Edmodo has become very popular as the Learning Management System (LMS) of choice for many schools and teachers around the world. I can not think of any reason why that would not be the case: Edmodo offers a free and user-friendly service. Dayna Laur, a social studies teacher with 14 years of classroom experience, has created a wonderful how-to eBook demonstrating the steps taken to integrate this LMS in the classroom. The eBook, titled ‘Instant Edmodo How-To‘ is targeted at educators and administrators, and is written using very simple language, outlining clear & detailed steps for performing a wide variety of functions using the Edmodo LMS. I would highly recommend reading the eBook for teachers who wish to become more familiar with using Edmodo in their classrooms.
The eBook contains 14 short chapters, each with a different focus. For example, there is a chapter titled ‘Setting up your Profile’ which outlines the steps involved in creating and building your teacher profile on Edmodo. The chapters are also labelled ‘simple’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘advanced’, depending on the level of tech-savviness of the reader, or their level of comfortability with the platform. Each chapter follows the same structure: a short introduction to the Edmodo function or feature, followed by a ‘Getting Ready‘ section to outline prerequisite steps, then a ‘How to do it‘ section listing the steps in a summarized format, followed by a ‘How it works‘ section explaining the steps in more detail. The last part of every chapter has a ‘There’s more‘ section that offers further features or steps for the teacher that would like to try them out.
Dayna Laur has written the eBook using very simple language that I believe is accessible to all educators, regardless of their ICT knowledge or expertise. I also believe her style of writing is very practical and not too technical, and the steps outlined or explained in every chapter follow a very logical sequence. Organizing all chapters using the same structure also helps the reader follow the instructions, and be able to easily identify areas where they might need more reading. Additionally, the eBook is full of screen-shots that help the reader with following the steps outlined in each chapter. The formatting of the eBook is also very appealing to me as a reader: the use of clear sub-headings, the font size, and the appropriate use of ‘bold‘ font and numbered lists. I would definitely recommend Dayna Laur’s ‘Instant Edmodo How-To‘, as I believe it is a useful guide ‘for educators who intend to use Edmodo for instructional support in classrooms or in professional development sessions’.
I have been teaching in iPad classrooms for nearly 18 months now. During the first few months, the biggest obstacle I faced was creating an efficient workflow between myself and the students. By ‘workflow‘ I am referring to a system that enables the teacher to easily distribute tasks to the students, collect that work back from students, and efficiently give them feedback on their learning. Initially, I would e-mail the students the task sheet, then they would download it and open it in another ‘app’ that allows them to work on it. Once finished, the students would e-mail me the work back. Lots of e-mails got lost, or my e-mail became too hard to organise and manage. Also, students could not e-mail big files like videos they’ve been working on. Additionally, having to e-mail all feedback to students was not fun. Basically, an iPad workflow that relies mostly on e-mail can be a big headache (in my opinion, at least).
Towards the end of 2012, Edmodo introduced a wonderful new feature to their iPad app: the ability to import a document from any iPad app into Edmodo, and hence upload it to your Edmodo Library. This was a great update, and many teachers got excited about it. This meant that now I can use my iPad to upload handouts/task-sheets and then attach them to an ‘assignment‘ post on Edmodo. It also meant that students could download these task-sheets/handouts, work on them in another app, then upload them back onto Edmodo to submit for an ‘assignment’ post. I quickly started using Edmodo in that manner with my year 8 Humanities class. It was great!
All minor tasks and major assessments were assigned through Edmodo, whereby the students would download the task-sheet, work on the assignment in the designated app (Pages, Keynote, iMovie, Notability and Skitch are the most popular in my classroom), then submit their finished product back on Edmodo. Once all assignments are submitted, I then download each student’s submission, mark/grade their work and give them the numerical grade and feedback comment all on Edmodo. The same applies for Edmodo Quizzes: the students can solve them on Edmodo, and view their answers and marks/feedback on Edmodo. In short, Edmodo offers a very efficient, manageable and free workflow system for teachers in an iPad classroom: teachers can easily distribute work to students, collect work back, mark/grade it and give feedback all on the one platform! Below are some annotated screenshots of all the great things Edmodo helps me accomplish in my classroom:
However, I quickly realized that I also wanted my students to collect all that work they’re doing into one easily accessible ‘portfolio’, as opposed to it just being on the other apps, and then submitted on Edmodo. This is where Evernote has been a great help. Any student-created Keynote presentations, Pages documents, annotated PDFs, and annotated photos that the students submit on Edmodo, they can also export to Evernote (in their ‘notebook’ which they ‘share’ with me). I always ask my students to export and submit everything in PDF-format as it preserves the formatting of the document. Once I mark the assignment on Edmodo, the students take a screenshot of the feedback comment and the numerical grade. These screenshots are then added into the same note on Evernote where they attached their work in PDF format. An example of this is shown below:
Since the students had free accounts on Evernote, I could view everything they added into their ‘Shared Notebook’, but I could not modify or edit any notes. Therefore, by the end of the first term of this year, I decided to trial having a premium account. I created a notebook per student, and shared it with them. Since mine was a premium account, that allowed the both of us to edit and modify notes. We continued to use both Edmodo and Evernote in the same way, however I could now leave my feedback directly in their Evernote notebook for the minor activities finished in class, and use the Edmodo ‘Assignment’ feature for the major assessments. One way by which these shared Evernote notebooks have also been a great help is how I use them to give feedback on quizzes completed on Google Forms. I often create quizzes and tests on Google Forms for my students to complete. The students would access the quiz/test through the URL that I post on Edmodo, and take a screenshot of their filled-in forms before clicking ‘Submit’. I would then open the form responses in spreadsheet-format, copy each student’s ‘row’ of responses and the row of questions, and paste both into their workbook along with my feedback and mark. Here is an example:
I have also previously written feedback notes in the students’ shared notebooks where I would attach a PDF rubric, and an audio-note along with the numerical marks. I usually do that at the end of every term. Here is an example of that:
To conclude, Edmodo and Evernote together have really helped me setup an efficient and manageable workflow for my iPad classroom. All tasks can be distributed through Edmodo, downloaded by students from Edmodo into other apps, submitted or ‘turned-in’ through Edmodo, marked/graded on Edmodo, and students can even receive feedback on Edmodo. I would definitely direct any teacher interested in finding out more about it to the ‘Edmodo Help-Centre‘. Furthermore, Evernote has been a great help in allowing the students to collect all this work (along with the feedback received on it) into the one place in the form of a portfolio. Below are some screencasts explaining certain how-tos associated with my workflow, and a screencast giving a tour of my one of my students’ shared notebooks.
