Edmodo.com is a great way to communicate with your students online in a secure way, and best of all...IT'S FREE!!!!. The platform was created by educators and made for the classroom. Some of the features of Edmodo include being able to post notes to students (they can respond back to you or the whole class), attaching files to your post, or posting links.
The way it works is pretty simple. As the teacher you register for an account. Once your account is created you can create your classes. This could be just one class (ex. Mrs. Burnett's) or multiple (ex. Math p.1, Math p.2...). With each class that you create you get a code. Students then sign up for their own accounts then enter the code for your class. It's good to note that students can have multiple classes associated with their account (Parents can also sign up for accounts so that they can view their child's account).
Once everything is created you can get started posting to your class. As the teacher it is important that you have conversations with your students before they start using Edmodo about appropriate academic behavior online. I would also make sure and mention to your students that what they post can either be a direct message to you the teacher, or to the whole class. There's no in between. You will have documentation for everything that students post as they will have to be logged in to access your class, and students can attach assignments to their posts to turn into you as well.
I think that this is a fantastic tool that could be a great use of social media with your classroom!
I've just found out that an already great site is now even better! If you don't know about min.us check out my prior post about it here. Basically the site provides a crazy simple setup for sharing. You can drag a pic onto the site and easily share from there. Brilliant right? Well now min.us has come out with new features such as being able to share music & documents, as well as images. You can also select multiple files on your computer (hold Ctrl on your computer as you click to select more than one) and drop them all in to receive one link to share. You just have to drag any file onto the window of the page and drop it in.
If you're not familiar with the Doodle 4 Google program you can view more info here. The gist of it is that one lucky student will have their "doodle" featured as the Google logo for one day, and earn a $15,000 scholarship, plus more. Doodles this year must follow the theme, "What I'd like to do someday..." and registration will close at 11:59 Pacific Time on March 2nd. They've made some changes this year including parents can now register their children, and there is no cap for the number of doodles that a school can submit. That's just the basics though, if you're interested in more I highly suggest that you read through their contest rules.
