Schoology provides me with a central location to monitor and teach 400 students.

Submitted 6 years ago
Stephen R.
Stephen R.
Ramtown Elementary School
Howell NJ, US
My Rating
Pedagogy
Supports

My Take

If a school has a 1:1 technology rollout, they should sign up for Schoology right away. Prior to having Schoology, we faced difficulties with the communication between students and teachers. Now that we can easily exchange documents between computers, it has brought our school to the next level of technology integration.
In addition to the students, the faculty has formed groups which allow us to have a PLN and share resources instead of running to the copies or getting lost in an email folder.
My minor constructive critique of the company is that for gamification matters, I wish that if a kid took a quiz and passed "with at least XX score" they received a badge automatically. At this time, you must provide the badge to the student manually. The only critique would be the testing system. It is great, however, I wish there was a feature where when you printed a completed test, it would show Student A's answers on the test. As of now, it is just on an excel spreadsheet. At conferences, it would help if a parent requested to see a print out of the students test.
These are two minor critiques that would be great to have, but I wouldn't think twice about not joining Schoology. Schoology is the best thing to happen since we became a 1:1 technology district. Students and staff give it an A+

How I Use It

As a computer teacher in a grade 3-5 school, I needed a way for students to submit lessons to me. Having a computer for every student, the option was either air dropping or using a flash drive on each students computer. I have 389 students to teach. Units range from Microsoft Word to iMovie presentations. Schoology allows students to work at their own pace and submit work to me. I use Schoology as a modified flipped learning. For students, I have them watch a video embedding into the assignment on how to complete the work for the day. This especially helps the special education students as they get the 1 on 1 training that they need. If students finish early, they have an assignment to begin. Students are never left wondering what to do next.