I love Edmodo! I discovered it via Twitter the day before my first class of the 2010-2011 academic year, and I can honestly say it has revolutionised the way that I interact with my students both inside and outside class.
If you’ve never heard of it, here’s a quick intro. I describe it as ‘facebook for education’. Here’s a screenshot of my homepage at the moment:
For anyone who has used facebook, the interface should be instantly familiar, and for anyone who hasn’t it is very easy to pick up. Here’s a video to show you how it works:
Their user guide is very comprehensive, but if you get stuck, feel free to ask for help!
As a teacher, it has meant I can easily:
- share materials
- make sure absent students know what they’ve missed
- offer students help
- collect and mark assignments
- provide a varied diet of homework (not just workbook pages)
- share links and videos to make English more fun
- motivate students to find out more about various aspects of English-speaking culture
- chat with my students outside class
- and much much more…
I’ve received a lot more homework from my students, including returned second drafts of writing (almost unheard of before!), felt a difference in rapport with my students, had great fun discussing various youtube clips, and generally seen a much higher level of engagement and motivation both inside and outside the classroom.
But don’t just take my word for it’s usefulness. 27 of the 45 students I used Edmodo with last year responded to a survey I created to find out what they thought of it, and this is what they had to say:
So as you can see, Edmodo has made a real difference to the English-teaching and -learning experience in my classes over the past year, and it’s definitely something I will use again.
I hope this has persuaded you to try it out (and no, I’m not being paid for this!) 🙂
Enjoy!
I’ve just gone onto facebook and noticed that my students are still sharing links that they’ve found on Edmodo even though classes finished last week 🙂
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Thanks a lot for this – I hadn’t look into Edmondo (we use wikis) but I certainly will now 😉
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