I need to give so much thanks to my daughter allowing me to use her Edsby account to share with you what it looks like from a student view even with her indiscretions of overdue assignments she was happy to share (even if it makes my eyes twitch…how does a teachers kid have overdue assignments?).
As a teacher and a parent we have the brain capacities to navigate more complex websites, older students can also complete with such tasks. However, you are going to notice that so much of the parent view is exactly identical to the student view but the students get a few more features then the parents. This platform is visually the exact same from kindergarten to grade 12; this is a vast difference in cognitive abilities and what can be accomplished. If there is one big recommendation or advice that I have to give Edsby it is this: You need to have different student views separating the early elementary from the upper grades.
There is a serious disconnect and not a real great understanding of what students levels of abilities are. The munchkins in grade one still do not know their letters let alone know how to log onto computers using their names and if they do it takes them way too long to get on and then they miss out on the super fun activities.
Watch my video below and see how students can navigate through the student view and how it can be used very similar to google classroom when it comes to handing in assignments or viewing assignments teachers have given you!
I wish I could have done a video to show you this side of things but due to privacy I cannot do it that way so please bear with my pictures as I try to give you a good picture. If you have not done so please check out the parent exploration first and watch the video, it will help you understand things a bit more. This post will focus on the meat and potatoes of the teacher section; well what I use it for. If I taught higher grade levels I would use other features Edsby offers which I will showcase in Part 2.
Main Screen
Similar to the parent page you are going to notice a lot of similarities in its appearance with minor additions. As a teacher I am part of the HTTA group where as a parent there was none at this time, also I have a bit more information on the right under Sacred Heart.
Messaging Area:
This feature allows parents and students to message me or vise versa in a secure environment and was a place for where our administration assistant set up our conferencing manager. Overall I have not had many parents use this function.
Attendance Feature:
Exploring A Class: The Main Page of a Subject
Gradebook Features: Assessing & Inputting Marks & Creating Your Marks
Options for Status Flags
Overall inputting marks is an easy task at this stage and Edsby offers a drag option so you can quickly input marks if all your students had the same mark; I go back and then change the select few who score higher or lower. I also really like the share feature; when I am ready to share I can. We all know that sometimes stuff comes in slowly or we only are able to mark a few during our prep so this allows us to have a bit more control. The one feature that needs improvement in this area and that is a big deal to me would be when I include other curriculum outcomes and I have to provide a mark it does not appear in the other gradebook and I feel that it should appear there as well. Example: Students do a social presentation in class; I go to the social gradebook, create the assignment, include the social outcome along with the ELA outcomes for creating a poster and also the speaking pieces, it will not appear in the ELA gradebook. I feel it should be posted there as well without me having to do anymore work.
Creating/Adding Assessment:
First you need to decide what kind of assessment you are going to be adding:
There are other options for teachers here such as including instructions and files for students or for themselves as the teacher but I do not use this feature.
The Learning Story- Students Online Portfolios
This is a big piece to Edsby and has many different ways to access and upload information; as amazing as it is, it doesn’t come without its struggles or uphill battles from a teachers perspective. One big thing to keep in mind when it comes to students learning stories is teachers in my division have a minimum of what they are required to post and some teachers do just that, while others do a lot more so there can be some struggles just with that online presence and parent expectations.
Some of my struggles:
There are so many different ways to get to the same place, it becomes difficult to remember how to get somewhere; streamlining my time
The teacher app on the iPads is not reliable, glitches, kicks you out, takes a long time to load
There is no option to “Select All” students when posting, you have to select each individual student
When creating a post for everyone I cannot create it and then go add a evidence to each one’s post, I have to either do one of two things, 1. create individual posts (which is not time efficient) or 2. Go into each child’s learning story click on the large post I made and then add a reply and upload individual pictures or documents that way and then make an additional comment because you cannot leave a picture or document without it. There is much work that needs to be done here to make this easier for teachers and much less time consuming!
The student QR codes can be helpful but again it comes with its issues.
It takes a lot of my time to upload things onto Edsby and I am one of those teachers who uploads lots but my frustration lies with the amount of work it takes when I know many parents do not even go on it, and I can tell specifically what parents have not even accepted the invitation from 2 years ago or have not checked it in months.
Benefits of the Learning Story:
Captures learning throughout the year, and is cumulative from previous years.
Teachers can share what is going on in the classroom and share student successes
Upload videos, audio, documents (computer or from google and onedrive) , add links, and record videos
Students can upload their own work once I have created the post
Share Option: when I am ready to share with parents and students I can
Add outcomes and create custom tags for easy organizing
Write observations of evidence
Creating Evidence
Student went in and uploaded their work and then they can add in their reflection pieces. I then also have the ability to comment on their post at any time.
There is a lot more to the basics of adding to their learning story but those were the meat and potatoes of it and it makes it more difficult to share, especially with respecting students privacy, a video would have been much much easier!
Prior the most recent update to have the best access your child’s learning features on Edsby you needed a computer. Which was a huge problem for many clientele involved and created a significant problem for families. It became who had access to a computer and could see their child’s Edsby accounts and who had a limited version because they only had access to looking at it on a phone. It created a divide that was highly unfair and unrealistic for the creators to think people had both a computer and a phone at their immediate disposal regardless of economic status and created disinterest with parents engaging with the platform. Since the update I am much happier with the platform both online and on my iPhone. Not only can I access similar things but the ease of use on the computer and on the phone has improved sustainably. Check out my video below for a view from a parents perspective!
