The year of Edmodo

Edmodo continues to upgrade and improve itself periodically and it continues to impress me and my students and has, almost single handedly, helped me achieve last year’s objective of improving communication with my students

Posted by José Picardo on August 14, 2009

Sharing ideas and resources among the teachers in my staff room isn’t as good as it could be, I’ll be honest, but it does happen. Some teachers, like me, also share ideas and resources online, using forums or Twitter, for example.

However, we all know from experience that, often, the solution to a problem comes from looking at it from a completely different perspective and that going round the same problem in circles achieves no purpose.

With this in mind, having often wondered what would happen if, instead of asking fellow teachers for ideas and resources, we asked our pupils how they would like to be taught, I decided that I should stop wondering and ask them what they thought of using Edmodo for the first time this year. Above is what they had to say.

Edmodo, a micro-blogging platform for teachers and students, is often described as “what Twitter would be like if it had been designed by a teacher”. I think there is more to it than that, I think Edmodo, with its clean design and its spot-on educational oriented functionality, is what Twitter would be like if it had been designed by students for students.

Edmodo continues to upgrade and improve itself periodically (now in version 3.0 and with an iPhone/iPod Touch app in the pipeline) and it continues to impress me and my students and has, almost single handedly, helped me achieve last year’s objective of improving communication with my students.

Its success has been such that I am left wondering, do we need an institutional VLE at all when we can use tools or combinations of tools like Edmodo to provide my students with personalised web-based teaching and learning opportunities?

What do you think? Your thoughts are, as ever, very welcome.

José Picardo

José is Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Nottingham High School, a secondary school in England, and is interested in the way technology can be used to enhance and transform teaching and learning. José has been curating Box of Tricks since 2007 and holds a MA in ICT and Education.

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  • http://lifefeast.blogspot.com/ anamaria

    Hello Jose,

    I follow your blog regularly and as I can see we both like using Edmodo. I’ve created an Edmodo group where EDL teachers share lessons they create over the weekend . We also share articles and start conversations. Last semester I used an edmodo group with some sts in order to hand in written HW. My sts were a bit resistant to having to use a computer to communicate w/ me, most of them only associate computers w/ pleasure (orkut and msn) but not learning. However, I was glad to observe some of them used it to ask me questions / help .But I haven’t given up, I believe Edmodo is a wonderful tool for teachers to improve communication. Wonderful post!

    • Guest

      Hello Ana Maria,

      I have also noticed that students can be reticent to use the internet and all the possibilities it offers for academic purposes. The majority of my students confess to me that sitting in front of their computer at home is an integral part of their down-time and their leisure, and I too have wondered to what extent my attempts to better provide feedback and communication through our own social network is perceived by them and an intrusion and an impingement on their privacy.

      Edmodo, however, has a very specific remit and my students don’t see it as an intrusion at all, but rather as a very valuable tool that actually helps them. It also allows them to compartmentalise and separate the work from the play.

  • http://lifefeast.blogspot.com anamaria

    Hello Jose,

    I follow your blog regularly and as I can see we both like using Edmodo. I’ve created an Edmodo group where EDL teachers share lessons they create over the weekend . We also share articles and start conversations. Last semester I used an edmodo group with some sts in order to hand in written HW. My sts were a bit resistant to having to use a computer to communicate w/ me, most of them only associate computers w/ pleasure (orkut and msn) but not learning. However, I was glad to observe some of them used it to ask me questions / help .But I haven’t given up, I believe Edmodo is a wonderful tool for teachers to improve communication. Wonderful post!

    • http://www.boxoftricks.net José Picardo

      Hello Ana Maria,

      I have also noticed that students can be reticent to use the internet and all the possibilities it offers for academic purposes. The majority of my students confess to me that sitting in front of their computer at home is an integral part of their down-time and their leisure, and I too have wondered to what extent my attempts to better provide feedback and communication through our own social network is perceived by them and an intrusion and an impingement on their privacy.

      Edmodo, however, has a very specific remit and my students don’t see it as an intrusion at all, but rather as a very valuable tool that actually helps them. It also allows them to compartmentalise and separate the work from the play.

  • http://aliceayel.posterous.com/ Alice

    Thank you for this post Jose, it could have not come at a better time as I want to try it this year with my students to follow homework. I was thinking at first of using a blog to set homework and other useful resources but I think blogs have a different mean and after reading your post, Edmodo will be more relevant for homework and assignments.

    I will let you know how it goes, Alice.

  • http://aliceayel.posterous.com/ Alice

    Thank you for this post Jose, it could have not come at a better time as I want to try it this year with my students to follow homework. I was thinking at first of using a blog to set homework and other useful resources but I think blogs have a different mean and after reading your post, Edmodo will be more relevant for homework and assignments.

    I will let you know how it goes, Alice.

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