Edmodo
Introduction
EdModo is a website that allows creating learning activities for a class with "apps". Most of these will open on a third party website. Some (or most) then can report results back to EdModo. Apps can be selected according to five types of criteria: publisher (teachers or publishers), subject area, (american) grades, ressource types, and price (free to $6 and more).
According to Wikipedia (Feb 2019), “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 very teacher-centric in their design and philosophy: students and parents can only join Edmodo if invited to do so by a teacher.”
Since 2018, Edmodo belongs to NetDragon, a Chinese company specialized in online gaming and educational applications.
The environment
The global websites
The environment provides for the following types of interaction.
Teachers can:
- Create classes
- Create groups
- Be part of school
- Sign up students within a class.
- Browse applications (i.e. resources) in Edmodo spotlight and add them to library
School and district administrators can request access to admin tools.
Withing a class, teachers can:
- Invite students
- Post notes, assignments, quizzes and polls
Edmodo applications
Edmodo spotlight contains sortable and searchable educational apps. Quote: “Share your most engaging teaching resources. Discover and share the best K-12 classroom content, lesson plans, worksheets, and more through Edmodo's global educator network.”. Each resource can be added to the teacher's library.
Types of resources:
- Some are applications. The user is directed to a third party website and sometimes results are given back to EdModo.
- Some are just links, e.g. software to downloaded and installed or other websites with information
- Some are teacher-created materials or tips, à la pininterest
Resources are characterized by type, for example as games&activities, videos & screencasts, worksheets, lesson plans, exploration, web link, group activity, teacher manual & resources, individual lesson plans, unit plans, edmodo quizzes.
EdModo quizzes are integrated with the platform and can be assigned to students.
There are suprisingly few general interactive applications, e.g. we could not find any drawing tools. There are many educational games.
Problems
- There is no "about information". It is assumed that user start clicking without any reading probably.
- Edmodo Help center contents only partially display on Ubuntu 18 (Firefox / Chromium) claiming that "your browser does not support SVG".
Links
- Official home page: http://edmodo.com