I can not describe how much easier Edmodo has made my teaching! At the beginning of this academic year, and in my capacity as an eLearning leader, I was involved in a whole-school effort to rollout Edmodo. The eLearning leaders at school gathered all teachers and showed them a few videos highlighting the benefits of Edmodo, then we divided all staff between us and went on to smaller workshops to help them set up their own accounts and classes. It caught like wildfire! I had staff approaching me everyday wanting to learn more and find out ways to use it better.
In my school, we have three year levels using the iPads (years 6, 7 and 8), and two year levels using laptops (years 9 and 10). Every student in those five year levels has a personal learning device, whether it’s a laptop or iPad. I generally teach the earlier middle years, and I am in charge of the school’s iPad program. Therefore my focus is usually on the iPad as a personal learning device. Edmodo now offers a fantastic iPad app, especially after recent updates just before Christmas 2012. I will try to list the many ways I use Edmodo, and why I love it so much:
It is now very easy to share a worksheet or handout with my students on Edmodo. If I prepare a worksheet on Pages or have a worksheet in my Dropbox, all I need to do is ‘open in another app’ and select Edmodo. I prefer to share worksheets and handouts as a PDF, because that preserves the formatting of the document and it’s very easy for students to download an app that allows them to annotate PDFs (like Notability or TypeOnPDF).
Students can easily download a document from Edmodo, use it in another app (like a PDF annotation app) and then upload it again onto Edmodo to submit it as an ‘assignment’. This solves the whole ‘work-flow’ problem that many teachers faced upon the introduction of iPads into the classroom. Worksheets, handouts, task sheets, graphic organizers, anything you want the students to work on, just upload it into your library, add it to a folder that you share with the students or attach it to a post, then they access it and open it in another app. Once they have finished, they need to upload it into their ‘backpacks’ and then submit it as an attachment to an ‘assignment’ that you posted.
Edmodo’s ‘assignment’ feature allows me to post an assignment with a due date and a task sheet, see who submitted it and when, mark it using a PDF annotation tool, grade/assess it and give feedback all in one neat place. It really is hassle-free! While the desktop version of Edmodo allows better assignment-marking features than the iPad app, I can still mark simple assignments on-the-go from my iPad.
Edmodo’s ‘quiz’ feature allows me to create really quick and simple quizzes to use in class. Creating the quiz is really simple, and I can use multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, matching, or even short answer questions. It also shows you some really cool statistics about the students’ answers.
Edmodo’s ‘poll’ feature allows me create quick survey polls in class and can be a very valuable formative assessment tool. It has been very useful in my Humanities class to help me decide what students may need to focus on more for the coming lessons, or what sort of format would they prefer to submit their assignment as, among many more polls.
Edmodo’s ‘note’ feature has been a great help in creating exit slips for the students. Right before the lesson ends, the students are asked to write ‘one thing I learned today is…’ or ‘one thing that surprised me today was…’ or ‘one thing I’d like to find out more about is…’. After posting their exit slips, they can all see what the others have posted and maybe comment on each others’ posts and respond.
Edmodo’s ‘members’ feature allows me to manage my students in each class/group. This has been very handy in reminding a student of their username in case they forgot it while logging in again, or resetting their password if they can’t remember it, or even changing a student’s member-status to ‘read-only’ if they have been posting too much irrelevant content and abusing the posting feature. I can also use this feature to award ‘badges’ to my students, which is a great incentive for many of them.
Edmodo’s ‘small groups’ feature makes group-work a lot easier to manage and assess. In my drama classroom, students are arranged in small groups or ‘theatre companies’, and a lot of their brainstorming is done on Edmodo, or even simply documenting group-work in a virtual group-work log.
Edmodo’s ‘folders’ feature makes it very easy to organize documents in a folder and share that folder with my classes. Standard templates like reflection help-sheets or rubrics can be placed in these folders so students can have access to them anytime.
Edmodo has made it much easier to teach ‘digital citizenship’ skills in a safer and more-controlled environment. Having a strong social-networking aspect to it, Edmodo allows the teacher to model appropriate online behaviour and etiquette, and gives the students the opportunity to practice those skills in a teacher-controlled environment.
I would seriously recommend Edmodo to any teacher out there. I would also refer any of them to the Edmodo Help-Centre which has a great collection of how-tos (with screenshots and clear steps) and tips for using Edmodo.
Mohamed El-Ashiry's Teaching Portfolio 