PE4_Edmodo

I have decided to focus my RILS project around Edmodo. I previously was working with Wikispaces to create an online community. One of the biggest drawbacks of that tool was the lack of ability to comment on another person’s page. I wanted the tool to act as a forum for my students to post their photographs and create discussions. Students could upload their photographs to Wikispaces as part of the new page function but they could not make comments anywhere except in the discussion forum. The discussion forum would not allow users to upload files. This led me to think about what I would want in my theoretical perfect web 2.0 tool. I began to realize that what I wanted was facebook in my classroom. The benefits of facebook are the ability to create new discussion posts that automatically get sent to a group of friends, the ability to upload photographs, and comment on any files or updates posted to the site. Of course facebook is not accepted as an educational tool by my school district. In fact, the website is blocked from all district-owned computers. After a bit of research, I came across Edmodo. This site is a classroom collaboration site the works just like facebook but it is set up to be accessed privately. Teachers can create groups for each of their classes. The site will give you a group access code to give to your students. Students create a username and password then enter the group code. Students do not need to enter an email address to register. I felt that was a huge benefit. Once into the site, students can upload a photo for their profile. As you can see from the photos below, the screen organization looks similar to facebook. Both the teacher and students can create new posts including files, photos, or links. The teacher and students can send private messages to each other but students cannot send private messages to other students. No one can access the class page without registering using the group code so the site is completely private. I am excited to implement this into my classroom.