Edmodo is the leading social learning platform for the K-12 classroom. Edmodo launched at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year by Nic Borg and Jeff O’Hara, two Chicago-area School Technology Administrators.
Edmodo has over 65 million users. This extraordinary growth comes from teachers coming directly to Edmodo, signing up, creating closed groups and inviting their students to join these groups. Word about the benefits of Edmodo spreads virally among teachers across schools and districts. Over 300,000 schools have classrooms powered by Edmodo.
Once educators and students are connected in a safe social environment, they can collaborate; share digital content and educational applications; and access homework, grades, class discussions, and notifications from any computer or mobile device.
One of the key benefits of Edmodo is that every feature has been built with students’ safety in mind. Edmodo differs from other social networks, while uniquely fitting the needs of the education environment in the following ways:
Use Edmodo Connect to interact with the core features of Edmodo.
Groups are closed private networks and can be set up by teachers for classes, clubs, professional development groups and other collaborative projects. For each group created, a six-digit code is generated, which students use to join their teacher’s private group.
Students can only join groups to which they are invited by teachers they know. Once they are in a group, students can send messages to the entire group or directly to the teacher but not directly to other students. The only people that can find students on Edmodo are the teachers and classmates. Students are completely safe from strangers.
Group posts appear in members’ streams. Users can filter their streams by group, assignments, alerts, quizzes, latest replies, and more. The stream allows teachers and students to manage and view all communication and action items in a single place, from all members of all of their groups.
Assignments are created by teachers and distributed to their students using the assignment post feature. Teachers can title their assignments, identify a due date, associate a description or prompt, and include attachments from the web, computer or Edmodo library.
When students log in, they see the assignment in their stream and can view the embedded file or media. They can then turn in their completed assignment directly to their teacher.
Teachers can track which students have turned in their assignments and natively grade (and comment on) student work allowing students to receive immediate feedback.
Quiz features include the ability for teachers to create quizzes, edit and load previously created quizzes, provide a quiz description, set the time limit for a quiz, and preview a quiz before sending it to their students (group).
Edmodo supports five question types: multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, matching, and short answer. When the student submits the quiz, the teacher is notified. Once the questions are automatically scored, (except for short answers) the grades are populated into the teacher’s Edmodo grade book.
The planner enables teachers to manage personal and group-based events and tasks. By creating an event or task, teachers can help students keep track of upcoming assignments, events, projects, school activities, professional obligations, and more.
Teachers have personal libraries that allow them to maintain a repository of digital learning materials they have collected and want to reference or use with their students. Teachers can use Edmodo’s communities as a content discovery tool and—with one click—snap, new content appears in their library.
Similarly, students have personal backpacks that allow them to manage the content they’ve created, collected or shared with their Edmodo groups.
Teachers and students can organize their content into folders, sort by file type, group, and more.
Teachers and students can create profile pages summarizing and tracking themselves as professionals or learners. Beyond optional information a teacher discloses in the About Me section, teacher profiles also display badges earned for achievements and progress on the Edmodo platform.
A student’s profile page displays a quote the student finds inspirational, tracks grade progress over time, and displays badges earned for behavior and achievement. Only a student’s teachers and classmates can view his or her profile page. A student’s profile page is not searchable or viewable by other users on the platform.
Teachers and students can earn Edmodo badges, and teachers can earn teacher-created and publisher-created badges. Student badges award students’ hard work, participation, proud moments of achievement, perfect scores within apps’ lessons, and more. Teacher badges acknowledge their use of Edmodo, e.g., creating a class group with student membership, forming teacher connections, following a publisher community, participating in an edmodo training group, sharing content, and more.
Publisher communities provide content and app partners an opportunity to engage directly with teachers who are using their materials or apps in their classrooms. You can (and should) use your communities as an R&D tool to learn what’s working and what’s not. Contribute to a virtual public library (called the publisher collection) that allows teachers to discover new content. Leveraging your community features allows you to improve your apps and grow your user base.