I have known about Edmodo since sometime during the 2008/2009 school year. I set up an account and even set up my classes. I just never enrolled my students. I was using BlackBoard, which the district had invested in BlackBoard licenses, and I had wanted for my students for years. Why try something new when I finally got what I had originally wanted? The redundancy factor between the two also played a roll in not using Edmodo. I was a classroom teacher AND CFF Coach, so I did not have the time to experiment with many tools that did the same thing.

This year, BlackBoard is gone, I still have my Edmodo account, I set up new classes, but…I still have not enrolled my students. Why is this? I hope to use our school Moodle site once everything is up, running, and open outside of school. My plan is to build a complete online course in support of my traditional classroom, much like I had in BlackBoard. I am currently using my class wiki in that capacity.

So, if I do not use Edmodo, why am I promoting it? Two of our staff members are using it with their students. Bryan Pasquale, who teaches social studies, and Kerri Heymann, one of our high school math teachers. They love the ability to quickly set up classes, and HAVE THE STUDENTS ENROLL THEMSELVES. All you supply is Internet access and a code for the students to type in. The students do the rest. This is great if you are not planning to build an entire online course in Moodle!

What does Edmodo do? Why should I use it in my class? Well, for the limited time we have used it this year, we have created threaded discussion boards for the students, posted formative surveys/polls for students to respond to, posted assignments online for students to access, collected assignments electronically from the students, and set up an easy, secure, and monitored channel for communication between staff and students.

Now, what we will do beyond the first day we used it in class…

Seriously, it is that easy to use. The Edmodo page looks and acts like a Facebook homepage. The kids picked up on that right away. Most of them use Facebook, all of them have seen Facebook, now is our chance to show them how to use a similar tool appropriately. We can see everything that is posted, the students may post to the entire class, or directly to the teacher. Staff and student files may be posted in the same fashion. You can also use the built in calendar feature to keep students aware of the class schedule, and there is a handy links feature so students can jump from Edmodo to important class Internet sites.

Here is a screenshot of what the Edmodo home screen looks like,

The Edmodo Class Homepage view

So, there is a quick overview of what you can do with Edmodo…and I almost forgot…Edmodo is FREE!

If you would like anymore info on Edmodo, fell free to e-mail me or fill out a request on the CFF wiki for Tech Tips.

Here is my first Tech Tip Blog Post. It deals with the basic practicalities of making your job easier. There are three programs you need right now, and they are all free. The reason that you need them is that they will allow you to work with others and will make life so much easier once you become comfortable with them.

The first one mentioned, Google Apps, is supplied by the District. It allows you to store documents, PowerPoints, and Excel files online. You can not only access them from anywhere there is an Internet connection, but you can also collaborate with others easily, no cutting and pasting, no e-mailing attachments, and all that other rigamarole. New Brighton’s start page to log in is http://partnerpage.google.com/nbasdcff.wikispaces.com. If you need your log in information, please e-mail me. We are setting up student accounts so they can have the same sort of access to their work. By creating accounts for the district we will be able to administer student accounts for such tasks as fixing lost or fogotten passwords. You can also set up a personal account at http://google.com.

The second is Diigo, a social bookmarking site. It allows you to store your favorites, or bookmarks online, so you can access them on any computer once you log in to the site. You can also share bookmarks with other individuals and groups. This allows you to have access to the research of others, once again without much effort. There is a group for New Brighton Teachers, and there are numerous other groups for educators. You can also create groups for your classes to give students access to approved bookmarks for your class in a secure setting, see me for details. The general site to create an account is http://www.diigo.com. Once you have created your own account, you can go to sign up for an educator’s account at http://www.diigo.com/education.

The third program dovetails nicely with existing programs in the district. Many teachers use Kidspiration and Inspiration software to create graphic organizers for use in the classroom. There is a free web-based, (online), program called Webspiration that allows you to do the same thing. Webspiration allows you to upload existing files to the Internet, download files to your desktop, and share your files with others, just by typing in their e-mail address. The people you share with must also have a free account to acces your files. You can edit the files together, or just pass them around by sharing. Webspiration also contains free clip art and media to drop into your graphic organizers to make them more interesting for the students. The program has many other features that I will not get into yet. This tool is available at http://www.mywebspiration.com.

The main themes that bind these three programs together, beside the fact that they are all free, is that they allow you to access information from anywhere in the world, and that they allow you to easily collaborate with others. Let’s face the fact that there is not enough time in the day to accomplish everything we would like to do. By working together, we make tasks easier and can accomplish more in the limited time we have. if you would like help setting up any of these accounts feel free to contact me at school.