eLearning Blog

About a month ago I was given a beautiful new laptop - something that happens every three year.  Pre-Covid-19 I often left it at work and came home to a new device - not to mention I also am on my smartphone a lot.  For those reasons I do not like bookmarking on my laptop as it ties me to one device. For years I have been bookmarking using Diigo .  It is a cloud based app that can be reached on any device.   I also use it for sites where I have passwords.   No I don't leave the actual password, but give myself cryptic reminders which are enough for me.  Plus the site allows you to check a box so no one else can see your bookmarks. But you can go from your bookmark and see others who have saved the site and see what they are publicly saving which can lead you to hundreds of new useful discoveries. 

  Yes I know this isn't a post on educational technology, but my roots are as a teacher and, in particular, US history.   Plus it's always good to know why you are doing something - in particular giving thanks today.   Did you know that the author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was behind the US making Thanksgiving a national holiday and that Lincoln was the president who initiated this.  There is no proof that turkey was actually eaten on the first Thanksgiving but watch the video above for more fun facts. 

In this year when so many students are receiving their entire class online, communication with students is more important than ever before.  So what are the best ways to communicate with students? The most important thing to do to have effective two way communication with your students is to create a welcoming culture.  This means starting your meetings with a quick warm-up that brings out something about the students.  You might simply go around the room and say hello to all your students or ask about their favorite holiday food or what they did this past weekend.  Answer the same questions you pose of your students as they want to know you are human too. You should start by creating a short welcome video to explain how students can navigate your learning management system (LMS).   The video ( here is how to make one ) should be no longer than five minutes and should be followed up with a course orientation that you do in your chat room.    Secondly, you should model good habits for

The district where I work has just switched to School for its Learning Management System.  As such I have been learning how to export and upload courses from another LMS and at the same time to manipulate what I am doing in Schoology. To that end the best place to start for learning is the Schoology tutorial page .  While you can certainly save the page, I have found it most helpful to simply write what you want to do and add the word "schoology" to a search engine as in "create assignment + schoology" and you'll be taken to the page to help you - in this case here . Schoology also has a YouTube channel which you can find here .