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.
One teachers Edmodo experience with a student
Edmodo has been an integrated part of my students’ school life for a number of weeks now. My class is a relatively small grade five group of 10 boys and 9 girls. We are part of a rural school in Queensland Australia with just over 230 students spanning grades 1-7. The school is wonderfully equipped with ICTs having IWBs in every teaching room and a ratio of 5:1 PCs to students.
My class would be nicely described as ‘that’ class – I’m sure you know what I mean. The general hobbies of the students outside school largely revolve around farm-life, motorbike racing, rugby league, and pig-hunting (yes, grade 5). Any use of the computer at home is generalised to gaming, surfing the web and chatting.
Edmodo has had a dramatic effect on my class – with an interface that mirrors the best Web 2.0 has to offer – it has captured the imaginations of my kids and driven them further to succeed in their work.
A case in point
A particular student of mine (that we shall call Fred) is the type of boy who survives on Coka-Cola, chips and his X-box. In grade 5 he has seen every horror film imaginable, knows far too much for his age, has no inner-monologue, is completely hyperactive but dislikes sport, plays his X-box for hours before school and long into the night, and just does not ‘get’ school – I love him – he’s great. Fred isn’t particularly naughty nor does he lack intelligence. He’s just got too much outside school to appreciate what is in school – it’s a waste of his time.
English is a particular headache for Fred as he is a decent speller and can read and write – ‘so why do I need anything else?’ This began to change a little bit last year when I started to integrate computer games into literacy but Fred had still never handed in an assignment or a single piece of homework in the 6 months I’d taught this class… until last Friday.
On Friday we started looking at alliteration and alliterative sentences/poems. In class we covered the classics ‘Sam the slippery snake slipped and slid across the slimy swamp’ and paid attention to alliteration in The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Towards the end of the lesson I was asking the students to think of their own alliterative poems and to give them some thought over the weekend (I never set weekend homework)
The bell rang, class dismissed – teachers race each other to the staffroom for a frosty beverage – another week done.
I opened my laptop mid-drink to check some emails, read some blogs, update Twitter and while I was there – have a play with Edmodo. This is what I saw… at 3:30 on a Friday…
Now I know he didn’t quite get the point and it’s not truly alliterative but let me reiterate – Fred has NEVER handed in a piece of homework, Fred does not ‘do’ school, Fred does not get supported outside school to complete work… Fred sat next to his X-box and instead of killing bad-guys he signed onto Edmodo, wrote me 4 poems that I didn’t ask for and then spent the next hour or so chatting to his classmates online about what we had done in school that week. They left encouraging messages in reply to his post and I sat there open-mouthed at how good I knew that would make him feel… all thanks to Edmodo.
Edmodo Store T-Shirts & Mugs
I’ve been asked quite a few times if we had any t-shirts which I regrettably had to say no. Today that has changed. I decided to create an Edmodo Cafe Press Store so Edmodo supporters can now purchase some Edmodo gear. We have a bunch of different style t-shirts and coffee mugs. You can get any color you want as long as it’s white (my homage to Henry Ford and the Model T)
Edmodo 3.0 Feature Highlights
Notable Edmodo 3.0 features
- Realtime updates – Edmodo time-line auto-refreshes
- Threaded replies, replies are now underneath each post instead of sent to the top of the timeline and treated like a new post.
- New caching system – Speed when clicking items is now super fast
- Archive feature – ability for teachers to archive their groups forever.
- Inline editing of posts and replies -we don’t send you to a separate page to edit your posts and replies now.
- Spotlight feature – when someone replies to one of your posts, when you post an assignment or when a student turns in an assignment they get highlighted in the spotlight area. This should be the first thing you check when you login to Edmodo from now on.
- See all posts by user by clicking their picture or name.
Items currently disabled in Edmodo 3.0
- Notifications are currently disabled - Update: turned back on Aug 2nd at 2:04pm CST time
- Importing of RSS feeds – Currently Disabled
- Group Deletion – we have to rewrite the group deletion codes. as things are much more complex due to our cacheing system. No time-frame yet on when this will be back.
Make sure you check out The Edmodo Documentation Wiki for detailed instructions of Edmodo features.
Edmodo 3.0 has launched
We launched Edmodo 3.0 this evening. It’s been a long day and we are tired from working all day. I will do a more in depth post tomorrow. Just wanted to thank everyone that has reported bugs and joined us in the live u-stream this evening. We had a great time.
We are launching Edmodo 3.0 on Friday July 31st
I just wanted to write a quick post letting you know that we are going to be launching Edmodo 3.0 on Friday July 31st. We will have some site outages during the day while we take Edmodo offline and do the upgrade. I would not make plans to use Edmodo for any course work on July 31st as we are unsure of how long the upgrade may take. We have worked very hard on the new version and are very excited to get it up and running for you to use with your classes.
The Edmodo Team
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Edmodo is a private micro-blogging platform built for use by teachers and students.
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