Teacher’s Corner: Robert Miller’s Edmodo Experience
Note: The following post is a guest post by Robert Miller, who is a 5th grade teacher at Port Orange Elementary in Port Orange, Florida. Robert Miller is an Apple Distinguished Educator, BrainPOP Advisor, and one of NSBA’s 2009 “20 to Watch”. Robert can be found on twitter @RobrtMiller and at his class website http://www.maxclassonline.net if you would like to contact him or see the cool things he is doing with his students to enhance their learning experience.
This year has been one where I found myself moving away from the static teacher showcase web page towards web applications leading my 5th grade students into a more interactive online experience that does not end at the two o’clock bell.
This past fall, I discovered Edmodo referenced on my Twitter feed and after reading the homepage and researching other teachers’ usage, I knew immediately that Edmodo would be an anchor in my classroom’s online experience. As it turns out, Edmodo is now our main aggregate for both classroom communication (both with me and with student peers) and the collaborative portal for works and projects.
Jeff asked me to share some of the ways my 5th graders and I use Edmodo in our classroom. I, too, have picked up many tips from other educators on the Edmodo Group available to all of us and I encourage you to continue or start to share your best practices!
- Many Language Arts programs are using Literature Circles… Have you ever thought about creating an online component? Although I believe the face-to-face discussion is the most exciting way to share a great book, some students just cannot wait until the next day and often they share a few thoughts the night before in their private Edmodo Lit Circle Group… Each group-of-four loves to have their own private room!
- Here’s one that I gleaned from the Edmodo Group: Create a “Recess” Group that will draw in your less-than-motivated students. This is a room that they can do their “chat posts.” My students and I have set prior parameters for such a group and I have found that some will log in for the Recess Group but stay for my actual content and peer collaboration.
- My class webpage has a sidebar of web application links to which my students can jump (VoiceThread, Animoto, GoogleDocs, GlogsterEDU, Pixton Comics, etc.). Edmodo allows for each some sort of embedding or linking to a student project or showcase. Students can chose to share their projects/assignments and collaborate with classmates to make them better in one location… I love it!
- I am teaching my students proper digital netiquette by making myself accessible in the evenings with Direct Messaging. We discuss what is important to interrupt me after school and what can wait until the next day. If a student has a burning or important query/issue, that student may “DM” me knowing that I am going to receive a text message immediately of their post. They can expect a response soon thereafter. This function has solved delays, deadlines, and parental questions and alleviates disruption and the flow/progress of the next morning’s routine. Students who DM me with frivolous or irresponsible questions (“Mr. Miller, what page was the math HW?”) are addressed personally in the morning.
Maybe you too, see the endless possibilities of Edmodo in your classroom. Might any of you be partaking in classroom-to-classroom/school-to-school groups (something I and another distant teacher are exploring)? Are any of you finding the Edmodo Assignment Post/Gradebook a time saver? (Support Comments lead us to believe that Gradebook is going to be further improved in future updates). I hope that you are finding Edmodo as an enriching web 2.0 resource as I do and I look forward to reading and implementing your shared classroom ideas.
As I tell my students, “Great idea! Want to share? Go Edmodo!”
Note: We just wanted to thank Robert for taking the time out of his busy schedule to share his experience with Edmodo. We are also looking for others to share their experience’s with Edmodo. Feel free to contact us and share your experience.
Shared Tags
A couple weeks ago we quietly launched a simple new feature on Edmodo, that was the direct result of teacher input. Shared Tags enable you as a teacher to selectively share certain tags with your students.
To share a tag, first click the “Manage” link in the upper-right of the Tags Panel.
This will take you to the Tag Management screen, where you can mark any of your tags as “Shared.”
Any student that belongs to a group you created will instantly have access to the shared tag, using the “Shared” tab that will appear in their Tags panel.
Only teachers are able to share tags. Let us know what you think in the comments, or if you have already started using Shared Tags. Thanks again to our users, for providing us with another great feature idea. Keep them coming…and stay tuned for some very exciting new features coming soon.
Edmodo document viewer now online
We just activated a new feature on Edmodo called the doc viewer. The Edmodo doc viewer allows you to view certain document formats inside your browser, without having to download the file and open the document in an external application. The following formats are currently supported:
- doc – Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2003, XP
- docx – Microsoft Word 2007, 2008
- pdf – Adobe Portable Document Format
- odt – OpenOffice Open Document Text File
- rtf – Rich Text Format
We will be adding support for more file formats in the future such as xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, and txt. The doc viewer is built in flash and is not available on the mobile version of Edmodo.
Here is a quick rundown on how the document viewer works. After sending a file or assignment post, “Generating View…” will appear next to the links for any attached files. While the view is being generated, you and your students will still be able to download the original document. Once your document is ready to be viewed, a “View” link will appear. Click the view link to load the doc viewer right within your browser. The doc viewer has the ability to download the original file, print, view fullscreen, and even zoom on text in the document.
