Week 11: CBL in High School

I do not have any experience in teaching at the high school level and it has been many years since I was in the role of a classroom teacher. I tailored my view of the question to my current role and put a spin on it to put myself into the shoes of a high school educator. A lot of other on this forum selected Edmodo and I would have to agree with them - based on my quick review, the product seems like it would be a safe and effective educational social media network. The ability to share content such as video etc. with students and other teachers is very useful - it is a useful networking tool for teacher to teacher relationships. Also, the ability for this product to be used on mobile devices is a huge benefit to todays students. The assignment calendar is a positive too. My biggest concern about use a CBL for communication and grading is still the security. In a digital world security is always something that we need to be concerned about. When using a CBL to communicate there is a risk that privacy might not always be private. All in all, I can see many benefits to such a product and to CBL to communicate.

Not being a teacher, I think Edmodo would be a good choice. The fact that it has the look of Facebook can be very appealing to high school students who are already familiar with social networks and other social media apps. It's also free for teachers, parents and students, so why not give it a try. Another bonus is that Edmodo is organized around connections (not friends, like Facebook) and students can only post to classes, which is safer and gives teachers more control over the group. As an educator, my primary concern would be privacy but it's probably a standard concern nowadays.

Of the three options, Edmodo appears to be the most versatile and flexible. It appears that it could be used for a number of courses, and would reinforce the ISTE standards that learners would have *hopefully* learned in elementary school. As with the previous question, I think there are many factors that must be considered when selecting a platform such as this. I don’t believe that simply picking a ‘fit’ for a public high school is sufficient, here again one must consider what the desired outcomes and objectives are. As an educator I have many concerns when using a CBL. Ensuring confidentiality of information is always a priority, and making sure that the learners are engaging with the material would also be very important. Some CBL’s are difficult to navigate, and learners get frustrated when trying to access information and resources.

Although I’m not a high school teacher, Edmodo seems to offer the most appealing features for secondary school teachers and students. From a student perspective, Edmodo looks and functions a lot like social media sites that teens are drawn to and most have familiarity using. From a teacher’s perspective, Edmodo offers a lot of engagement- and communication-related features including opportunities for student collaboration and discussion, and quick and easy assessment options like quizzes and surveys. From an administrative perspective, Edmodo also allows teachers to record and share students progress, and the fact that Edmodo is free is a major bonus. Overall, it seems to be the most versatile and appealing platform for use by high school students and teachers. As far as using CUBE, I think that looking at Face 3 (The Buyer), Face 5 (Development of the Market) and Face 6 (Competition with Other Forms of Learning) offer the most valuable information to an analysis of Edmodo from an EVA perspective. For Face 3, Edmodo is usually acquired at the class or school level. As a free product, the initial move to using Edmodo often comes from the ground up, as opposed to traditional top-down methods. This may make wide-spread adoption very slow, but the longevity of users may be significantly higher than other interfaces, as user who have initiated its use already have significant “buy in”. For Face 5, LMSs are well-supported and in growing demand in high schools as teachers and administrators look to augment classroom lessons with online content and are moving towards paperless learning environments. Finally, for Face 6, competition varies greatly with the degree of use and with the specific jurisdiction. Although Edmodo will never replace traditional classroom settings, it does provide greater flexibility to students to extend their participation and learning to locations and times which are more convenient and/or more conducive to their own productivity. If I switch again, back to the role of an educator, I think my biggest concern about using a CBL environment to communicate and grade students would have to be about the reliability and security of that information.

As an EVA, using Edmodo seems most flexible and age-appropriate for high school students. It's look and feel mirrors that of Facebook, which may be more familiar to teenager. FreshGrade may also work, but is often used to communicate with parents, as opposed to being a platform for students to share and collaborate on their projects. I think iTunesU provides a great way to share coursework, lectures, and other content. I can envision using iTunesU for course materials and then using Edmodo for the day-to-day running of the course. Again, I'm not sure that Edmodo is worth the an investment, however, with the rapid growth of Google Classroom across North America. My biggest concern as a professional educator, is discussing student privacy with parents. Making sure that student data is being collected, reviewed, and removed from a system in a manner that is acceptable to students and parents would require planning and research into the company's policies. As an EVA in Canada, I might be more interested in a CBL that has Canadian data storage, like FreshGrade, but I might be concerned about the competitive advantage of global juggernauts like Google.

