Review on Edmodo

Review on Edmodo

Edmodo is an educational technology company offering a communication, collaboration and coaching platform to K-12 schools and teachers. The Edmodo network enables teachers to share content, distribute quizzes, assignments, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents. Edmodo is very teacher-centric in their design and philosophy: students and parents can only join Edmodo if invited to do so by a teacher. Teachers and students spend large amounts of time on the platform, both in and out of the classroom.

Edmodo was founded in 2008 by Nic Borg, Jeff O’Hara and Crystal Hutter, three former school district employees who wanted to put social learning into an education environment. It has received several awards over the years, such as Noodle’s 2015 Best Online Education Tool, 2016 GESS Education Award and the 2015 EdTech Digest Cool Tool Award for its Snapchat tool.

Edmodo runs a network of partners that consists of publishers, developers and other companies to share content and apps with teachers and students. Edmodo is set up like a social networking feed, similar to Facebook. Students, teachers and parents can communicate with posts, and other users can like or comment on them.

Edmodo offers several benefits, including:

§  Unlimited storage so teachers won’t have to worry about clearing out space

§  Integration with Microsoft Office and Google Apps for Education, so users won’t have to remember passwords for individual sites (a new feature)

§  Global teacher collaboration for support, answers and ideas for topics, lessons and issues

§  Anywhere, anytime access via dedicated mobile apps

§  Security and privacy tools such as private groups and the ability to track members’ activity

§  Parental access to students’ homework, tests, grades and classroom announcements

§  Collaboration features for parents

The Edmodo Snapshot tool is designed to meet Common Core standards, as well as other education standards schools must follow. Edmodo partners with content providers to display resources such as lesson plans, tests, games and other activities. Snapshot also provides question banks and assessments for teachers as well as real-time reports that illustrate progress by student so teachers can figure out which students need help.

Edmodo Spotlight is a tool for downloading various educational apps. Users can find specific apps by filtering for subject matter, grade and/or price. Teachers can create and upload their own apps or make recommendations. Most of the apps are free to download, but others cost a nominal fee.

There’s a dedicated help center for students, parents and teachers to find answers for common troubleshooting issues and other questions. Users can also submit a support request, ask questions to other users, send feedback to Edmodo or find out information on product releases from the help center. Edmodo’s support staff consists of former educators who are experienced in classroom settings.

The End