
The Process
The process setting up for this inquiry project has been year-long. To prepare students for the challenging work of not only a book club conversation, but navigating a social space to facilitate this conversation, I knew I had my work cut out for me.
Timeline of Preparation:
When it came time to start looking for a social networking space that would support this type of work, I wanted to look around. I was very familiar with Moodle, a Course Management Site, and the blogging site KidBlog I used previously, but recently I was exploring Edmodo. Edmodo is becoming more popular in schools in my area, and I was very taken with the ease of setup. The classroom management dashboard was fantastic! I was even more excited about the built-in features for setting up small groups and giving them spaces in which they can have a conversation.
Of course, everything looked great “on paper,” but I wanted to see how it held up while being used by real world third graders.