Edmodo is a free social network that can be used by teachers and students. It is a great tool for collaboration and can be accessed from any web-enabled device including smartphones and iPads.
Edmodo has many great features:
- Student accounts that do not require email addresses
- No games or advertisements
- Safe environment where the teacher controls who can join
- Ability to include files and links in a student/teacher generated post
- Share assignments with the class
- Create online quizzes
- Tag posts to better organize content
- Keep an online calendar or gradebook
- Organize classroom documents using the library feature
- Create small groups within a particular class for easier communication
Recently I had the opportunity to work with middle school English and French classes on two very different Edmodo projects. For the English class the students joined an Edmodo group as one of the main characters from the book they were reading. The students created journal posts in their character’s voice essentially producing an online diary. In French class students had the opportunity to join Edmodo to communicate with a partner classroom in France. Each of the two classes joined the same group in Edmodo giving the students the ability to communicate with each other while being safely managed by their two co-teachers.
To learn more about using Edmodo in your classroom check out Edmodo’s Help Center or the videos on the Edmodo SchoolTube channel. Edmodo also provides a series of webinars. To access the Edmodo app for mobile devices go to iTunes for the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad and Google Play for Android devices.
