How I use Schoology
My district has used Schoology for quite some time, far before distance learning ever existed. I’ve used it for the same amount of time because I really wanted to strengthen my students’ technology skills. Students would type their writing assignment or do an occasional math/ELA assignment that I made digital that day. We’ve only been a 1:1 Chromebook district for two years, so before that I was frequently checking out our grade level Chromebook cart, which later just lived in my classroom, so my students would be comfortable. In current months, I’ve depended my knowledge of Schoology more than ever before.
How I Organize My Course
During the normal school year, I would create a folder for each subject. I quickly realized that didn’t work for distance learning because my students were constantly going in and out of multiple folders per day.
In the Spring, I made one folder per week. Within each week's folder, would be a separate folder for each day of the week. This worked out for the thirteen weeks online, but I quickly learned in the fall that this system would not be as useful.
So after the first two or three weeks of this current school year, I quickly changed to day of the week folders and would just label what week it is. For example, all of “today’s” work can be found in Monday folder, Week 12 (November 2). I also added a “Past Weeks” folder within each day of the week folder to put all of our old work without deleting or unpublishing it. This way, the assignments still show up in the grade book. This allowed students to be less visually overwhelmed, but to also still have the ability to complete missing work from past weeks.
Finally, the newest feature to my Schoology course has been my buttons. This became so popular because Schoology’s customization is so limiting. I was able to use the buttons I got on TPT for my Google Site to use in my course for vital locations I want my students to access. I’ve recently updated it to show our daily schedule, because even after twelve weeks students can’t seem to remember, and my Bitmoji because it is fun!
How I Use Schoology
There are so many features within Schoology, but I definitely only utilize certain ones more often than others. I frequently use reminders, the Google assignment integration, and assessments.
The reminders are visible to students on the right of the screen so there should be no reason why students don’t know important dates. When published assignments have due dates, they will appear in the reminders. Also, students can directly click the assignment title and it will take them straight to it. I include student birthdays as well, which classmates love to comment on birthday wishes and help build classroom community. Finally, I include my office hours or small group times for students to refer to.
I use Google integration every single day. I create assignments in my Google Drive and then I can add it to our course for students to complete directly in Schoology. Similar to Google Classroom, the assignments make individual copies for each student. I’m able to also see students working on their assignments during our live class sessions or if they haven’t yet opened it. When students are struggling to use the toolbar, sometimes I can quickly add it to their document for them. I usually use Google Slides for about 99% of our assignments, but I also give my students Google Docs and Google Drawings too.
Assessments are my main way of knowing if students have met a specific standard. In the world of distance learning, standards are definitely graded in a different way. Especially since there’s no true way to tell if that was the students best work. There could be internet issues or integrity issues if someone else doing it for them. I use assessments for warm ups, quizzes, tests, or just comprehension checks. There are so many test options and it definitely depends on the subject for which ones I use the most. My most used question types are multiple choice, fill in the blank text, and image highlight. I use short answers and text highlights too, but it depends on what I want to ask my students.
Written by Co-Author Madalyn Bradburn