Blackboard Learn by Anthology vs. Edmodo (discontinued)

A school with a well-established technology imprint with their students (for example, ours is a BYOB school where every student has their own laptop and must bring it to school every day and where over 99% of our families have reliable broadband at home) is a reasonable scenario for using The arrogance and intransigence of the sales force is quite disconcerting… They are no longer the only game in town and don't yet realize it. Less well-off schools/families may find it a challenge if students must be on campus or at a public library in order to use the technology. Obviously, during the pandemic, this became problematic for some districts.

Incentivized

I find Edmodo to be especially suited to secondary school. It is a great way to accommodate the busy schedules of teens who are often working their first jobs or attending sports and have limited time for homework, but can benefit from looking up assignments or receiving reminders on their phones. It also prepares them for college in that it resembles many collegiate LMS systems

Incentivized

• Provides HTML quality course content that is easily retrievable and viewable.
• Provides multiple methods of communication: email, threaded discussions, real-time "live" online discussions, as well as grade portal.
• Allows facilitators multiple methods of grading or providing feedback: threaded discussions, rubric scoring, personal comments, inline viewer, or download/upload attachments.

Incentivized

• Edmodo is an excellent communication tool. Its Facebook style of posts makes it a familiar environment for teachers to communicate what's happening in class with both students and parents.
• Edmodo's ability to submit and grade assignments online is easy to use and very similar to some other popular LMS platforms. Assignment collection is straightforward and the digital grading tools are simple and effective.
• Edmodo makes it extremely easy to get both students and parents into the the LMS system. Edmodo also has an easy to use subgrouping feature as well, allowing teachers to divide individual classrooms into smaller groups for particular assignments.
• Edmodo's online testing feature is fairly easy to use. I have found this a useful feature for both informal and formal assessment of students.
• Edmodo's polling feature is simple and effective. There are many uses for polling both in and out of the classroom.
• Edmodo's messaging feature is a nice way to communicate between student and teacher or parent and teacher.
• Edmodo's app (Android or iOS), although not as feature rich as the website, works well with many of the features already listed above.
• Edmodo has a very nice Calendar feature, allowing the teacher to easily post important information and/or due dates of assignments.
• Edmodo makes it easy to share folders, either with the public or with your classes.
• Edmodo, like many other popular LMS platforms, integrates nicely with Google Drive.
• Edmodo has a great many community forums. This really is an amazing feature of their LMS. It is so very easy to connect with other teachers and bounce ideas off of each other.

Incentivized

• Although the current graphic user interface is easy to use, it can be improved with larger fonts, dynamic menus, and attractive graphics.
• The system does not include a module to pay the school fee.
• The roster tab lacks detailed information about students.

Incentivized

• Google Classroom is more stream lined, offers students the same functions as Edmodo, and is preferred among majority of students.
• Students are often locked out of their classrooms after 14 days, forget passwords, and have trouble finding class folders.
• Edmodo's platform has been relatively unchanged for the past several years and students seem to want to try newer applications and technologies.

Incentivized

There are several aspects of Desire2Learn that outweigh the benefits of using Blackboard. I find that the Desire2Learn system is a bit more user friendly and looks more up-to-date. However, the decision to renew systems is not up to me because the entire University uses the same system. Regardless, I think I would choose Desire2Learn over Blackboard because of its improved user interface.

Edmodo is a LEARNING tool. Not "one more thing" I have to use or integrate. It was my one stop shop for everything for my classes. More importantly, I was able to watch my students grow. My students who were timid, and quiet, became my discussion leaders. Students who didn't do their homework, never missed an assignment once I started doing "e-tickets" and discussion groups. Everyone felt they had a voice, which made our classroom community that much stronger.

It is very usable for both faculty and students. The interface is pretty intuitive and most students can use it without a lot of additional training. Faculty do need some training to effectively use the interface, but they usually get it pretty quickly. We have had to create some additional programming to give faculty a way to delve deeper into the content.

If used for its intended purpose, Edmodo is a great service. It's free, meaning teachers can actually afford it. Plus, it offers a lot of tools that make communicating with students and parents simple and painless, in addition to allowing basic assignments and quizzes. It's totally easy to learn, making it less intimidating to teachers who don't have a lot of time and who may not be completely comfortable with technology.

Itʻs a good platform for certain things such as tests. Blackboard may not be the most user friendly but there is always room for improvement in any website, business, etc. When used with other platforms such as Google Classroom, Blackboard can be more effective, but when used by itself I feel it is not as impactful from a student perspective.

If there is an issue, concern, suggestion, or question, Edmodo support is helpful and willing to listen. Many Edmodians are former teachers and have a sense of how classrooms work. This is crucial when building a platform to use in education. Edmodo does an excellent job of staying connected and collaborating with teachers.

Incentivized

Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.

Incentivized

Plan a little extra time to let them play with the platform with fun assignments. This made them comfortable submitting work, finding items, communicating with me or each other

Blackboard is the all around better fit for our intuition. It provides the "bells and whistles" we require in having a diverse faculty and flexibility in course delivery. The "bells and whistles" aren't cheap, but we have found that budgeting for this large expense has been more than worth it for us.

Incentivized

When I first decide to think about changing our teaching method from traditionary to modern, online method, Google Classroom seems to the best one, because it is from Google, and everyone knows Google is the best, I lost so much time to receive the access for Google Classroom. So I researched about other online classroom platforms and when I found Edmodo, I gave it a try. And I can say that now, it's a good experience and I love It.

Incentivized

• It has answered all my needs for distance learning and met most of the objectives
• The only negative I can think of is not having access to the past course material and not being able to download the lectures
• Another positive is the zoom integration feature

Incentivized

• Definitely better customer service! Once the parents figured out the tool and students were proficient with it. It was an excellent way to communicate student's strengths and weaknesses in their learning.
• Increased employee efficiency. Especially since teachers can share assignments easily too. And, as I've referred to many times, the grading feature is a huge time saver!
• A negative impact is we have had some cyberbulling. But, used the blocking features and handled it with face-to-face interaction with the students in question and their families.

Incentivized