Edmodo

Review on Edmodo

Edmodo is the leading social learning platform, an educational technology company which offers a communication, collaboration and practice platform to K-12 schools and teachers. Edmodo launched at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year by Nic Borg and Jeff O’Hara, two Chicago-area School Technology Administrators. It has over 65 million users. The Edmodo network enables teachers to share content and manage communication with students, colleagues and specially with parents. The main goal of Edmodo is to introduce an innovative method to the teachers and students where they can stay connected outside the class. Basically, Edmodo is a safe social networking site.  The site allows teachers to easily create class groups where teacher and the students can post messages, discussion questions, assignments, quizzes, polls and much more.

To explore Edmodo features one need to open an account on Edmodo, it has different criteria to open an account like, one is for teacher access, one is for student access and one is for parents access. To create an Edmodo account one need to go to https://www.edmodo.com/ and choose account criteria. After that, enter the full name, email address, and other necessary information to activate the account by using email address. One can edit his or her profile and add one class. One of the key benefits of Edmodo is that every feature has been built with students’ safety in mind. It differs from other social networks, while uniquely fitting the needs of the education environment. It does not require private information from students. Students join Edmodo at the invitation of their teachers using a unique code the teacher generates within their Edmodo account. Once invited to join Edmodo, students can only access groups to which they have been invited by their teachers. Students in Edmodo can post messages to their teachers or to their entire Edmodo group, but students cannot send private messages to each other. Teachers maintain full control of their Edmodo groups and can delete posts, monitor all activity, review student posts before they go live, and even set individual students or groups of students to “read-only” access. On the other hand, The benefit of keeping parents connected is clear that they are informed of what teachers are teaching, they can reinforce the same concepts at home, which makes for stronger learning outcomes. Edmodo has long been a powerful tool for teachers who want to keep parents connected. Parents can follow class assignments, track grades, and receive messages regarding events and activities. They can follow along through our website or with its app.

Edmodo is very teacher-centric in their design and philosophy. Teacher needs to open a class or class group where the students can join by using teacher’s class code or teacher can invite the students to join the group through a mail. The students and parents can only join Edmodo classes when a teacher invited them to join. Only the enrolled students of a specific class group can see the posts or take tasks of that class and only teacher can change the status of privacy of class posts. Teachers have personal libraries that allow them to maintain a repository of digital learning materials they have collected and want to reference or use with their students. Teachers can use Edmodo’s communities as a content discovery tool and with one click—snap, new content appears in their library. Similarly, students have personal backpacks that allow them to manage the content they’ve created, collected or shared with their Edmodo groups. Teachers and students spend large amounts of time on the platform, both in and out of the classroom. This platform has a safe social environment and connection within the users. The users can collaborate, share digital content and educational applications, access homework, grades, class discussions, and notifications from any computer or mobile device.

It has four criteria at dashboard like Assignment, Quiz, Note and Poll. Assignments are created by teachers and distributed to their students using the assignment post feature. Teachers can title their assignments, identify a due date, associate a description or prompt, and include attachments from the web, computer or Edmodo library. When students log in, they can see the assignment in their stream and can view the embedded file or media. They can then turn in their completed assignment directly to their teacher. Teachers can track which students have turned in their assignments and natively grade or comment on student work allowing students to receive immediate feedback. Quiz features include the ability for teachers to create quizzes, edit and load previously created quizzes, provide a quiz description, set the time limit for a quiz, and preview a quiz before sending it to their students group or class group. It supports five question types: multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, matching, and short answer. When the student submits the quiz, the teacher is notified. The questions are automatically scored except the short questions. To grade the short questions teacher needs to check the answers thoroughly. The grades are populated into the teacher’s Edmodo grade book. In the Notes session teacher can post any task or instructions. And in Poll session, post is like gathering opinion through some questions with close ended answers.

This site is very easy to use. Students, Teachers, Parents, Administrators can learn to use the tool in a short period of time. One can able to access the tool using various devices, with all browser types, from anywhere, anytime, and anyplace. It is very compatible with multiple devices and equipment. Since users will not all have the same devices or equipment, it is important that the tool is flexible enough to be used with a variety of devices or equipment like android app or iPhone app. On the other hand, Teachers can create connections with other students from different schools, states, or cultures. Teachers can differentiate instruction by creating subgroups of students Students can upload homework assignments, take quizzes, polls and receive grades and feedback and suggestions from teachers. Parents can be involved by viewing their child's work and grades, and keep in touch with teachers Provides a method for sharing documents and digital media online Great tool for use with mobile devices and for mobile learning. The tool works with all browser types.

This site has some limitations. For its privacy issues, sometimes new users face difficulties to create an account. On the other hand there is no face to face interaction which can lead to feelings of isolation. When it comes to post any task and edit, there is no scope to edit the posted task. One may not be able to edit the post if an user want to change the post only delete option is available. These are the some limitations of this site.

So, Edmodo is a social learning network and discussion platform where teachers and students can interact and collaborate online. The web-based application is available for teachers, students, parents and administrators. The application is free and easy to use and there is no installation setup involved. 

Here is the link of this site: https://www.edmodo.com/