Edmodo (discontinued) vs. Schoolmint Hero

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

I would highly recommend this as long as you are able to get 90% or more buy-in. However, if there is not a MAJORITY buy-in I don't feel it will be successful. My colleagues and I found that classroom management was much improved in the classrooms of us who were sold on using it and used it with fidelity, adding extra intensives because of infidelity in other classrooms. It became obvious to the administration that the lack of buy-in was destroying the program outcome.

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

• Tracking tardy behavior quickly across settings.
• Tracking positive behaviors.
• Intentionally rewarding positive behaviors immediately for all students.
• Quickly alerting alarming behaviors.
• Allowing for all students to be successful throughout the day across all settings.
• Allows all staff to reward all students for exhibiting positive behaviors.

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

• Students need to have direct online access to picking their prizes based on the points they've earned. It will give more focus on doing what's right.
• Teachers need to have the ability to create their own positive rewards in the system based on their subject area.
• Is there a way to have the system remember your username so you don't have to type it out every time you sign in?

Incentivized

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 a great product

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.

again. for the day to day usage, adding points is a bit of a chore but I keep doing it because the students respond

Incentivized

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

Someone is always available. I like being able to call, chat, or email as needed. There are also a lot of tutorials and webinars provided. Hero does a good job of providing tools for onboarding new users and customers as well. It is easy to find whatever information you are looking for.

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

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

We have used Class Dojo and Progress Book. Hero is great for discipline specifically. We also have e-school, but it does not allow the level of detail and follow up that Hero has. Before Hero, we had a really ineffective system for tracking student discipline, and it was hard to be consistent.

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

• Definitely worth the money. The kids are happy, they're using the program as often as they can, and they appreciate the opportunity to be rewarded for their good behavior.
• We've been able to sustain a store, and that's super awesome. I know we wouldn't be able to without the help of Hero and the ways in which we keep the hype.
• I think I need more help with teacher adoption. We have a lot of initiatives at our school, so we're trying to take on a little more than we can chew at this point. We're getting there though!