through an open, online course network."

"Now let's imagine a university in the 21st century decides, as a matter of choice, to make all of its students attend classes in these sorts of learning spaces. But more than this, they decide to black out all of the windows so that no one can see in and they say that there can be no displays of student work within the room. They provide a standard overhead projector in each room and they insist that teaching consists of a 5 minute introductory presentation from the teacher followed by a question, followed by another 5 minute video and so on. Students are only allowed to talk to each other if they go to a corner of the room that has been walled off from everything else. This method of teaching will be the same for every degree program so the artists and sculptors will use a space like this as well as the engineers and physicists. Learning about modern dance and nursing will all occur in these spaces."

"For the last few years I've used a website and blog to communicate with students, hold online discussions, offer help and post resources. Maintaining the two different systems wasn't always easy, there were features I wanted, and it was all public. So, this year I decided to use Edmodo with my classes. It has been great already. Edmodo is a free, learning management system that is full featured and easy to use."

"The overarching theme now of Learnist and Lore (aside from the first letter of the names) is that these sites are designed to function just like the most popular social networks in the world … except they were built just for teachers and students. To me, that says that it's a very exciting time in edtech as companies are able to finally leverage the resources and data from the Facebooks and Blackboards of the world … then turning this into a very useful new tool that can be completely tailored to the education audience."

"Class2Go stands out for a variety of reasons. It is open-source, it is nonprofit, it is portable and it is designed not only for teaching but also for research, so Stanford professors will be able to learn about learning as they teach."

"I have long been a fan of Edmodo after it was introduced to me as tool in the Global Read Aloud.  This free social network specifically aimed at students and teachers is a fabulous way to integrate social media into your classroom, as well as setting up ways to collaborate with other classrooms."

So now that I am seeing this, I am torn between which one to try in my classroom. Between Edmodo and Collaborize Classroom, which one would you suggest? Has anyone tried both of these? Looking for suggestions before I finalize with my classroom.

Stacy: This would be a great tool exploration project. Compare and contrast both of them.

Online Education Technology for Teachers and Students

This is great. I really like the direction that education is taking. I think that the more we incorporate technology into our schools, the more the students will respond and make significant gains.

"as I set up the WordPress blog (which was there for the syllabus, widgets, static material), I realized that there was no need for two systems. After consulting with my colleagues Jim (our blog meister), Laura (our commenter and organizer), and Todd (our captain of synchronicity), I shifted the whole thing to a Google Site. There was no need for the Community, since I had some old gadget that could do discussion."

"Managing dozens of disconnected systems is expensive and time consuming. Slate simplifies logins and data management between tools."

"Teaching and learning may rest on processes invisible to the naked eye; but lessons and courses are spatiotemporal things: activities with extension and duration, leaving traces, demanding behaviors. And in order to get a hold of teaching and learning, at some point we need to move from the abstractions to the concrete activities. Teaching a course or a lesson, and taking a course or a lesson: these are concrete physical activities. And project management gives us a good analogy for what the dimension of learning which is not theoretical but is absolutely necessary."

"Academics are used to altering their tone to match the audience and context, whereas students tend to lack such skills and so will, for all their tech-savvy, sometimes be uncomfortable with more formal forms of contact. In the long term, students need to develop these skills: in the meantime, we can meet them halfway."

"Learning management systems have become the primary delivery platform in most higher education systems for course-related activities such as lecture presentations, readings and assignments, discussions, and quizzes. Until a few years ago, access for learners and instructors with disabilities was either poorly supported or not considered at all in many popular tools. Due to lack of, or limited, accessibility in learning management systems, students were not able to fully or independently participate in key course activities."

Thank you!!

"For those of you gearing up for the Fall Semester, I want to make sure that you know that (1) Canvas upgraded the math editor recently and there is a lot of new functionality available and (2) there are print-friendly guides for using the Canvas Equation Editor. You can include these in your syllabus or as handouts if you are planning to do some intensive Canvas stuff with equations in the fall."

"The consortium is interested, however, in how its members might avail themselves of sophisticated online tools while limiting their reliance on the education-technology industry, said Lauren Kay Robel, provost of Indiana University at Bloomington. "There is a rather widespread concern about the notion that the core of our academic mission, on the teaching side, is being essentially developed by for-profit companies," Ms. Robel said in an interview."

After some time playing and building a course, something happened . I realized that I trusted in the platform and I let it to take me wherever it wants. It's fair to to say that Instructure's people, and all the other people involved in the development of Canvas, must be congratulated. Bravo!!!.

"Hersh believes there is another major factor driving the gap between retention rates in face-to-face programs and those in the rapidly growing world of distance education: the lack of a human touch."