I did not have a lot of positive comments to say about Edsby as a parent when it first was introduced to our division. There were many, many glitches, the overall ease of use was not user friendly and the layout was not ideal. More importantly there was information that I could only access if I had a computer and it was some of the more important information that a parent should have ease of access too. Lucky for me I work at a school where I have access to a computer and I am taking my Masters so I purchased a Surface Pro for my own use; prior to taking my master I did not have a home computer; I didn’t need one, my phone did all I needed. It was a huge disadvantage for parents who did not own a computer and I think completely unfair of Edsby and our division to assume anything differently.
The new and improved app:
It is more visually appealing and the ease of use has improved tenfold. Similar to the video posted of accessing Edsby through the computer you will see similar pictures below:
Parents can easily book an interview, plan an absence or log an absence, can easily look at their children’s learning stories, bounce between different children’s edsby accounts, view multiple pictures in one post with more ease, comment on children’s posts on the learning story, and stay up to date with children’s marks and overdue assignments! Having access to the overdue and marks at any given time has been a game changer for me as a parent and keeping on top of my daughter who has taken on her dad’s traits of procrastination!
Edsby is an educational platform that is a single place for educators, parents, and stakeholders to gather, provide, and manage the many diverse needs required for schools that is student learning focused.
Training a dog takes patience and a ton of work. My husband brought home this handsome boy at 6-7 months old and I have been hard at work with him since. I was nervous as all beans when it came to him coming when called and not running away in public. Here is his success so far with that.
I am beginning to use certain features on TikTok with more ease now, I feel I have the text feature understood, searching and adding a song, and uploading videos and pictures.
Just seen this possibly new feature on TikTok using a QR code so I thought I would play with this. Let me know if it works. Thanks for tuning in to my exploration!
I have been busy working on and thinking about the actual final product lately. I was able to learn how to create sub tabs or categories on my blog and then sub sub categories under my major project. I did this because I needed to have more organization but to also to process what kind of information I want to be included. Some of the sub categories do not have anything in them yet but will as I continue to grow my project. I have re-learned that I need some patience when working with technology and at times it is just not as easy as I want it to be. I struggled with wordpress this week allowing me to upload my TikTok videos, then all of a sudden one upload worked but the others did and would not so I left them in link format. Check out My Exploration for my newest videos: adding effects, text, combining videos, adding sound. I am so amature at it that I just have to laugh at myself! Something else that I have been busy doing is looking at Common Sense Media and realizing that it has ratings for both Edsby and TikTok along with a parent guide, these I also included in my project, I felt they offered a lot of great information. My next goal is going to be looking at the privacy policies and terms of use and then getting an summed up version posted under those categories.
I have done more in TikTok then I have in Edsby because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to tackle it, but I think I have a plan now which includes exploring the app from a parent perspective and as a teacher, I wanted to from the student perspective also but I do not know if I will have enough time to do that but it is in the back of my mind.
Below is video I recorded showing my new tabs I created. I was so excited that I accomplished this (even if its a beginner thing). I also was pumped that I was able to create this video…all the learning! However I am still having issues now uploading just videos (will I ever win? will it ever be just as easy as I want it to be?) So now I am hoping that you can all click on the link and be able to open it up; I was going to put it on TikTok and upload that way but then it’s public and I just didn’t want that.
I was given a task by The Strong Studio to complete a week challenge with creating a video about the most impactful thing I learned from participating in a Top Droppers Challenge. I chose to use TikTok to create the video because it fit so well with my final project. Here are some of my reflections on this video: there was a lot of frustration with having to go back and redo the video because I kept making mistakes, or waiting till words came back around so I could set the text duration and I couldn’t get my timing perfect on the end to stay a bit longer so a person could read the last little bit without having to pause. My daughter offered a piece of advice afterwards to keep my text font the same so it would be easier to read; I agree with her 100% but I also wanted to use this opportunity to play with fonts specifically for this class. Overall I had a blast creating this longer video but it took A LOT of time (almost 2 hours in just putting it together not actually recording), A LOT of editing and clipping videos to make them shorter, and not to mention trying to record myself in the middle of a trainer led workout where I was trying to get a good workout in was something else all together, etc. I was surprised at the effort that needed to go into my very amature creation and I have a lot more appreciation for the people who create very flawless (to me) looking TikTok videos, and man the tools they must have to get everything perfect!
This TikTok was created with a lot of support from my daughter! Check on the link below!
Yep that’s me, I am the dummy!! I decided to do some beginners “research” on how to use TikTok aside from enlisting my daughter to help and offer feedback on my videos; she has been a great resource to have but sometimes she is not interested in helping me so I turn to Youtube. Although something suspicious may be going on here….she doesn’t have TikTok yet so this makes me wonder how she knows all the things… (I need to investigate that later). Youtube is so helpful sometimes and this is one of those times. I watched this video below and then I put it into practice, the focus is going to be on sound and effects; although I have played with it before in other videos, this is where I finally understood what I was doing and not necessarily going in blind.
Common Sense has provided a privacy evaluation on TikTok where it evaluates the safety, privacy, security, and compliance of the platform. TikTok is labelled as “warning” with 60% and does not meet their recommendations for privacy and security practices. It goes into more depth around data collection, data sharing, data security and rights, data sold, ads & tracking, parental consent, and school purpose.
Common Sense is once again proving how valuable of a tool it can offer to both educators and this time parents. Common Sense has put together a comprehensive guide to navigating and understanding the app. There review includes but not limited to a description of TikTok, how safe it is, recommended ages and appropriateness for children, how to make videos private, delete videos, parental controls (this was relieving to see), TikTok security, and other topics.
