Edmodo

In today’s 21st century classroom, it is imperative that students are given the opportunities to interact with technology. Edmodo is a very useful educational platform to use in the classroom and encourages students to improve their digital literacy at school. Edmodo boasts a design that is very familiar to Facebook, something that welcomes to students and encourages student interaction as Edmodo mimics something that many of them interact with on a daily basis. However, it is important to make it clear to students that although Edmodo’s set up is similar-looking to Facebook, it is in fact very different and should be used for educational purposes only. Edmodo is a nice “closed garden” for students. Students are only able to access their “class” if they are given a log-in by a teacher. This is nice and puts parents at ease that their children’s work is protected by Edmodo’s log-in feature. Parents do have the ability to access Edmodo groups as well. They can be given a password from a child’s teacher to log-in at access that child’s class. While this is a nice feature, many schools have district websites for teachers or teams of teachers. Having another log-in for many parents may not be ideal. Edmodo’s capabilities are wide-ranging. This website allows teachers the ability to post assignments, quizzes, documents, videos, links, calendars, formative assessments, etc. Students also have access to a virtual “backpack” which allows them to upload documents that they can access anywhere with internet access. Students and teachers can also interact with each other by sending messages to one another. This feature opens up the doors of virtual communication and is a good way to teach students how to act responsibly when interacting with one another online. Edmodo also has a wide-variety of apps available in its store to enhance student’s Edmodo experience. The biggest downfall with Edmodo in my experience is the fact that a document cannot be simultaneously edited by a student and teacher. If a student is submitting an assignment they must save it and upload it to Edmodo. Then, the teacher must open it from Edmodo, make changes, save it, and then upload it back to Edmodo. With an online environment like Google Drive, students and teacher have the capability to edit documents simultaneously and have them saved automatically on the Google Drive. Overall, I would give Edmodo a very favorable rating. For what it does, it does well, and is ideal for an elementary/middle school classroom. At a higher grade level a teacher may want to supplement Edmodo with a more advanced online learning environment.