I am looking into this pretty cool social networking application for educators – Schoology.com . It allows you to share documents, media, links, post grades, take attendance, perform online assesments, run thread discussions, etc… And it is FREE, which is always a plus!
I am looking into its viability for my 7th grade science class. We are a laptop school and 7′s have Macs that go back and forth from school to home.
Has anyone used this website, or similar one for their classes?
I began using Schoology last semester, and I love it! It is very easy to use, and because it looks like Facebook, its interface is familiar to most students. There are so many features that you hardly have to look outside of the application for other features. It has gradebook, dropbox, repository to organize documents for sharing, blog capabilities, online quiz/test capability (so easy!), etc. I highly recommend it. And because you’re a laptop school, giving online quizzes/tests, doing surveys, blogging would all be easy to do.
have you had any issues with cyber bullying? i noticed that each student gets to create their own account. they can email, blog, etc and i can’t tell if i have control over it? if i can see into their accounts or are they considered private? with 176 student i can’t see how i would track all the uses of their accounts.
I haven’t had any problems with that at all. They create their own accounts, but there is no “wall” like there is on Facebook, so that can’t just post stuff that way like they can on Facebook. They’re registering for your class, so you have administrative control. If your students submit anything, for example in a discussion, that is offensive, you can delete it. And the other thing is that any update that comes through you can receive those updates in your email (you can set this notification). So you don’t have to worry about cyber bullying at all. Their accounts aren’t “private” in the sense that you have no administrative control. I think Schoology has done a good job with this.
Thanks so much! So glad to hear that it worked well for you!
I will have to check it out. I am currently using edu2.0 which is also free and has heaps of features. You can set up lessons with multimedia content, take attendence and grades, parents can be connected to their students so that they can see all their stuff etc etc
Hello, KAY
I want to ask you about Schoology I don’t want my students see all the group in this website do you have any way to prevent that ,
Thank you
Sorry I can’t help, I haven’t used Schoology like I planned to, between the website and 1st class email that the kids use, I thought it would be too much.
I’m not sure what you’re asking. I’ve not created groups; I’ve created multiple classes instead of groups, even if I’m teaching the same course, but different periods. Groups were an extra layer for me, so I haven’t worked with them hardly at all. So I can’t speak to what you’re looking for.
The way I’ve figured out stuff on Schoology is testing it. So if I were you, if you don’t want to contact the wonderfully helpful support staff at Schoology, I’d create a test group and see if what you don’t want to happen in fact doesn’t happen. If it does, I’d look for another way to do what you’re looking for.
What I do know is that when you set up a group, you set it up the same way as a course – through an access code. So each member of the group would have to have that access code for that group. It would seem that if a student doesn’t have that access code, they wouldn’t be able to access who’s in that group. So the only people that could access that group are the group members who have signed up for that group with the access code.
Like I said, I’d try it to see how it works out.
I hope this was a little helpful.
Kay