Students Using Edmodo

     The number one reason the students liked using Edmodo to publish their writing is what I expected it to be. They liked sharing their stories with us, Fairmont State students, and with their fellow classmates. They also liked getting feedback or as one student wrote, "it is fun having FSU students add to the story." Their favorite writing activity seemed to be the collaborative writing project. I remember when I was young and I thought it was so exciting to speak with older girls, so I thought it was really cute when one student wrote "I loved it because we got to talk to older people."
     I learned a lot through these collaborative projects. The main thing I learned and will always make myself remember is that you have to switch things up to keep students motivated to learn and do well on their work. This group of students seemed excited and interested while doing the projects. On Skype, I remember their teacher mentioning that they didn't complain once about having to write. Using the internet, collaboration, or both is a great way to switch things up.
     I would definitely incorporate a collaborative project using a microblogging tool into lessons for my students. I am a third grade teacher and there are many other elementary schools nearby where I know teachers. I talk to a third grade teacher at one of these elementary schools and ask her if she would want to collaborate. We discuss what our upcoming lessons are, and we are both going to be teaching about writing with descriptive words. We create a project where both of our classes will get on a microblogging site and write a story with as many descriptive words as they can think of, and which of course make sense. The next day each class will look at the other classes' stories. They look to see where more descriptive words can be inserted, and if they want to, add on a couple more sentences. They write these as a comment to the other student. Similar to our collaborative project, the students can get new ideas and be creative.