Using Schoology for Instruction

Video Transcription

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you are having a wonderful day today. Today, we're going to be learning about another learning management tool, Schoology and how you can use that for various elements of instruction. We're going to look at its features as well as its major strengths and some challenges.

For today's lesson, I've chosen a quote by Benjamin Franklin which states, "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." By the time you are done with the lesson today, you will be able to describe the features of Schoology that you can use to help develop instruction.

So now let's take a look at Schoology and all of its features. First it's important for you to know what Schoology is. Schoology is a cloud-based learning management systems that offers an element of functionality to the work that you're doing in the classroom, both in K-12 classrooms as well as for many higher education users. It tends to have a basic package that's free to teachers to use and then some additional elements that can be added on for purchase later on.

Some of the major features of Schoology include elements of personalization. You can personalize a home page, so that all of the academic information is in one place. Students can add course profiles, so that there is flexible course creation with many different learning tools. Teachers can help make sure that their courses are specific to what they want to offer as well. You also have the ability to create assignments and events, various tests and quizzes, so that you can really meet the needs of assessment for your students in your class.

There's also an exceptional amount of extended file support, meaning that Schoology can support many files, so that the teacher can help use third party content without many formatting problems. Meaning that if you find a PDF that you really want to use or a video that you want to show, Schoology really helps you to be able to integrate those into your home page. Also, there's the ability to personalize online grade books and attendance and customize those grading options, so that you're really able to help grade in the way that you, as a teacher see is most important.

Also, Schoology helps add a ton of flexibility. There are opportunities for you to have flexible instruction tools, meaning that you can really individualize that instruction to each specific student or help group students in various learning elements, so that you are meeting the needs of those groupings of students-- helping to group students may be where they are within a particular lesson or proficiency for a particular standard.

There's also homework submission areas, meaning that students have the flexibility to post their homework online in certain places. That allows students to really take the learning outside of the classroom if that works in your learning environment and meets your students needs.

Also, there are mobile apps available for Android and Kindle Fire as well as iOS, iPhones, all of that such, so that students can access Schoology from various devices. You can access Schoology from various devices, helping to really open up those lines for you and keep that learning available active and flexible.

Schoology is also really wonderful at helping to increase that communication, something that we can't get enough of in education these days. There is the opportunity for calendars to be included, especially a color coded format so that you can help manage those various course events. For those visual learners, this is something that can be really helpful.

There's also the ability for you to apply course analytics, meaning that you can track students usage so that you're able to communicate through those students whether or not they are meeting the expectations that you have set out in terms of their use of the various elements. Also, there's messaging that allows for you to message and share resources with your students. It allows peers to share with other students as well, and email and text notification capabilities so that kids can stay up to date and help with those difficult reminders.

There are discussion boards that are possible and group work spaces that allow for students to thread in discussions so that they can accommodate a wide range of files or attachments to keep that discussion valid and interesting and expansive. As well as those group workspaces that allow for collaboration on various learning elements.

Finally, there is a huge opportunity for student growth and professional development. Students have badges that they can earn for motivational purposes. Elements can be applied to standards and outcome alignment for various content areas and for assessments, helping keep you as a teacher honest and make sure that you are meeting those standards as well as what's called the application marketplace.

This is a Schoology app center that gives educators access to various instructional and management apps to keep you on top of what you're doing, as well as various professional networks allowing you to collaborate and share resources with other teachers so that you don't feel like you are on that education island.

Next, let's go ahead and look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of Schoology. One wonderful strength of using Schoology is that it has really good interface with apps. Things such as remind101 and other elements that really help to encourage both students and teachers to stay on top of what it is that you're doing.

There is a robust assessment system, meaning that you are able to assess your students knowledge in a number of different ways, helping to lead you to really keep track of where your students are in terms of their proficiency with certain standards as well as helping them to really stay honest and active with the work that they are doing in your course.

Finally, it's mobile device friendly. This is exceptionally important these days as students always have their hand glued to some sort of mobile device. This helps to keep your class and the coursework relevant and easily accessible to those students.

However, there are some challenges in using Schoology. Although there are many, many, many, many different elements available and it can be flexible, there tends to be a very limited customizability, meaning that it's difficult for you to really change up or edit the system itself. So you really have to be able to buy into everything that Schoology can offer you and not need to really adjust it much to meet your needs.

Also, Schoology is cloud-based. So that means that it might disappear. It's possible that elements that are cloud-based systems don't always stay around long enough, especially if there aren't people that are keeping them updated, really focusing in on that community to keep it valid.

So you just need to make sure that with cloud-based systems, that you're always on top of whatever information you put out there, that you have it backed up, and that you have a plan for if Schoology is no longer available. I would highly encourage you to go ahead and check it out. It is open and available for you to take a look at. So go and see for yourself if it's something that you think you might be interested in.

Now that we've reached the end of the lesson, you should be able to describe the features for Schoology that you can use to help develop instruction. Before we end today, I'd like to take just a moment for reflection. Now that you've learned about all of the elements involved in using Schoology for instruction, what do you think would be the first step that you would take to implement Schoology into your learning environment? Feel free to pause the video for a moment as you think about your answer to this question.

Now to dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the Additional Resources section associated with this video. That's where you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply this course material. Have a great day.