Edmodo 3 – In Class

Edmodo in Class

 The use of Edmodo in class is the one thing that caused me a few headaches… all the computers in the school bar my laptop were running Internet Explorer 6 and Edmodo requires 7 or better to run. I went through all the appropriate channels and was kindly instructed that I could upgrade two computers to Internet Explorer 8 – I would say that the hassle associated with this (IE8 is a pain in the backside) was worth it for the benefits of Edmodo but now that we can no longer use Edmodo… well… I’ve got nothing to say…

Kind of…

 So I didn’t particularly get to use Edmodo as much as I would have liked but in the small time available we did do a number of really cool things…

 1 Embed Videos

  

Everyone knows the dangers of using YouTube in class. As educators we have to be extremely careful and sensitive with what we let our kids see. Edmodo eases that burden by swiftly and smoothly allowing any video with an embed code to be placed directly into the posts without any of the extra paraphernalia that causes Youtube-related headaches. Not only that but you can ‘tag’ each post and effectively create a ‘videos’ page where they are all listed. 

 

 

 

 

 

2 Embed Flash

 

 

Many of you will be aware of the myriad of Flash resources out there – being English I’m a big fan of the BBC Bitesize website and the games/lessons that they freely provide the embed codes for. I have taken a number of these in the past and posted them on Edmodo the night before the planned lesson – thus allowing those attentive kids to get a head-start (turns out that that was nearly all!)

I post these into specific subject groups, tag them and then use them in the lessons.

 

 

 

3 Groups and Tags

 

 

I had a group for the three main subject areas Literacy, Numeracy and Science and created tags for subgroups – easily allowing access to digital resources as stated above. If students have subject-specific questions then I encouraged them to post here and we addressed them in class.

 

 

 

 

 

4 Links

 

 

BBC Bitesize again, subject-specific groups again and tags… again. This time I linked a brilliant game called Questionaut (will blog at a later date) for use on the IWB by fast-finishers. We actually ended up using it a number of times as a starter activity or a group plenary but still; very effective and efficient.

 

 

 

5 Absenses

 

 In the two weeks that Edmodo was a part of my class I had three different students off school for various reasons – each student logged onto Edmodo just after 9am and talked to the class via the IWB – I even set them work to do! (Cruel I know but they did it!)

I’m sure there are a million more uses but let me end it there… the one thing I will comment on is that we are preparing our students to be safe, confident, positive people in an increasingly risky digital world. Most of my class make private use of MSN, MySpace and Facebook – why should we fear to educate them in the mediums of which they are already familiar? It is our job to guide them in the safe usage of these tools – Edmodo is a wonderful means for this end.

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