Tuesday, March 19, 2013

I ♥ Edmodo!

Last year, I posted on Tumblr about my new-found love for Edmodo. (Click here to see that original post.) Now that I've used Edmodo for over a year, I thought it was time to revisit it.

If you are not familiar with Edmodo, here is the description from their website:

Edmodo provides teachers and students a secure place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner.

Last school year, I began to use Edmodo with my students. At that point in time, our district had a different LMS, but many of my students had difficulty logging on and finding materials I shared on there. The difference Edmodo made to my students was astounding! They posted and learned with each other as the year went on. We used Edmodo to share content, host class discussions, celebrate our learning by sharing projects, and for assessments. Students who were too shy to speak up in class were some of the ones who shared the most on Edmodo! It made a huge difference and our classroom community was stronger for it.

This year, there have been lots of changes. I changed positions in the district, so I'm not in the classroom anymore. I'm the Technology Integration Specialist at a small school in our district. Our entire district adopted Edmodo and Moodle as our LMS, and the biggest change of all - our middle schools all went 1:1 with iPads. It's been a busy year!

I've trained and worked with many teachers and students on using Edmodo, and I love seeing how they use it this year in the classroom. We also have a schoolwide Learning Commons group, and we use this to share tech tips, upcoming events in the Learning Commons, and the students have started sharing their favorite novels as well. Since the Edmodo iPad app update in December that allowed students to turn in assignments from other apps, my teachers have started using it even more. It is a huge asset as we move towards a paperless classroom.

What are your experiences with Edmodo? Do you feel that it has enhanced your classroom community, or is there another site you prefer? Please share!


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