I found the presentation by Dr. Bibbee really interesting. The Edmodo website would be a viable alternative, with some flaws, to D2L. I like the fact that things are kept confidential from other students. I also found it pretty interesting how chatting section of the website was color coded per each student. I really think that would make organization of chats really easy to follow with regards to questions and comments from students. I think I'd like to use this website if I were to teach online again, for organization purposes relating to homework and PowerPoints. Even in a classroom context, I think it would still be useful. For practicality though, I will stick to D2L since I have been using for over one year.
The CMC project in my group with Xu and Dira is coming along well. I'm excited to finish it so that I can begin to focus on the final paper. I think I am going to enjoy writing it since I took so much pleasure from the observations! I really enjoyed seeing the technologies used in a CALL-based classroom environment. Looking for links and correlations to CALL pedagogy will be an easy thing to do for me since the professor's use of CALL was pretty limited in this lecture class.
I can see why one would want to stick to D2L for the university, especially when you've grown accustomed to it. I would like to try out Edmodo too and see how it could fit into the classroom first hand!
ReplyDeleteYah, it'd be interesting to use both D2L and Edmodo and see which one the students like best.
ReplyDeleteThe color coding seemed confusing. Would each student get a separate color? What if there are 20 students in the class? A rainbow of color might be more confusing than just having students' names attached. It would be interesting to see that feature in use to get a better sense of how it works.
ReplyDeleteI thought this color-coding sounded like a good idea too. In D2L chat, you know, the students an color code their names, and that's quite helpful for referring back to the last thing a certain person said. Problem is, some students like to choose really light colors which are hard to read on the screen (one of my instructor's pet peeves). I imagine that since Edmodo arbitrarily assigns colors as students enter the chat, they only use colors that make the text easy to see.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Edmodo seems to be a very good alternative option in some cased where D2L is not available. More than that, as you mentioned Edmodo could meet teachers' expectations because it has very "outstanding" features such as grading section, confidentiality, motivating and Facebook-like design.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to see all of the class's CMC projects because I think each would bring a different flavors to the table.
It is a good idea to use both D2L and Edmodo. If a instructor is familiar with D2L, it is not easy for him/her to give up it, and it will make the online component less challenge for both instructors and students because D2L is still widely use among this level.
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