I have to say that Edmodo helps a lot with managing all the different stuff students do, because students can turn in a link to whatever tool they used to help them do the learning or they used to provide evidence of learning. And I only need to look in one spot--the assignment I created in Edmodo where students are turning it in. This is nice for assignments where they make Prezis or Voicethreads, because you can play them right from Edmodo without ever going to an external site. I use this Edmodo feature when students are presenting in class--I actually throw the screen you see below up on to the big screen in the front of the room, and we play everyone's presentations from Edmodo. This means no logging in for each person before each presentation and wasting valuable time.
Juno allows me to see who has completed activities and progress checks, or, in the case of activities, how far along they are in their completion.
Sometimes I do go through what students have turned in through these tools and score assignments (I always do this for assessments in Juno), giving formative feedback along the way. Not always though. For me, Edmodo & Juno are primarily used to keep track of the "who did what and how much" for every student--the stuff they do during class. I think keeping track of what the "what have I actually learned and how well did I learn it" is much more important. But I don't always keep track of this learning using points, unless it's time for me to enter points in the gradebook. I don't feel the need to quantitatively micromanage my kids, giving out numbers for everything because that's the way teaching has been done--turning students into a pile of numbers by assigning them numbers for every single thing they do in class. (You don't know how hard I work to get students to realize that just because I assigned it doesn't mean I want them to turn it in so I can give them points for it; I want them to do it for learning. When I say this to students at the start of the year, I get a lot of puzzled looks that frustrate and sadden me at the same time.) Points data is useful sometimes, but I don't always feel the need to quantify and objectify something (human learning capability) that is by nature qualitative and subjective. And I definitely don't feel the need to have students trade every single assignment in for meaningless points.
(Can you tell I hate points and wish I didn't have to use them? Sorry about that little rant-in-a-paragraph above, but it had to escape. I'll save the rest of it for another post.)
So what do I do instead? I have this crazy thing that I do sometimes during class where I walk around and look at student work while they're working on it. I make them show me what they're doing, question them about what they're learning, and sometimes make notes on post-its (an idea I stole from Rick Wormeli during one of his amazing workshops) which I slap on my desk to be summarized in an Evernote notebook later on that I keep for each class period. Sometimes I will not allow students to leave the room until they have shown me what they have done and have talked with them about how they are progressing on the I can statements for the unit--an informal and verbal exit slip. This way, I eliminate a lot of time I would spend outside of class looking at student work by actually examining it in class. Plus, by doing this during class time, I have the added bonus of being able to give immediate feedback to the student while he/she is right in front of me. I also find this helps me build some pretty strong relationships with students, and they see that I am out to help them, not punish them with points all the time. But the key here is that I can see where students are in the learning without having to score every single piece of student work.
But what I really want them to see is that what they're working towards is learning, and that the reason they're doing the activities is to help them progress in their learning--that the point of my assignments is not points in my gradebook.
But I do have to quantify their learning at some point, unfortunately. I do this by scoring their final progress checks and PBL presentations; however, I don't think I should have all the scoring fun all the time. I think students should be involved, since it's their learning, not mine. So I have students fill out this Google spreadsheet that I make (time required: 3 minutes tops because of a wonderful invention called "Copy/Paste" and the "Make a Copy" function in Google Docs) and put out to them either in Edmodo or on my class website. At intervals during the unit, I have them fill it out, reflecting on how their understanding has changed. They also provide links to the evidence that they know it--the links to the learning activities they completed using web tools. They can also write in what they know, if they feel they need to add a written component to their evidence. Students seem to like this, especially since this helps them organize what evidence they will eventually need to put on their ePortfolios at the end of each semester. I know I like it, because it promotes metacognition and teaches students to know how well they know something.
Students do turn in the links to their spreadsheets via Edmodo; however, I usually only look at them when I am scoring their final progress checks for the unit to see if what I think about their learning and what they think about their learning "matches up." If it doesn't, I write a comment in their spreadsheet. One thing I've learned about having students track their learning this way is that, when you start doing this, what you think about their progress and what they think about their progress varies greatly. However, as they get more and more skilled at knowing what they don't know and how to fix it, you'll see that gap slowly narrow over time.
So, how do I keep track of all the stuff they do to learn and the learning itself? Very carefully, using class time to formatively assess learning and provide feedback--and by having students keep track of their own learning along the way. Have any other great ways you use to keep track of it all? Please feel free to share.