I know the teachers at my school use Edmodo a lot and some use Fresh Grade. I think it's great Edmodo is very versatile and it's free. Students can communicate with each other and they are able to access their homework and classwork through this community. I am currently using Google Classroom and I know my school district is moving towards using only Google Classroom. I find it easy to use and I can relay information very quickly through this medium. Homework can be distributed, collected and marked easily. My biggest concern would be more learning to do, reliable Internet connection, students having a device at all times in class and outside. I think it's a great vehicle to connect with the masses. I like how I can set up each classroom and give them content to everybody. It's quick and helpful in the classroom. I believe my school district had to buy Google Classroom and students need to have their own Google school account and sometimes I have to send them to the library to find out their email and password, especially with the international students. That can eat a lot of classroom time.

My answer to these questions is similar to the previous question on elementary schools. Analyzing whether an CBL fits with a school is a lengthy process that requires all stakeholders including teachers, administrators, and students. Our school looked closely at the main competencies that we wanted to build in students and then carefully chose a system comparing over 15 key functionalities. Here is a link to the document that was compiled with the help of all major stakeholders: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jvIQIkpGHKTxewy1pueYtEg-d9JzKC8boYjkgv3q3DQ/edit?usp=sharing. Evaluating CBL platforms using short videos and articles is good to round up an initial list. However, in my opinion, a school should undergo the painstaking process of evaluating the most promising platforms by demoing them with teachers, students, and administrators. Any of the aforementioned platforms could work for a high school, it ultimately depends on which high school we are talking about.

I have worked with iTunes U in the past as well as their dedicated classroom app. It has a lot of advantages, especially in cases where a teacher has access to a classroom set of iPads. It offers features such as the ability to mark assignments in app or write feedback and return them to students. It allows you to pull material of all sorts from a very wide database which includes entire courses sponsored by schools such as Harvard and MIT or districts such as Richmond and Surrey. It's biggest drawback is that it is primarily useful within the iOS ecosystem. Now that I have been exposed to other options such as Edmodo and FreshGrade I will certainly be considering their benefits as cross-platform services for BYOD environments.

In the past I have developed and delivered an iTunesU course for a iPad course I teach - the program was easy to use and allowed for an easy place for students to find resources for the course. The ability to link in apps and other content made iTunesU a great solution at the time. Recently there have been updates to iTunesU which allows for students to submit work and additional features which makes it more like traditional LMS. Currently at my school we use Edsby as our LMS (www.edsby.com) and I have found that it is a superior LMS to many of the others that I have experimented with in the past. IT is easy to use and has a great mobile application. It serves as a method of communication, curriculum delivery, professional development , school calendar and organizational tool and as an assessment tool. The Gradebook allows teachers to create digital rubrics, assess with online testing and is customizable to different methods of assessment. The parent feature allows for communication and the ability to track student progress in each course.

If I were looking to use one of the three platforms I believe I would use Edmodo in my high school classroom. I do not teach an "academic" course so some of the more content heavy CBLs like iTunes U would have little use for me. I like the ability of Edmodo to custom make a platform for your class with additional apps and content. In a shop class It would be helpful for students to share projects in progress and have their peers comment and provide feedback. On the other side of the coin students can post pictures of their projects online and have the teacher assess their reflections and thoughts. Since Edmodo is designed in an easy to use social media styled platform, there seems at first glance to require little training for the students to begin using the product effectively. My primary concern with using a CBL in a classroom would be the privacy of the students in the classroom. I know personally the the Vancouver School Board has issues with the use of Google based products, as the storage of student information in the American based severs breaks freedom of information rules. As students will be posting and participating online I would want to ensure their personal information, including grades, could not be accessed by outside users.