Week 3 Journal

What technology tools can I use to manage and track differentiated student progress in my class?

This week I focused on finding tools to manage and track student progress. My priority was to find FREE things that would be easy for the students to use. The links I found are posted here: My Blog 02/05/2013.

At first I experimented with business-oriented project management sites. One that could be useful is ZOHO. The free package is for an unlimited time so this is a big plus. It only allows one project, but many participants can be included. This looks like one way to create goals within a project and track students' progress; but it might be reinventing the wheel when there are much more popular tools out there. These were listed at http://www.diigo.com/list/drlee66/tools-for-trackingmanaging-progress by Lee Graham. (Of those more typical tools I like the looks of Edmodo and Wiggio- but I haven't been able to play with them.)

My favorite find for younger kids was Goal for It http://www.goalforit.com/. This was a site created for parents, kids and anyone else wanting to set some goals for themselves. It has a fun look and feel and seems easy to use. I believe this would be very useful in many different classroom settings! It could be used to modify behavior as well as set up projects and assignment goals. One warning- this is an open online community so kids would need to be shown how to keep their goals and activity private or only share with the class/teacher. Parents could also get into using this with their kids.

Over the past week I have read the blogs of classmates, the Connectivist Daily, and other web articles related to technology in the classroom. I have made attempts to join a Wiki group, with continued lurking in various groups to find the best fit. I have finally settled on the 4th-6th grade group.

Going into the next week, I'm excited to be working more with my Wiki project group! We are going to decide the best way for us all to communicate, and I'm hoping we use Edmodo or Wiggio. I really wanted this class to be an opportunity for hands-on experience with technology tools that I will use with students. Those particular tools look like something that I would return to; especially Edmodo which is already very popular for schools.