Edmodo

What is Edmodo?

Edmodo is an educational technology company offering a communication, collaboration, and coaching platform to K-12 schools and teachers. The Edmodo network enables teachers to share content, distribute quizzes, assignments, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents.

Edmodo is an educational website that takes the ideas of a social network and refines them

and makes it appropriate for a classroom. Using Edmodo, students and teachers can reach

out to one another and connect by sharing ideas, problems, and helpful tips. A teacher can

assign and grade work on Edmodo; students can get help from the entire class on Edmodo.

It is a safe environment. There is no bullying or inappropriate content, because the teacher

can see everything that is posted on Edmodo. Also parents can join the class to bring a level

of transparency that is difficult to achieve without technology. All in all Edmodo is a grat

companion to just about any class.

Features of Edmodo

The Basics of Posting

Posting Notes is the main feature of what makes Edmodo great. Teacher and student are able to

post and respond to other posts easily and in real time. It is very easy to do and very helpful.

Let’s take a look at the Comment Box found at the top of your homepage. The home screen contains a feed of recent posts and events relevant to your profile. It also contains links to other options and settings. The feed can be filtered by group or class. In the homepage, student will also see the :-

Posting Alerts

Alerts are used to send important messages to people or groups. It is done the same way but

will appear in larger font and in bold. It will also show up in the Notifications. To create an Alert,

just click on Alert at the top of the Comment Box and the rest is the same as creating a note. Hence by see this posting alert, student will take noted about what are been send from their teacher to them as an important message.

Posting Polls

In posting polls,teacher can create questions with multiple choices and the people in the

group vote on it. Hence, student can collaborate more in their teacher 's post as it is one of the interesting way to get student attention. Here is an example of what it will look like when it is done and after some students have voted. Each person only gets one vote and there is no way to know who voted for what. It’s a lot of fun.

Working with Assignments

Teachers can add assignments to classes, complete with description, due date, and any necessary links or attachments. Once submitted the teacher can instantly grade and comment on the material. This help student to be more participate in learning process and gather more information through working in the assignment. Besides, they also will alert with the due date and follow the description given  since they will be graded through their assignment.

Creating a Quiz

Edmodo offers a way to create and give online quizzes. Just like an assignment, once the teacher has 

create a quiz, it is saved and they can give it again at a later date. Another nice feature is the ability to load a question from another quiz and if the teacher would like to experience the quiz or make sure that they have everything in the right place, they can preview it first before student take the quiz as  students will see the exactly same thing the teacher do.

Grades

Assignments added by the teacher are automatically added to the gradebook. Students can view their grade from their classes instantly, as well as view any comments made by the teacher. Through this gradebook, student will know where is their mistakes and tend to fix the mistake and improve better in the future. Besides, they also will compete each other with their friends since their marks has been exposed to the class and boost their spirit to get better marks.

Class or Group

Teachers have full control over their classes. They can add, remove and contact students through their group dashboard. Besides, teachers can also create “small groups” when the class is broken up for class projects, allowing the groups to share resources with each other. 

Profiles & Badges

Teacher profile allows them to write information about themselves and what teachers they have

connected with. That way parents, students, and other teachers can find out more about the teacher.

A new feature that Edmodo has just added is the ability to create and award badges to

students. To create or view the badges that Edmodo has created click on Create Badges and teacher can award them to their students. Teacher can create a badge by give it a title, write a quick description and upload an image.

Calender's

Keep students organized by setting dates for tests and events. Student calendars will show events for each class in a customizable color. Assignments are automatically added to the calendar by their due date. Hence, this will help student a lot in organizing their time to prepared for their test, assignment and upcoming event.

Benefits of Edmodo 

This online learning tools help teachers administrate their classes have recently grown in popularity – they are known as Learning Management Systems (LMS).

Edmodo can be incorporated into classrooms through a variety of  applications. Current uses include posting assignments, where they could be sorted for example by either who did not turned in their assignment or graded and not graded. It is also good for  creating polls for student responses with the advantage of instant feedback.

Edmodo allows the students to upload assignments for their teachers to view and grade.  Students who are normally shy in the classroom, can take advantage of edmodo  and use it to speak privately with the teacher.

