Edmodo

Edmodo was designed as a Facebook like format for students, teachers and parents to communicate ideas with each other in a new and innovative fashion. Edmodo is a concept that I had heard about but had not had the pleasure to use prior to undertaking this unit. While playing around with this site I found that it had a similar skin and appearance to Facebook but marketed at education. There are many features available on this site such as

• General posting by teachers and students
• Assignment submission
• Polls
• Being able to respond to other students posts
• Being able to post images and links

The sight is only accessible by those who have permission, and the teacher can chose whether they want to allow students to openly post or whether all of their posts need to be moderated. I found it to be very easy to use and a great way to have a student community and use a different medium for students learning. It was very easy to use and everyone using it during John Pearce’ lecture picked it up very quickly and learnt how to use all the features. It creates a sense of independence for students, despite being monitored by their teacher, and allows students to become aware of the need to be wary of what is written online, at a young age prior to them jumping onto Facebook or Twitter when they are older – it allows for discussion of this.