Update: Given the high popularity of the doc viewer, we are working on speeding up the conversion process. Thank you for your patience.
Re-Tweet this to enter to win an ipod touch from Edmodo
UPDATE: The current Edmodo Twitter giveaway is over. Congrats to @mmiller7571 for winning the iPod touch on Twitter.
Edmodo has a booth at the Florida Education Technology (FETC) Conference in Orlando, FL this week. We are doing a few iPod touch giveaways at our booth and if your here at FETC you should stop by our booth (booth 844) to say hi, get an Edmodo Demo, and enter to win one of many iPod touches.
If you are unable to make the FETC conference this week we are also doing an online giveaway on twitter too. To enter to win on Twitter, you must follow @edmodo & re-tweet this blog post and you will be entered to win. We will announce the twitter giveaway winner on our blog after the results are compiled. Tweets will not be entered after 9pm EST on Friday, January 15 2010. The announcement will happen as soon as we get a chance to compiled all the tweets and use a random number generator to pick a number.
Edmodo Mobile Webapp Updated
We just updated the Edmodo Mobile Webapp. New Post and Logout links have been added to the top of the web app. The post tab has been replaced with a Groups tab so you can view just posts from an individual group instead of only all your groups at the same time as is with the Home tab. The new post link at the top of the page replaces the functionality of the old Post tab. Here are some screenshots of the updates in action. Let us know what you think and would like to see added in the comments.
Recent replies filter added
We just added a recent replies filter on Edmodo in the right sidebar. This filter will sort your posts with the most recent replies even after they have been cleared out of the spotlight area. This will make it easier for you to see questions or comments that need your immediate attention. It’s a pretty small feature but it will make seeing replies a lot easier.
Edmodo Mobile Web Application
The number one feature request we have received for Edmodo is an iPhone/iPod touch or mobile web app. This is something that has been on our agenda since we launched Edmodo. Tonight we would like to give everyone an early holiday present and announce the beta of the Edmodo Mobile Web Application at http://m.edmodo.com.
The Edmodo Mobile Web App has been designed to work with the iPod touch and iPhone at this time. It may work on other platforms but they have not been tested as of yet. The mobile web app is pretty basic and will be revised over time based on feedback from you. In the web apps current form you can view posts, reply to posts, vote on polls, post new notes, and view what’s new in your spotlight. The basic goal of our web app is to make it easier to post or reply to someone when your not sitting at a computer.
We would love to hear your thoughts about the Edmodo Mobile Web Application in the comments. Let us know what you think and what kind of future enhancements you think we could make.
Edmodo Polls: You can now post polls to your Edmodo groups
We just launched Edmodo Polls for teachers. Edmodo Polls is a simple system that allows you to post polls to your Edmodo groups to get quick anonymous feedback from your students effortlessly.
Lets do a quick overview of how easy it is to add a poll. First click the “more” link in the Edmodo post bubble. Next, select Poll and the post should look like the following screen shot. You type your question, and at least 2 answers. If you need more answers, just click the “add answers” button.
This is what a poll will look like to your student. Each student can only vote once and they can not retract their vote.
Once you start getting some responses from your students you can quickly gauge student sentiment regarding the question you posted.
Clicking the update link will refresh the polls stats for you.
What do you think of Edmodo Polls? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Now what are you waiting for, login to Edmodo and try out the poll feature 
KSS Summit Edmodo Presentation
We found this Edmodo presentation online that was created by Howard Chan from Kipp Adelante Prepatory Academy for their annual summit in Orlando, Fl in August. (hope they invite us to come next year, I could use a vacation with Mickey Mouse He makes several points about his thoughts on Edmodo, which we would like to share with everyone.
- A blend of Social Networking and Online Classes
- Simplicity for Teachers
- Relevance for teaching and learning
Now have a look at the full presentation slides.
We’d love to share more of your Edmodo experiences with the Edmodo community. If you’ve created an Edmodo presentation, Edmodo documentation, or have an Edmodo success story you would like to share with the rest of the community, send us a quick note by clicking the contact form above.
Small Interface Change… Big Improvement
We’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about how to find an assignment and we kept having to repeat the same thing over and over on how to filter your streams by post type. There was a drop down menu above your stream that you had to click to expose your filtering options. We decided to re-think how we did this for 2 reasons: 1. make your lives easier and 2. make our lives easier
Old Filter
New Filter
We think this change solves a pretty important problem for Edmodo users. Even though it’s small, we think it is going to have a big impact on how you and your students use Edmodo. Tell us what you think in the comments area here or on Edmodo in the Edmodo group.
-
-
About
Edmodo is a private micro-blogging platform built for use by teachers and students.
-
Feeds
Subscribe in a reader