Parent can also do an account which will  allow them to see their children’s assignments and grades. Teachers can also send alerts to parents about school events, missed assignments, and other important notices through Edmodo.

Flexibility and Convenience. The teaching profession is a very demanding job due to certain specific work pressures like taking care of a huge number of students. Thanks to innovations in teaching technology, teachers can now choose to decide how, when and where they would like to educate the students for online courses. Online tutoring provides flexibility to teachers to either take classes on nights and weekends for anyone around the world, without leaving the comfort of their home.

Endless Teaching Opportunities. When asked about the benefits of online tutoring in a recent survey, many tutors claimed that the opportunities of reaching out to students from different parts of the world enhanced their teaching style. The challenge of dealing with students from many different cultures kept them highly motivated, and this, in turn, increased their job satisfaction.

More Variety. One of the biggest demotivating factors for teachers is the monotonous nature of their job. Thanks to the online platforms, teachers can bring back variety to their teaching.

With the mix of technology and convenience, teachers can find a subject they are passionate about and teach it to students who are equally passionate about learning that subject. If you’re bored with your current course, finding a new course and a student from a different culture can not only be exciting and easy.

Learning with Students. Offering to tutor English Language-Learners can be difficult. To overcome this problem, a lot of tutors provide help to students through ‘learning by teaching’ methods. Teachers can discover new words and phrases as they start communicating with students. A mutual learning experience can be a great motivator for both the students and the teacher.

How to start with Edmodo?

Teacher and students can use Edmodo both in its desktop version and the App, available for Android and iOs.

Getting Started for Teachers

Signing up

Before creating classes on Edmodo, teachers need to create an account, which can be connected to their existing accounts from other service providers (outlook, Google, Facebook).This is very easy. At the homepage, simply click I’m a Teacher and a new dialogue box will

open up. Simply fill out that information and click Sign up. The information from these other accounts is not shared with students or parents. Below is a video shows that how teacher want to get started with Edmodo account 

Group Code

Next, teachers should start to setting up their groups. Groups are basically

classes for students to join. It is very easy to create a group and just as easy for students to

join that group. To do this click on Create in the Groups area of Edmodo (on the left hand side

below the profile picture).

A new window will pop up prompting teacher to name the group assign it a grade level and define

the subject that is taught. Also teacher can  make all new members to read-only option. This will allow the students to read what is posted, but not allow them to post themselves. 

After you have created the group, A window will pop up confirming the groups has been

created and the code to join the group. This code can be distributed to students as they sign

up. This will allow them to join your group and all the privileges that go with it.

Settings

To access in the setting page, look under Account (in the upper right hand corner). It is

pretty basic. Teacher can change their profile picture by picking a logo provided by Edmodo or by

uploading their own picture. Also, they can change their password, add notifications (either an

email or text message), or your personal information. 

Student Signup

After teacher was already created the group, student can sign in into the group.

1.  Students need to go to www.edmodo.com and click on I’m a Student. 
2. Then,they will need the Group Code that received by their teacher when signed up.

If students are already signed up and using Edmodo. They do not need a new account. All

they need is to Join the group or Request to join URL.

Here is the preface of student profiles which are similar to teacher profiles but a little different. Students can pick how their learning style and what career they might be interested in. Teacher can also find their student activity on Edmodo (what they’ve posted), what groups they are in, and what badges they have earned. 

One of the greatest advantages of Edmodo is that students and parents do not need to share their personal information or email addresses to create an account. All they need to do is to enter their name, surname, create a password and enter the class code, which should be provided by the teacher. This code is automatically generated by Edmodo when teacher create a new group.

With teacher account, teachers can create groups and invite students and parents to join. In the groups, they can share resources, photos and articles, which will be seen by your students in a news feed format. They can also send and receive private messages and create folders, where students can upload assignments. All media shared with the group is automatically stored in a section called My Library.  

In a nutshell, Edmodo has made many changes for the better improvement. I highly encourage all of teacher in school, student and parents to keep working and exploring with Edmodo and share it’s wide variety of features to other colleagues. It is a great resource that is so flexible that any class could not work for. I am sure everyone either parent nor students will find it helpful including teachers in class as well. I also encourage everyone who uses Edmodo to join and contribute in the Edmodo communities since they are one kind or resources that has inspired many people by answering others questions.