Schoology

Schoology 

Schoology.com is a community network and a virtual learning environment as well. This freely available interface provides teachers with tools needed to create and maintain an online classroom. The fully cloud-based service allows teachers to create various learning materials and courses students can connect to.

Schoology also allows students and parents to interact with teachers in a secure online environment.

Schoology.com has a free-to-download smartphone enabled application. The latest services are available at Schoology Blog.

 

 Student registration video - http://www.screencast.com/t/Ys9h9WiH

 

When you register, you can select one of three user profiles: teacher, student, and parent. Both students and parents need access codes to register. These codes are provided by the teache,r and while students can register using the same code, parents need separate codes to protect student privacy data. On your first visit after registration, small bubbles appear on the screen with tips on how to use the interface.

The system uses a structure and menu items already familiar from social networking sites. Basic functions include messaging and connecting to a Google or Facebook profile. If you connect to your Google profile, you can share content with students using your own Google Drive. The calendar allows you to create various events in four layers by default: courses, groups, school and personal events.

 

 
You should start working by configuring your profile (video) -
http://www.screencast.com/t/qMa5ilpAB

 

Here you can upload photos, share various personal details and maintain a microblog. By clicking on your profile you can easily see the number of posts and content pieces shared and the number of students assigned to specific groups or courses.

The menu item “Recent Activity” is similar to that of Facebook’s Wall where you can follow the postings of your friends, groups, school and your own. This is where you can create a poll and share events and status updates.

One of the levels of communication and collaboration in Schoolology is the group. You can create three different types of groups: invitation based, requiring connection request, and open. Except for open groups, you need an access code from the admin (teacher). Within the group you can chat, create albums, view each other’s profiles, collect and publish materials for the group.

 

Groups in Schoolology (video) - http://www.screencast.com/t/iw0rbpAe8p

 

The most important venue of learning is the course, which provides services similar to most learning management systems (LMS). Under the Courses menu you can create your own course or join courses created by other teachers (to do so you need a code generated by the interface).

When you create a course, you need to enter the name of the course, the subject and the class and you can see the code and the options as to what type of materials you can assign to the course.

Course management (video) - http://www.screencast.com/t/MkGo1FQKZ6

 

Within each course you can create assignments, add deadlines and descriptions and enclose files, links and background materials as seen with the moodle system. You can also add to the specific assignment the development objectives and skills outlined in the curriculum.

You have a number of options under the Materials menu:

• give assignments to students
• compile (various) online tests
• publish files in the course
• have a conversation on a specific topic
• compile an album
• create pages.

The course interface also includes a grade book to view student attendance, grade their work and view student diagrams. Under Attendance, instructors can keep records of student attendance (present, absent, late, excused absence) and add comments to the students’ user profiles.

 

The menu item Resources allows teachers to collect lots of learning materials (video) - http://www.screencast.com/t/tvzQS5mpOCjR

 

Another useful element of Schoology is Resources where you can run targeted searches for topics that interest you. You can narrow down the search by entering the course name, the auxiliary material type (activity, evaluation, learning material, game/puzzle, learning tool, lesson plan, presentation, test), class and file format. You can download the content you find useful to your online storage drive and you can even create your own collection.

Under Own materials/resources you can import the documents (and calendar events) of your Google account and use learning materials by other teachers or from the Khan Academy.