Review on Edmodo

Edmodo is an educational website that takes the ideas of a social network and refines them and makes it appropriate for a classroom. Using Edmodo, students and teachers can reach out to one another and connect by sharing ideas, problems, and helpful tips. A teacher can assign and grade work on Edmodo; students can get help from the entire class on Edmodo. It is safe environment. There is no bullying or inappropriate content, because the teacher can see everything that is posted on Edmodo. Also parents can join the class to bring a level of transparency that is difficult to achieve without technology. Edmodo is an incredibly flexible and powerful educational tool that can be adapted and used in just about any class in a variety of ways. All in all Edmodo is a great companion to just about any class.

             Before a student can create an Edmodo account, they will need a 6-digit group code from their teacher. Once they have their group code, they can visit http://Edmodo.com and select the ‘I’m a student’ button. From here they can enter the group code provided by their teacher, complete the registration form and select ‘Sign up’. Students are not required to enter an email address to create an Edmodo account.

           With your account, you can create groups and invite students and parents to joint. In the groups, you can share resources, photos and articles, which will be seen by your students in a newsfeed format. You can also send and receive private message and create folders, where students can upload assignments. All media shared with the group is automatically stored in a section called ‘My Library’.

            Over the past year, Edmodo has also released a ‘Messaging’ function to facilitate one-to-one and small-group communication between teachers, students, and parents. Messaging consolidates all school-related communication while protecting individuals’ personal addresses and phone numbers, ideal for parent-teacher communication. To obviate cyberbullying, Edmodo integrates strict safely controls for messaging and across all other platform communications.

           Use of Edmodo in a classroom is one of the many ways to infuse technology into teaching and learning. The Edmodo network enables teachers to share content, distribute quizzes, assignment, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents. Edmodo is very teacher-centric in their design and philosophy: students and teachers can only join Edmodo if invited to do so by a teacher. Teachers and students spend large amounts of time on the platform, both in and out of the classroom.

   Edmodo offers several benefits, including:

§  Unlimited storage so teachers won’t have to worry about clearing out space

§  Integration with Microsoft Office and Google Apps for education, so users won’t have to remember passwords for individual sites.

§  Global teacher collaboration for support, answers and ideas for topics, lessons and issues.

§  Anywhere, anytime access via dedicated mobile apps

§  Security and privacy tools such as private groups and the ability to track members’ activity.

§  Parental access to students’ homework, tests, grades and classroom announcement

§  Collaboration features for parents

I love the fact that Edmodo is constantly updating to make the site more powerful, easier to use and just better overall.