Edmodo is more than just for your students - it can be professional development as well.

Some of you may have heard of Edmodo and might even be using it in your classes.  Those of you who aren't using it probably think that it's just for your students.  Edmodo is so much for than that and can actually be a great tool for professional development.  You can join groups for things like middle school science or technology in the classroom.
Of course you can also create classroom groups to assign homework, quizzes, track performances and award badges.

Google Docs gets Columns!!!!

Google Docs users have been asking for it for a while and now and Google finally gave it to us; columns in Google Docs.  You can now create documents with with two or three columns.  As with many things Google, it's pretty simple to include columns in your document.  All you need to do is to click on Format and then choose Columns.  How easy is that?  Then you can pick one, two or three columns.   You can also click on more options to customize it a bit more and change up things like spacing between columns.

What other things do you want to see updated in Google Docs?

Back to School - Get to know your students

I have never really done a get to know you activity with my students because my school is small.  The kids have been together since Kindergarten and by the time they are in middle and high school I figured that they knew everything there is to know about each other.  This year I am trying something new and, of course, I am using technology to help me out with it.  I've decided to have each student share one fact about them that most people don't know.  To do this, I created a Padlet board for each of my classes.  Padlet is basically an online builtin board.  You share the link with others and they an add text, videos and images to the board.  Neither you or the people you share your board with need an account, but I find it help to have one as the teacher.  Padlet gives you the ability to choose a background image and set other preferences to customize what your board looks like.



Once students have all submitted their facts about themselves, I am going to have the students try to guess who they think each fact belongs to.  I'm still trying to think of a fun way to do that part, but I would love any suggestions that you have!

This post is cross posted on my science blog Savvy Secondary Science.