Edmodo Time Zone

Many of my students use the calendar option in Edmodo.  A few students noticed the calendar events were not displayed on the correct date  on their calendar view, but on the teacher's calendar view, the events displayed correctly.

If you are experiencing this problem in Edmodo, have the students go into their account profile settings and change the time zone.  Once my students did this, the calendar events adjusted to the correct time zone and they had the correct calendar view.

Digital Portfolios

I am getting ready to assess students in 8th grade on the New Jersey Technology Assessment for Proficienty and Integration rubric (NJTAPIN).  They need to be proficient in certain technology skills, before they go to high school,  and the NJTAPIN rubric measures this progress.

The students need to create a document, spreadsheet, database, multimedia presentation, and a graphic organizer that includes a range of skills.  For example, students need to create a spreadsheet with a formula or function.

Grading students on this rubric can be very tedious because there are over 300 students in the 8th grade and they do not have digital portfolios.  As the administrator of this process, I need to go through their files to determine if they met the requirements of the rubric and grade them accordingly.  This procedure will be very time consuming, that is why I am starting now.

So, to make this process less painful, I created a NJTAPIN student checklist which will give the students the list requirements needed for each tool.  I had the students fill out the checklist in February.  This gave them an idea of what they completed and what they still needed to do.  Within another week, I will have the students revisit their checklist and complete it.

The checklist requires them to provide me with the filename, location, and the application they used to complete the skill.  At this point, I can easily find the files with the requirements by using the checklist as a guide.    In addition to that, students must complete an Internet Links Template.  The purpose of this template is to provide me with the links to their web 2.0 projects, (if they used any).  After I grade the students, I have to enter their total score into a spreadsheet, which will determine if they are proficient in technology literacy.

In addition to this, what I am getting ready to implement is a pilot for students to create digital portfolios.  I created a template using Microsoft PowerPoint and I uploaded it to my Google Drive, so the students have the option to use Google Presentations or Microsoft PowerPoint to showcase their work. The template will contain all of the requirements for the rubric, and I will only have to look at one presentation, as opposed to several files for one student.

Since this is my first year implementing digital portfolios, I wanted to use an application that students are familiar with and comfortable using.  That is why I chose PowerPoint and Google Presentations.

I am optimistic that my students will be able to complete this task successfully and be proud of their digital portfolios!